John is an experienced leader with a strong background of defining and executing company strategies. He is especially skilled in channel management, market analysis, brand marketing and selling technology products and services. He has successfully served in a number of executive positions and has been in management for 20 years. John is currently writing a book on increasing revenue generation. He has been a co-author of a comprehensive marketing methodology for high tech companies and has helped venture capitalists and private equity firms gauge their technology investments. In 2004, John served as Vice President of Marketing for the NA arm of the $6B IT Services division of Siemens, AG. John served on the board of directors at WebTrends, purchased by NetIQ (NTIQ) for $1 billion in 2001. WebTrends was highly successful dominating the web site analysis and reporting space. Prior to WebTrends, John was the Vice President of Marketing for Tivoli Systems. John has worked as a contracted consultant for established companies, start ups and top analyst firms.
John can be reached at john@johnwryan.com or you can follow him on Twitter @buyersteps
Buyers will not engage with providers who don't have their marketing and sales in alignment with the buyer's process.
This is the first of a series of articles written from my book Buyer Steps. I am exposing my book one topic at a time through these articles. I would welcome feedba...Nov. 8, 2011 12:48 PM EST Reads: 758
It's not that I don't like business...I can't stand boring businesses that have no intention of making a dent in the world...or improving it. They are just "getting in the way of the money" with the hope of being chosen. Usually, it's a dearth of creativity/courage, either one - it's ...
Many providers are still relying on their company's viewpoint for their marketing. Since buyers can instantly share information in the 21st century, it is best to adjust heavily toward helping the buyer reach their goals. Buyers want information in specific ways at ideal times to accel...
A discussion on helping organizations ask the right questions to see if they're ready for IPv6.
On February 3, 2011, the Number Resource Organization (NRO), along with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Architecture Bo...
Congratulations. Everyone in your company is now in marketing, sales and service. They may not reside in any of those three departments and they may lack in specialized skills, but they can create a bridge of trust which is smart marketing. I recently wrote a white paper called The Dig...
At the center of each 20th century corporate sale was often the constant feeling that the buyer had to take immediate action. Their platform was burning and the buyer needed to make a decision. The provider would work hard to shove as much biased information down their throats as pos...
According to Intel, the reason this makes sense are:
Acquisition enables a combination of security software and hardware from one company to ultimately better protect consumers, corporations and governments as billions of devices - and the server and cloud networks that manage ...
Today I have posted a white paper on the Digital Buyer approach and why business providers must change their approach in order to obtain and retain more of them. It's time companies and firms of all sizes organized their revenue efforts around The Digital Buyer's needs. You don't wan...
IBM and Unica Corporation today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Unica in a cash transaction at a price of $21 per share, or at a net price of approximately $480 million, after adjusting for cash. A publicly held company in Waltham, Mass., Uni...
It is the provider’s marketing leadership that is charged with helping buyers go through their steps. But the big cultural shift is when everyone in the provider’s company decides to be a marketer.
Stories are as old as cave drawings it seems. It’s the opportunity to describe what...
Innovation is the cause of leadership, not size.
There are plenty of examples that would support many of these characteristics. Admittedly, size does make it more challenging to be innovative and agile. But I would also argue that conventional wisdom is fueled by the size of the tar...
A common sense approach to finding a job for the young person you know.
Nothing is always true when it comes to people. Admittedly, the representation here of a Millennial candidate and Boomer takes a bit of a poetic license. It’s meant to help the Millennial keep their sense of humo...
Social media can be a vexing component of the overall marketing effort. On one hand, hundreds of millions of people use it. On the other hand, how does a company make use of it? The power of the network is the number of people on the network itself. The beauty of a popular platform...
While they acknowledge that use of the Internet as a tool for communications can yield both positive and negative effects, a significant majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth Future of the Internet survey say it improves social relations and will c...
An April 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project asked respondents whether they had used a variety of devices – laptops, cell phones, game consoles, and more – to go online using a wireless network. Altogether, 56% of Americans said they have...
How Generation Y will continue in their online sharing ways.
In a survey about the future impact of the Internet, a solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders said the Millennial generation will lead society into a new world of personal disclosure and information‐sharing us...
A new web site enabling agencies and the public to review the detailed financial performance of federal IT investments using dashboards. The home page offers a quick glance into the overall investment portfolio while also allowing you to go deeper into specific IT investments. The s...
A solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth Future of the Internet survey expect that by 2020 most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks, rather than depending ...
