Even so, as the seller, it’s crucial to become the driving force that unites these stakeholders, fostering alignment, agreement and action to successfully close the deal. When this is your goal, there’s one key tool you can use to achieve this: A well-crafted business case that provides a shared vision and a common goal. Here’s what you need to know to develop one that helps you gain alignment across even the most diverse buying committees.

Understand Each Stakeholder’s Perspective

Before you begin to develop your plan, take a moment to remember that the people you are ultimately selling to are exactly that: People. Even though there are many of them in each buying committee, they’re each human beings with their own wants, needs and desires within their organization.

In addition to that, it’s important to note that every role within the buying committee has a unique influence on the decision-making process. When you know what that is, you’ll be better positioned to understand what matters to them and how to communicate value to them. For example, the CEO (who might be the executive sponsor) is most likely highly invested in organizational growth and any tactics that can drive it.

One of the best ways to begin gathering what each stakeholder cares about is to identify who the champion of the committee is. They can be found at any level, but they’re often a mid-level manager, department head or practitioner. They’re your champion because there is something for them to gain by implementing your solution, whether that’s recognition, a promotion, a raise, a resume builder or something else.

Since they’re a strong advocate for your solution, they can help you navigate the ins and outs of the rest of the committee. If you know who the champion is, and more about their motivations, you can share how your solution will align with their goals and help them achieve them.

Engage The Executive Sponsor

The executive sponsor is the key decision maker of a buying group and provides the final blessing for the solution. Executive sponsorship is typically the CEO, CFO and or the board. These folks (except for the CFO) are intrigued by the art of the possible and tapping into growth levers. As with any of the members of the buying committee, you’ll have a much better chance of gaining alignment if you take the time to discover the executive’s personal and business drivers, and then tailor the business case accordingly.

If you’re not sure how to do this, start with the champion and/or other buying group members who you know. Oftentimes, they will be able to share insights about the executive team’s priorities and growth levers with you. Just remember that this is an important person to get to know. Without executive sponsorship, the decision-making process will often lack support, guidance and, ultimately, approval.

One of the keys to engaging with executive sponsors is to deploy your own executive team. It’s lonely at the top and executives seek counsel from their peers in other organizations. Identifying key executives on your prospective account’s team and aligning them with a similar exec from your company early and often will help you overcome major hurdles later in a deal. Use LinkedIn to find direct or common connections to help usher your executive into a meeting with your executive sponsor. Making this play early in a deal when you are not trying to close is critical. It’s typically too late to deploy this move at closing time because there is no trust built.

Overcoming Blockers

In every buying committee, there’s usually a blocker, too. This person tends to be a stakeholder in either procurement, legal or security, concerned with rules, regulations, budgets and details. Since their primary responsibility is to assess potential threats and safeguard the business, they often pose challenges and create barriers during the sales cycle.

While the business case you’re developing may not directly impact these stakeholders, it can still serve as a valuable tool during negotiations. A validated business case, supported by the executive sponsor, decision maker and champion, can help leverage their influence in negotiations and align their interests with the solution.

Final Thoughts

Successfully gaining alignment across a diverse buying committee is crucial for selling high-value deals. By understanding each stakeholder’s perspective, leveraging a champion, engaging the executive sponsor and addressing potential blockers, a well-crafted business case can be the driving force that unites the committee toward a common objective.

The business case should highlight how the solution meets the needs of each stakeholder and the broader business goals. As negotiations progress, the business case becomes a valuable resource for aligning with groups like procurement, legal, IT and security. By effectively gaining alignment, sellers increase the likelihood of closing deals and fostering successful partnerships.

Josh Wagner is Co-founder and Partner of In Revenue Capital, a venture capital firm.

The post How To Gain Alignment Across A Diverse Buying Committee 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.

With the concept of being more present, open and happy laying the groundwork, 6sense’s CRO Latané Conant opened the event with, “The Antidote To More…,” which touched on the need to redefine what marketers expect from technology, lean into a new era of intelligence and get more aligned than ever before. She explained that 95% of the buyer’s journey takes place on someone else’s website, and buyers’ penchants for anonymity — aka the dark funnel — is causing organizations to throw more resources and manpower at illuminating the darkness, which often doesn’t work.

“The typical response to the growing dark funnel is more: More marketing, more campaigns, more advertisements, more BDRS — more, more, more,” said Conant. “And then we have to keep up on the sales side: ‘Let’s get more data sources, let’s train more of the sales team, let’s find more tools, let’s make more calls!’ And you throw it all at the dark funnel, and guess what? Some success happens, but then the cycle starts again — unsuccessfully.”

It’s what Latane calls “1990s marketing” — and it’s not working. Specifically:

• Only 7% of prospects visit websites;
• Only 3% fill out a form; and
• 78% of accounts predicted to be in-market are not even in an organization’s CRM.

“This ‘more, more, more’ mentality creates a poor customer and prospect experience,” said Conant. “It also impacts our employees — they’re the ultimate representation of our brand and 81% of them are burnt out. We need to break the cycle of more for our employees, for ourselves and for our prospects and customers. We need to start reimagining how we work.”

With the stage set for growth, the main topics covered at Breakthrough included:

• Inspecting and setting clear expectations for workflows and processes is important for success;
• Ensuring sales and marketing are aligned and triggering the right opportunities at the right time is critical for winning deals;
• Leveraging technology to work smarter, not harder; and
• Working as one revenue team.

1. Be More Data-Defined

Data is the lifeblood of all marketing functions, as indicated by the 71% of marketers who utilize it. However, 47% of practitioners are struggling to collect the right data on prospects due to the sheer amount of it available.

“There are many different pieces of intent data: First-party data, data from tools like 6sense and then there’s your own data,” explained Sarah Sehgal, Director of Demand Generation for digital experience platform FullStory, in an interview with DGR. “A big area for marketers is figuring out how they want to define intent and determine which area they want to look at, and then the second component is why they want to look at it and what do they do with it. Instead of getting distracted and overwhelmed by all the data, you need to focus on what your use cases are and what you’re trying to do and pull in pieces of your data from there.”

