SMarketing and the blame game
This week’s Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference in San Francisco welcomed an energized crowd of more than 450 attendees. The theme: Sales & Marketing Collaboration That Delivers Results.
In the past, where Sales 2.0 was defined more around technologies that enable sales processes, it has evolved to focus on how to better integrate marketing and sales to impact revenue. The business world is far from done talking about the need for sales and marketing alignment. That’s because of a few pesky problems that have so far gone unresolved. The biggest of those problems is the blame game. Marketing says Sales doesn’t follow-up on leads; Sales says Marketing doesn’t provide leads worthy of follow-up.
The folks behind the Sales 2.0 conference even changed the name of the event to make it clear in no uncertain terms that Marketing and Sales are co-owners of revenue generation.
Conversations were abuzz with funky terms like “SMarketing” almost as if there was a race for coming up with a new name that represents the marriage of the two.
Having attended most of the sessions and having met with representatives from each exhibiting vendor, I’ve come up with my own list of take-aways from the event.
The key concepts of the event were:
- Marketing & Sales can no longer be adversaries
- Marketing & Sales must have an equal share of responsibility for driving revenue
- Buyer behavior has changed dramatically with the advent of the Web therefore marketing and sales must adapt – quickly.
- If you don’t adapt the ramification is not that you’ll get left behind, it’s that you’ll become irrelevant and then you’ll go out of business (it’s that serious).
- Marketing needs to generate leads not by focusing on products but by focusing on customer needs at each stage of the buying cycle.
“SMarketing”
And other Concepts from the Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference
ABC is now ABH
“Focus on the Customer” was also a mantra at the event. Instead of “Always be closing” it’s now “Always be helping”. Learning about prospects in advance of a call – indeed, monitoring and aggregating information available from social networking sites to facilitate a connection and a better conversation is a key element of customer focus.
Hoover’s, OneSource, InsideView, and FirstRain were there demonstrating how their products could help with that. And they weren’t the only ones. CRM companies were also there talking about Social CRM.
This is the first Sales2.0 conference I’ve attended where I can recall 4 CRM products being exhibited (SAP CRM, Pivotal CRM, Oracle OnDemand and Microsoft Dynamics).
CRM equals Sales 2.0? Funny thing... seems that the CRM platform has turned out to be a perfect meeting ground for Sales and Marketing to come together. And the concept of Social CRM is becoming a reality as these CRM vendors (and others) are adding social networking capabilities to their platforms.
Other technology related take-aways are:
- Social Media cannot be ignored. At minimum, Marketing needs to participate and Sales needs to listen and leverage what they learn to create more knowledgeable conversations with prospects.
- Mobile access is essential. Prospects must have mobile access to your information and resources. Salespeople must have mobile access to needed information (CRM) and resources (social media and collaboration platforms).
Buyer behavior with respect to the purchasing process has forever changed. The way we market to buyers must also change. The focus has to be on helping the customer with their buying journey. And that requires a change in mind-set.
You no longer have the same ability to control the buying process. But that presents enormous opportunities for those who can evolve. And the Sales & Marketing 2.0 conference is a good place to learn how.
