Sales & Marketing: B2B’s New Power Couple

Sales & Marketing: B2B’s Newest Power Couple

#B2BSummit

April 29-30, 2015 | AT&T Park, San Francisco, CA

Adam Blitzer SVP & GM Pardot, Salesforce

@adamblitzer

©2014 Copyright Demandbase, Inc.

Demandbase Confidential. 2

Why Does Sales & Marketing Alignment Feels Like This?



When It Could Feel Like This



Agenda

The New Buyer’s Journey

The Cost of Misalignment

4 Common Sales & Marketing Conversations

Q&A



Buyers Are More Connected Than Ever

Website

Social Media

Email

References

Community



Buyers Control the Sales Cycle

ABOUT US CONSUMER

REVIEWS

SOCIAL

MEDIA

COMMUNITY

DISCUSSIONS

PRICING

PAGE

CONTACT

SALES

GOOGLE

SEARCH

By 2020, 85% of the buyer’s

journey will be completed

before the buyer reaches out to

sales.

85%



Disconnected teams: Marketing and Sales silos

Disconnected tools: Fragmented, hard to access

and use

Disconnected story: No holistic view of buyer

makes insights elusive

Most Companies Are Struggling to Adapt



68%

of companies have

not identified their

sales funnel

79%

of Marketing

leads are never

converted to

Sales

Only 46%

of reps win more

than half of

potential deals

10%

of revenue lost

per year due to

Sales and

Marketing

misalignment

Limited

Visibility

Poor Lead

Quality

Not Enough

Leads

Low Lead

Conversion

Missed

Revenue

Target

The Cost of Being Disconnected



“Only 30% of CMOs have a clear process or program to make sales

and marketing alignment a priority.” -CMO Council



Marketing and sales conversation #1*

*Real life sales and marketing leaders

VP, Sales VP, Marketing

“We missed our target –

we need more air cover.” “We send you tons of leads.

You just aren’t closing them.”



Strategy #1:

(Re)align Goals



Todays KPIs are Usually Misaligned

Sales Marketing



Funnels & Pipelines are Divided

Visitor

Inquiry

MQL

SQL

Won

A divided funnel leads to

✖ lead volume over lead quality

✖ turf wars over leads

✖ marketing being a cost center

✖ content that focuses on lead generation

Sa

les

Ma

rketin

g



Get to a Single Funnel

A single funnel leads to

✔ a single end goal

✔ one scorecard for the entire business

✔ content that moves prospects through buying stages

✔ a better hand off / hand back (recycling) process

✔ trust

Visitor

Inquiry

MQL

SQL

Won

Ma

rketin

g &

Sa

les



Pipeline and revenue:

where the rubber meets the road for

sales and marketing.






“You don’t make the right

content and we can’t

ever find what we need.”

“You never use it anyway!”



Strategy #2:

Content That is Easy to Find & Use

(for reps!)



Most Content Sits on the Shelf

“70% of content created by B2B marketing teams is never used by sales reps” -SiriusDecisions

That’s because content is

hard to find (not where the reps live)

stale

stage-agnostic

persona-agnostic

all first party

not available in the right formats



One Stop Shop Filter by Type Filter by Theme

A Central Repository (that isn’t terrible)



Nurture Your Sales Team

Drive internal “demand” Make it fun!



Nurture Your Sales Team

Chrome Extension Signature Management



Content Review is a Team Sport

Mix hard data with anecdotes from the trenches.

Data Anecdotes






“The leads you send us

are terrible.” “You aren’t following up with

them! .”



Strategy #3:

Define a Marketing Qualified Lead



Most Buyer Profiles Are Created in a Vacuum



Both Sides Need to Agree on Definitions

SALES

What’s happening in the trenches

MARKETING

Market research & campaign data

TRUTH

DEFINE MQLs and SQLs

together

ESTABLISH an SLA between

teams

REVISIT Every quarter



Agree on Two Types of Scores per Persona

Geography

Industry

Company size

Title

Tracked behavior

Recency of activity

Frequency of activity

Lead source

Interest Fit






“You aren’t getting leads

to us fast enough.” “You don’t follow up fast

enough.”



Strategy #4:

Go Faster



Speed Matters

“35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.” -InsideSales.com



Establish SLAs

Once the definition of an MQL is agreed upon

Establish aggressive SLAs for lead distribution

(should be seconds to minutes)

Enforce an equally stringent SLA for lead follow-up

(should be minutes to tens of minutes)

Track win rate and sales cycle by first follow-up time



Why don’t sales reps follow up?

They don’t know that a lead came in

They are away from their desks

They are working more pressing, “hot” leads

The leads are obvious bad fits

(you solved this with your MQL definition didn’t you?)



Interrupt your reps, they won’t complain!

Close rates go up when reps have recency & context

Push alerts to your reps everywhere they work

(email, CRM, desktop, and phone)

Give full context into prospect behavioral history

Show them when a prospect is active

Start with a pilot when rolling out alerts

Consider specialization (inbound lead qualification)



Companies that Align Grow Faster

Better Alignment Quality Leads Pipeline Growth High Conversion

More

Revenue

Source: Math Marketing / Sirius Decisions / MarketingProfs

24%

faster three-year

revenue growth

25%

increase in Sales

qualified leads

67%

improvement in

close rates

60%

Increase in follow-

up within 24 hours



Thank You

Sales & Marketing: B2B’s New Power Couple

Marketing

Transcript of Sales & Marketing: B2B’s New Power Couple