As part of the new partnership, the companies will release G2 TechBlend, a new content solution that blends TechTarget’s contextually relevant editorial content with the insights, news and trend analysis from G2. The companies will also introduce new site features to the TechTarget website, such as more than 2.4M peer reviews from the G2 marketplace.

“Today’s B2B tech buyers are progressing further through the buying cycle than ever before speaking to a vendor,” said Rebecca Kitchens, President of TechTarget, in a statement. “Throughout this journey, they look to trusted online sources to educate themselves on the specific solutions that will help their organizations address the challenges they face. TechTarget and G2 provide are both leaders in their respective areas, and each offers robust content experiences and different but complementary traffic sources. When combined, they add tremendous value to self-service buyers at the exact point of their research – no matter what buying stage they’re in. By exposing our content to each other’s audiences, we can bring insights that significantly better serve the needs of B2B tech buyers, which is why we are so excited about this partnership.”

This partnership closely follows TechTarget’s acquisition of Informa Tech’s digital businesses, which the company absorbed to help create a global platform in B2B data and market access.

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Minimizing The Inheritance Tax

When marketing leaders switch roles to a new organization, the Inheritance Tax can lead to unforeseen and often underestimated expenses. To lessen this burden, marketing leaders can take several steps. First, they need to prioritize understanding the originally intended marketing strategy and business goals associated with the inherited martech platforms.

By uncovering the “who” and “how” of the platform’s usage, marketing leaders can effectively navigate the challenges of a new instance. Seeking insights from key stakeholders and utilizing available learning resources, such as customer portals and consultancies, can expedite the onboarding process and minimize the Inheritance Tax.

Uncovering The Context

With more than 11,000 martech tools in 49 categories, it’s important to know the role and responsibility of each tool you’re investing — or currently invested — in. Keep in mind investment isn’t only in terms of software; business process is a critical factor in determining absolute ROI.

Leaders need to gain a holistic understanding of the current business goals associated with each platform and assess for technical updates. Are there new features that have been rolled out in the last year? Are you utilizing the full feature set of the platform relative to the capital expenditure/operation expenditure costs being spent on software licensing? If not, you’ll want to schedule a demo to review your software or consider having an external stack audit.

Identifying Key Stakeholders

Knowing the key stakeholders is crucial when inheriting systems that run your marketing and sales engine, as it enables effective collaboration and ensures alignment with team objectives. Additionally, it’s critical to have a pulse on team usage and adoption, particularly when organizational shifts happen that lead to user base churn. With that in mind:

1. Know your active users versus license holders/seats.

This helps you inform who is a part of the discussion group versus decision-making group on technical upgrades, enhancements and integrations.

2. Determine your super users and know your user productivity calculation.

The productivity calculation is total output/total input, which can help you determine your risk of churn in people and inform your process decisions.

Understanding Capabilities

Extracting performance analytics and information from a new (or new-to-you) platform is important. Equally important is understanding the systems’ capability, function and features. 

Lean into support for product info to ensure you are leveraging your tools and enhanced features. For example:

• Ask for a 20-minute sales demo on the platform and have your team of experts listen for required customizations/configurations to achieve what you need from the tool or identify blind spots to functionality that exists that you may not be leveraging; or
• Consider getting a tech roadmap audit or playbook to quickly identify opportunities, redundancies and challenges within your tech stack.

Understanding Cost Optimization

Knowing where to save and where to spend is critical. To create long-term value, executive leaders must identify spending areas that drive differentiation and support critical capabilities. Organizations can make informed decisions about resource allocation by analyzing the lifetime value of costs and recognizing that not all revenue is equal. This approach ensures that spending aligns with strategic objectives, enabling sustainable growth and profitability.

Streamlining Legacy Martech Tools

Legacy martech tools can become burdensome when they are underleveraged or overly customized, leading to longer ramp-up periods and frustrations during onboarding. Marketing leaders can mitigate these costs by adopting a proactive approach. Regular martech audits, conducted by outside partners or consultancies with unbiased views on the history of the systems, can assess the overall stack fitness and readiness to support business objectives.

