My key takeaways from this event (of course attending the regular sessions goes without saying):

• Network, network, network.  Whether you are a sponsoring company looking to generate new leads for your business, an attendee sent to find one of these solutions, or just someone interested in the presentation topics this conference is literally full of industry experts of a myriad of topics across Marketing and Sales.
• Check out the customer case studies.  These are a great way to learn how companies that are probably dealing with many of the same problems as you are were able to solve their issues.  You might even learn some best practices in running and measuring demand generation programs as well!
• Don’t ignore the sponsor booths.  Yes, we had a booth at the conference but that is not why I am mentioning this.  As a company sponsoring the event we found it very useful to walk around and talk to the other sponsors and this is in fact how we found one of our key partners, Bulldog Solutions, at the 2012 event.  If you are an attendee this is a great way to possibly find some great solutions that can help with your marketing or sales efforts or even just learn about some cool new technologies.

This year was truly an impressive show.  The organization and structure, as well as breakout sessions and events fostered a great opportunity for education and networking opportunities.  It afforded us wealth of new opportunity across our organization and we look forward to the opportunity to attend again next year.

• Peer based selling and reference selling is the most effective way to accelerate deals through the funnel.
• Sales Enablement  is becoming increasingly relevant with 30% of sales time actually spent selling and 70% of the buyers journey completed before sales is engaged
• Persona based content - with more than 70% of company content never used by sales, it is important to feed sales and ultimately prospects with relevant content segmented by role, industry, etc. based on what buyers want to buy, not on what you sell.
• Pivot toward business accountability and insight from not just producing more leads to producing tangible business value.

You should definitely check out his post on Eloqua’s blog to get into more detail about those, but the point that sticks out in my mind the most is his last one about business accountability and insight.  Understanding which Marketing and Sales campaigns generate the most revenue, bring in the most net new names, etc. is critical to enabling companies to hold their Marketing and Sales departments accountable for demand generation.  If a company can’t properly track and measure its demand generation efforts can it really hold its Marketing and Sales teams accountable for the numbers they generate?

SiriusDecisions has developed a great methodology for measuring this with its new demand generation waterfall.  If you can figure out a way to leverage this by creating a measurement system in your CRM solution that tracks volume, conversion rates, and velocity through your Marketing, Sales, and Telesales funnels (shameless plug Full Circle CRM does this for salesforce.com) then it can go a long way in creating a culture of accountability and aligning your Sales and Marketing teams to drive more revenue.

A couple takeaways from this session to help bridge the gap between Marketing and Sales:

• Sales and Marketing need to have access to the same data and be able to speak the same language
• The initiative to re-examine business process and train the Sales team needs to come from Sales leadership, not Marketing
• Marketing and Sales need to work together as early as possible in the strategic process so it is a complete team effort that works for everyone

Aligning Sales and Marketing can be tough, but if you are tenacious and stick with it the benefits can be staggering.

Looking forward to more exciting sessions today!

SiriusDecisions took this idea to a whole new level with their new demand generation waterfall methodology where they break out all of your demand generation efforts into marketing, sales, and telesales funnels.  Tracking all this data can be tricky since most CRM and MA (Marketing Automation) solutions are not set up out of the box to do this, but with Full Circle CRM’s Marketing Performance Management application enterprise companies are now able to completely operationalize and measure the new SiriusDecisions demand generation waterfall right inside of their salesforce.com instance.

Don’t believe it?  Well let me introduce you to Bulldog Solutions.  Bulldog has successfully used our application to do this exact thing right inside of salesforce.com.  You can read more about this in a recent blog from Denis Pombriant discussing the use case, in a review Bruce Brien, SVP of Client Success at Bulldog Solutions, wrote on TrustRadius, in our press release today announcing the launch of this, and this blog post written by our CEO, Bonnie Crater.  The point is the ability to implement this methodology is actually here and as a marketer I am very proud and excited to be a part of the company that is paving the way to make this happen.

We are thrilled to be part of the 2013 SiriusDecisions Summit in San Diego this week, so swing by our booth and also check out our customer case study with Mashery in breakout room 14 on Wednesday either at 9:50AM or 10:45AM about how we helped them implement and measure the SiriusDecisions waterfall inside salesforce.com.

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships”.

Every Sales executive wants to win games (closed opportunities), but the goal is to win championships (drive more revenue for the company).   To win championships we need to know what’s working in Marketing, in Sales Development, and across all our Sales teams to generate demand.   We want to replicate successful campaigns and quit spending time on ineffective campaigns.  Good sales leaders are always asking questions to win championships.  What campaigns are driving the most revenue?  Are multiple Marketing and Sales campaigns influencing a sale?  What about email campaigns from Sales Development?  Should we spend more on specific sales campaigns?   How can we drive more revenue?

