Category: Leadership

Effective direct marketing in the business-to-business landscape furnishes the lead generation and relationship-building necessary for business growth. Unlike B2C marketing, where sales cycles tend to be short, B2B marketing generally includes more decision-makers and longer sales cycles.

Following are time-tested direct marketing techniques that help a business navigate the B2B landscape and ensure long-term growth.

Understand Your Audience

At its very core, every great marketing campaign starts with an effective knowledge of your target audience. In a B2B context, that would entail at which level in companies you target – CEOs, procurement managers, or department heads, depending on your product or service.

Conduct market research to find out as much information as possible about your prospective client’s needs, problems, and buying behaviour. This information will help in creating detailed buyer personas of who your perfect client would look like.

With highly defined buyer personas, one can tailor the marketing message to answer the specific needs and challenges of the audience.

Tailored Email Campaigns

Email marketing is a truly robust tool for B2B direct marketing. Personalised email campaigns will allow you to build relationships with your prospects, nurture leads through the sales funnel, and eventually close sales. Begin to segment your email list, focusing on criteria such as industry, company size, job role, or purchasing behavior.

Personalise the email messages about the needs and pain points of each segment. Use the recipient’s name and other relevant personal details to make the email more engaging.

You should also share some really valuable content, including industry insights, case studies, and whitepapers, which would help your prospects solve some of their business challenges. Not only does personalization drive open and click-through rates, but it also builds trust.

How to Use LinkedIn for Lead Generation

LinkedIn is the goldmine for B2B marketers. It is a professional networking platform with huge potential for lead generation and engagement. Begin by optimising your LinkedIn profile and company page to show your brand experience and value proposition. Include appropriate keywords so you pop up in search results.

Engage your target market through the sharing of relevant content, be active in industry forums, and participate in active LinkedIn groups. Robust search functionality on LinkedIn enables the ability to find and engage prospects much more easily.

Personalising the request to connect and the follow-up messages will further enable you to deepen the relationship with key decision-makers. You can also utilize an ad option through Sponsored Content and InMail for additional lead generation.

Content Marketing and Thought Leadership

Content marketing is one of the pillars of B2B direct marketing. You will be in a position to place your brand at the forefront of its niche by creating valuable content and sharing it to attract prospects. Design a content strategy that will include a mix of blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, infographics, videos, and webinars.

Address the crucial pain points of your target audience. Share actual, useful insights, practical tips, and data-driven analysis that would help your prospect make a decent decision.

Consistently posting quality content not only drives way more traffic to your site but also establishes trust and credibility in your brand. Share your content via email campaigns, social media, and industry forums to reach a larger audience.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing is an ultra-targeted approach—instead of casting a wide net, ABM tailors the marketing efforts toward the unique needs and challenges of individual accounts. This approach is particularly useful in B2B marketing, where the sales cycle is truly longer and involves multiple decision-makers.

First, identify the key accounts to target based on criteria such as revenue potential, industry, and strategic fit.

Run personalised marketing campaigns to meet the needs and pain points of each account through activities like personalised email, targeted ads, customised content, and one-on-one meetings. For ABM, the marketing and sales teams must be very closely aligned to ensure coordination and effectiveness in the approach.

Key Takeaway: Mastering the B2B landscape

A strategic and targeted approach to direct marketing may make all the difference in this complex B2B environment. Drive business growth by effectively engaging potential clients through personalised campaigns with an added understanding of your target audience, along with lead generation through LinkedIn, content marketing, and ABM.

Next in line are the add-ons: webinars, direct mail, and continuous measurement and optimization. With these battle-tested methods, your business will do more than succeed amidst tough competition in the B2B space; it will be set up for long-term success.

By Matt Dykes, COO at Abzorb

The workplace has changed over recent years more than it has done since the industrial revolution, so we are most definitely due an update. Remote and hybrid working is now the norm since the pandemic. Multi generations in the workplace have never been so diverse to manage and the younger generations such as Gen Z are constantly disparaged about being too ‘precious’ just because their needs and aspirations are different to others. And let’s not forget the biggest game changer of all in the workplace, the introduction of AI.