These assessments help to identify opportunities for optimization and can limit the switching costs associated with new leadership and improve operational efficiency. Through careful cost containment and investment, organizations can position themselves for sustainable growth and profitability in the dynamic business landscape.

Arturo Mendiola is the Chief Growth Officer at Shift Paradigm, a digital marketing agency.

The post So, You’ve Inherited A Martech Stack: Now What? appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

However, it’s not all smooth sailing for RevOps strategies: The need for effective data governance remains a critical concern, while balancing technological adoption with human intuition also necessitates careful consideration. And, despite its widespread adoption, just 39% of practitioners said that their RevOps strategy is mature.

“Organizations often have multiple teams that all have different goals and measurement requirements around how they’re engaging with prospects and customers, and they’re doing this through multiple different technology platforms,” said Amy Hawthorne, a Principal Analyst at Forrester, at the B2B Marketing Exchange (#B2BMX). “We have multiple teams executing out of multiple platforms with different goals, and we have different messages being broadcast across multiple technology platforms by different teams. This doesn’t make it easy to ensure that we’re aligned to the customer — in fact, it forces us to have a playbook.”

As organizations seek to consolidate tech stacks and improve internal alignment, they’re cultivating their RevOps playbooks by embracing AI-powered insights and nurturing interdepartmental communications. Throughout this special report, we’ll dive into the current state of RevOps and discuss:

• The technologies marketers are adopting to improve their performance, such as CRM systems, marketing automation platforms and sales engagement platforms;
• The steps companies are taking to align internal teams to streamline workflows, increase collaboration and enhance personalization;
• How to strike a balance between technological adoption and maintaining the personal touch in customer/prospects relationships;
• The importance of data-driven decisions in identifying and targeting the right customers, qualifying leads and tracking pipeline performance; and
• The role of automation and AI technologies in predicting buyer behaviors and informing next-best actions.

Updating Tech Stacks & Eliminating Lagging Solutions

It doesn’t take more than a quick glance at Scott Brinker’s 2023 Martech Map to realize there’s an overwhelming amount of marketing technology available for practitioners. With such a high quantity of solutions with overlapping capabilities, practitioners must evaluate these technologies carefully.

“There are many incredible platforms today, but there are also a lot of ‘shiny new objects,’” said Brooke Duffy, a Business Consultant and Fractional CRO for start-ups, during a CRO panel at the B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange. “When you’re evaluating what you need, there are a few things to keep in mind. No. 1 is not knocking the good ‘ole fashioned Excel spreadsheet — as long as you can pull the data that you need to optimize, it’s OK to lean into some old-fashioned ways. Secondly, you need to look at the full customer lifecycle to see what needs optimization; it’s just not about seeing where the breakdown in the sales cycle happens.”

Duffy continued that content AI is something organizations “definitely need,” noting that companies can’t make content fast enough. With that in mind, she suggested that marketers first look at the assets they’re trying to create and determine what pieces of technology would be best suited for that endeavor.

Building on those AI insights, Andrea Eaton, another panelist and the VP Global Revenue Marketing at low-code development platform Outsystems, added that she puts AI tools in three buckets:

• Those that help practitioners understand the past;
• Those that help teams work better and smarter; and
• Those that help promote future growth.

But incorporating new technology often goes hand-in-hand with budgeting — and with 53% of practitioners pointing to issues with legacy technologies, Eaton encouraged practitioners to be discerning about the technology they keep around. As 2024 draws closer, organizations should audit their tech stacks to identify strengths and cut weaknesses.

“Don’t be afraid to reevaluate your tech stack: Just because you invested in something previously doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you anymore,” said Eaton. “If it’s something you haven’t been able to see value from or didn’t have the bandwidth to truly ever implement, I think making those decisions to not renew or somehow repurpose the investment is OK.”

