John Stone

About John Stone

CEO at Revenue Architects - Sales, Marketing and Digital Business

Entries by John Stone

Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

Criteria for Objective Software and Solution Selection

An effective revenue architecture takes advantage of a range of leading marketing automation and sales enablement technology solutions. Cloud solutions make some traditional evaluation factors – like technology infrastructure management and application maintenance – less important in selection, yet functional and vendor considerations remain critical. It is easy to instantly provision cloud solutions and free trial offers often lead to snap decisions. However, a lot of operational disruptions occur from the selecting the wrong solution. Despite being easy to turn on and off from a technical and economic standpoint, the operational impact to a business from migration of data along with organizational disruptions is significant.

June 7, 2019 /0 Comments/by John Stone

B2B Marketing and Sales, Buyer Engagement, Revenue Strategy

Measuring Total Addressable Market – TAM and Active TAM

The first dimension in constructing a Revenue Architecture is Markets and Buyers. The output includes the identification of the Total Addressable Market (TAM). Once we have made a market selection – considering market strengths and weaknesses, offering portfolio and a range of competitive and market forces, we can measure TAM. TAM works particularly well in […]

April 11, 2019 by John Stone

B2B Marketing and Sales, Buyer Engagement, Closed-loop Marketing, Revenue Growth, Sales Excellence

The Problem with Today’s Sales Methodologies

Face it. Most of the sales methodologies from the 80’s are tired. They do not address what growth companies need today. Growth companies need to shift from using a sales methodology to using a revenue methodology.

February 7, 2019 by John Stone

B2B Marketing and Sales, CRM, Marketing Automation, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

Selecting Marketing Automation and CRM Solutions

Face it, buyers don’t care whether they are interacting with your marketing or your sales organization, they follow their buying process – often in an unstructured and unpredictable way. They self-sell on the web, research with influencers and engage 1:1 with sales people. An effective buyer experience across a dynamic buyer’s lifecycle requires that your revenue architecture is designed with a coordinated closed-loop process supported by integrated technology stack.

September 15, 2018 by John Stone

B2B Marketing and Sales, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Growth

Do I Really Need Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation is of particular value when pursuing a higher volume lead generation or demand generation model.

In a recent Quora post, we answered a question about the value of marketing automation. If you generate – or seek to generate – a high volume of leads (100+s) from the web from self-directed buyers, then yes, you will value having a Marketing Automation platform.

Consider Marketing Automation as part of a broader “technology stack” – there is the “Martech Stack” and the “SalesTech Stack” – we look at these together as the “RevTech Stack”

Their are a number of leading players in marketing automation – Marketo, HubSpot, Eloqua, Pardot, SharpSpring, Act-On, Infusionsoft, Mautic and others.

Prices range from a few 100 per month to many $1,000s – a lot is based on volumes (size of lists etc), but there are also a wide range of feature sets.

It is difficult to recommend any one system. We use SharpSpring, Pardot, HubSpot and Marketo. All of these are solid systems. Consider the integration and platform ecosystem (e.g. Pardot is part of the Salesforce Cloud).

May 8, 2018 /0 Comments/by John Stone

B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Strategy

Knowing Is Growing: Identifying Your Ideal Target Advisors and Influencers

Effective advisor engagement begins with an understanding of the ideal advisors and influencers for your investment products and offerings.

February 27, 2018 /0 Comments/by John Stone

Buyer Engagement, Financial Advisor Marketing, Investment Management, Revenue Growth

Knowing Is Growing: Identifying Your Ideal Customer or Client

Effective Asset Management buyer engagement begins with an understanding of the ideal customer or client and influencers for your products and services. Your marketing success will depend on strategies and programs that rely on accurate identification and targeting of market segments. Depending on your business model, you will target a variety of different audiences. An asset […]

February 27, 2018 /0 Comments/by John Stone

Buyer Engagement

[E-book] Exposed. The False Promises of Revenue Marketing

This eBook was published by Revenue Architects with a focus on B2B. It describes the 9 Principles of Effective Buyer Engagement that serve as a practitioner’s guide to increase leads, conversions, pipeline velocity and revenue impact.

February 23, 2018 by John Stone

Buyer Engagement, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Strategy

Feel Their Pain, Secure Their Business

To understand an advisor’s POV, to engage with them, you must have a deeper understanding of their pain — their urgent, visible problems, even those they may not be aware of.

January 30, 2018 /1 Comment/by John Stone

Buyer Engagement, Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue Architecture

Engage, Advance, Convert: the Mandates of Effective Content

Only by fully understanding your prospective buyers’ pain points, key challenges, intents, preferences and more can you create content that truly resonates with them.

January 2, 2018 /1 Comment/by John Stone