Cosby kicked his presentation off by level-setting his classification of ABM, which he defines as a revenue strategy that aligns revenue teams around a set of shared accounts. Revenue teams, for their part, are defined as tightly aligned sales, marketing and customer success departments. However, alignment remains a key issue, as it’s the No. 1 reason ABM fails, Cosby explained. He continued that the other two reasons for failure include:

• A tech stack and KPIs not set up for ABM; and
• A lack of dedicated resources.

“You can’t just go to your sales team and tell them that you’re building an ABM program, because they’ll just Google the term and get a bunch of information that sounds really complicated,” said Cosby. “Instead, tell them you’re going to build a playbook that will help surface meetings for them.”

{loadposition GIAA}With that in mind, he explained that the ABM playbook must be built around sales activation plays, which are “the repeatable processes for sales or customer success teams when they become involved in specific customer conversations.” The benefits of these activation plays, he continued, consist of:

• A natural alignment of sales and marketing;
• Starting the transition of KPIs and the martech stack; and
• Simplifies the process of getting started.

In other words? Sales activation plays directly address the top three reasons for failure. With that in mind, he shared the “Four D” framework of building activation plays, which include:

• Data, a summary of the target, messaging, positioning, personas, product and any input that impacts the content and targeting of the activation play;
• Distribution, which are defined strategies, tactics and channels for how the data is then distributed to the target audience;
• Destination, which consists of the “what” and “where” that data and distribution push prospects to, whether it’s pages, content, conversion points or desired outcomes; and
• Direction, which are the conversion points or paths that are established to better track target direction and outcomes for the activation play, such as forms, CTAs and demos.

Once there’s a successful playbook in place and sales’ calendars are filling up with meetings, Cosby shared that marketers can then focus on refining the playbooks and more directly tailoring them to specific accounts.

“If you’re starting scrappy, focus on one playbook and choose the one that aligns with your largest or most reliable data source,” said Cosby. “This ensures repeatability and allows for a smoother transition into more advanced ABM programs later on. The goal is to balance volume with control and data specificity. Don’t jump into a 1:1 approach right away — instead, build a foundation with a targeted playbook.”

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In other words? Buyers’ expectations are all over the place, and the G2 report posited that it’s due to a lack of trust in salespeople. As sales rep err on the side of reactivity over proactivity, buyers are increasingly returning to self-service options. Chris Heard, CEO of software sourcing platform Olive Technologies, believes this “growth at all costs” mentality is leading SaaS companies to overpromise roadmaps and obscure pricing until sales can position expected value. 

To learn more about the escalating tensions between buyers and sellers, the Demand Gen Report team sat down with Heard to dive deeper into the issue.

Demand Gen Report: How did the world of software become so murky? What are some of the factors that contributed to it?

Chris Heard: Inconsistent software pricing isn’t new, and the rise of agile development in the 2000s exacerbated the issue. This led to incomplete product understanding during the early stages, hindering the creation of clear monetization models for sales teams. The focus on product development resulted in pricing becoming a neglected “product attribute” rather than a dedicated function. 

What hinders software sales today is a dysfunctional system that discourages transparency in pricing discussions. Because pricing remains obscure for buyers, it creates an uneven playing field where similar customers pay different amounts. Sales teams often lack the training on how to discuss pricing openly, which hampers early price conversations.

DGR: Let’s dig deeper into the “growth at all costs” mentality — why is it troubling for businesses and how can sales teams work to move beyond that mentality?

Heard: The “growth at all costs” mentality is often to the detriment of long-term customer satisfaction and sustainable growth. Investors usually prioritize rapid growth above all else, pushing companies to adopt aggressive sales tactics. This strategy leads to a hyperfocus on closing deals quickly, even if it means making misleading promises.

{loadposition GIAA}Also important is embracing data-driven decision-making, using data to track customer behavior, measuring the effectiveness of different strategies and making informed decisions about product development, pricing and marketing. And finally, businesses should foster a company culture that values customer satisfaction above all else, empowering employees to focus on the customer experience and make decisions that benefit them in the long run.

DGR: Why should vendors provide more transparency around software pricing?