Unifying Teams By Understanding Commonalities

The effort to align sales and marketing is a tale as old as time: Year-over-year, Demand Gen Report research research shows that despite more people indicating they’re prioritizing alignment, they’re still greatly struggling. For example, while more than one-third of practitioners agreed that sales and marketing are aligned on ICP and already have strong coverage, the same survey revealed that 67% want better sales and marketing alignment. However, the most successfully aligned teams start at the top — and there’s a slew of new revenue-related roles that are ready to unite teams.

“A recent LinkedIn post found that revenue roles — CRO, Head of RevOps, etc. — are one of the fastest growing jobs, and it can really head up sales and marketing,” said Eaton. “Regardless of structure, alignment must come from business planning and a shared understanding of your customer. Once you understand your targets for the year and where they’re supposed to come from, then teams can work together to form joint plays and discuss how to make it work.”

Promisingly, research revealed that 53% of practitioners currently utilize a centralized hub of information that all teams can access. Eaton continued that other shared understandings should include:

• Who the ideal customer is;
• What motivates key personas within buying groups;
• How to best convey messaging to those personas;
• The best way to differentiate delivery and messaging; and
• Alignment on the value proposition to help with acquisition and retention.

Creating Customer-Centric Experiences & Cohesive Narratives

The ghosts of B2B marketing’s past relied on hitting prospects and buyers over the head with wordy product information and overt sales pitches, which came at the expense of personalization and strong relationships. In the modern era of marketing, however, B2B practitioners are much more apt to take a personalization page out of B2C’s handbook.

“For a long time, people said, ‘Oh, we’re selling to businesses; they don’t care about our brand or what we stand for,’” said Duffy. “But, at the end of the day, your buyers are human and brand matters to them. More times than not, people aren’t ready to buy what you’re selling but over time, they will be, so it’s important to stay in front of them.”

Duffy continued that while she believes organizations should keep an eye on their competition, it’s more important to focus on what their customers care about. She explained that there are a lot of similar choices out there, and a specific feature or price tag isn’t going to move the needle. Instead, building trust across the customer lifecycle will.

Eaton doubled down on Duffy’s insights, pointing to the power of constructing a strong brand narrative and voice throughout all communications. As an example, she pointed to the infamous dark funnel — while marketers might not be able to fully illuminate it, they can control the messaging prospects see related to their brand.

“Marketers need to be cognizant that they’re representing their brand in the way they want it to be perceived across every touchpoint,” continued Eaton. “Storytelling is key when it comes to prospect and customer engagement — some of the best programs I’ve seen all tell stories about how similar prospects saw success and achieved great business outcomes with a particular solution.”

Conclusion

The core tenants of a strong RevOps strategy — or playbook — undoubtedly revolve around efficient use of technology, strong internal alignment and a hyper-focus on humanizing experiences and connecting with prospects at a personal. All business comes down to one thing: Engaging and converting customers, and the best way to accomplish that is to ensure all systems and people are aligned on creating a seamless customer experience.

“Organizations that are customer obsessed are experiencing exponential revenue growth, profitability growth, customer retention growth, employee engagement and overall customer trust,” said Forrester’s Hawthorne. “Aligning to our customers is the best strategy to ultimately deliver our value, our promise and to win deals.”

The post 2023 State Of RevOps: Curating Tech Stacks & Teams That Promote Efficiency & Alignment appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Outreach

With more than 25 years of experience building enterprise applications and bringing innovative technology to market, Mitra will oversee Outreach’s strategy and product development for new personas, new verticals and increased enterprise adoption. Additionally, he will provide leadership to Outreach’s new India office as the company continues to expand its global presence.

Previously, Mitra created ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management business unit and led it as General Manager before he went on to lead the Industry Solutions unit. Prior to ServiceNow, Mitra created and led market-leading B2B enterprise applications at SAP and Oracle.

“When searching for our Product and Technology President, we wanted someone with visionary excellence to lead Outreach in our platform journey,” said Manny Medina, CEO and Co-founder of Outreach, in a statement. “Abhijit’s experience in SaaS and alignment with our values made him the perfect fit, and he already made an immediate impact with our customers at Unleash [the company’s annual user conference]. I look forward to working with Abhijit to empower every sales professional to achieve their revenue goals.”

