Tag: Marketing Technology

Sales and Marketing Alignment

In a research study titled, “2016 B2B Sales & Marketing Collaboration Study,” Samantha Stone and The Marketing Advisory Network found that the misalignment of sales and marketing objectives remains a key problem for B2B companies.  Although this has been a topic of discussion for several years now, misalignment remains a key stumbling block to meeting revenue objectives.  Finger pointing between sales and marketing has long been a blogging meme.

When asked about whether marketing co-workers were doing a “superb job of supporting sales efforts,” sixty percent of marketers agreed while only twenty percent of sales executives agreed.

Other signs of disconnection between the two parties:

  • Only twenty percent of marketers believe that there is a 95% follow up on marketing generated leads while only half of sales executives believe a 95% follow up rate is maintained within their department.  Overall, 57% of respondents believe that no more than 85% of marketing leads are acted upon by sales.
  • Marketers have little confidence that sales reps are using the tools they develop for sales.  While only 15% of marketers believe their tools are broadly adopted (“virtually 100%”), over half of sales reps believe the tools are being fully deployed.
  • While fewer than twenty percent of marketers believe that sales is rewarded for supporting marketing objectives, 55% of sales teams believe their rewards are aligned with marketing.
  • Firms that did not share key performance indicators between sales and marketing were half as likely to exceed revenue targets.
  • Marketing ownership of pipeline acceleration is critical to meeting revenue targets.  “Organizations that exceeded revenue goals in the last 12 months are 3X as likely as those that miss revenue goals for marketing to “own” pipeline acceleration (not just lead generation),” said Stone.

“It’s common sense that organizations that rally together around shared goals will drive more efficiency than those where different functions are at odds with each other. Yet, most sales and marketing teams struggle with achieving this ideal.  That’s almost terrifying given we know fully integrated companies are more profitable, drive faster growth and make happier customers,” said Stone.  “Sales and marketing leaders are smart, yet almost every organization I walk into has some level of unhealthy tension between the two groups. It doesn’t seem to matter the size of the company, the industry they serve or how fast they are growing. In fact, it’s so common we accept it as inevitable.”

Sales and Marketing SLAs (Source: Marketing Advisory Network)
Sales and Marketing SLAs (Source: Marketing Advisory Network)

The study also found that setting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between sales and marketing are highly correlated with revenue performance.  Firms that took simple steps such as defining lead scoring criteria and lead follow up timeframes were much more likely to exceed goals than fail to do so.  Of the six SLA goal categories defined by Stone, five were associated with “exceeded revenue goals” more commonly than missing revenue goals by more than ten percent.

The one goal that was not associated with outperformance, agreeing on the “number of new contacts added to the database by sales,” doesn’t address the mix of marketing and sales generated leads.  If we assume that there is an optimal percentage of sales generated leads, then agreeing on a percentage that is significantly above or below the target would be sub-optimal.  Absent a way to determine this optimal mix, setting an SLA on sales generated contacts could easily result in too much or too little time spent on contact identification.  If the number is too high, then reps are likely to add contacts of little value to the CRM so as to reach numeric targets.  A smart SLA would be based upon an analysis of the cost of generating sales contact records against the benefit of adding additional contacts.  As such, setting an analytics-free numeric target is no better than having no SLA at all and allowing each rep to determine their optimal contact discovery level.

Teams that perform best, document more service level agreements between sales and marketing than those teams that simply meet or miss revenue goals,” said Stone.  “Those that exceed revenue goals even collect data points such as win/loss data in a formalized manner.  Perhaps the most simple practice they follow is not only agreeing on lead scoring critical for sales follow up, but on time from lead assignment to follow up. It’s this closed loop accountability that clearly makes a difference.”

Finally, one simple step for improving revenue is for marketing to attend sales meetings.  The study found that B2B organizations which outperform on revenue are twice as likely to have marketers attend customer and prospect meetings than firms that fail to meet revenue targets.  Furthermore, marketing departments should be surveying the sales team on tools.  Stone found that firms “that exceed revenue goals are 3.1X as likely as those that just meet revenue goals to survey buyers when evaluating sales tools and 14X as likely as those that miss revenue goals.”