Sehgal also took the stage alongside Jen Leaver, FullStory’s former Director, ABM and Integrated Campaigns, for a session titled, “Segmentations, Scoring and Attribution — OH MY! How To Use Account-Based Intelligence To Mature Your Revenue Marketing.” In that presentation, the pair touched on the specifics of how FullStory analyzes data. Sehgal and Leaver explained how they utilize 6sense’s platform to divide all that data into different segments for better internal organization.

“Once we have data in our internal systems, we pass it over to our AI tools to get a holistic picture of both marketing-sourced and -influenced impact that our campaigns are having on revenue,” said Leaver. “We’re using all that intent and engagement data to get our campaigns up and running. It’s much easier to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one, so we’re taking data beyond the initial prospecting sales motion and applying it to how we expand and retain our customer base.”

Intent data doesn’t have to stop at buyer-focused insights, either. According to Julie Kornerup, Marketing Associate, Intent-Driven Marketing for sales enablement and training platform Allego, another key use of intent data revolves around creating “competitor takedown campaigns.” In her session, “Revolutionize Your Intent-Based Advertising: How To Build & Scale A Retargeting Machine,” she explained that Allego utilizes technographic data to double-down on targeting competitors’ customers with as much product-related messaging as possible.

2. Be More Technologically Inclined

Given Breakthrough’s theme of being more and doing less, technology and automation were two key focuses throughout the event. Several speakers noted the role of technology in their campaigns, with the specific purpose of automating time-consuming tasks. For revenue lifecycle management solutions provider Conga, that takes the form of orchestrating outreach sequences.

“We’ve created outreach sequences based on factors such as vertical, persona, industry and intent,” said Claire Couch, Demand Generation Marketing Leader for Conga, in an interview with DGR. “Within our outreach sequences, we’ve used prompts and variables to create outreach that’s 80% core content already established and 20% personalized. That’s mixed in with some automatic steps, and we’re really trying to drive prompts for outbound prospecting.”

Couch continued that in Conga’s 1:1 and 1:few efforts, target accounts are served up advertisements with their company’s name, and then are directed to Folloze pages that are co-branded with Conga, the prospect’s company and other partners. She then explained that Conga uses the 6sense platform to surround those advertisements with omnichannel strategies, such as outreach sequences and direct mail.

“It really does take the reps effort to do that and a mix of technology to complement how we’re getting that prospecting out there,” continued Couch. “We’re ultimately using the intent and insights from 6sense and tailoring it by looking at keywords surfaced to work into the messaging. It’s building the muscle of how our reps prospect, and then seeing how we can provide tools that create more efficiency so they can conduct this outreach at scale.”

Interestingly, FullStory’s Sehgal noted that while martech spend has increased over the past few years, the utilization of it went down. With that in mind, “consolidation is going to be the future,” she explained, highlighting the importance of ensuring multiple teams — including marketing, sales, RevOps and customer success — have access to data, as it’s easier to justify spending with stakeholders when many teams are utilizing it.

3. Be More Aligned

Despite multiple speakers pointing to aligning internal teams as a key to success, the truth is that 46% still struggle with aligning sales and marketing. This, of course, leads to inconsistent messaging, lack of accountability, decreased customer experiences and wasted resources — all factors cumulate in creating more work and animosity.

“You need to create a culture that promotes open and honest communication, so when there are issues or questions about data, everyone’s comfortable to ask those questions,” said Sehgal. “This creates a space for sales to ask those questions and raise the flag of, ‘Hey, why does it say this is a strong fit account when it’s not?’”

That communication extends beyond existing processes and into the potential adoption of new strategies, tools or technologies. Couch noted that promoting internal alignment also helps with ensuring the entire organization is on the same page when it comes to new tech adoption.

“We’re all humans, and we can be resistant to change,” continued Couch. “When we launch something to, say, the broader sales organization, we like to start with a pilot group to get feedback early on. Oftentimes, we just assume we can roll something out, focus on enablement and then it’s done. Instead, you need to focus on ongoing training, feedback sessions and create focus groups to understand what’s going on.”

Expanding on the importance of communication was Matt Grebow, Sr. Manager of Enterprise Marketing for ServiceTitan, a home and commercial software. In his session, “Smarketing Besties: Building Well-Oiled Orchestrations Between Sales And Marketing,” he explained that it’s not about “perfect alignment” — instead, he suggested organizations find ways to share unique perspectives, work toward a common goal and coordinate outreach closely. 

“Our sales and marketing teams speak at least once a week and talk about what they’re seeing in the campaigns that are running and share insights,” said Grebow. “This helps us understand that we’re all working toward the same goal, and we can share different perspectives that can only tell a story when we bring them together, which creates a lot of trust. When marketing and sales outreach is not well coordinated, it can come across as spammy and annoying.”

Grebow then suggested the following outreach tips:

• Allow marketing to take the lead when communicating with leads that need more nurturing, as it’s often not worth sales’ time;
• When an account doesn’t have a sales director but is showing high intent, marketing should incorporate a sales perspective into the conversation to start building a relationship; and
• Marketing and sales should work jointly on crafting outreach to existing accounts.

4. Be More Kind

Aside from the litany of marketing and sales advice practitioners shared to help attendees enhance their campaigns and internal communications, one of the event’s key takeaways was ensuring that work isn’t, well, work. 6sense’s Conant explained that she believes eight out of 10 workdays should be fun — and that doesn’t always take the shape of foosball and snacks at the office.

“You need to ask your teammates what their ‘fun factor’ is,” continued Conant. “It’s a great way to open a dialogue about how your co-workers are doing and growing.”