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Connell joins BlueWhale with more than two decades of leadership experience in the B2B information industry. As CPO, he will focus on strategic initiatives, which include accelerating growth through data and product innovation, increasing market awareness and generating new value for the marketing and sales professionals in BlueWhale’s business technology vendor customer base.

For his part, Flint possesses a background in directing media strategy, account management and innovation for leading B2B agencies and media companies. In his new role, he will help advance the adoption of BlueWhale’s growing product portfolio.

“We are thrilled to welcome John Connell and Kevin Flint to the company,” said James Oberhausen, President & General Manager of BlueWhale Research, in a statement. “Their exceptional leadership and industry expertise align perfectly with our vision for growth and expanded value to customers. We are proud that the durability and positive trajectory of our business has allowed us to invest in our team with these appointments. The future for our company and our customers is very bright.”

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In the last decade, we have seen hundreds of new technology-driven tools emerge to support sales teams at every step of the sales process and beyond, including sales force development and management. Because sales is an increasingly digital practice, these tools are being adopted rapidly, making the sales team increasingly dependent on technology to drive topline growth. Companies that effectively integrate these tools into their existing workflows become garner a significant advantage over their competition.

Many of these tools leverage artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) to help sales leaders move past the Monday morning quarterbacking session usually supported by more traditional analytics and into the realm of insight and foresight offered by predictive and prescriptive analytics. But this area is still evolving, and most businesses have a lot of work to do to improve data quality to the point where it pays real dividends.

While sales teams won’t be replaced by robots anytime soon, the increasing utility of this technology is an exciting advancement as the new and improved human-machine interface is already driving some notable results. We talk through a few examples below.

Enhancing Account Scoring & Targeting

An over-the-counter pharmaceutical company’s sales organization was using two teams to promote products to different specialist and generalist physician audiences, splitting their time and diluting their overall effectiveness. The sales target plan had the unintended effect of encouraging sales representatives to devote time and effort to easy-access, low-volume health care providers. The team needed to maximize sales impact to drive business for core products without altering the current size or alignment of the salesforce.

The team combined data from enterprise sales systems with invoicing and communications data to make the connection between sales team deployment by account and higher sales and margins. This shift allowed us to better balance sales territories, emphasizing healthcare providers with the highest potential impact. Increased focus on accounts that matter resulted in outreach to twice as many patients while reducing the number of providers on active contact lists.

Enabling Better Tactical Pricing Decisions

A global chemicals company traditionally used a highly manual process to set prices for non-contracted customers. Company leadership recognized they were leaving money on the table, and they knew intuitively that robust data resources could be leveraged to make faster and better pricing decisions.

We started by developing an inventory of data assets, and then worked closely with the client to build a detailed understanding of market dynamics and pricing behaviors. This initial phase provided the foundational understanding to support developing a model to test, pilot and calibrate pricing recommendations.

Next, we coded a fully functional pricing model and automated most of the data inputs by connecting directly to the client’s enterprise systems. We also created a user interface that provided pricing suggestions and rationale, updated daily with the latest data including detailed documentation and user guides for future refinements to the model. Once deployment was complete, we were providing daily pricing recommendations for over 20,000 combinations of product type, customer country and delivery periods, and quantifying the estimated revenue impact of suggested pricing changes to allow the company to prioritize its pricing moves.

More importantly, we eliminated a high degree of manual analysis and set the stage for further decentralization of pricing decisions by giving regional sales leaders the data, capabilities and rationale to make their own recommendations.

Moving Rapidly To Digital

The relationship between sales, marketing and technology is increasingly integrated and will soon be the dominant mode of operation across most B2B sales teams. High-performing sales teams are figuring out how to better integrate technology as part of an overall system that augments the characteristics that define a great sales professional, while reducing company dependence on a few superstars.