Tibor Shanto, Principal of Renbor Sales Solutions, calls for improved cooperation between sales and marketing under the leadership of a Chief Revenue Officer:

I have always seen sales and marketing as being on a shared mission and fighting the same battle. Like the military, to succeed, marketing has to provide air cover for the ground troops, namely sales, and this requires complete coordination, planning, execution, and review. This needs to extend from lead generation through all stages of the sale. At each stage, marketing offers up different coverage based on the feedback from sales. And sales needs to be sure to provide that feedback every step of the way or the air cover may miss the mark. While each branch of the military has their command, the overall effort is led by the commander. That’s why I am a fan of companies having a Chief Revenue Officer, rather than a distinct VP Marketing and VP Sales.

It is through a recognition of shared goals subject to shared metrics and feedback loops that firms can obtain improved performance from the two departments that own revenue generation.

The research was sponsored by QuotaFactory.

Demandbase Takes ABM Leadership to the Next Level

The ABM Tech Stack published by the AMBLA identifies a broad set of technologies involved in implementing Account Based Marketing.
The ABM Tech Stack published by the AMBLA identifies a broad set of technologies involved in implementing Account Based Marketing.

For several years, Account Based Marketing (ABM) was discussed by Demandbase with little interest from other firms.  In the past twelve months or so, it has taken off and become a full blown marketing fad well into its hype cycle (time will tell whether it becomes a movement).  Now that other firms are discussing ABM, Demandbase has formed an ABM Leadership Alliance with Oracle and several other firms.

Account Based Marketing identifies a firm’s best prospects and then looks to deeply market and sell to those organizations.  As B2B purchasing decisions span multiple individuals and departments, targeting single decision makers is no longer sufficient.

“If you are only looking at an individual, you may only get a part of the picture; seeing the collective acting together helps you to truly understand how interested an account is in your solution,” said Demandbase CMO Peter Isaacson.

Last month, SiriusDecisions released a “2016 State of Account-Based Marketing,” report which found that over seventy percent of B2B companies are looking at implementing ABM and have dedicated staff to ABM-specific programs.  The process is still relatively new with 58% of surveyed firms only in the pilot or test phase.  The percent of B2B marketing departments with full ABM programs in place grew from twenty percent in 2015 to 41% last year.

This year’s data shows ABM continues to gain rapid acceptance for B2B marketers.  What is most exciting is that marketers are rapidly building ABM skills so they can deliver on its promise. Marketing teams understand there are many ways ABM can deliver business impact and are reporting on a range of metrics focused on both demand creation and relationship improvement objectives. In the coming year we’ll see marketers continue to invest in ABM technologies to deliver on their goals.

  • Megan Heuer, VP of research at SiriusDecisions

The alliance is expanding ABM beyond Demandbase’s original programmatic marketing slogan to a broader concept spanning Engagement, Account Selection, Infrastructure, Measurement, and Sales Enablement (Sales Intelligence).

Sales Enablement is broken into three categories all supported by traditional sales intelligence platforms: Sales Intelligence, Account Insights, and Contact Development.  ABMLA has defined these terms a bit differently than I have.  By Sales Intelligence, they mean improved coordination between sales and marketing including target account intelligence gathered by marketing.  Account Insights focuses on buying signals to assist with outreach prioritization.  Contact Development focuses on deeper intelligence around decision-makers.

Missing from their model is ABSD (Account Based Sales Development) services that provide sales reps with pre-defined messaging and campaign cadences  which can be adjusted by sales reps.  ABSD firms provide what SalesLoft refers to as “sincerity at scale.”  Other firms in the ABSD category include QuotaFactory and KiteDesk.

“For ABM practitioners, being able to go beyond the account to the contact level is critically important to drive deeper relevance and specificity,” said Matt Senatore, research director at SiriusDecisions. “For those companies focused on lead generation within target accounts, technology that can help automate this is an important component that enables their ABM programs to scale more efficiently.”

