Seth’s recent post titled “Senior Management” got me thinking about how experience can backfire when it gets us in a rut. As a “free agent,” I find myself on either side of the experience paradox, depending on the gig.

Some of my consulting work puts me in new and unpredictable situations where I am learning everything. Although I am not bringing as much experience to the table, I am bringing enough smarts to provide a fresh perspective, and to ask, “Why do we do it that way?”

In my marketing work, however, it can be more challenging to stay open-minded, because experience guides me by default—and my old experience can close me off to new concepts.

Contemplating this paradox reminded me of a chat Paul and I had recently about the promise and the curse of B2B marketing technology. We are inundated with amazing new tools and processes to master, with increasingly sophisticated marketing automation, CRM, web content management, email management, social media management, and analytics. It’s tempting to become a competent B2B marketing technician, while becoming distracted from the practice and objectives of marketing. (As a techie myself, I speak from experience.)

And as we all learn the same tools, we all end up doing the same things—cool things, mind you—but on a playing field leveled by the technology.

We need to step away from our computers, and start thinking like our prospects.

We need to get out into the field with Sales and meet prospects and customers. We need to know the objections Sales encounters, so we can address them in our content. We need to create content strategies around what our prospects want throughout their buying process. We need to understand our competition and our position. In other words, we need to get creative like B2C marketers do. But all this has been said before.

To get this strategic perspective and still cover all the bases, we need the technicians and the creative thinkers. Performing B2B marketing effectively requires a range of skills broader than we could have imagined decade over decade, and now year over year. The “Renaissance” marketing manager is a thing of the past; we avoid specializing—and delegating to specialists—at our peril.