By watching and learning from Ted Rubin (another first for me), I realized how relationships matter in the marketing and sales world.

He is firm believer of developing and nurturing relationships. As the most-followed CMO on Twitter, he makes it a point to reply to his followers (well, his followers are so many he tries to keep up with them). And it’s true; I saw his replies on comment thread of this YouTube video interview.

I’m going to follow this guy as soon as this post is published.

Here are my notes about the guy:

1. Permission marketing and idea virus is the beginning of return of relationship. Relationships are important so that you can tell you stories.
2. Go directly to the brands. What agencies do is to spend the money that agencies give to them and then deliver what is expected of them. Understand the brands. Develop a relationship with the brands. Spend more time with them; get to know them as people so you get the opportunity to talk to them about new things.
3. When asked if he’s a Marketing Person or a Sales Person as a kid:

Both but more on the sales side. I was the kid who always sells something new. I had to be both because I need to explain what I was selling.

The best salesman are marketers at heart. At sales, you need to concentrate of the people. People comes first before the product. Relationships outlives everything.

Marketing gave me new insights in sales. I know what a sales team needs. Marketing is great, but if you cannot sell a product, break down marketing into SILOs… Bring it up to the customer service (because it’s a part of the sales), frequency of sales, lifetime value of a customer…

What happens is you market a product and sell it to people. Then you have a customer service that completes the whole sales process.

4. A lot of marketers don’t know how to deal with people. They come up with ideas and pitch in front of the camera. Unlike salesmen, we talk to people and we learn to listen.

5. Hear and listen. Social marketing needs listening.

6. Everything that we do is social. Every chance that we communicate, get intelligence, and share, is social.

7. Some companies have empowered their employees to power their social outreach and customer service.

Starting a revolution of employees — sometimes, change don’t happen on top. Employees should be empowered to be able to brainstorm freely, innovate in their company.

8. Looking people in the eye digitally — we do this in life generally: when to talk to somebody, you look at them in the eye to develop relationships. I do the same digitally: I check profiles, I call them by name. The 1936 book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie taught us that saying a person’s name is the most beautiful sound a person can ever hear.

On the other side, make yourself available as well. Take the time to check on the profiles of the people who follow you. Use tools that let you search keywords about your company, competitors, to know what’s going on. This is current events. You need to be a lurker.

9. People that I’d love to meet:

a. Richard Branson — how he interacts with people, his brilliance

b. Tom Hanks — not as actor, but as a marketer and a business person

c. Seth Godin — glad to have spent time with him; cool guy to talk to. I just love to hear how his mind goes.

10. I try to be myself. I try to be authentic.