For Conga, Couch explained that the “fun factor” includes going all-in on launch events and other office activities to create positive associations with different activities.

“We did a ‘Taco Tuesday 6sense Fiesta’ to get our team fired up about adopting the platform,” said Couch. “It comes back to the human element of ensuring that people feel heard and helped. You need to create positive associations in the workplace so workers understand that it’s not just another thing they do — it’s how they can achieve success.”

Shifting away from workplace-based fun, the event also encouraged marketers to prioritize their “five to nine” post-work hours. Conant explained that employees can’t have fun at work and feel motivated if they’re not focusing on taking care of themselves personally.

“It’s hard to have a zest for work if you don’t have a zest for life,” Conant concluded. “When I think about the antidote to more, it’s about securing your own oxygen mask first. You need to be more present in your family, friendships and relationships. You can’t just do more — you must be more.”

The post 6sense Breakthrough Recap: B2B Orgs Increase Pipeline To Revenue Creation By Prioritizing Automation, Communication & Alignment appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

The Nature Of The Broken System

Marketing is often seen as a unified department that works in unison to achieve shared goals. In reality? It’s more of a dystopia. Usually, the CMO will set the strategic vision and then MOps will be responsible for executing on it. While that might seem like a reasonable arrangement, it’s the breeding ground for numerous problems.

To start, CMOs tend to be visionaries in terms of strategy while MOps professionals know how to take tactical steps toward execution. So, when a CMO tells MOps the strategy they need to have executed, there’s a very good chance they don’t understand what it takes to actually do so.

The CMO might recommend implementing a certain technology and associated strategy, for example. But even though the idea might be a good one in theory, the CMO might not realize that executing on it is impossible given current tech constraints and systems. So, what gives?

Should MOps tell the CMO they need a new strategy? Well, they could try… but they usually won’t. Instead, they end up trying to maneuver the strategy to fit their tools, which often dilutes the original strategic intent or makes the whole ideal unravel. To say the process is neither efficient nor effective is an understatement.

The Status Quo Needs To Change

CMOs typically have excellent ideas, but they’re also used to operating at the highest level. They set strategies that are important and well-intentioned, like improving the bottom line, but they’re also incredibly broad. How do you even start to execute against something like that?

Additionally, there are parts of the execution that only hands-on practitioners really grasp. For example, the organization’s target audience, tech stack, customer engagement and more can make a difference in how a strategy is implemented. If the CMO doesn’t have direct visibility into these very tactical elements, it makes sense they wouldn’t know how to best shape their strategy around them.

It’s also helpful for such strategies to be rooted in process, people and technology. Their buyers’ buying cycles should be considered, as should the extent of their internal systems. A CMO setting a strategy on their own might be able to effectively grow brand awareness, but without knowledge of all these factors, they won’t be able to drive revenue like they want to.

How To Get It Right

While this might all seem like it’s pointing fingers at the CMO, it’s not intended to. Siloed organizations are usually that way because of how the business is structured and/or years of operating in a disjointed fashion. CMOs are usually doing their best; they’re just not set up to succeed.

Fortunately, the solution to fixing this marketing to marketing (M2M) relationship is actually relatively simple: It requires both parties getting in a room and collaborating about the marketing strategy before it becomes permanent. This way, the CMO can share what they are trying to achieve with the strategy they’re envisioning, and then MOps can offer insights into how feasible such a strategy is given all the factors covered in this article.

It’s worth noting that MOps’ contributions should go beyond simply telling the CMO that a strategy won’t work. They should use data analysis, tech evaluation and performance measurement to help inform the strategy and back up their opinions. Then, once a strategy is formed that everyone agrees is both realistic and promising, MOps can weigh in on how to optimize marketing processes so the execution can be done more smoothly.

The M2M misalignment problem is just as imperative to fix as the one between sales and marketing. Luckily, it’s not a hard one to solve; it just requires both parties being willing to share their individual insights and work together to create the right strategy and tactics that put the organization’s best interests first. As with all things in business, a lot can be improved by simply breaking down barriers and prioritizing honest, constructive communication.

Raja Walia is the CEO of GNW Consulting, a data-driven marketing automation agency.

The post The Other Alignment Problem That’s Not Sales & Marketing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

1. Focus On Creating A Strong Brand Identity

Demandbase’s Jon Miller shared his take on marketing’s playbook — specifically, that it’s not working. Throughout the appropriately titled, “Nothing Works Anymore: Why Marketing Needs A New Playbook,” Miller shared that the old playbook isn’t as successful because, “we’ve lost the art of brand-building in B2B — and it hurts us,” he explained.

“By overinvesting in demand and underinvesting in brand, we’ve hurt ourselves,” Miller continued. “Modern buyers are savvy — they know if they fill out their contact information, you’ll start calling and emailing them. They want to research at their own pace and reach out when they’re ready. The old playbook supported us when we marketed to people we knew, but now we need to talk to people we don’t know.”

With that in mind, Miller said marketers’ new playbook should include:

• Conditioning the market by building brand awareness;
• Engaging accounts who are in-market and want to hear from them; and
• Orchestrating sales and marketing operations for the modern buyer.

2. Strategically Adding Events Into ABM Programs Unlocks A ‘Gold Mine’

Next up were Cvent’s Mylissa Paterson and Alex Rolfe, who discussed the importance of ensuring both sales and marketing have a seat at the ABM table in their session, “Maximize Your ABM Strategy With Event Data.” According to the experts, the top two reasons practitioners turn to account-based strategies are to grow existing accounts and acquire net-new logos — and no channel is better suited to meet those needs than events. They continued that the “trifecta” for successful event-based ABM strategies are:

• Aligning marketing and sales;
• Delivering highly personalized content; and
• Creating engaging experiences.