The alliance noted that “B2B companies face a set of unique marketing challenges, which require specific technology to address. As you navigate the space, you’ll need to identify the technologies and vendors that have solutions built for the unique needs of B2B.”

The founding members of the alliance include

  • Demandbase – “Full Funnel ABM”
  • Oracle Marketing (Eloqua) – Marketing Automation
  • LookBookHQ – Content Marketing Automation
  • Get Smart Content – Content Personalization
  • Optimizely – Testing and Automation
  • Bizable – Attribution and Reporting
  • Radius – Predictive Analytics

At this point, the alliance does not have any Sales Enablement members which is understandable because Demandbase operates at the very top of the funnel targeting anonymous individuals at named companies.  However, several sales intelligence firms have already adopted ABM positioning including Avention, Zoominfo, DiscoverOrg, and DataFox.

The alliance was announced on the opening day of Demandbase’s annual user conference.

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

The task of software product developers has become increasingly difficult.  It used to be that marketing could “put lipstick on a pig” and sell a poorly designed product based upon futures, a few cool features, and a high ROI claim.  But increasing competition and higher user expectations make dressing up a weak product more difficult for several reasons:

  1. Buyers do much of their research upfront, so marketers and sales no longer control the narrative.  Purchasers are now able to frame their requirements and conduct much of their basic research before raising their hands.
  2. Review sites such as G2.com (FKA G2 Crowd), TrustRadius, and PeerSpot provide input on what users like and dislike about software products.  If there is a disconnect between promises and reality, these problems will be surfaced.  If there are connectivity, performance, or scaling issues, these will also be flagged. (Warning: be wary of reviews that are manufactured by vendor campaigns.  Look at the review dates and note if reviews are tightly bunched in time or if a small vendor has several-fold more reviews than its larger competitors.  These reviews are often derived by campaigns, some with rewards, for reviews.)
  3. We’ve all come to appreciate great design thanks to Steve Jobs and Apple.  Most of us are not experts in what makes for great design, but we are much better at identifying poor design, balky workflows, and ugly interfaces.
  4. Services must integrate with each other.  It is no longer possible to build a product that only weakly integrates with key vendors.  Simply providing a download CSV for enterprise software platforms is unacceptable to admins.  The AppExchange has thousands of vendors on it.  In SalesTech and Martech, it is expected that your service integrates with Salesforce, MS Dynamics, Adobe/Marketo, and Eloqua/Oracle.  Other common integrations are Chrome Connectors, Hubspot, Gmail, Exchange, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (SNAP).  We are already seeing Sales Engagement vendors such as SalesLoft and Outreach.io build their own partner ecosystems.
  5. Competition is fierce.  In the Marketing Technology space, Scott Brinker identified approximately 3,500 Martech vendors in his 2016 graphic, up 87% over 2015.  By 2019, the vendor count had doubled to 7,040. That is a large gaggle of voices calling for attention.
"Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2016)" courtesy of Scott Brinker and Chiefmartec.
“Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2016)” courtesy of Scott Brinker and Chiefmartec.

Products rarely succeed if they are backed by poor marketing.  But is increasingly difficult for poor products to gain traction by marketing alone.  Firms now must tie strong marketing to strong design and an unmet user need.  A company like SalesLoft identified an underserved market (Sales Development professionals) and gave them “sincerity at scale.”  Likewise, DemandBase was talking about Account Based Marketing for years (and supporting it with their programmatic marketing platform) before other vendors recognized the value of targeting your best clients and prospects.

In a blog, Gartner Research VP Jake Sorofman warned marketers:

When your value proposition, use cases and features are all in perfect harmony with a high-value need, customers take notice. You’ve won their minds. When the user experience doesn’t just fulfill these use cases, but does so with artful simplicity and deep respect for the user, you’ve won their hearts, too.

When I’m evaluating which products to profile, a poor UI is a red flag.  I’m also wary of profiling products that lack an integration story, have typos on their website, push marketing puffery into bald-faced lies, or whose pitches suffer from featuritis.