Heard: Transparent pricing reduces friction from the buying process and potentially leads to higher conversion rates and faster sales cycles. Transparency also fosters trust between customers and vendors. Knowing precisely what they’re paying for upfront reduces ambiguity and the potential for bait-and-switch tactics. Finally, more transparency about pricing empowers businesses to plan their software budgets accurately, allocate resources effectively and avoid unexpected costs in the future.

Let’s not forget that vendors benefit, too. Transparent pricing attracts customers who are serious about buying and who understand the value proposition, leading to fewer wasted sales resources on unqualified leads. In a competitive market, transparent pricing becomes a differentiator, attracting customers who value upfront information and fair dealings. Customers who understand the value they’re receiving for the price are less likely to churn due to hidden fees or unexpected costs.

DGR: How can salespeople work to generate more trust with prospects? What steps can they take to align?

Heard: During an interaction, salespeople should pay close attention to the prospect’s concerns, questions and unspoken cues and ask open-ended questions to encourage the prospect to share their feelings and thoughts openly. This approach helps build understanding and rapport.

You also need to commit to transparency — be honest and upfront about the product or service and share any limitations or potential drawbacks earlier (not later) in the conversation. Listen to prospects’ objections and proactively address them with empathy and clear explanations. Finally, be yourself! Authenticity goes a long way in building trust.

DGR: What are some key sales strategies you’ve deemed successful?

Heard: SaaS vendors should dedicate time to generating and nurturing leads by creating content, guides and webinars that attract and educate potential customers. Companies can optimize content for search engines and relevant topics. Salespeople should actively participate in relevant social media communities, engage with industry influencers and share thought leadership content. The teams should leverage data and insights to personalize cold outreach, ensuring relevance and minimizing intrusiveness.

DGR: In general, how do you see the sales landscape evolving over the next few years?

Heard: More and more sales processes will become automated. The sales process already has more AI applications than most other industries, and while automation helps significantly reduce bias, it will also make it increasingly difficult for companies to stand out.

Branding will become important early on, and many of the trends we see in B2C purchasing — an empowered buyer but with a herd mentality — will become more prevalent in B2B, and larger organizations will thrive. Smaller organizations who haven’t yet established their brand will need to have very clear differentiation, highlighting all that’s wrong with the large organization, like slow to innovate and scale, not trendy, etc.

The post Navigating Trust, Transparency & Transformation: Insights Into Modern Sales Strategies appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The Lowdown

Truent.ai’s new Segmentation & Alerts feature is designed to enhance revenue intelligence for businesses selling to banks and financial institutions. It leverages AI to analyze 23 firmographic and intent data points, providing insights into the unique buying behaviors of financial institutions. This reportedly enables go-to-market (GTM) teams to personalize outreach efficiently, eliminating outdated strategies and optimizing resources for effective targeting within the financial industry. Truent.ai aims to support strategic initiatives and sustain growth by delivering a tailored experience for its customers in the evolving revenue operations landscape.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

Truent.ai’s new product feature identifies a prospect’s likelihood to purchase a product via 23 different firmographic and intent data points specific to financial institution, which includes the institution’s core offerings, asset size, location, number of branches and more. With these data points, teams can pinpoint exactly where and how prospective customers within the financial industry are looking to purchase. This eliminates inefficiency and outdated GTM strategies that are focused on generating massive amounts of activities, which ultimately waste significant human resources and valuable company dollars.

Who It’s For

Truent.ai is built specifically for those selling into the banking and credit union market, providing a concise and accurate view of an ideal customer profile. Truent’s seeks to deliver the experience and support customers need to implement strategic GTM initiatives that cater to the financial industry. Truent claims it’s committed to partnering with customers and providing them with the critical resources and support they need to navigate an evolving revenue operations landscape.

What It Solves

Despite increasing optimism that the U.S.’s economy will achieve a soft landing, GTM teams are still being asked to do more with less. As a result, identifying and adopting AI-powered solutions to drive efficiencies and enable scaled 1:1 outreach is critical for success, particularly in relationship-driven industries like banking and financial services. Segmentation & Alerts helps GTM teams selling to U.S.-based banks and credit unions achieve this level of personalization by specifically providing insights into the unique buying behaviors of financial institutions.

