Five Core Competencies for 2012 and Beyond

Content. Social media. Lead management. Sales enablement. Data. In growing numbers of b-to-b organizations, sales and marketing leaders are realizing that it is around these five strategic imperatives that dramatic progress must be made to better align with changing buyer dynamics, and to achieve more predictable, accelerating revenues in 2012 and beyond.

As your organization plans for the upcoming year, now is the perfect time to assess whether it has the process discipline required to succeed in five cross-functional areas, and if not, what to do about it.

In this post, we share five key trends that we believe will impact marketing and sales functions in 2012, and discuss specifics around each.

1. Content Remains King

Creating compelling content that engages target audiences has been a primary focus of b-to-b marketers for more than a decade, yet most continue to struggle to keep up with evolving content requirements. B-to-b organizations realizing efficiencies and success in creating and managing highly effective content have done so through a disciplined approach, starting with assigning accountability for creating a content strategy that maps content to the information needs of specific buyer roles in defined buying cycle stages. SiriusDecisions research shows that the trend of b-to-b buyers engaging with sales reps later in the decision making process continues. Organizations are responding to this trend with inbound marketing strategies and the creation of better and deeper content to attract, engage and educate, which has resulted in buyers with deep knowledge, and well-formed opinions and perceptions. When they’re ready to engage, they expect salespeople to add even more to their knowledge, meaning that marketing needs to up its game in terms of the enablement content provided to reps and partners.

2. Leads: Volume Down, Quality Up

Marketing automation has made it easier than ever to design and execute multi-touch marketing programs that generate high volumes of responses. While this is great news, it hasn’t created the efficiencies many expected. Marketers are also busier than ever and spread so thin that it becomes difficult to do anything well. By focusing on efforts with lasting positive effects such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), automated recycle nurture programs and Website conversion optimization (WCO), and integrating those efforts with serialized marketing programs, marketers can create a steady stream of leads via sustained tactics that simply need monitoring and tweaking over time. Leading organizations are using inbound marketing, WCO and other strategies to create more leads while executing fewer programs. In addition to fewer programs, marketers should review the volume of leads delivered to sales and consider turning down the volume and increasing the quality. Our research has found that fewer, better-qualified leads result in a far more efficient sales force and contribute to improved pipeline dynamics. If salespeople spend less time reaching out to prospects who are not ready to engage or buy, they can spend more time focused on deals that are moving forward.

3. Enablement’s Next Step

While product and solution marketers and product managers have always focused on supporting field reps and channel partners, what often have been ad hoc activities are evolving into a more formalized, continuous process known as sales enablement. The core goal of enablement is simply put: Increase rep and partner productivity. Product teams, business units and product/solution marketing will continue to set business goals, define strategy and act as subject matter experts (SMEs) for their domain (e.g. industry, solution, product, customer segment). But making a person or group of people (formal or virtual) responsible for standardizing enablement initiatives (e.g. program frameworks, content templates) from disparate business units or product teams is critical to ensuring that sales resources can absorb what is being delivered to them. This function also should be responsible for sharing enablement best practices across the organization, and performing the data collection and reporting necessary to demonstrate how enablement is improving sales productivity.

4. Integrated Social Properties

For too many organizations, social media strategy still consists of maintaining a Twitter account or two, updating a blog a couple of times a week and accepting LinkedIn group members. In larger organizations, different business units or regions often establish their own social accounts with little thought or insight into what their colleagues are doing. This results in social accounts whose focus overlaps, along with content and links that are endlessly repurposed and a general dilution of uniqueness and brand – not to mention the confusion that customers, prospects and other constituents experience when they can’t find the most appropriate social property to engage with. Organizations should conduct a social properties audit to determine the state of all of their social accounts and properties, including blogs. In some cases where there’s topic-area overlap or low levels of engagement, consolidate accounts to drive the highest levels of interaction. One of the best ways an organization can advertise its social presence is to create a landing page that lists all of its social properties by topic area to make it easier for individuals to find the most appropriate account.

5. Data: Better Buyer and Customer Insight

Data quality gets a lot of attention because it is the foundation of successful sales and marketing interactions. Unfortunately, having correct and complete contact and account records doesn’t mean much if they aren’t used to learn about buyers and customers, rather than just catalog and count them. Once data quality processes are in place and trustworthy data becomes available, use it for more than results reporting. Insights are needed to deliver the right assets and interaction options to buyers and customers at the right time. It’s not necessary to wait until a data project is finished. In fact, data improvement will never be finished; it’s an ongoing process. As data-related investments are made, look for incremental uses of data around analysis and action. Focus on “need-to-have” data elements first, then expand based on the potential value a new data element could bring to insight-driven marketing. Don’t forget to build a data dashboard to show progress.

Much uncertainty remains in the global economy, making it unlikely that marketing budgets will grow significantly in 2012. To succeed, those responsible for marketing and sales must focus their resources where they will make the most positive impact. Another key to success will be finding leverage points and preparing for the future. By employing strategies with longlasting effects (e.g. inbound marketing, WCO), marketing can deliver better-quality leads with fewer programs.

Finally, when planning for the year ahead, be sure to determine on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis the steps that must occur to accomplish your goal. While the goals may be exciting, the key to success is the execution.

Ally Motz

Tags: B2B, Research, Strategy