Prepare Your Reps for Improvisation
- 21st May 2013
I recently watched one of my all-time favorite comedies, the 1984 classic This Is Spinal Tap, a “rockumentary” following the fictitious band Spinal Tap as it tours the U.S. desperately looking to regain its lost popularity. Rob Reiner starred and directed a cast that included Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, all famous for their comic improvisation. Most of the movie was ad-libbed; the actors were given rough outlines instead of scripts to memorize for their scenes and simply worked off each other. The talent and skill of this ensemble resulted in one very funny movie. The job of sales enablement, to a degree, is to prepare reps for improvisation. I’m not talking about showing up on sales calls and making things up off their top off their heads – but the ability to spontaneously adapt and react to whatever happens on a call and with a buyer.
Continue Reading...Maybe You Already Have Enough Data for Analytics: Part II: More Insight With Touch Analysis
- 20th May 2013
In my last post, I described marketing touch analysis and how to use this information to “do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.” Today, I add more variety to the approach and explain how to gain better insight into the effectiveness of your marketing tactics. I promise to keep the rocket science out of this discussion to help you better understand what this stuff is and how it can help you with your work. There are pragmatic ways you can take advantage of these techniques without a staff of scientists.
Continue Reading....Reflections on Summit 2013 Through a Sales Enablement Lens
- 17th May 2013
Last week, SiriusDecisions hosted more than 1,500 attendees at our annual Summit, held at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. As a new member of the SiriusDecisions team, it was a wonderful experience to watch my colleagues in action as they presented our latest research and insights to the entire crowd. The presentations covered a wide range of topics important to b-to-b marketing, sales and product leaders, from the rearchitected waterfall to the unified integration model. But sprinkled throughout each presentation was a subject that is near and dear to me – sales enablement. As I made the rounds and introduced myself, the conversation consistently turned to sales enablement, even before I mentioned that I cover this area. Here are my answers to three of the questions I encountered most often during those discussions:
Continue Reading....B-to-B Sales and Marketing Haikus: 2013 Summit Recap
- 16th May 2013
We’ve published a number of blog posts that provide comprehensive overviews of the content presented at our 2013 Summit. This post takes a different tack and pares key Summit content down to its essentials.
Continue Reading....Getting Back to the Basics
- 15th May 2013
Sometimes we need to step back from the complexities of our b-to-b marketing day jobs to make a simple decision: what type of demand we are trying to create. The demand type of a product or service drives a number of fundamental marketing decisions – messaging, targeting, the offers you create, the tactics you use and more. Yet seemingly agreeable colleagues often disagree on which demand type matches their products or services. This disparity is dangerous to your ability to market effectively as a team. SiriusDecisions has identified three demand type categories.
Continue Reading....Why Marketers Must Do a Better Job of Investing According to Opportunity
- 14th May 2013
In working with companies on developing account-based marketing programs, I’ve seen marketing become its own worst enemy when it comes to the concept of aligning effort to the right opportunities. Nearly every company has some form of the 80/20 rule (approximately 80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of customers), but too few define marketing requirements based on this reality and its implications. We worry way too much about pure volume of activities and dollars and way too little about context and understanding the right investment levels to reach our ideal prospects, support our best customers and support the sellers aligned to them. This is not to suggest that all marketing dollars must be allocated to supporting that 20 percent. In fact, sometimes that group requires less marketing help than other segments, from a program investment point of view. However, support for the largest and highest-potential accounts should be a starting point for investment, not an afterthought. Here’s a checklist to help you align resources to opportunity the account-based way.
Continue Reading....Summit 2013: Day 3 Recap
- 10th May 2013
Summit 2013 finished big, with the unveiling of two new SiriusDecisions frameworks and presentations by two winners of the Return on Integration (ROI) Awards. The day’s events began with the Summit’s traditional highlight video showing the sights and sounds of the participants enjoying the event, including last night’s tour and dinner aboard the USS Midway.
Continue Reading....Summit 2013 Highlights: A Balanced Approach to Innovation Investment
- 10th May 2013
“The best way for us to look at an organization’s strategy is to look at its budget,” said Jeff Lash, research director for SiriusDecisions’ Product Management service, in introducing the final presentation of Summit 2013. “56 percent of organizations we surveyed reported that more than half of their new offerings fail to meet financial and performance objectives,” Lash noted. “That’s an astounding number. So why does this happen? Because only 11 percent of organizations align their process for investing in new offerings with marketing and sales budgets.”
Continue Reading....Summit 2013 Highlights: The Unified Integration Model for Marketing, Sales and Product Functions
- 10th May 2013
When polled about the state of integration among b-to-b product, sales and marketing functions within their organizations, 98 percent of Summit 2013 attendees agreed that at least one of those functions was not well integrated with the other two. Twenty-six percent of those polled said that product functions were not well integrated with sales and marketing, 11 percent said sales was not well integrated, 9 percent said marketing was out of sync, and 53 percent said their companies’ integration problems were generalized across all three functions. To address these issues, the SiriusDecisions Unified Integration Model was introduced today at Summit 2013 by Jay Gaines, vice president and group director of the b-to-b research firm.
Continue Reading....Summit 2013: Day 2 Recap
- 9th May 2013
Today’s Summit proceedings included a full day of presentations on b-to-b sales, marketing and product strategies and best practices. Here are some of the highlights.
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