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Geoff Vincent

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CEO, BizCompare Inc.

148 points

With over 25 years of marketing and senior management positions at leading B2B companies including American Express, FedEx, CCH and Dun & Bradstreet, I offer pragmatic POVs about marketing, sales, customer satisfaction and performance management.

WEB: BizCompare Blog

Feb. 10, 2012

Geoff Vincent and 11 other people answered this question

How should senior executives be spending their time? Where do they have the greatest impact?

Hi Roger, your response is very inspiring and I was happy to vote it up.
Dave's question did reference what a Sales executive should be doing with their time and I confess to being concerned when you say that they should be "organizing and aligning ... more

Sales Management

Sept. 27, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 3 other people answered this question

How long does it take you to write a blog post?

On average, after doing all the tagging, title building, linking etc., I'd say about 90 minutes per blog ....I don't type so fast too. more

Online Marketing

Sept. 27, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 2 other people answered this question

What are 'anchor text links' in terms of SEO? How do they help your search marketing efforts?

Links are important for SEO, both on your site as well as on other sites linking back to your's.
From an SEO point of view, its more powerful if the actual words used in the link are not simply one's URL but are one's primary ... more

Online Marketing

Sept. 11, 2011

Geoff Vincent is now following Helen Bereschinova and 2 other people

Aug. 9, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 1 other person answered this question

Hiring managers, what are the most annoying things a candidate can do?

An annoying and (self) destructive thing that candidates can do is to provide "thoughtless" answers to a question and a leading indicator of this is (in part) the duration of their answer. Specifically, a very short answer can indicate a superficial response with little effort ... more

Human Resources

Career Development

May 11, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 2 other people answered this question

What is your definition of value? Yours and your business?

For both me and my business: Value is a function of price AND quality. Good value is a product or service that delivers the right level of quality relative to the price being asked. Value doesn't necessarily mean that its high quality, only that its ... more

May 11, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 41 other people answered this question

Assuming a blog is important to your business, how often do you write articles & post them?

Terrific spectrum of ideas and feedback here. I've struggled with this and am going to TRY to post weekly but if something else comes up, I won't wait, just post it right away. Anything more than 2x per week is starting to overlap with other ... more

March 8, 2011

Geoff Vincent recommends this answer by Joe Preston

Your small business has a $10k advertising budget. Where do you put it?

To me, this decision is driven by what kind of customer activity you define as a success, but in general...
1) Implement a program where you track "how did you hear about us?" with every new customer, and analyze those results on a regular basis.
2) If ... more

March 8, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 12 other people answered this question

What is one feature of modern websites that you think should be abolished?

Josh ..two thoughts on a non-technical level:
Firstly, I'd like to see the never changing homepage abolished. With so many ways to make one's home page more fluid and current, why would anyone settle for a page that doesn't change for months (or years) on ... more

March 2, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 7 other people answered this question

What techniques have you used to optimize your company's website for SEO?

Josh, in addition to the good suggestions above, you should strongly consider having a company blog. It provides new content on a regular basis which is SEO friendly. Also, over time with good content, the blog and individual posts will garner direct backlinks for you.
I ... more

Company Websites

Feb. 7, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 7 other people answered this question

Which would you hire: a candidate with a lower cost, or one with a better culture fit?

Hi Nancy ...for the most part, I come down on the side of the more-money-but-better-fit option that previous commenters also tend to advocate. But I would also challenge the notion that culture is sacrosanct. For example, perhaps the culture needs to evolve and you need ... more

Human Resources

Employee Screening

Feb. 7, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 5 other people answered this question

What are the best ways to track and analyze backlinks?

Hi McCall,
Every Monday morning, I look at various sources to measure how my site is doing for various things including backlinks, so I consider myself somewhat "schooled" on this topic.
In the free category, I concur with Paul re: Yahoo Site Explorer as a good ... more

Online Marketing

Jan. 5, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 4 other people answered this question

By what metrics do you measure the success of a marketing group?

Hi Margaret
These may be very rudimentary, but my favorite, and I think most important, B2B metrics are centered around the customer base:
- How many customers do we have today?
- How many are shrinking, flat or growing? Related: What is our retention rate?
- How many of ... more

Sales & Business Development - Small - Medium and Large Enterprise

Sales & Marketing Alignment

Sales - Small - Medium and Large Enterprise

Jan. 5, 2011

Geoff Vincent and 4 other people answered this question

How can you be sure that your marketing 'guru' is worth their salt?