This is a lot for business leaders to grapple with but understanding and managing this changing landscape is essential for business growth and attracting and retaining talent. These colossal changes do not warrant minor edits to your policies and strategy but call for a complete re-write.

Remote, Hybrid and Flexible Working

Many business leaders are enforcing ‘return to the office’ (RTO) mandates but despite companies trying to allure them into the office with various benefits they won’t be bribed because they are determined to keep remote and hybrid working. A recent study from BambooHR’s 2024 Return to Work report shows that 90% of employees want remote and hybrid work for flexibility and a better work/life balance with 51% of remote workers saying it helps them with family duties and 74% of respondents enjoy not commuting daily. 

Business leaders need to understand that a ‘one size fits all’ model does not work with today’s diverse workforce of multi generations with different needs.

Leaders have struggled over the past few years with the shift of power moving from employers to employees and are trying to reclaim it. But by enforcing RTO and tracking employee’s office attendance and monitoring them too closely you are creating a micro-managed ‘Big Brother’ culture driving down trust, respect and taking away any autonomy and flexibility. 

Managing Multi Generations

Today there are a multitude of generations in the workplace from baby boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. As mentioned, the younger generation always seem to get bad press but what we must acknowledge is that this generation grew up with the digital age and in a different world so it’s no surprise they have different needs and aspirations. Instead of disparaging them maybe we should learn from them, even better learn from each other. Research from LiveCareer revealed that 87% agreed they could learn from each other while 78% thought it led to conflict. 

Millennials and particularly Gen Z have grown up in a world where mental health and well-being is freely talked about, and they wouldn’t hesitate to talk about it at work. Whereas a Baby Boomer would probably feel very awkward talking to their manager about mental health. Deloitte Digital reported that empathy was the second most important trait in a business leader while leaders placed it fifth. The Visier survey also revealed that 64% of Gen Z employees ranked good physical and mental health as a leading life ambition.

Gen Z prioritise spending time with family and friends and good health over career aspirations. They want to work for companies with good ethics and values they believe in. They have seen what the workaholic lifestyle does to people and burn out is not attractive. They are more self-aware and can talk about feelings, ethics and values, and what matters and that’s a good thing.

Incoming AI 

Employees fear AI taking their jobs in the workplace and it’s not surprising when the Institute of Public Policy Research recently announced that AI will threaten up to 8 million workers in the UK. However, if we harness the power of AI now and understand it then we can use it to relieve workers from admin and mundane jobs focusing them on more rewarding, interesting, and high value positions.

Business leaders need to step up and understand how they are planning to use AI in their business and make employees feel at ease working with the technology instead of against it.

The Re-Write

The archaic attitude of ‘this is how we have always done it’, ‘who do they think they are?’, ‘we are in charge not the employees’ needs to change. Admittedly, this will mainly be from business leaders of older generations and maybe also from larger established businesses rather than start-ups who tend to be more receptive, innovative and agile.

Business leaders will need to re-write the culture of their organisation ensuring it is transparent, meaning that you openly communicate your vision, mission, objectives, strategies and what you are working on, what works and what hasn’t. Empower employees by involving them in decisions, provide them with the opportunity to voice their opinions, suggest new products and services encouraging innovation and creativity, but at the same time ensuring that they know it’s OK to make mistakes and that we learn from our failures. 

Involve them in the introduction of AI asking them how their roles and everyday tasks could be improved and what they find dull about their job. Make it clear to them that they will not be replaced by AI, and you want to get to a place where they can work seamlessly with AI to improve their productivity and efficiencies and augment their roles. Then offer them training and development programmes to ensure they have up to date training and opportunities to develop their career if they want to.