Women now account for 50 percent of the U.S. workforce.[i] In 1969, they made up 33 percent of the workforce.[ii] Women have become important breadwinners in the U.S. and now account for 62 percent of college associates’s degrees, 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 60 percent of all mas...
IBM recently conducted interviews with 1,500 leaders from all over the globe across 60 countries representing 33 industries. Their conclusions about what it takes to be successful in today's complex environment:
Facing a world becoming dramatically more complex, it is interesting that...
I've often wondered why people sometimes struggle with decisions as an individual or in groups. Group dynamics are very interesting to me and personal behavior that seems to be fueled by fear or embracing life/opportunity is equally intriguing. Regrettably, you will see in certain grou...
When I started my high technology career in 1982, we had an unemployment rate of 10%. Doesn’t this sound familiar? It was a brave new time in computing and no one was even sure where it was all going. Doesn’t this also sound familiar? I probably didn’t realize it at the time since I wa...
Whether the ball is old or new, it doesn’t matter. It feels right. Something goes off in my brain where all of my memories of pick up games and balls thrown or chased down come rushing back. And memorable smiles that showed up in buckets. Smiles from friends, family members and even pe...
Over the last few weeks, I presented a lesson or two a week for my readers. For your convenience, here are all seven of the martial arts lessons that I believe you can apply to business. Lesson One: Laying a Foundation – Hapkido is a building program that relies on previous steps along...
There are different opinions on these sites, but I focus on raw functionality not hype. By working daily to learn the nuances of how these social media tools work together, I have been contacted by professionals I would have never met through my own network.
All of these tools are i...
In the case of Ulitzer, as a writer I am focused on getting readers from within an existing audience. There are already thousands of readers coming to the Ulitzer site, so if they are interested in my topics such as marketing, they will find my articles as well as others. Ulitzer all...
In Q2’09, the total notebook PC market posted strong Q/Q and Y/Y growth as units surged past the 38 million mark, as reported in the DisplaySearch Q3’09 Quarterly Notebook PC Shipment and Forecast Report. The mini-note PC (netbook) market was particularly strong, growing 40% Q/Q, which...
It will take you twenty times to learn this move – New students come into class and see all of the Hapkido techniques on sheets on the wall. The list is intimidating to say the least. Korean terminology, foundational moves, nuanced techniques and sometimes small notes written in pen on...
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of their timing to buy. Over 50% of leads are not yet sales ready, so nurturing those leads can help you maximize results rather than throwing them away.
Twitter is a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, par...
Quiet the voices – While in training, I like to sit in a lotus position, close my eyes and drift inward. There is usually some kind of a striking class like Karate being taught before Hapkido and it can get quite loud in there, but no matter. When you learn to go inward, you are able t...
More proof that blogging is smart business. Just make sure that whoever is blogging is a good writer and is committed to being consistent.
Otherwise, it will be a waste of time. You can either have your developers include a blog in your web experience or use free tools like Wordpr...
This is Lesson No. 3 of a Continuing Series on How Martial Arts Skills can be Applied to Business. There are no short cuts – a Hapkido master told me this and thank goodness there are people in the world who still believe this. Stop trying to be clever and instead focus on earning real...
This is Lesson No. 4 of a Continuing Series on How Martial Arts Skills can be Applied to Business. A million lessons everyday – Everyone you meet, everything that happens to you is a lesson. In Hapkido, every class brings either someone who knows more than you or someone who has taught...
Despite a down economy, we continue to see investment in SFA. With shrinking sales resources and market opportunities, investing in technology to automate critical sales processes may be the only alternative to still meet sales targets. The economy has affected vendors in different way...
Wildfire delivers a social media promotions platform. This is an interview with its CEO Victoria Ransom. We play in 2 categories, we’re in the Social Media Marketing category and we’re also in the promotions space. We've taken promotion formats that have been proven successful and hav...
Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today announced that it serves more retailers on the 2009 Internet Retailer 500 ranking than any other social media competitor. Bazaarvoice dominates the Top 100, where it beats out i...
Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Microsoft Dynamics POS 2009, a flexible, scalable solution that helps midmarket companies and specialty retailers provide outstanding customer service, drive employee productivity and make business decisions with confidence. The new s...
Inside Info announced today that QlikView business intelligence software ranked first in ease of use and customer loyalty, outperforming industry leaders SAP (Business Objects), Oracle (Hyperion) and IBM (Cognos) in the newly released BI Survey 8 – the world’s largest independent surve...
