Timeless is a term that, when applied to something it indicates that no matter how old it is, the relevance and overall utilization of the item never diminishes. It's a term that can be applied to many things, including literature. A few timeless written works that come to mind include the Holy Bible, War and Peace and Atlas Shrugged among many.

Could B2B Marketing Confessions be added to that list?

I first read B2B Marketing Confessions shortly after it was published in 2011. Its author, John J. Wall, compiled his many years of traditional and digital marketing into an insider book that, despite its size, packs a ton of useful information and insight over his career to that point. As John is also lucky to know me personally, I held onto the book rather than giving it away. In the process of rearranging my desk to make room for other books I keep buying but never get to reading, I decided to revisit this book, over a dozen years after I first read it, especially as I realized I never wrote takeaways from it the first time. Oops.

With the timeless inference already out there, it may come as no surprise I still got a few takeaways from it today.

Solid marketing principals are timeless – Sure some of the names of specific tools are dated and HubSpot was nowhere then what it is now, but the types of tools and how you use them is still relevant today. Not to mention the hard, non-glamourous work that is behind the scenes in developing the marketing strategy.

Crossing the making-payroll chasm – This resonated to me, where the reference is regards to your business starts out as something where you just trying to eek by and concerned about making payroll, but then to take it to the next level you really need to invest and work hard to make it. Many business don’t get this far, and those that do still have a not-so-easy journey ahead.

Your CRM system won’t run itself – No truer words or thoughts can say this and it’s no different today than it was when this book was written. Any CRM system needs to be fully and properly administered, maintained, developed, governed and evaluated, let alone used properly by its end users.

Should the book be revised? – As John has written other books since and he shares his knowledge and research weekly as co-host of the long-running Marketing Over Coffee podcast, where I would vote for him to do it, I wouldn’t press him on it either.

B2B Marketing Confession flows from the product to how you market and sell it. Sprinkled throughout the book is John’s wit and anecdotes from the road, many I have had the good fortune to hear first-hand from him. I recommend this book for multiple categories of readers. It serves as a great reference for someone interested in marketing as a career, someone who doesn’t work in marketing but wants a better understanding of what they do, as well as those in the field who want to reflect on the profession. As you may guess I am going to hold onto my copy (I still need John to autograph it) however you can still find a copy online in print, digital and audio formats.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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