Devise a remote and hybrid working strategy ensuring employees can work flexibly and remotely if desired and come into the office when required. Ensure that they have the option to come into the office when they want to or for a purpose such as a meeting, or brainstorm, the choice is theirs. You are giving them the autonomy to get on with their work and make the decisions on how best they do it.

Help create and cultivate social connections for all teams that are in office, remote or hybrid to increase effective collaboration and inclusion, and connect teams.

Trust, flexibility and respect are the buzz words here, by demonstrating this to your employees they will be aware that you trust and respect their autonomy to get on with their job and get the work done. By doing this you will be rewarded with enthused and motivated employees who value their job and who they work for and remain working for you.

Demonstrate that you care for your employees by being empathetic and understanding by holding regular ‘check in’ sessions to ensure that they are OK and if they have any issues they want to talk about.

All Good Things 

All good things come to those who wait so be patient. This new way of managing the modern workplace takes time and we are all learning together, and it will continuously evolve, and you and your employees will adjust accordingly.

It’s not a power struggle it is about gaining mutual respect and trust and working as a team to achieve your objectives. The payback will be that employee engagement will increase and you will garner their respect and trust which is two-way, you must earn it to receive it. This takes effort and time, but the benefits will be that you attract and retain talent, improve your reputation as the company people want to work for.

By Cheryl L. Mason, J.D.

Trust is a two-way street. To get it, you have to give it.  For leaders, this translates as risk and for employees, this means value.

The pandemic required offices to shut down and people to work remotely. Many leaders were not and still are not comfortable with employees working in a location other than the traditional office space. The belief was and is that employees cannot be trusted to do their work without the possibility of the leader checking on them.  What is most interesting with this concept is that leaders (pre pandemic) rarely left their offices to check on employees.  It was the idea that they could that gave them comfort. Leaders believe that when employees are not in the office, they are not working and if they are, they are less productive.

Most leaders follow conventional leadership practices. Work is done at work and anything at home is not work. This created an inherent distrust between leaders and employees.  Leaders followed the traditional boundaries – be the boss at work and the human at home. This is the training leaders received for years. If you can’t see the person in the office, they are not working. This led to questions, how do we manage people we can’t see; how do we provide training; and what if they are working out?  For these reasons, during the pandemic many leaders clamored work surveillance software, required employees to check in with supervisors when working remotely, and pushed for the return to in office work as quickly as possible.  By doing all these things and more, leaders broke any fragile trust they had with employees.

Change was already well underway before the pandemic. Some organizations had implemented telework and remote work options with successful results. I led one of these organizations. Prior to the pandemic, approximately a quarter of my staff worked remotely and about one third participated in telework. And as shocking as it might be, these people were successful, sometimes more so than their in-office colleagues. When the pandemic hit, we transitioned our entire workforce of more than 1000 people to remote work and we continued hiring, adding 200 more employees and training them REMOTELY!  We also improved our technology which provided more support for employees and streamlined processes. And what happened? Our results exceeded all expectations!  Why? and How?  Getting comfortable with risk, adjusting to change, and communicating value, acknowledgement and trust every day.

The redefinition of personal and professional success and the boundaries between work and life were changing fast. Employees want to matter, to know that they bring value and have purpose to the organization. In this way, work enhances their lives, but it does not dominate it. Employees believed that they demonstrated to leaders, during the pandemic, that they could be productive working remotely and thus, it should be an option. But leaders pushed back because it was outside their comfort zone. It requires them to take risk and operate differently.  Again, leaders broke the trust.

Some leaders did not believe this could continue. Others think that because some employees’ jobs require them to be in the office on a regular basis, that everyone has to – it’s the only fair way to do it. That thinking doesn’t work with employees. Employees expect leaders to think and lead the organization in the best way possible for the employees, the customers, and the organization, not themselves. That might mean some people have to be in the office, but not everyone and not all the time. Many employees do not believe that the leaders think beyond profit or results and how they as leaders are impacted. Employees are challenging leaders to think outside their comfort zone and lead with agility, innovation, and trust. Employees are asking leaders to treat them as their most valuable resources.