So be wary of the firms that sell features over value, that promise ROI with gauzy claims of indirect benefits, or that fail to understand the underlying needs of their customers.  A pig with lipstick is still just a pig.

Avention Launches DataVision for Marketers

DV1

Late last month, Avention announced availability of OneSource DataVision, a hosted marketing platform which integrates internal and external customer intelligence.  By matching Avention company and contact data against customer and prospect files, Avention improves the accuracy and firmographic fill rates of marketing databases.  The result is improved customer segmentation and targeting based upon enriched data from Avention’s Global Live database of companies and contacts.

DataVision also provides analytics and visualization tools for marketers.  “As a result, you will be able to identify and leverage key customer and prospect segments to make more informed decisions, identify cross-sell opportunities, key industries, verticals and much more,” states Avention.

“In a world where gaining new customers has become more complex and competitive, and customers engage with vendors later in their buying processes, marketing and sales teams need to align their data more than ever. OneSource DataVision is a powerful – yet easy-to-use – tool that helps marketers understand their current customer bases in detail and identify the most relevant target companies and segments,” stated Lauren Bakewell, SVP of product for Avention. “Initial customers have seen positive business impacts and results from their use of OneSource DataVision.”

DataVision provides a centralized marketing view of customer data which may be housed across multiple platforms including CRMs, Marketing Automation Platforms, and order entry systems.

“Companies need accurate, deep data to gain the marketing intelligence needed for better targeting and advancing customer relationships.  The ripple effects of greater marketing intelligence within the enterprise are improved sales cycles, cost of lead and sale and revenue generation,”  blogged Jennifer Nash.  “OneSource DataVision helps marketers increase the value of existing customer and prospect data by centralizing, analyzing and visualizing multiple data sources.”

DataVision includes a gap analysis tool which assesses the total addressable market in order to identify underserved markets and growth potential.  After enriching and segmenting the data, DataVision users can prospect for similar companies.

DV2
DataVision Look-Alikes segmented by state.

 

As DataVision provides ongoing cloud based data cleansing and standardization, It is likely to be competing against similar offerings from ReachForce, Zoominfo, and D&B NetProspex.  The service is also likely to butt up against predictive analytics companies such as Lattice Engines and Infer.  While Avention offers a set of predictive tools (e.g. Business Signals and Ideal Profiles), they do not appear to be fully integrated into the initial release.

Analyst David Raab noted that DataVision’s hosted data model is likely to result in fresher data “since any query to DataVision will return the latest information available to Avention.”  He also complimented DataVision’s visualization tools and the platform’s ability “to compare those distributions with the entire Avention universe of known firms.”

A significant trend over the past two years has been the blurring of the lines between sales and marketing with sales intelligence vendors addressing marketing requirements (e.g. DataVision, Zoominfo,  InsideView for Marketing) and marketing functions migrating down the pipeline to sales reps (e.g. SalesLoft Cadence, Salesforce IQ).  Historically, OneSource shied away from building marketing tools in order to focus on the sales and research functions.  While they long offered match & enrichment services, this offering was managed by their Professional Services team as either a custom project or CRM enrichment.  DataVision is their first product designed specifically for the marketing team.  Of course, improved data quality at the top of the funnel provides benefits to sales reps in the form of improved lead quality, enriched leads, and properly routed opportunities.

Marketing Technology Buyer Research from Walker Sands

Walker Sands Marketing Research (N = 313 Marketing Professionals)
Walker Sands Marketing Research
(N = 313 Marketing Professionals)

A recent survey of US marketers by digital marketing firm Walker Sands Communication found that 62% of marketers had led a marketing technology purchasing process in the past three years.  At firms with fewer than 50 employees, 79% of marketers had managed the decision making process with the percentage dropping to 41% at larger organizations.

Amongst millennials, 55% had served in a purchasing leadership role.  “The new martech buyer journey is being shaped by a new generation of marketers,” said Walker Sands’ Director of the Marketing Technology Practice. “B2B brands shouldn’t underestimate the influence end users and millennials have on the marketing technology stack.”