Getting the approach right is all about building the right ecosystem that fits your culture, market and where you are currently in the evolution and adoption of digital solutions. As sales operations teams become increasingly digital — and customers do the same — the mix of capabilities required to achieve success are shifting from people and processes toward technology. It’s an exciting advancement, and those not actively tapping into these new tools and techniques will find it increasingly challenging to win share in a competitive market.

Donncha Carroll is a Co-founder and Partner at Lotis Blue Consulting, an advisory firm that helps organizations transform and grow through a combination of applied data and behavioral science. Tom Hill is a partner at sales effectiveness consultancy RevenueShift.

The post Improving The Sales Org Through The Power Of Tech appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The Lowdown

Post-Meeting Briefs within Chorus, ZoomInfo’s conversation intelligence platform, use generative AI to provide users with easily digestible and comprehensive post-meeting summaries.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

These Post-Meeting Briefs are designed to:

• Capture key moments from the meeting and generate a list of action items; and
• Deliver the most relevant points and follow-up items to the user’s inbox minutes after the meeting ends.

Who It’s For

The tool is for anyone working in an office setting, but especially sales professionals who interface with prospects and customers via video call.

What It Solves

Post-Meeting Briefs allows participants to focus on the conversation and pain points, rather than note-taking.

What Makes It Special

“ZoomInfo is using generative AI and automation to reimagine how businesses go to market,” ZoomInfo Chief Product Officer Dominik Facher said. “This cutting-edge technology will drive better outcomes for our customers by helping them save time and do their jobs more efficiently.”

Contact

ZoomInfo
(866) 904-9666
Sign up for a free trial

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The updates seek to enable enterprise tech organizations to accelerate opportunities. Specifically, the enhancements include:

• New navigation that helps sales reps monitor changes within accounts and leverage granular intent insights;
• Account Journeys that outline the key demand-related activities occurring within each account in clients’ own systems and on the TechTarget network;
• Usage dashboards that provide visibility into onboarding and change management;
• Automatic real-time territory synchronization;
• Data augmentation through standard and custom Salesforce field syncing; and
• An Opportunity Dashboard that shows how Salesforce opportunities are progressing, where go-to-market (GTM) team actions and TechTarget have influenced them and where teams should focus for optimum outcomes.

“When B2B tech buyers need to solve business problems, they come to TechTarget first because we provide both the independent decision-support editorial content they respect and the vendor content they seek in a context that caters to their buying ‘jobs-to-be-done,’” said Michael Cotoia, CEO of TechTarget, in a statement. “Priority Engine provides our clients with deep insight into these buying team and buyer’s journey interactions so they can better capitalize on real demand taking shape in their markets. This release gets this proprietary data directly into more GTM users’ hands and makes it easier for them to drive critical impact for their organizations.”

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Premium Content is designed to assist companies with tracking mentions about their brand, competitors, industry and more by relevant analysts and other influencers. The solution collects and displays these mentions from analyst research, blog posts, quotes in the media and social channels. With its new capabilities, Premium Content helps users:

• Receive automatic notifications via email, Slack and in-app when relevant reviews are posted;
• Customize notifications for different ARchitect seat holders to reflect their role, needs and the product line(s) they work with;
• See a synopsis of relevant reviews with each review’s title, summary, technology “pros and cons” (PeerSpot) and customer “likes and dislikes” (G2):
• Get an at-a-glance, aggregate view of relevant review activity from the Premium Content dashboard; and
• Track and report on review trends over time.

“ARchitect is the leading influencer management platform, and nowadays, influence comes from many different places: Analysts and other industry experts, as well as technology users themselves,” said Andy Zimmerman, CEO of ARInsights, in a statement. “These customers often sway others, especially through reviews, and exert influence on the buying cycle. So, it’s advantageous for AR pros and customer marketers alike to track what customers are saying — and providing the means to do so is part of our strategic evolution. G2 and PeerSpot are both premier and trusted sites for people to leave and learn from reviews, and bringing their information into Premium Content is a natural fit.”

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