Leaders must change just as the employees and the workplace is. Relating to and connecting with your employees can be done in person or virtually – but it is necessary.  Leading requires taking risk and adapting and embracing different approaches and perspectives. You either drive change or it runs you over – either way trust is the copilot.

A thesis on business management is the final work of a bachelor’s or master’s student. It reflects the author’s ability to develop theoretical/practical solutions to business management problems and improve existing business mechanisms in various directions.

The essence of business management is the timely identification of problems in managing socio-economic systems and organizations. The researcher’s task is to conduct a deep, objective analysis of the content of the problem and identify ways to solve it. If they don’t know how to do it right, it is better to turn to the thesis writing service – fast and quality help is guaranteed. A professional writer who works there can help you write any part of a thesis.

Goals and objectives of the thesis in business management

A thesis in business management demonstrates a graduate’s professional training level and their ability to conduct independent scientific research and competently solve assigned problems. What is required from a student when writing a thesis in business management?

• Conducting theoretical research on a reasoned substantiation of an existing scientific idea and the essence of the process/phenomenon being studied.
• A comprehensive analysis of the origin of the control mechanism and its functional characteristics.
• Justification of the chosen research methodology in the context of the characteristics of the research subject, as well as typical trends associated with the pattern of development based on the available data.
• Development of reasoned and workable theoretical proposals to improve/eliminate a pressing problem in the field of business management.

How to choose an object and subject for a business management thesis

To simplify the definition of the object/subject of business management research, you should familiarize yourself with their main examples.

Options for research objects

Any object in business management is a type of self-developing system that quickly responds to changes in the external environment’s structure. Such a reaction leads to the system dramatically changing its thinking strategy, the behavior of working personnel, the set goals, and the structure of divisions.

Note. The effectiveness of external factors’ influence is directly affected by the degree of sophistication of the working business management mechanisms, the system’s susceptibility to rapid changes (its openness), and the state of the internal environment.

What can become the object of research?

1. Associations of organizations (trade unions, associations, concerns, industrial and financial groups) and their work/functioning patterns.
2. Study of the organizational and legal forms of different organizations or their divisions (including personnel).

Subject of study

In a scientific thesis on business management, the subject of research is the solution of emerging problems of business management relations in the functioning and development of selected systems.

How to write a thesis in business management: a step-by-step guide

Writing a thesis in business management comes down to 6 main steps:

• Selection of a relevant research topic in accordance with the approved list
• Appointment of a scientific supervisor
• Drawing up a work plan for the thesis research
• Formatting the structure of the future document
• Submitting a thesis for review
• Preparation for defense of a thesis in business management.

Choosing a topic for a thesis in business management

A graduate has the right to independently choose the topic of their thesis in business management based on the list of topics approved by the graduating department. In some cases, a student can submit their version of a topic not related to the list for approval. The main requirements for such topics are compliance with the author’s specialty and belonging to the list of priority department research areas. List of examples of relevant topics that allow you to write a high-quality paper quickly:

1. Company competitiveness and social business responsibility
2. Basics of business modeling for sustainable growth of the selected enterprise
3. Analysis of consumers of the selected trade segment
4. Business planning in the development of management systems in the industry
5. Description of international factors influencing personnel management (company name).

Choosing a scientific supervisor

The scientific supervisor of a graduate in the specialty “Business Management” can be a specialist from an educational organization with an academic degree of “PhD,” “Doctor of Science,” and practical experience in the process of writing theses. Scientific consultations on issues related to writing a thesis in business management begin no later than two calendar weeks from the date of appointment of a supervisor for the project.

Drawing up and organizing a plan for further work on the thesis

The student, together with the project supervisor, draws up a plan for working on the thesis. What will the process of working on the paper look like?

