Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jul 23, 2010 @ 10:52 AM
Research analyst Jim Ninivaggi joins Jonathan Block for a podcast on the benefits of applying a time and motion study to B2B field sales (14.7 MB; 16:00).
To listen to this podcast, Click Here.
Posted by John Neeson on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 @ 10:06 AM
Well it's that time of year again. Many of you will begin your annual planning for 2011 or are well on your way to creating your budgets. This is the time of year where we do many budget benchmarks to show you trends in marketing spend that are often used to support the changes you are looking for. As we consider the improvements we have observed in sales and marketing alignment, here are three best practices to consider in your plans:
- Create a “menu” of programs sales is requesting. Very often marketing focuses on the top-line programs but not what they manifest into at the sales level. Build out the programs you will need in a menu model for sales. Include a description for each program showing what sales problem is solved with program and written in sales language not marketing. Show what will be on the menu for lead generation for new accounts, existing accounts, for sales enablement, and what will be done for targeting. Also show how the menu might be different by sales channel.
- Reverse the waterfall. Now with your menu created, determine the marketing requirements needed to achieve these sales programs. Establish what the number of leads will be, what marketing will source and what they will influence.
- Brand to demand ratio. Finally, determine what has been the ratio of awareness required to create demand. Look at what you've spent in years past on communications and advertising and see what the ratio has been for every dollar spent on demand generation, what has been spent in driving awareness.
Active dialogue is at the heart of B2B marketing and sales alignment, and fostering this dialogue should be a part of every planning process. Without using such a planning model as we've presented here, marketing is often left with assuming the impact that it can have on sales and, subsequently, the business.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jun 18, 2010 @ 09:31 AM
Research analyst Jim Ninivaggi joins Jonathan Block for a podcast on tips for selling to senior-level B2B executives (11.2MB; 9:45).
To listen to this podcast, please Click Here.
Posted by Joe Galvin on Tue, Apr 27, 2010 @ 10:46 AM
When Salesforce.com (SFDC) announced its intention to acquire Jigsaw on April 21, 2010, it marked its entrance into the data services market. Jigsaw’s SaaS-based, crowdsourcing model of company/contact data collection and validation appears to be a logical extension of SFDC’s cloud computing infrastructure. What is unclear is if SFDC really wants to compete with the D&Bs, Hoovers and ZoomInfo’s of the world for this market or if this, like their other acquisitions, becomes the technology foundation for their next cloud-based application. Just as Korel turned into SFDC content and Groupswim became Chatter, does Jigsaw become SFDC Contact at some point in the future attempting to leverage the millions of contacts currently stored in SFDC by their multitude of clients? I struggle to believe that the SFDC sales force is going to make plan by selling Jigsaw as an add-on into their client base as they attempted with SFDC Content before making it free. Or that they will direct/distract their sales force into the complex marketing data buying centers where vendors like Harte-Hanks and Acxiom make a living.
Does this also ignite the dreams of all those App-Exchange vendors that they may be next? Does this signal SFDC’s intention to get serious about marketing automation? At DreamForce last November, many thought the “mystery cloud” that later revealed itself to be Chatter was going to be the announcement of an acquisition in the marketing automation platform (MAP) space, as had been rumored. SFDC’s marketing capabilities are notoriously lacking when compared to the functionality we see with MAPs like Eloqua, Marketo and Manticore Technology. Combining the data services capabilities of Jigsaw with an established MAP vendor would give their sales force a powerful 1-2 punch to sell add-on seats into marketing, leveraging their SFA infrastructure and growing their contact value.
The increasing volume of announced and soon-to-be-announced vendor acquisitions/mergers in the sales and marketing automation markets suggest that in anticipation of the next growth cycle, the vendor community is quickly adapting to user demand for value-added applications that drive performance and sales productivity, and that these are the requirements that will rise to the forefront of funded initiatives. With more than 88 percent of organizations having already deployed core sales force accounting (SFA) applications, it seems only logical that the next wave of user investment will be directed toward sales and marketing 2.0 applications — those that focus on selling, not just measuring sales.
For SFDC users this can only be viewed as good news. Jigsaw, like Content and Chatter, represents the first truly new functionality we’ve seen from SFDC, enabling it to move beyond being a sales force accounting tool and becoming the integrated sales and marketing suite that users are building for themselves today.