What Makes It Special

According to the company, Segmentation & Alerts is the first and only solution of its kind specifically geared toward empowering GTM teams selling to financial institutions.

Contact

Truent.ai

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The AI Assistant reportedly can:

• Change the tone and voice of emails;
• Write emails faster and without error;
• Lengthen any message instantly;
• Work across multiple languages;
• Support talk-to-text functionality; and
• Summarize a user’s dictation as a paragraph or bullet point.

“Pipeliner CRM is about the perception and performance of the salesperson,” said Nikolaus Kimla, Pipeliner’s CEO, in a statement. “With the recent rise of AI, we saw an immediate opportunity to apply the technology to our platform in a way that makes the sales process more efficient and engaging for salespeople. With the current economic climate, it feels right to offer our Voyager AI Email Assistant to our customers for free, allowing them access to this revolutionary tool to improve their day-to-day communications with no added cost.”

In addition to AI Assistant, other free applications include Pipeliner’s Appointment Scheduler, Appointment Planner, Relationship Mapping Tool, Account Management Tools and Email Sequences Tool.

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The TruVoice platform was created to help capture and present customer insights and coaching intervention analytics in role-based dashboards to help managers monitor, measure and modify strategies and interventions on specific accounts. Specifically, the solution was designed to:

• Pinpoint areas of weakness or opportunity in customer relationships;
• Trigger an alert to the account team that outlines an account’s areas of concern and/or interest; and
• Serve up relevant coaching content.

“With this automated customer feedback and customer success coaching system, each individual account team member will be shown areas for improvement based on what their customers are saying,” said Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions, in a statement. “It’s like a fitness tracker for customer success: Just like a fitness tracker monitors your physical activities, helps you identify areas for improvement and provides personalized recommendations, this system tracks customer experience, uncovers gaps based on customer feedback and offers tailored training to optimize results.”

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The Lowdown

Conga Revenue Lifecycle Cloud takes typically separate and disjointed business processes — such as quotes, contracts, revenue collection, obligation management and opportunity renewal — and brings them together within one complete revenue lifecycle. This reportedly empowers organizations to provide intelligent end-to-end selling experiences and targeted omnichannel customer interactions.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

According to the company, Conga Revenue Lifecycle Cloud is a first-of-its-kind cloud platform that supports the complexities of revenue management for businesses to drive, configure, price, quote, contract, negotiate, manage, collect and renew revenue. Conga Revenue Lifecycle Cloud connects and standardizes processes across all teams to create one unified system. This single system-of-record:

• Drives intelligence throughout revenue processes for businesses with a platform that is open; and
• Gives customers the flexibility to use Conga’s solutions on the interface of their choosing, which includes a web application, a Salesforce connector and APIs that can be embedded directly into a website, portal or application.

Who It’s For

Conga Revenue Lifecycle Cloud benefits many roles within an organization and across industries, including financial services, health and life sciences, manufacturing and more. While finance teams perform many revenue lifecycle management tasks, the outcomes impact several departments across organizations, from sales and marketing to procurement, legal, IT and business operations.

What It Solves

Conga Revenue Lifecycle Cloud enables cross-team collaboration to help accelerate revenue velocity, eliminate errors and gain more insight into customer behaviors and expectations. Conga’s open platform and unified model eliminates silos, delivering efficiency and certainty across business functions that drive revenue.

What Makes It Special

By delivering a platform that ties to existing and future systems, Conga Revenue Lifecycle Cloud seeks to provide customers with choice, flexibility and scale while offering a 360-degree view of all opportunities, obligations and risks across the revenue lifecycle.

Contact

Conga

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With more than 80 sessions that include Breakouts, Lunch & Learns, Case Studies, Workshops, Keynotes and Labs across five tracks — Content2Conversion, Demand Gen Summit, Sales Impact Summit, Go-To-Market Strategy and ABM In Action Live — there’s something for every marketer in the line-up. Let’s peek into this year’s agenda and see what’s in store.

Kicking off the event with the opening keynote is “B2B Content Lessons From Taylor Swift: Shake Off Your Old Strategy & Experiment To Engage,” featuring Forrester’s Phyllis Davidson. Throughout this session, Davidson will take a page out of Swift’s songbook to talk about better connecting with your audience, personalizing content and experimenting with new approaches and technology.