• The author of the work is obliged to visit the supervisor several times a month and inform them about the progress of the work done.
• The student, paired with a supervisor, undertakes to prepare a recommended list of literary sources relevant to the topic of the thesis in business management, a template for the future structure of the document, the purpose/objectives of the upcoming work, a description of the theoretical, methodological and empirical basis of the research.
• The final result of work on the thesis is presented for review. A special commission checks the document, after which a verdict is announced on the advisability of issuing admission to further defense of the work.

Preparing and formatting the structure of a thesis

A thesis in business management consists of seven main structural elements: title page, content (table of contents), introduction, main part (with chapters, sections, subsections, paragraphs), conclusion, bibliography, and appendices (if necessary).

Submitting your work for review

Reviewing a thesis in business management is a prerequisite for obtaining admission to defense. The document is sent to a third-party specialist for review no later than ten days before the official defense procedure.

Preparing to defend a thesis

Before the date of the defense of the thesis in business management, the author of the work presents to the management of the department copies of the thesis research, prepares a report with a speech for the defense, and prints out visual materials on the topic.

By Merilee Kern, MBA

In the much-anticipated new book, “Dare to Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart,” trailblazing former federal agency CEO, TEDx speaker and renowned relational leadership expert Cheryl L. Mason, J.D. unveils an unconventional yet highly effective approach to leadership, In it, she challenges the status quo, encouraging leaders to take personal responsibility for their team’s engagement and development.

Having been the fourth Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed—and first woman—to serve as the CEO/Chairman of the VA Board of Veterans’ Appeals before founding her Catalyst Leadership Management consultancy for which she serves as CEO, in “Dare to Relate,” Mason provides a refreshing perspective to revolutionize workplace culture and leadership practices to foster a more dynamic, cohesive, productive and effective team environment.

Mason is a visionary who has transformed workplace culture and achieved unprecedented results. Thus, unlike conventional leadership training, “Dare to Relate” is written to forge a new path for cultivating strong workforce relationships. It addresses the fundamental principle that employees are people and a company’s most valuable resource.

Contemporary leaders often lack the preparedness and essential tools needed to effectively lead today’s workforce. All too often, leaders rely on human resources or personnel management to manage their employees. “Dare to Relate” challenges the status quo, empowering CEOs and other leaders—both established and aspiring—to take personal responsibility for engaging and investing in the people who comprise their workforce. With this book Mason provides a compass for visionary leaders who dare to create an impact.

“Being a catalyst leader involves facing challenges, overcoming obstacles and genuinely caring for and supporting your employees,” says Mason. “In ‘Dare to Relate,’ I share my journey and guide readers through essential principles of the relational management style. The book outlines the kind of skills needed to lead with authenticity and empathy. The kind that bolster staff morale, trust and bottom line results in kind.”

From her own journey as a military spouse to her groundbreaking role as the first woman CEO of a federal agency, Mason extraordinary journey detailed in the book is inspirational and empowering. So too are her actionable insights intended to embolden readers to break free from limitations and forge their own path of self-development to realize unparalleled success.

A Peek Inside:

Geese in V Formation:

Mason draws an insightful parallel between the flight patterns of geese and leadership. Have you ever watched geese fly in their distinctive V formation? Mason encourages us to pay close attention, for there’s a lesson in true leadership to be learned.

Leadership in Action:

In their flight formation, the leader occasionally drops back to let another take the lead. This selfless act optimizes flying time, showcasing the importance of shared leadership responsibilities.

Efficiency and Communication:

The geese position themselves just above the bird in front, reducing wind resistance and conserving energy. This fosters efficient communication and allows them to track each other, highlighting the power of teamwork.

Purpose, Impact, and Value:

Mason underlines that each member of the flock serves a purpose, impacts others, and brings value to the team. This analogy beautifully illustrates the interconnectedness of leadership and teamwork, emphasizing the importance of caring for the team.

If you or someone you know is keen on a dynamic, inspirational and high-impact book that can ignite the spark of leadership within, look no further than “Dare to Relate” as a powerful source of motivation and key learning for building powerful, meaningful and authentic workplace connections.