Hugh Macfarlane, Author at align.me

Six Strategies for Sales and Marketing in 2012

The liquidity risks of 2008/9, public bailout, market nervousness and contraction, financial market uncertainty, high unemployment and subsequently sluggish US economy have all commanded world attention for the last two or three years. None of this though prepared most of us for the genuine risk of sovereign debt default for a growing group of member states, and the potential collapse of the European Union, or at least that of the Euro Zone. 2012 is, at best, a period of further uncertainty. How should sales and marketing leaders prepare? In a paper entitled. “Collateral Damage. What next? Where READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Hugh Macfarlane & Jim Lenskold present Funnel Forum

align.me’s Funnel Forum webinar ‘Turn Leads to Revenue’ is now available for download. Funnel Master, Hugh Macfarlane, has teamed up again with his friend and Marketing ROI guru, Jim Lenskold, to deliver crisp new insights into global best practice on turning leads into revenue. As recognized leaders in marketing best practice, Jim and Hugh have shared the virtual stage many times before; having presented webinars to enthralled audiences and delivered a series of popular joint white papers via MarketingProfs. The 45-minute webinar, which has already been accessed by hundreds of viewers around the world, provides business owners READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

What happened to the real CMO?

Once upon a time not so long ago in a kingdom not so far away, Marketing asked for a seat at the big boy’s table. Determined to lose the tag of being purely a communications role, CMO’s insisted that it was marketing that held the key to improving the bottom line - and therefore, must be included in all strategic business decisions. These pioneers had a strong point, it echoed often enough, and was reinforced widely enough as a ‘good thing to do’. For its efforts, Marketing was granted a seat at the table, and grinned for READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Looking for SEO keyword researcher / analytics guru

We are a highly developed user of SEO, but the CEO is the main creator / resident geek re key word research, page optimisation, and analytics, and that is poor leverage of his skills. We're looking for an SEO analyst who is very efficient in researching key phrases (quantitative and qualitative assessment of competition for phrases, volume and trends) on-site and off-site optimisation, and analytics / optimsation tests. You will be 'on tap' for any of our consultants to do key phrase selection and analytics work, and be able to turn requests around within 1 day. There READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Looking for Office template guru

We are a highly developed user of Office templates, but the CEO is the main creator/resident geek re templates, and that is poor leverage of his skills. We're looking for an Office template guru who is very efficient in building / evolving templates for Word, Excel and PPT, including styles, headers, page inserts, tables, graphs, logo inclusions, and occasionally, macros that operate on opening. You will be 'on tap' for any of our consultants to do template work, and be able to turn requests around within 3 days. There will be months when no-one asks you for READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|News|

The surprising math of cities and corporation

B2B marketing may have universal properties. Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations. Enjoy the video, then our views on how this phenomenon plays out in the world of the funnel. The universality Geoffrey West (and his collaborators) speaks of applies equally to the funnel. That READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Velocity|

Getting the right people on the bus may mean losing others

B2B marketing can be a tough grind, sometimes. We’re big believers in Jim Collins’ findings from his Good to Great research (and book), and one of the keys to the success of high growth businesses is about getting the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus. ‘Wrong’ in this context is not about good or bad, but about ‘fit’ for the team, values, work style, work rate, focus on the customer and other factors at a given point in time. If you buy the logic of what Collins calls “first who, then READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|News|

align.me CEO & Founder, Hugh Macfarlane’s featured keynote at DemandCon now available

Hugh Macfarlane’s featured keynote at DemandCon in May 2011 now available as an interactive video. July 8, 2011, Melbourne, VIC, AU – Hugh Macfarlane, Founder and CEO of align.me and author of The Leaky Funnel, was a featured keynote at DemandCon in May 2011. He then joined Funnel Coach, Charles Besondy, to run a full day Funnel Plan training workshop with the foremost thinkers in B2B demand generation. His keynote was centred on a topic that has made it to AMA’s Top 10 list of primary focus areas two years in a row – Sales and Marketing READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics, Velocity|

align.me and MarketOne join forces to present Funnel Forum

align.me’s latest Funnel Forum webinar ‘Give Marketing a Sales Quota’ is now available for download. May 20, 2011, Melbourne, VIC, AU – Two of the most innovative minds on marketing productivity, Hugh Macfarlane of align.me and Enrico Brosio of MarketOne, have teamed together to present the latest Funnel Forum webinar, titled ‘Give Marketing a Sales Quota’. A pioneer in demand generation services to the technology sector, MarketOne has 6000 sales lead development programs and 350 clients under its belt. align.me chose to collaborate with MarketOne to enable organizations to utilize their marketing function to its full potential. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|News|

B2B marketing secrets of high-growth companies

Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of align.me, writes... B2B marketing professionals know that nurturing a prospect is a fine art. So if there was a demonstrated way to master this art, we would all want to know about it, right? Well at DemandCon Jon Miller (VP of Marketing, Marketo) is aiming to teach us how we can reach 1000 customers in three years by telling us the ‘secrets’ of a certain company. Jon has been named a Top 10 CMO for companies under $250 million revenue by The CMO Institute, and he co-founded Marketo. His experience has READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

About Hugh Macfarlane