IDC ’s 2009 tech sales barometer has just been released. Entitled Selling in 2009: 10 ways to find, win and keep the money it features the findings of its barometer study alongside its recommendations for tech sales people. Its key findings are summarised below, but the long and short of it is that sales teams are investing more in inside sales and demand generation techniques, whilst realising that they need to be more aligned with marketing on lead gen programmes. If there was ever an opportunity for marketing to work with sales more closely, as highlighted in my interview with Ron Rose of HP last week, or in the post on getting sales and marketing to collaborate on business development, it’s now.
-in 2009 tech sales teams will be expected to do more with less; as a result demand generation will be a major focus – most teams are shifting more budget to inside sales
-sales organisations that bolster dedicated investments in lead quality and demand generation will be rewarded with significantly higher sales productivity
- the research highlighted that sales teams were increasing investment in sales enablement, lead qualification and demand generation across the board, with budgets for sales’ travel and training being slashed
-shared metrics was highlighted as the area that sales and marketing are still least aligned, with sales people giving an alignment mark of only 25 out of a possible 100.
5 comments
From your summary, it sounds like sales people are starting to get on board with marketing more than ever? I can understand how this would be the case, if they don’t have enough budget so want to influence the way that marketing spends its own funds. I think it’s up to marketing to be ready to react positively to this (rather than defensively).
Anyway, I’m off to read the article now!
Sarah’s just pointed this article out to me; I think I agree up to a point (this may be the reaction of most sales operations), but it would be a shame if they’re not paying attention to the advice Neil Rackham has on selling in harder times: http://www.gazelles.com/sales_summit/Rackham_Selling_Harder_Times.doc
If sales spend too much time pushing marketing to run lead gen campaigns, they may lose focus on their best customers and deals. The trick is for marketing to pick up the slack and sort out lead gen as well as even helping sales with key accounts if they can.
No doubt – best in class marketers are aligned with sales goals and quotas. Marketing budgets must be allocated to meet these goals. It’s no longer the “sales” pipeline – but a “marketing/sales” pipeline.
It’s strange (and interesting) that companies would wait until there’s a downturn to do the right thing — to engage in the efforts that would maximize sales (and marketing) productivity. Why is that I wonder? But, anyway, I think it’s clearly a good thing that sales and marketing are more clearly delineating the division of labor that should guide their actions. Marketing, as I see it, should own the “sales ready lead.” It’s marketing’s responsibility to produce it and the less time that sales spends prospecting in the cold, the better. But it’s also good because sales can concentrate on building the elite and sophisticated skills necessary to guide the buyer through the final stages of a complex sale. But back to my original question: What has changed to encourage companies to do what they should have done all along? Any thoughts on that?
@Britton – very interesting question. From people I’m speaking to, it sounds like lead generation has gone from being one of many measures on a KPI dashboard to the only measure. It’s that singularity of focus that’s driving behaviour. With such a focus on lead gen and conversion, marketing teams able to push back on the other demands made on them. My only concern is that this might lead to “knee jerk” campaigning – rather than taking the time to craft a joined up process that’s durable in the long term.
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