Walker Sands provided the following tip when marketing or selling to millennials:

Millennials are beginning to step into decision-making roles, so it’s important to understand how to sell to them. They’re more tech-savvy than their older counterparts. Emphasize how your technology is more innovative and user-friendly than competitors. Also, it’s important to get more specific with millennials. Exactly how does your technology help them in their day-to-day role? When trying to reach millennials, spend more money on online display and social media marketing because they’re influenced by more information and a variety of content.

“With so many people potentially involved, B2B marketers have to understand who’s driving and influencing the decisions for specific pieces of technology,” said Parro. “Sometimes it’s the CMO, but the end user often has almost as much pull.”

Two-thirds of marketing professionals believed that they were able to provide input into the marketing technology tools used by their firm.

Martech purchasing committees most commonly consist of three to five members (57%) with one-tenth of the committees containing ten or more members.

The biggest obstacles to implementing new marketing technology issues were budget (69%), difficulty of implementation or integration (35%), and internal resistance to change (33%).

When it comes to conducting research, laptops and PCs continue to be the primary tool with 91% of marketing professionals beginning their research on these devices and 92% conducting all or most of their research on their laptops or PCs.  Nevertheless, marketing content should be mobile-enabled as non-research phases (e.g. lead nurturing, quick lookup) are more likely to be from mobile devices.

When beginning to research solutions, buyers see themselves as in control with thirty percent first learning about the technology from peers or colleagues, twenty percent on news publications or blogs, and thirteen percent from search engines.  Sales reps initiated the education process only five percent of the time.

Sales reps also lack much influence over the final decision with only eleven percent of purchasers finding sales reps to be very influential and 58% somewhat influential.  Unsurprisingly, marketers placed more weight on vendor websites or blogs (89% said they were very or somewhat influential) and vendor content (86% found it to be very or somewhat influential).  Trust, though, was placed in peer recommendations (63% very influential), online reviews (44% very influential), and analyst reports (33% very influential).  Of the eleven information sources they asked about, vendor’s social media accounts were the least influential with 48% saying they had no influence on their decisions.

The Martech data aligns closely with a Conference Board study which found that 57% of the purchasing decision is made before reaching out to a sales rep.  Only 14% of purchasers reached out to sales early in the process (zero to twenty percent completed) and only 46% raised their hands to vendors before completing half of their decision making process.  A full quarter of purchasers are eighty percent complete with their purchasing decision before contacting vendors.

The Walker Sands research on Buyer Phase before formally signaling the firm of interest is consistent with other B2B purchasing research.
The Walker Sands research on Buyer Phase before formally signaling the firm of interest is consistent with other B2B purchasing research.

The report noted that “Marketers are doing so much of their own technology research that many have already made a decision and are ready to purchase before contacting a sales rep.”  In total, slightly over one-third of decision makers didn’t self-identify as a purchaser until they were at the decision or purchasing phase leaving little opportunity for companies to actively influence the decision.

Walker Sands advised marketers, “Your customers are almost to a decision before they even contact you. The key is to make sure that your technology is fully represented within the content they’re consuming and that this content is aligned with reviews and other news articles online. Buyers will rule you out if they can’t find the information they’re looking for or are confused during the discovery and research phases. Once you make it to the decision and purchase stages, make sure that you understand the prospect’s needs and why your product is right for them.  Remember, they already know the basics, so you’ll have to sell them on why your product fits their unique needs in order to convince them to make that final decision.”

As to publications, the top five sources of information on marketing technology are all business, technology, or general purpose publications: Forbes (44%), Wired (37%), Wall Street Journal (35%), BusinessWeek (31%), and New York Times (31%).  Only three advertising and marketing publications were seen as go to resources by at least ten percent of those surveyed: AdAge (30%), eMarketer (17%), and MarketingProfs (13%).

“Understanding the New MarTech Buyer Journey” was based upon a July survey of 313 marketing professionals.  21% of the respondents were Managers, 26% Senior Executives, and 31% Coordinators or Specialists.