“Understanding and creating bespoke experiences within conferences for each attendee is important,” said Paterson. “At the crux of account-based strategies is personalization — and events enable hyper personalization because they give us the opportunity to connect with someone at a 1:1 level. We can host and create experiences and create touchpoints within our brand that are meaningful, impactful and open the door for other conversations.”

 3. Craft Demand Gen Strategies To Include Sales Teams From The Start

There were two startling statistics that laid the foundation for “Turning Marketing Leads Into Marketing-Attributed Revenue”:58% of B2B sales team are not involved in the creation of demand generation strategies and99% of leads who exchange contact information for content haven’t read it by the time inside sales follows up.

“Inside sales team needs a seat at the demand gen table so that they can understand the lead’s journey, what to do with it and, most importantly, give marketing feedback,” explained BlueWhale Research’s Chris Isham. “If leads aren’t converting, you either have a vendor, data or a best practice problem. It’s important to figure that out on the front-end of these programs so that you can solve the problem, work with your internal partners to make sure it gets fixed and ensure your inside sales is armed with the best practices.”

Some of the best practices that helped BlueWhale clients achieve upwards of 3X the value of ROI include:

• Getting inside sales teams on the phone with prospects;
• Asking about specific intent topics and pain points when calling instead of focusing solely on content consumption; and
• Leveraging those leads to start new conversations with other organizational stakeholders.

4. Use Generative AI To Streamline Content Creation

Thirty-eight percent of marketers have a clear plan to adopt generative AI in 12 months or less — and 45% are still figuring it out by testing and considering without any formal plans. Throughout “New Research: How To Take AI-Assisted B2B Content Marketing From Creation To Conversion,” ViB’s Mariah West and Amateurish Productions’ Katie Dematteis discussed how marketers are moving beyond the generative AI hype and using it for practical business processes — namely to enhance content personalization.

“You can write a solid piece of content, then give it to ChatGPT to further personalize to a specific vertical,” explained Dematteis. “You can ask ChatGPT to add in points that address X, Y and Z issues, or feed it data about pain points for the machine to work into existing copy. This allows you to get more personal with your core verticals while also saving you time because you’ve already done the work to create a foundational piece of messaging.”

However, the experts warned that there are two major limitations to generative AI:

• Search engines don’t love AI-generated anything, so it’s only a matter of time before the algorithm catches up and doesn’t accept SEO written by generative AI; and
• It can’t be used for high-value content, such as pieces where a marketer wants to bring a new or high value perspective.

5. Ensure Event Success By Signing Dynamic Speakers & Leveraging Partnerships

Kicking off day three of the series were Drift’s Ottavio Dattolo and Sara Lieber with their presentation, “3 Ways To Level Up Your Events Program In 2023.” Specifically, they explained that those three steps include:

• Leveraging existing partnerships, as they have access to a diversified audience portfolio;
• Unlocking their database through persona-level targeting, audience segmentation and social segmentation; and
• “Getting your influence on,” which includes connecting with thought leaders that have personal followings and welcoming speakers with “maverick” and diversified personalities.

“Every company you know has a thought leader,” said Dattolo. “The culture is now around thought leadership across the board. And you can leverage diversification here because everyone has different personalities and backgrounds. In terms of speakers, you want people who aren’t afraid to shatter the glass ceiling or break the status. No one wants to be fed the same talking points they hear at every conference.”

6. Envision A Credit Score For Your Email

In an homage to a 1967 classic, Act-On’s “How To Succeed At Email Marketing Without Even Trying” saw Kelsey Yen and Alex Cunningham share their insights on the modern email landscape. The experts explained how deliverability and engagement go hand-in-hand when crafting email marketing strategies. While they acknowledged that practitioners will always have “bad sends,” they can’t be discouraged.

“I always advise my clients to look at email concepts as if they were on their credit score,” said Cunningham. “Everyone wants their credit score in the 800s, but are they doing everything from a money management standpoint to achieve that? And in a way, your deliverability and engagement rest on that same foundation. It’s important to remember that these two factors are the pillars to email marketing success in the long haul.”

These two pillars are built over time and will remain consistent throughout company growth, Yen added, explaining that the key topics marketers should consider when auditing email content includes:

• How often they email their subscribers;
• What sort of content they’re emailing out and at what frequency; and
• Whether or not the current strategies are moving unengaged subscribers.

7. Bring Sales & Marketing Stakeholders Into Alignment At The Planning Stage

The next session of the series featured three all-stars from ZoomInfo: Deeksha Taneja, Millie Beetham and Calen Holbrooks. Taneja laid the foundation by explaining that marketing and sales goals aren’t different: Both teams want to generate large amounts of pipeline.

“Alignment starts at the planning phase — you need to bring different stakeholders together and create a path to hitting your number,” she continued. “Everyone needs to understand their scalable levers and potential headwinds based on resource constraints or seasonal changes. Knowing all those things and working with your sales partners allows you to create marketing goals and plays that are related to not just sourcing the leads, but also how marketing plays a hand in influencing those leads.” 

Beetham added that sales and marketing need to talk the same language and work to develop it together. For example, she explained that ZoomInfo’s marketers think about MQL numbers as their marketing quota and, when their sales counterparts also think about their goals as quotas, “it breeds comraderies.”

8. The MQL Is Not Dead — Marketers Just Need To Overhaul Intent Monitoring

There are various rumors swirling around the industry that leads are dead… but RollWorks disputed that theory in its session, “Form Fills Won’t Cut It: Using Buying Signals To Drive Real Revenue Growth.” Jill Brock shared that despite the popular narrative that MQLs are dead, they’re not all dead — just the bad-fit ones are.

“Leads matter to marketers — they’ve always mattered to marketers, and they always will,” said Brock. “But marketers have an obligation to drive higher quality MQLs via a fit-focused approach; there are still too many marketers who define their lead scoring model with activity and fit as equally weighted, and see MQL volume as the end-all, be-all — meaning the wrong people at the wrong companies squeeze through. If fit is assumed, then there’s nothing wrong with the MQL.”

