What Saavy Firms Are Doing To Improve Their B2B Sales Productivity
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May 9, 2011 12:15 PM
The Sirius Decisions Summit is an annual opportunity to get a fresh take on what best-in-class firms are doing to improve their revenue performance with the help of their marketing + sales teams. Sirius Decisions’ analysts brief attendees on the results of their on-going research. Their clients share their tactics + experiences improving their own revenue performance with Sirius Decisions’ assistance. Attending vendors share their latest product innovations + client achievements. Over coffee, everyone shares their impressions, concerns, + improvements they’re looking to achieve. It’s a remarkable assembly of growth-focused folks looking for ways to improve their businesses and overcome their barriers to doing so.
My take on the key tweets from the Summit on issues directly affecting B2B sales productivity is
available here and viewable at a glance here:
The key impressions I gained from the presentations, tweets, + hallway conversations:
- improved revenue performance is being achieved via a combination of change management, myth-debunking research, cross-functional teams, and better metrics
- progress on improving revenue performance is impeded by organizational silos, poor data quality, content + tactics ill-aligned to buyer needs, and the fuzziness of the direct connections between efforts and resulting revenues
- attribution of impact seemed a greater concern that more holistically measuring + achieving it. Evidenced by questions about how to more aptly attribute marketing’s contributions to sales (as opposed to more thoroughly gauge, understand + improve it). Also evidenced by ‘best practices’ which now include basing part of Marketing’s compensation on their contributions to revenue.
- the greatest success and fastest progress is occurring in firms that are taking small, experimental, steps and then learning + improving incrementally. Best in class firms are accumulating better batting averages, not hitting home runs.
- curiousity + boundary-busting abounds. Pretty clear that the answers folks came to the Summit looking for were somewhere to be found amongst the assembled talent. Also pretty clear that even the best amongst us are achieving their own greatest successes with the help of others in the room.
- the process is a journey, and we’re not there yet. The faster we can provoke learning, the faster we’re likely to get there. Data’s got a key role to play in it all, especially in blowing away the fog of uncertainty that still surrounds much of what sales is able to achieve from the magic marketing can perform.
A big thanks to the folks whose presentations + tweets helped me gain these perspectives.
The big question: what have I missed?
Originally posted on Informed Innovation in B2B Sales Productivity
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