Welcome back to Demand Gen Report‘s blog series: Buzzworthy B2B. We’ve spent the past month watching the latest news and hottest trends in the industry and curated the top research statistics, financial news, personnel changes and more to keep you in the loop. Check out all the latest happenings in the B2B space throughout May 2021 below!
Movers & Shakers
As it turns out, May was the month of executive leadership expansion. Keep reading to find out the latest who’s who in the C-suite.
Ceros Welcomes New CMO & VP of Business Development, Partnerships
Content creation firm Ceros expanded its executive leadership team through the appointments of Jamie Gier as CMO and Tom Hewitt as VP, Business Development and Partnerships. The new hires will lead brand and marketing strategies, expand partnerships and customer experiences.
Reachdesk Appoints New CEO
Reachdesk, a direct mail and corporate gifting company, hired Temy Mancusi-Ungaro as its new CEO. Mancusi-Ungaro brings 14 years of experience in scaling businesses to spearhead the company’s growth.
Pricefx Expands Executive Team
Cloud-native pricing software Pricefx welcomed Ronak Sheth as President and Chief Revenue Officer to oversee the newly unified marketing, sales, ecosystem and customer organizations.
Money Makers
Seed funding — specifically Series B — was the name of the game this month, as two organizations secured multi-million-dollar investments to improve key areas of their platforms and strategies.
Qualified Completes Series B Funding After Year Of 800% Revenue Growth
In a Series B funding round, conversational sales and marketing platform Qualified raised $51 million in collaboration with Salesforce Venture and existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures. The company will use the funding to innovate products and expand its engineering, sales, marketing and customer success teams.
PartnerStack Secures $29M In Series B Funding Round
PartnerStack, a SaaS platform for partner and performance marketing, closed a Series B funding round after generating $29 million. The company intends to invest into recruiting more high-value partnerships, enhancing the platform to enable easier company/partner discovery, improving built-in payments and automation technologies and scaling go-to-market efforts.
Heads Up
It’s no secret that the B2B marketing world — and the world in general — is entering another phase of transformation as normalcy resumes. To help aid marketing teams in today’s constantly changing world, here are some various platform updates, ideologies and advice for B2B teams.
Forrester Debuts Next-Generation B2B Revenue Waterfall To Help Firms Accelerate Revenue Growth
During the 2021 Forrester B2B Summit, Forrester revealed its next-generation B2B revenue waterfall, which is designed to help firms accelerate opportunity development and revenue growth. The model seeks to help drive new pipeline and revenue opportunities in current accounts, turn buyers into advocates and fuel demand gen activities.
Adobe Summit 2021 Highlighted The Changing Digital Landscape & Associated Pain Points
Throughout the two-day Adobe Summit 2021, the focus revolved around the need to fully embrace the digital medium by revealing a series of solutions to help organizations deliver the digital engagement customers are seeking. Through the help of various celebrities — including Serena Williams and Dan Levy — more than 400 sessions, training workshops and community activities examined the future of a world paved by digital experiences.
Diversifying Virtual Events For Continued Success
Though the industry is starting to return to some sense of normalcy, virtual events and their hybrid counterparts are here to stay — just on a smaller scale. Demand Gen Report’s 2021 State of Virtual Events Report highlighted the transition of virtual events from over-the-top experiences to more personalized, targeted affairs.
The Need To Create Intimate & Engaging Digital Experiences
With digital experiences likely to remain a key component of marketers’ arsenals, organizations are turning to experiential gatherings — such as virtual wine tastings and online cooking classes—to promote attendance and engagement. To help organizations create immersive experiences, the What’s Working In Digital Experiences Report dives into the tactics that are promoting high levels of digital engagement.
Drift Releases New Sales Enablement Solutions
Conversational marketing platform Drift rolled out Fastlane and Sales Seat, two new solutions designed to help sales teams convert buyers with intent while re-routing lower priority leads and acting on intent signals through chat, email and/or video to deliver personalized messages.
SugarCRM Refines AI Model
Customer experience platform SugarCRM revamped the artificial intelligence (AI) and automation capabilities within the SugarPredict platform to improve its predictive lead scoring capabilities.
Stand-Out Stats
Although organizations have been rolling out solutions to address the changes in selling brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of investments are still being made to fully refine and improve the process, including:
- 83% of content consumed by the pandemic equaled the total amount of content consumed in 2019, according to NetLine research.
- MRP Prelytix research found that 99% of marketers plan to increase or sustain their investment in ABM in the year ahead.
- 54% of sales reps in Forrester’s latest sales activity study indicated that the loss of face-to-face meetings negatively impacted their ability to meet sales quotas.
- Intercom research revealed that 69% of support leaders believe that strong customer relationships are built through personalized support experiences.
- 77% of sales professionals say their sales organization plans to invest “significantly more” or “more” in sales intelligence tools, according to LinkedIn’s State of Sales Report 2021: North America Edition.
