High-Value B2B and Proving Marketing’s Worth, with Susan Curhan

Susan is a Connector...of business goals with strategies, and of people and ideas that strengthen business and personal performance. Her insights about marketing get at the heart of why and how smart marketers are valued drivers of business results. She’s led marketing, communications, product innovation, sales, and digital strategy in both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Before business school, she studied Pharmacy and is convinced her marketing career came from a stroke of luck that involves tennis and the U.S. Olympic team. She’s a proud science nerd, has a strategic framework at the ready for any situation, believes your resume needs work and is certain almost all communication would be better in table format.

Also, Susan believes bad creative is (mostly) the fault of poorly-trained marketers, not poorly-performing agencies. Want to know why? Follow this podcast, it will be discussed in a future episode.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• How Susan developed a love of science and then decided to attend Pharmacy school on a whim before moving into pharmaceutical marketing
• Why it is important to develop the broadest range of skills possible, and why Susan recommends you take on new projects and roles throughout your company
• Why truly knowing what a strategy is, and how to build one, is a vital skill you need to cultivate, and why your efforts should be grounded in the needs of the business
• Why you should focus on understanding your end-user/buyer, understanding your company's and products' capabilities and how to apply them, and how to stand out
• Why it is important to work at a company that values your contributions, especially if you are a woman in marketing
• Why project planning should include at a minimum a discovery phase, a planning phase, a design & implementation phase, and a measure phase
• How high-value B2B sales differ from other sales and marketing efforts, and why working with a varied team requires you to meet people where they are
• Why demonstrating marketing's return on investment is challenging, and why providing the sales team with tools to assist the sales pipeline is the best way to show value
• How Susan is tracking her team's use of time on projects and on "sustaining ops", and how the information has become invaluable
• What tools Susan finds invaluable in her work and to help streamline her workday, and what key daily habits she practices

Additional resources:  

• Susan's blog posts on getting the best from your creative agency: www.abravenew.com/blog/author/susan-curhan 
• Website: www.verawholehealth.com 
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/susancurhan/