Instead of focusing on form fills alone, Brock advised marketers to also action account- and contact-level data, as some behaviors of the buying committee — such as visiting a review site, researching similar solutions, consumer third-party content and clicking ads — will not manifest in clear digital signals.

9. The Buyer’s Journey Is Increasingly Self-Service

Content4Demand’s Alexis Carroll shared her insights into the buyer’s journey with her session, “Hacking The New Buyer’s Journey With Mid- & Late-Stage Content.” Namely, she explained that the buyer’s journey used to be a linear experience: A buyer realizes they have a problem, researches solutions and then chooses the right vendor. But now?

“We’re living in a giant mess of a buyer’s journey; it’s like spaghetti on the wall,” said Carroll. “Generational change is impacting marketing and buying, as Millennials and Gen Z get into positions of power in the workplace, they have a completely different perspective. They independently research and they don’t like sales talk, so your content needs to address all of their problems and pain points.

In the middle — or solution — stage, prospects are exploring possible solutions, which means practitioners should create content that explains how their solution can meet the persona’s need/solve their problem and illustrates how their offering is unique. In the later stages, once a prospect is about to commit to a solution, Carroll advised marketers to rely on first-hand accounts — such as case study portfolios and buyers’ guides.

Craving the full insights from these sessions? Register for the Campaign Optimization Series on-demand now to access watch all the recordings.

The post The Top 9 Takeaways From The 2023 Campaign Optimization Series appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

These challenges — and many more — make sales and marketing the twin engines of most B2B enterprises. Of course, that presents a challenge because sales and marketing aren’t always fully aligned. When the engines aren’t running in tandem, teams go around in circles or worse, crash.

In some companies, this issue may be as minor as needing to share information faster or fixing small breakdowns in communication. At its worst, the misalignment may come from a total lack of communication as the two departments try to carry out their own strategies.

As B2B companies adopt data and software to bring efficiency to their sales and marketing efforts, new solutions are emerging that can help unite these two critical departments. Intent data is one such solution, which, when used to its full potential, can put sales and marketing on a shared path to success.

Beyond Ad Targeting

Many companies familiar with B2B intent data likely think of it as solely a tool for identifying the best accounts to focus on. Intent data reveals upticks in research and content consumption activity among a list of target accounts. From there, the marketing department knows the accounts that are actively interested in a product and service, so programmatic, Facebook, LinkedIn, CTV or other advertising can be aimed at these accounts. Once they’ve delivered the ad campaign to those targets, they stop.

That’s a good use of intent data but it doesn’t tap into intent’s full potential because it barely touches sales.

Marketing teams should use intent data to look at their existing accounts as well. This may reveal that current customers are researching competitors or other tools that the business offers. This instantly creates the opportunity to up-sell or cross-sell existing accounts while also reducing churn. Imagine being able to identify if a current customer is researching a competitor.

Building Campaign Strategies Alongside Sales

At its most basic, intent data reveals who marketers should target. But going a step further, it can answer questions about why — or if — the marketing team should target certain accounts.

Planning an effective ABM or GTM campaign requires sales and marketing to look at their intent data topics to evaluate abnormalities and determine if a certain campaign is worth their time. Comprehensive ABM campaigns make use of paid advertising, gifting, events, sales outreach and content, which requires many resources like content writers, product marketers, demand marketers and sellers. Teams should work collaboratively to assess the chances that the campaign delivers ROI not only on the budget spent, but on the team’s time, or what I call return on effort.

By looking at the level of intent and the total addressable market, marketing and sales teams can determine the best way to allocate time and resources to their campaigns. The right intent data integration and shift in what metrics to track determines how to meet the needs of all stakeholders and influencers in the buying group, which is another way to improve win rates.

Compensations To Engage The Full Account

All campaigns should be aligned with sales teams’ goals and incentives. For example, a B2B software company may have eight different products and track intent signals for each. Most companies would think that they should focus their marketing efforts and SDRs on selling products that experience an uptick in the intent signals.

But what if the sales team is only compensated for two of the eight products? Those are the two products that they are most incentivized to sell, and therefore intent signals around those products matter more to them. Make sure you create a reverse funnel to align campaign results to business results. And that isn’t just a fictional example; it actually happened at a hyper growth business I was working with, and I’ve seen this multiple times.

Uniting For Shared Efforts

It’s these small but mighty changes that can help truly unite sales and marketing with intent data as the common bond that both teams use to drive their efforts. In today’s economy, outcomes matter, and B2B companies must think about both return on investment and effort.

Now that we’ve wrapped Q1, marketing and sales teams should have already met to align on goals for the year. If not, they need to do so immediately. Marketers should know what their sales teams are trying to accomplish from a goals perspective. Every flighted campaign should focus on helping sales meet those goals in the most efficient and effective use of their time. Intent data can help, provided companies are willing to go beyond the basics.

Jeff Marcoux is the CMO of Bombora, an intent data provider for B2B sales and marketing teams.

The post How Leveraging Intent Data Aligns Sales & Marketing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

But what will those strategies entail? And what can B2B marketing leaders do to increase their chances of success?

Facing tough times, we expect that B2B organizations will look to minimize risk by focusing their resources on the places that matter most. The B2B companies that will come out ahead are those that orient their strategies and operations around furthering the value created for their customer base. To make that happen, marketing leaders should consider pursuing these three approaches:

1. Make Customer Health A Top Priority

B2B organizations are shifting plans to emphasize growth in the places they know and understand — and that starts with their existing customer base. Strategies weighted toward retention, cross-sell and upsell revenues require not only great customer insights but also strong customer relationships. Yet, B2B marketing leaders have been notoriously poor at prioritizing customer health, and as recently as 2022, only 11% of B2B marketing decision-makers responded that their company’s CMO dashboard featured customer health scores.

