There are four significant trends making account-based marketing (ABM) a major focus for B2B marketers: Rising customer expectations are the most disruptive trend in business today. Customers no longer make categorical distinctions between their personal and professional brand relationships. They expect all companies to provide highly valuable personalized experiences all …
Read More »Busting the Myth of Sales Disintermediation
Are IT Buyers so self sufficient that sales people will no longer be needed? Much was made in 2013 of the notion that IT Buyers make a large percent of their decision before engaging with sales. Every major market research company had its own number but they all ranged north …
Read More »Sales process – the missing ingredient for marketing ROI
Most marketers in B2B enterprises have never been trained on sales process. If I were running your marketing or sales organization this would be the first thing on my agenda. Why? Because without understanding sales process, marketing is essentially set up to fail. How can anyone improve or contribute effectively …
Read More »Using Data as a Service for Scalable Channel Enablement
The magic ingredient for successful channel enablement at scale is data. Imagine having the financial, operational, and behavioral data you need on partners to optimize new product launches, coverage models, and channel programs. Imagine being able to show partners — no matter how new or small or niche their focus …
Read More »Connectedness – The Missing Metric for Sales Enablement
Enablement programs for B2B sales and channel resources tend to focus on activities – trainings, certifications, portal visits, most popular assets, most posts per person, ratings, etc. These are all indicators suggesting enablement resources may have been consumed. But they don’t do a very good job of measuring one of …
Read More »Start Operationalizing Your Buyer’s Journey
I was surprised to hear so much talk about the ‘buyer’s journey’ at a recent Sales 2.0 conference. More talk than I often hear at marketing conferences! Having said this, it was clear that many people who talked about buyer’s journeys did not know what the term meant. A hesitant …
Read More »Lead Distribution Scoring – a key differentiator for B2B marketers
Lead scoring is a well established technique for marketers to translate digital responses into levels of qualification for next stage outreach. For companies with no direct sales or sales cycles of 30 days or less lead scoring methodologies can be rapidly optimized around purchase behavior. For long cycle B2B sales …
Read More »Six Key Table Stakes for B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment
The IDC CMO and Sales advisory services held their most recent client leadership meeting in Santa Clara on June 5th. One of the key topics of the day was sales enablement. The ensuing dialog between the sales and marketing execs in the room was as impassioned as it was ineffective. …
Read More »The Customer Cloud: The Killer App for the Social Enterprise
The old two-step marketing and sales model for customer creation is dead. Today we have a three part model: Socializing, Marketing, and Sales – with socializing taking on increasing importance and marketing being redefined in the process. That’s a good thing for customers but it makes the market more competitive …
Read More »Market Intelligence on the Move Transformation continues to sweep its way through the marketing function and no “department” within the function is exempt from change. For this month’s CMO Advisor newsletter, we are now focused on the market intelligence area. Compared to its peer departments, Market Intelligence (MI) enjoys relative …
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