Interestingly, that’s not the only Taylor Swift-themed session on our docket this year. We also have “Enter Your B2B Brand’s Reputation Era,” with MNTN’s Jon Zucker, who plans to walk attendees through how CTV helps marketers ensure that they’re in the initial consideration set and provides brand-safe protections to ensure that delicate reputation stays intact.

While we’re on the topic of powerful women, I’m most excited for “Women In Revenue: How To Get Paid What You’re Worth,” a panel discussion that will share insights into the pay gap and how women can fight for their right to equal pay.

Before we move on, let’s circle back to the Keynote circuit. While Davidson will kick off the event Monday evening, the other keynoters we have on tap include:

• The Experience Maker Dan Gingiss, with “Elevating B2B Marketing: Transforming Challenges Into Opportunities With Customer Experience,” which will cover how integrating customer experience principles can address the distinct challenges faced by B2B marketers and provide actionable strategies to drive transformative change within your organization;
• Google’s Steve Armenti, with “B2B Buyers Want A Better Purchasing Experience — Get The ABM Framework That Delivers It,” to discuss how to use ABM in a new capacity to meet the evolving needs of today’s B2B buyers; and
• Two more that will be announced soon — I can’t give everything away!

Moving on, refining go-to-market strategies will remain a major focus of the event, with track sessions that include:

• “It’s Not A Sales Or Marketing Issue; It’s A Brand Issue: No BS Brand Tactics For B2B Marketing Leaders Who Want To Win,” featuring Kate DiLeo from the Brand Trifecta; and
• “Our Hard Work Is Hardly Working: The Unseen Reason Everyone Is Busy But Nothing’s Getting Done & How To Fix It Today,” with Andrea Fryrear of AgileSherpas.

It’s also not a secret that B2B marketing has changed dramatically in the last few years in response to rapidly evolving business buyer behavior. To help practitioners address the changing dynamics, eMarketing Strategy’s Ruth Stevens will take the stage with “What’s Working In B2B Marketing: New Developments, New Tools + New Techniques,” where she’ll share what’s real and what’s really working in social media, content marketing and trade shows and events.

Stemming off Stevens’ presentation, the topics she covered will be expanded in:

• “Make It A Marketing Sensation Soiree: Level Up Engagement & Have Key Targets Coming Back For More!”, featuring Dan Glicksman from CDM Media;
• “The Power Of Live Events: Driving Growth Through Experiences,” with Huong Nguyen, Shiloh Events;
• “Navigating The Intersection: The Convergence Of Demand Generation & Account-Based Marketing In B2B,” featuring a panel of speakers from Versique, Blue Yonder, Grubhub and Lumen Technologies;
• “Integrating Pursuit-Based Marketing Into Your Sales & Marketing Mix,” with Kim Saving, Accenture; and
• “Using Data To Drive Demand,” with Cisco’s Christine Otts.

And that’s not even scratching the surface: We also have bunch of Case Study sessions on Monday, several Lunch & Learns taking place across Tuesday and Wednesday, Workshops for All-Access Pass holders and our third-ever Campfire session, a keynote/workshop hybrid!

Other key elements of #B2BMX will include:

• The CMO Mentors program, which connects up-and-coming practitioners will seasoned industry vets;
• Our popular, invite-only CMO Exchange;
• An invite-only B2Bvip networking event;
• The Killer Content Awards ceremony; and
• Networking receptions.

Make sure to check out the full agenda and register now, and if you’re feeling lucky: Reach out to me on LinkedIn and I might hook you up with a discount code!

The post #B2BMX 2024 Preview: The Roadmap To Revenue Revealed appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Specific capabilities of solution include:

• Sending confirmations before meetings;
• Allowing sales reps to set up a nurture drip;
• Confirming next steps or answering quick questions; and
• Checking in and adding value to existing, stalled or cold leads.

“Over the past year, we’ve seen increased demand from revenue teams looking to leverage SMS as part of their multichannel outreach,” said Olof Mathé, CEO and Co-founder of Mixmax, in a statement. “Inboxes are overcrowded — it’s critical to stand out with the right message on the right channel to move deals forward, engage customers and build more pipeline.”