Where customer health is not well measured, it can’t be well managed. Making a change by introducing customer health as a key indicator of marketing’s performance is a great way to refocus the organization on a vital driver of growth — that’s why Forrester is predicting that use of customer health scores on B2B CMO dashboards will triple in 2023. With health scores established, organizations can dig into their most meaningful levers and use them to expand efforts into driving ever-stronger customer relationships.

2. Forge The Next Incarnation Of Sales & Marketing Alignment

As B2B organizations increase their attention on existing customers, the need for sales and marketing to enhance alignment across all stages of the customer lifecycle must take center stage. While Forrester expects some companies to respond to this challenge by shuffling internal reporting lines, we see reorganization alone as an unrealistically optimistic remedy for more fundamental misalignment. We’d prefer to see companies address two pressing operational issues that sit at the heart of misalignment: Understanding buyers as individuals who work as part of a group and adapting to the different types of opportunities that are being pursued.

To confront the texture of complex buying groups, organizations must start grouping and progressing buyers working on the same teams into cohesive opportunities (instead of treating them as disconnected individuals). Proactively working to identify and balance opportunity types (acquisition, retention, cross-sell and upsell) will help marketing and sales better align around consistent approaches for helping each progress through a buying process.

3. Retool The Revenue Technology Stack Around The Customer

A flood of innovative marketing and sales technologies has created new opportunities for organizations to connect with buyers in more automated, personalized and timely ways. Yet, the rapid influx of new tools has outpaced evolving GTM processes, leaving organizations with overlapping, duplicative and poorly aligned technologies. While internal functions may wrestle with the inefficiencies of a rapidly grown revenue technology stack, it’s the customer who is subject to experiences that are inconsistent, illogical and/or supremely frustrating because a provider’s business systems are not aligned.

Forrester predicts that B2B organizations will shed one-third of the point solutions from their revenue tech stack in the coming year to regain control, smooth out the customer experience and free up some budget in the process. Marketing organizations can start by partnering with sales operations and revenue operations functions to audit the current inventory of solutions, looking for technologies with redundant capabilities and places where those overlaps negatively affect the experiences of customers. Those overlaps represent prime areas for simplification.

While 2023 is bound to present B2B marketers with a host of both predictable and unexpected challenges, forward-looking organizations will rethink their relationships with buyers and customers. Those that successfully refocus their efforts and operations to ensure that the creation of customer value remains the driving force in all that they do are those that will come out on top.

Ross Graber is a VP, Principal Analyst for Forrester.

The post 3 Things That 2023 Will Demand Of B2B Marketers appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

“We’ve seen massive growth lately, which led to the creation of additional product lines and the desire to break out in different regions,” explained Heather Rath, ServiceNow’s Director of Field Marketing West. “There’s a lot of complexity as we look at sales’ needs and priorities, and if we break out a new industry team, they might have different priorities than an existing core team.”

The Problem

Rath’s problem was all in the name: As the company’s Director of Field Marketing West, she didn’t have much expertise or insights into the accounts that would operate out of ServiceNow’s East Coast buying centers. In addition to identifying geographic specificity, Rath also wanted to:

• Enhance the data fueling mid- and post-funnel ABM strategies; and
• Promote stronger collaboration between sales and marketing.

“Ultimately, our priority is to drive new and accelerate open pipeline to close — we’re not looking at loose metrics,” said Heather Rath. “But when we’re delivering interactions, engagements or account insights to sales, we want to make sure we’re delivering the most qualified, sales-ready engagement and the most up to date information and materials to sales to ensure we’re starting that conversation at the right time.”

And, in terms of the Western enterprise’s already existing ~1600 accounts, Rath wanted to ensure her team was focused on post-lead engagement for each account to ensure it was being targeted with the appropriate strategy and messaging. As Rath puts it, “our ultimate goal was to connect marketing awareness to sales readiness.”

“When we talk about post-lead engagement, we want to ensure we have the right programs with the right messages to support those open opportunities and drive them to close,” she continued. “However, we can’t use the same tactics across the full funnel, because messaging will be different dependent upon the industry, persona and intent data we’re receiving.”

She continued that she wanted to build a pathway to connect marketing awareness to sales readiness.

“The handoff, or insights, we deliver to sales is what’s most critical to the campaign — so often we’re executing programs, whether it’s a live event or online program, it’s always important to ask, ‘Why is this important?’ Why are we asking sales to do this?’” explained Rath. “We wanted to make sales more successful as we look across all stages of the funnel and promote that ABM mentality.”

The Solution

ServiceNow adopted MRP Prelytix, an enterprise ABM platform, to leverage its analytic capabilities to synchronize efforts across both field marketing and campaign teams. By leveraging MRP’s insights and orchestration capabilities, Rath was able to seamlessly move top-of-funnel marketing leads into mid- and post-funnel sales leads.

On the geographic side, MRP analytics helped Rath identify what region intent signals were coming from so her team could act accordingly with the right messaging. For example, if the signal’s coming from San Jose, that would indicate a retention play is needed; if it’s originating from Charlotte, that could indicate a new acquisition.

“The great thing about the analytics tool is that we can get laser-focused not only on the geography and region, but also home in on specific accounts that might need additional support,” Rath explained. “We’ve been able to build micro clusters, if you will, that enable us to get very targeted on specific personas, intent, propensity or buying groups to execute successful campaigns.”

She continued that the team is also leveraging “two-touch” campaigns, which wrap a broader, early-stage outreach with a more targeted direct mail campaign. Rath emphasized that campaign follow up is “critical.”

“We collaborate most with extended marketing campaign and product management teams to ensure we have the right messaging, and then we connect with our inside sales and solution sales experts to ensure they’re driving the follow-up,” said Rath.

The Results

To best showcase ServiceNow’s results from the MRP ABM implementation, Rath cited a specific campaign she ran for a vaccine management company that required her team to quickly pivot and leverage insights and data to formulate a success campaign on the fly.

