I’m pleased to bring you a series of interviews with thought leaders in B2B Sales and Marketing.

This time we interviewed one of the sharpest and hardest working guys in sales and marketing — Paul Dunay of Avaya, Vice President of Global Services Marketing (If memory serves).  Paul’s also the author of the very popular blog, Buzz Marketing for Technology and he has a new book out, Facebook for Dummies.

If you like what Paul  has to say, just visit him at pauldunay.com.  I wish to thank Paul for his contributions to Fearless Competitor.

Many more thought leaders are coming soon, so stay tuned. We’re on a mission to bring our readers the very best.

CSO Insights recently found that quota achievement was at its lowest rate ever, lead generation budgets were flat or cut, and quotas were being raised.  Jim Dickie sees this as the Perfect Storm. Jim Dickey said it is like raising the high jump bar, when we could not clear the last height.  As a marketing expert, Paul, what are you observing in B2B sales today?

Yes I have observed the same dynamic in many firms (mostly tech firms) and its a dangerous path. But the ones that I see that are really doing well are doing 2 things right 1) they are “hugging” their existing customers to keep them close. From a marketing perspective this means Account Based Marketing - what can you do to stay top of mind with your best customers. and 2) they are using all the data they can to drive rich profiles of their prospects. From a marketing perspective this means Lead Nurturing. Taking the leads that are not ready to buy and nurturing them until they are. It’s often said the your existing customers are your best source of revenue, I would add your lead nurturing database is your next best place!

The economic challenges of today are a major problem for B2B sellers.  Blogs and content sharing are critical elements like websites and Buzz Marketing for Technology is a very popular blog. How can a robust online presence help generate leads? Can you share the lessons you’ve learned with our readers?

I have what I like to call my Content Factory because blogs and other forms of social media all take tons of content. The fact is social media has changed the paradigm forever - and while that sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo consider this - the volume of User Generate content last year exceeded that of Publisher (read Marketer) content - meaning the marketer is now the white noise to the User Generated content. So you better have a Content Factory - one that can create and reuse content to make new forms of interesting content.

Today it’s more critical than ever that marketers can measure the impact of options.  They need to know what’s working, what’s not, and what to change.  What do you recommend they do to track key metrics?

Metrics are always important but I feel like marketers measure a lot but don’t know what really counts in their organization.  I still feel there is only one metric that counts – SALES. Ringing the cash register is the best if not the only way to prove marketing value. And our lead nurturing platform has been immensely helpful in giving transparency into that process and showing that value. Many of my readers have questioned the outright simplicity of just using one metric by saying to me – don’t you measure Impressions? or don’t you measure Cost per Click?

Well of course I do but do I then email those stats to the CEO? No. But I do feel they have a place in your metrics so let me give you my 3 tiers of marketing metrics:

1) Reach metrics – Web site impressions, page views, radio impressions etc…
2) Efficiency metrics – Cost per click, time spent on the website, downloads of a paper or podcast etc.
3) Value – Contribution to Pipeline, contribution to Bookings, ROI on overall bookings.

Content is more important than ever.  Buyers look for content at every stage of the buying process.  What do marketers need to know about content and what actions do you recommend they take?

Well as I mentioned above the content game has changed forever but I would say beyond that is what marketers need to know is how to use their content engine to create content that matches the various stages of the buying cycle and deploy that content to the audience in those various stages. You also have to figure that you may need to have a few touches in order to get your message to stick - In the recent Edelman Trust Barometer report (http://www.edelman.com/trust/2010/) they detail out how many times your message needs to hit target in order for it to resonate! The answer – 3 to 5 times. To me this is the story for any content marketer like myself. Using a multichannel approach that leverages traditional and non traditional channels like Social Media is the key. And Social Media can actually help accelerate this stat for you because of the viral effect it has.

If a CMO were to ask you today – What are the 3 most important takeaways that I need to know? What would they be?

1) The future of media is just one word … Contextual – you have to find to fish where the fish are. Don’t go out and try to place banners or annoying pop ups around content and conversations where you want to be seen. You need to identify where those conversations are and show up with some valuable content that can add to the discussion

2) Be sure to have a rich content engine and a lead nurturing platform in place so you can tell who is respond to what content and adjust as you go and …

3) Be infinitely curious about new forms of social media but vigilant about the ones that you decide to pursue

Thanks Paul.  Great stuff.  We welcome reader comments too.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s also the author of two highly acclaimed white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, as well the ebook, Prospect Driven Marketing. He’s been retained to write a new white paper and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Find New Customers helps business develop and implement programs to improve the way they find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.