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The new solution is designed to build target lead lists, generate relevant messaging and execute omnichannel tasks autonomously. Additionally, the platform seeks to speed up prospect interactions when positive intent signals are detected.

“Faced with ongoing economic turbulence and talent shortages, many businesses are turning to AI to jumpstart and streamline their current sales workflows,” explained Srinath Sridhar, CEO of Regie.ai, in a statement. “Regie.ai solves these pain points for enterprises by providing a first-of-its-kind generative AI platform designed specifically for go-to-market teams. Our new solution empowers companies with the power of AI, enabling them to save time, reduce costs and focus on more strategic activities.”

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“From 2022 to 2023, the number of requests to speak to a human increased 2.5X, demonstrating prospects need to solve their business needs as quickly as possible,” said Matt Tippets, SVP of Product at Drift, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “Moreover, bot-only conversations proved 66% less likely to convert into an opportunity when compared to conversations that routed in a human agent. What this tells us is that buyers still crave human interaction within their digital shopping experiences.”

Adapting To Modern Buying Experiences

Tippets continued that B2B buyers crave digital buying experiences that give them what they need, when they need — even if it’s not a convenient time for human agents. In fact, the report found that 39% of all conversations happened outside of normal business hours, while 41% of all meetings booked through Drift happened outside of traditional office hours. With that in mind, he noted that it’s critical for businesses to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that help provide 24/7 connections with their prospects and buyers.

“Having the right AI strategy in place to meet growing customer demands is critical as marketers step in 2024,” said Tippets. “B2B buyers come to your website with a specific goal in mind, and they expect you to make it easy for them to achieve it. When you deliver on this expectation, they’re more likely to spend more time with your brand.”

Tippets continued that customer expectations are at an all-time high, as the amount of feedback site visitors submitted via Drift conversations more than doubled in the past year while the amount of people who started a chat to “just test the bot” decreased 4X.

With these findings in mind, Tippets shared that the top trends shaping AI and customer engagement throughout 2024 include:

1. Personalization Is Out; Individualization Is In

According to Tippets, personalization means “Dear Name” at the top of a brand email instead of “Dear Customer” or changing a website background to a prospect’s favorite color. However, he cautioned that that type of personalization doesn’t target what buyers need in the moment — there’s nothing unique about it. 

“Yes, I’ve got a name, home address and favorite color (orange), but none of that represents what I really care about when I interact with a chatbot or a brand,” continued Tippets. “An individualized experience treats people for who they are and what they need at that moment — and that’s what AI is good at. AI is enabling 1:1 conversations in a way that technology has never done before, ushering in a new era of truly individualized communication and support.”

2. AI Still Faces A Rocky Road

Historically, content was the most time- and cost-intensive part of 1:1 personalization — and now individualization — Tippets explained, pointing to conversational AI as a tool that can help provide the foundation to remove some of the content bottlenecks. However, he noted that once one problem gets solved, another is likely to emerge.

“When one bottleneck opens up, we inevitably identify new ones,” said Tippets. “It may be talent to optimize AI, effective training of targeted models or even performance of new AI to meet the needs of organizations, employees and customers. Wherever we identify those new challenges, we need to ensure it’s not seen as a structural blocker but a speed bump toward a new normal.”

3. Businesses Must Train Employees On AI

With that in mind, businesses need to focus on training employees to fully understand and utilize conversational AI solutions. Tippets added that oftentimes, companies don’t always aim to understand the technology that supports business processes; they just care that it’s fit for a purpose.

“As employees invest time in using AI tools and experimenting with the latest capabilities, that knowledge will be applied in unexpected ways in their day-to-day job to improve everything from individual efficiency to departmental tactics to corporate strategies, regardless of your industry,” said Tippets. “If you’re not leveraging conversational AI in your website strategy — and training your employees on it — you’re already falling behind.”

For more insights into the “Conversation Trends Report,” join Drift’s VP of Marketing, Emily Singer, and Director of Product Marketing, Holly Xiao, for a webinar on Jan. 17 as they dive into the insights gathered in the report.

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