She explained that her team was able to prioritize accounts that were searching for specific keywords based on certain solutions that target personas and accounts ServiceNow did or did not own. As a result of its efforts, the team saw 3X sales-created pipeline.

“Collaboration is so important — not only at the top of the funnel but through the funnel,” explained Rath. “Being able to leverage these intelligent insights and meet accounts where they are is key to our business, in addition to ensuring we’re delivering the most pertinent information at the right time. The more actionable and qualified insights we can deliver to sales is just going to increase that trust and level of partnership. Having everyone on the same page and striving toward the same goal is really important.”

The post ServiceNow Increased Sales-Created Pipeline By 3X appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

“If you can align sales, marketing and product, you can move faster than your competitors. In fact, the numbers show that companies that achieved alignment grew 17% faster and were 14% more profitable than unaligned companies.”

-George Colony, CEO, Forrester

“The final component of aligning internal departments is trust. And this is more in terms of building a relationship with sales, because the more actionable and qualified insights we can deliver to them is just going to increase that trust and level of partnership. Having everyone on the same page and striving toward the same goal is really important.”

-Heather Rath, VP of Marketing, ServiceNow

“It’s time for you to unlock your creativity. Think differently, take risks, try new things, break down those silos and connect disparate pieces of data. But most importantly, take action.”

-Cristina De Martini, VP Research Director, Forrester

“A change leader is less worried about the minutia of change initiatives and more focused on setting the tone and end state. They remove barriers that get in our way, and they release resources to help us accomplish our goals.”

-Peter Ostrow, VP, Research Director, Forrester

“A company like Netflix — or any of these channels that you might subscribe to now — they create content, everything goes into their content creation or the deals that they do with content creators. Every subscriber for them is their revenue, and they treat that subscriber like precious gold dust. They think about how this buyer is changing and how they are going to serve them up information. Because if I lose them, I lose a subscription dollar, and that’s hard because I can’t manage my business. Well, we should think like that about every single person that we get to our sites, any sites that you run: Websites, social media sites. When I started to think about every visitor to my website in this way, it really started making me think about the amount of money that I was losing, not just that I was investing in this content, but I was losing if I couldn’t convert them and keep them engaged.”

-Jennifer Smith, CMO, Brightcove

“Every time somebody makes a purchase decision or recommends one of your products and services to be purchased for their business, they are putting their professional reputation at risk. And that creates a very emotionally charged interaction before you even start communicating.” Michelle Yaiser, VP, CX Analytics, Forrester

“As an organization, if you can align on what you’re trying to achieve through customer obsession and focus on it, it puts you in a good situation. Start assessing how much you want to invest in customer obsession.”

-Nick Buck, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

“We learned that it really is possible to scale personalized, relevant email outreach when marketing and sales come together — when marketing is developing the needs-based templates and when sales has been doing the research when somebody comes through and personalizing those emails. We also learned not to cry over form fills because with person-based advertising, we can get actionable signals from prospects by knowing who’s clicking on what even if they’re not completing a form.”

-Martha France, VP of Marketing and Sales, Vya

“Stop thinking about individual roles and start thinking about personalized, modular content that’s usable across many different functions and then create a personalized journey based on the role and somebody’s self-assessment of their skills.”

-John Buten, Principal Analyst, Forrester

“Know your priorities — including what you want to accomplish this week, month or quarter. This is so critical because in our world, you have so many things coming at you and there’s just so much opportunity to get distracted.”

-Steven Leonard, Chief Sales & Customer Engagement Officer, ArcBest

“The content engine of the future will merge human and machine. They will work side by side, each making autonomous decisions that help manage and fuel a unified customer experience.”

-Christine Polewarczyk, VP, Research Director, Forrester

The post Top Quotes From Forrester’s B2B Summit appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

RevOps is like ABM in the sense that it quickly evolved from an industry buzzword into a full-blown, necessary business initiative. As teams continue to break down silos to promote a more sustainable work culture, they’re simultaneously meeting buyers’ demands for a self-service, cohesive experience across all stages of the buying journey.

When executed properly, RevOps unites the stray departments and transforms them into a single unit with the same processes, goals and metrics. While RevOps can drive growth by removing organizational inefficiencies, the strategy is only as successful as the data, technology and people powering it.

As more marketers put this strategy into place and others refine their current models, organizations are starting to automate key aspects of the process to streamline efficiency and promote internal alignment to drive more predicable revenue.

“When we moved to RevOps modeling, we increased our revenue in a lot of ways — our churn went down, renewal rates went up and our account representatives spent more time on business growth instead of mundane tasks,” said Christina Kay, VP of Marketing for ResellerRatings. “In addition to impacting our business internally, our clients were happier as we moved more to a partnership approach and were able to concentrate more on conversations and getting feedback.”

Throughout this report, we’ll discuss the key benefits of deploying a RevOps model, including:

• How RevOps tightens the lens on valuable customer insights through all stages of the buyer’s journey;
• The rise of RevOps teams and their influence on marketing strategies;
• The new technologies practitioners are implementing to aid RevOps efforts;
• How organizations are increasing their dependence on automation to streamline RevOps; and
• The more technical focus marketers are putting on their internal RevOps initiatives.

Creating Alignment Across Departments By Owning The Customer Journey

Although organizations know the dangers of operating in silos, it’s still all too common for sales, marketing and operations teams to operate independently of each other — research has found that 37% of organizational dysfunction is caused by departmental and data silos. When each team has its own processes and no effective means of communication, customers receive a disjointed experience.

“Think of your organization as a three-legged stool representing sales, marketing and operations,” said Christine Nurnberger, CMO of Bottomline Technologies. “When one of the legs of the stool is not working right, you have a problem. If you have the best sales team in the world but the marketing team doesn’t identify a buyer and understand their needs, you will fail.”