Hi Kevin ...some very good advice so far from previous contributors to this thread. I'll echo David's comment that if someone actually markets themselves as a "guru", stay away.
So here's my contribution to this topic: While its important for you to ask a prospective marketing ... more

Campaign Building

Dec. 21, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 1 other person answered this question

What are some of the most important considerations to make when changing compensation plans?

Hi Alison,
You ask: When changing compensation plans for your sales team, what considerations should management take note of. A few thoughts:
- connect the new plan to overall revenue and other objectives ...this means have the ability to clearly communicate the changes to the sales ... more

General Management

Human Resources

Dec. 14, 2010

Geoff Vincent recommends this answer by Dr. Rae Baum

What's your marketing mantra?

"Relax and profit" the mantra we use has helped us experience creativity, determination, energy, enthusiasm, excitement, inspiration, power and vitality. more

Dec. 9, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 2 other people answered this question

What, in your opinion, is the most efficient website it terms of creating new business connections?

Hi Godwill,
My experience is that the best site to NUTURE new business connections is LinkedIn. However, the best site to CREATE new business connections, I think, is Twitter.
The reason say this is because Twitter is a great platform to (among other things) connect with ... more

Information Technology

Networking Techniques

Dec. 9, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 4 other people answered this question

What differentiates an average salesperson, and an exceptional salesperson?

I really like, and echo, what Dennis says: They seek out and learn all aspects of the company they represent.
I have found this to be true as well and would add that exceptional sales people will further leverage many of these folks (ops, accounting, ... more

Employee Conduct

Employee Motivation

Dec. 3, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 4 other people answered this question

Looking for user reviews of HootSuite?

hi Curtis,
Context: I am reasonably active with social media for my business. I focus on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook at the moment and probably spend about an hour a day on SM activities.
For me, Hootsuite is just right as a single interface for these ... more

Social Media Marketing

Dec. 1, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 5 other people answered this question

Should email marketing teams reside on the IT or Business side?

Hi Brad,
You ask: Should email marketing teams reside on the IT or Business side? My paraphrased answer is that the leadership and most members of the email team should be from marketing.You'll note that I call it the "email team". See below.
You also ask: ... more

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Campaigns

Email Marketing Team

Nov. 29, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 3 other people answered this question

If an employee leaves soon after training, can I require cost repayment?

Hi Julie,
You ask: Can I require that an employee repay us for training costs if they leave shortly after we take them on? I concur with the general theme of previous answers which is no. I'm going to hypothesize that the vast majority of individuals ... more

Human Resources

Employee Training

Human Resource Development

Nov. 29, 2010

Geoff Vincent and 7 other people answered this question

What Content Attracts You to Read a Blog?

Hi Carlos,
You ask what content attracts me to a blog. Some of this is personal preference. For example, I do not like a blog that is too long, less than 1000 words. Also, I like highly pragmatic blogs that provide advice/tools/templates/examples etc. on whatever topic ... more

Blog Best Practices

Following 3 Topics

Online Marketing

Search Engine Marketing

Following 3 People

Followed by 18 People

Knowledgeable in 44 Topics

#375 of 2984

#323 of 2156

Sales Management

#75 of 522

#5 of 30

Management Development

#2 of 20

Employee Conduct

#4 of 20

#10 of 47

#21 of 115

Human Resources

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Employee Morale

#7 of 30

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#24 of 126

Online Marketing

#127 of 360

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Online Marketing Strategy

#10 of 20

#8 of 20

#21 of 22

Thought Leadership

#22 of 27

Employee Motivation

#25 of 30

Marketing Campaign

#17 of 32

#25 of 42

Blog Best Practices

#28 of 44

#19 of 46

#33 of 51

#28 of 53

#32 of 56

#25 of 59

#35 of 68

Social Media Sites

#73 of 93

#60 of 100

#86 of 111

Social Networking

#92 of 125

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#182 of 220

#130 of 233

Social Media Marketing

#198 of 366

General Management

#873 of 1194

Information Technology

#1393 of 2263

#29 of 39

Marketing Automation

#485 of 531

#568 of 636