WinMo: Sales Intelligence for MarTech, Agencies, and Brands

Winmo provides a sales intelligence solution for agencies, media sales, marketing technology firms, and corporate sponsorships
Winmo provides a sales intelligence solution for agencies, media sales, marketing technology firms, and corporate sponsorships

List Partners launched their new Winmo sales intelligence service for sales professionals who target agencies, media sales, marketing technology firms, and corporate sponsorships. The List has long been a respected database covering the national advertising and agency sector.

“Online retailers are serving recommendations to their shoppers every day based on items they’re purchasing or browsing on their sites, said List Partners Director of Marketing Jennifer Groese. “Winmo does the same thing – depending on the advertisers, agencies or decision-makers you’re prospecting on a regular basis, our platform serves you with suggestions on other like opportunities worth pursuing.”

Features include Advertiser and Agency Search, Agency Relationships, Creative Portfolios, Personalized Alerts, and Sales Recommendations.  Users can build prospecting lists and share them with their team or synch then with SFDC.

The service also includes DailyVista researched sales triggers which cover Spending Shifts, Decision Makers on the Move, Product Launches, Struggles, and Expansions.  DailyVista looks to identify “significant industry shifts 3-18 months in advance.”

“Winmo is the only sales platform that serves sales professionals with intelligence on companies, decision-makers and why to engage them in real-time,” said List Partners President Dave Currie.  “We’re empowering teams to be more strategic with their prospecting, helping them to close the sales gap to win more business.”

Seats begin at $5,950 for database access, prospecting recommendations and sales alerts.  For $7,500, users also receive DailyVista triggers, media spend data, and research requests.  Volume discounts apply.

Pricing Transparency (or Lack of It) in Martech

RJMetrics: % of Companies w/Public Pricing by Landscape
RJMetrics: % of Companies w/Public Pricing by Landscape

Back in July, Fliptop was criticizing its competitors in the predictive analytics space for lack of pricing transparency.  Their competitors (Lattice Engines and Mintigo) responded that their products were simply too complex to post prices publicly; Fliptop was a simpler offering targeting the SMB space.

A few weeks later, Fliptop again went on the offensive noting their usability stating “Fliptop has done away with the Wizard of Oz approach to predictive analytics taken by most predictive vendors (‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’).”

It was all shaping up to be an interesting case of marketing jujitsu until LinkedIn stepped in and bought Fliptop for its talent.

I mentioned this anecdote because it fit perfectly with a recent study by Robert J Moore of RJMetrics that analyzed pricing transparency in the martech space.  Moore found that only forty percent of marketing technology companies post pricing on their website.  According to Moore, “companies justify their lack of public pricing based on solution complexity — there are too many factors, they say, that go into a price.  These solutions instead offer demos or ‘contact us’ forms.”

Backbone services such as CRM, marketing automation, and ecommerce are most likely to post pricing while middleware services such as data management, tag management, and identity management are the least likely to provide details.

Companies with freemium models are much more likely to provide pricing, but only 16% of the martech firms offered a free baseline service.

Moore found that companies with freemium models are more likely to have a lower paid first tier than companies that eschew freemium pricing.  Non-freemium vendors generally have their lowest tier pricing 2X to 5X that of freemium vendors.  Freemium vendors averaged $100 per month for their lowest tier while non-freemium vendors were slightly above $250 per month.

If you’re a vendor and want to quote pricing publicly, the data is clear: most of your competitors are quoting in monthly terms. And they’re probably doing it for a reason.
– Robert J Moore of RJ Metrics

Moore also found that monthly pricing dominates with fewer than 15% of companies advertising annual or one-time prices.  The dominance of monthly pricing held across all five martech sectors.  As Moore noted, this pricing is for vendors with transparent pricing; annual pricing is much more likely to be quoted by non-pricing transparent vendors when assembling a detailed quote.

The study was based upon the 1,876 company Marketing Technology Landscape put together by Scott Brinker.  RJMetrics employed Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to collect the data.