As RevOps works to unify departments and help them work together with clients top of mind, new technologies are emerging that can help businesses more easily identify inefficiencies and create new streamlined processes by analyzing reps’ sales behavior. Once employees across all departments are aware of the areas they need to improve and have optimized their performance, it creates more efficient collaboration and better workflows.

However, “when you start to shine a light with data, it makes people nervous because they are a little hesitant to have their weaknesses and processes exposed,” continued Nurnberger. “Change management around this function is really important because it’s all about growth, enablement and increasing productivity. It’s important to convey to reps that you’re not inspecting their work just for the sake of inspecting; it’s really about optimizing their abilities and streamlining their daily operations.”

Proof Point

Work management platform monday.com aligned its sales reps, customer success team and all remaining employees on its new go-to-market messaging by tracking internal adoption and identifying areas where reps needed more support. To help train, evaluate and certify the organization was all-in on the new messaging and it landed as intended, upper-level management tracked the effectiveness of this new initiative to understand which reps used the messaging and which ones needed more guidance, such as tracking whether reps used keywords in customer conversations.

Additionally, the monday.com team set up trackers for other keywords reps used on calls, specifically flagging filler words, such as “like,” “awesome,” “um” and “great” to minimize their use and focus instead on language that moves deals forward.

“Hearing a real buyer talk is way more meaningful than a sales manager telling a salesperson about the same thing,” said Jason Miller, Director of Sales in North America for Gong. “This allows monday.com to focus dedicated energy on helping reps improve. Our managers can add immediate value — the more a rep hears someone in their seat doing something correctly, the more effective it is.” 

Taking RevOps To The Next Level With Automation

With RevOps as the “nucleus” of revenue marketing, Kay explained that it’s important for organizations to add automation to their processes to manage tasks between departments. However, that streamlining of tasks is only effective if companies ensure their customer data remains up to date.

The foundation of every RevOps program must be a strong database that provides every team access to robust, high-quality data on everything from lead scoring and routing to ABM and attribution. Yet, research shows that two-thirds (66%) of B2B professionals are somewhat confident or not very confident in their organization’s data onboarding and list loading processes.

“Automation is limitless, but the data has to be clean for your RevOps model to successfully work,” she continued. “If you have a company record and all the people connected to that record don’t work there anymore, that does nothing for you. Automation helps standardized any type of manual input that a salesperson would put into a CRM, such first name and last name.”

Proof Point:

BrightTALK, a B2B webinar and virtual event platform, a B2B webinar and virtual event platform, was flooded with new prospects and customers looking to move their events online when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold of the world. After realizing its existing sales engagement tool wasn’t providing the insights and clarity it needed to take full advantage of the opportunity, the company turned to automation to gain more detailed reporting across the sales development process. Once BrightTALK’s SDRs were operating in the same platform, they had better tools and more actionable insights to improve team performance.

The relationship between sales and marketing is now more coordinated and collaborative. Using the same up-to-date insights, both teams regularly get together to better understand how customers are experiencing different sales and marketing messaging, content and tactics, and figure out where to make changes to improve the end-to-end process.

Shifting From A Sales-Centric To A Buyer-Centric Mindset

An interesting storm brewed when the Covid-19 pandemic’s forced shift toward digital selling started to blend with the younger generation’s preferences for self-service buying journeys, as 43% of Gen X customers and 54% of Millennial customers prefer rep-free interactions. With those shifting buying behaviors in mind, organizations need to move beyond messaging that promotes their products and rather focuses on targeting online buyers.

“As marketers, we tend to create product-centric messages, because selling has solely been a sales process for so long — but now it’s a buying process,” explained Nurnberger. “When you start to flip that notion and think about messaging from the buyer’s perspective, it changes key internal operations such as how you engage with prospects and customers.”

To identify which messaging will resonate best with prospects, organizations are starting to combine their RevOps strategies with ABM to focus their messaging on a key list of targeted accounts who are most likely to convert into customers to save sales rep time.

“We cleaned out our databases and reduced the target markets that we’re going after in favor of folks that have a higher propensity to buy or better product market fit,” said Nurnberger. “The process incorporates ABM and intelligent decision making with sales and product. We’re not looking at these things in isolation; we’re looking at the full picture to create a buying experience that is as delightful as possible but drives efficiency, scale and growth in the business.”

Proof Point:

Zoom eliminated its manually updated spreadsheet approach and instead adopted a RevOps automation platform that connected behavior to outcomes, surfaced key metrics and built custom benchmarks that resulted in increased pipeline and bookings. Zoom scaled its efforts by automatically capturing, analyzing and correlating sales engagement with outcomes that otherwise would have been lost. With a more approachable way to see how reps were spending their time, managers could shape coaching sessions into strategic conversations rather than reviewing past activities.

Sales leader Mark Pickart has made the People.ai solution part of his everyday work routine. “When I sit down at my machine to start the day, I look at the forecast, pipeline, emails and chat,” said Pickart. “Part of that routine is checking our automation platform to look at how our reps did — who had a busy day, and why? It helps me to know who to check in with and where to focus my conversation. As I spot check deals, especially the largest opportunities that I don’t know well, it shows me what’s happening and if I’m missing something.”

When it comes to RevOps implementation or expansion, ResellerRatings’ Kay explained that organizations often try to do too much, too fast. Instead of immediately turning to technologies to automate key processes and optimize internal teams’ effectiveness, she suggested organizations write down all current operating processes to identify areas to start with automation and provide visibility into inefficiencies.

“Don’t go too fast adopting and expanding RevOps — it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she explained. “Let that sink in. I’ve found that I learn the most when I set my ego aside. RevOps is a journey that affects the business in many positive ways, such as streamlining efficiency, aligning teams and, ultimately, driving stronger pipeline.”

The post Refining RevOps Models To Gain Better Customer Insights & Promote Collaboration appeared first on Demand Gen Report.