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to answer these questions when using marketing automation systems or working within Salesforce. Marketing Automation systems can be an important component, but they assume that all leads are from marketing campaigns.  Those of us in Sales know we often have to execute our own Sales-driven campaigns to fill our pipelines in Salesforce.   And it isn’t always clear what campaign influenced the sale.

We are able to answer these questions accurately using Full Circle CRM from within Salesforce.  Our Marketing and Sales teams make more accurate decisions about demand generation.  We review sophisticated Marketing and Sales campaign influence reports, detailed response and waterfall analysis.

Marketers typically purchase Full Circle CRM, because they see the gaps in data and process between Marketing Automation systems like Marketo and Eloqua, and CRM solutions like Salesforce.  But many Sales leaders are also using Full Circle CRM to make better demand generation decisions to drive more revenue.

I can only fantasize about having Michael Jordan-like success, but I do like to win games – and championships.

For me this is a landmark announcement.  I have been a Salesforce user since January 2000 and a proponent of accurately measuring marketing’s contribution to revenue since 2003. Sadly I only recently learned of SiriusDecisions, but have a high level appreciation for their contribution to standardizing best practices for B2B marketers.

I really like the nuance of what Bulldog did with the modeling.  Instead of one funnel (aka waterfall) that includes deals sourced by marketing, sales and telesales, they split it into three separate funnels so they could compare the efficiency of each source, find the bottlenecks and gain insights on increasing velocity.

Full Circle CRM is the secret sauce to all of this and is the product I always wanted as a VP of Marketing. We use Full Circle CRM at our company and it’s exciting how we’re helping other companies do the same.

See you at the SiriusDecisions Summit next week!

I’d read the highlights from the SiriusDecisions Summit the past couple years and was excited to finally attend last year to see what the hype was about. I can honestly say this event exceeded my expectations. Great content, great speakers, amazingly smart marketers all happy to share with and help each other.

This set of highlights & takeaways is far from complete, but it’s the mix of things I was particularly thinking about on the flight home.

1. Strategy is easy, execution is exceedingly difficult
Sometimes strategy is quite difficult as well, but it was clear in the room that we all have a good sense for what, strategically, needs to happen. Boiling that down to exactly how to do it, then executing on that plan, that’s where it gets complicated and difficult. This event does a nice job of taking strategic ideas and boiling them down to actionable tactics. Putting that into practice, measuring and refining, is the next big hurdle.

2. We all struggle with this (even the experts and leaders)
A side benefit of events like this is that they become an indirect form of professional and group therapy. Misery with company is still misery, but it’s certainly encouraging to hear super-smart people struggle with the same things you are.  The rules are changing, our customers are changing, and our organizations are only getting more complex.  The mountain keeps getting taller, but you have to keep climbing.

3. At minimum, use these frameworks as a guideline to improve what you’re doing
Full implementation of some of the Sirius models and frameworks can take more time and resources than some companies have (especially small and mid-market organizations). But that doesn’t mean the Sirius methodologies aren’t just as useful to smaller organizations to focus their thinking and execution. Every organization can improve their execution and results by picking up just a few insights and best practices from a broader framework.

4. Keep a bias for action & testing while you do the big things
I really liked the theme of longer-term planning, integrated marketing and customer lifetime approach woven throughout the conference. These are not quick initiatives and will take significant work and effort to prepare and execute. That said, it’s important to continue working with a sense of urgency and test new ideas quickly to validate a premise and build confidence in a longer-term direction.

5. Focus on the customer, not yourself (applies to cocktail parties too)
It’s not about you, your product or services, or even how you think about the world. Everything needs to be filtered through what the customer cares about. Ironically, this applies to conference parties as well. There were a handful of party-hoppers who spent most of the time talking about themselves. Not the best networking strategy.

6. We can control the message and start the conversation, but that’s about it
You can control the words, phrases, messages and brand you start with. You can define the voice, set the stage and start the conversation. But then, it’s out there and it’s no longer yours. The message now belongs to a community of customers, prospects, followers, competitors, critics and more who will shape where it goes next. You still have a say, and you can still shape and direct where you want the message to go. But know that the marketing reality post-launch puts you on par with just about anyone else with an Internet connection.

7. What you think is a campaign, probably isn’t a campaign
I really appreciated a Wednesday session on campaign best practices. Too often, we call an email send a campaign. Or any other tactical, short-term or one-time execution a campaign. Sirius called BS on us, and laid out a smarter way of thinking more strategically, more long-term, and more cross-channel about building awareness and driving action around a particular marketing idea. Fewer messages, not more, is what will get your customers and prospects to notice and act.

8. You really need a note-taking strategy for a conference like this
I have a relatively structured note-taking strategy when I travel, and thank goodness because I was typing, drawing and tweeting like crazy in almost every session. That note-taking strategy has to not only maximize your capture of good ideas, but make it easy to take action on them when you get home.

9. The networking game has changed
By mid-day Wednesday, 24 hours after the conference officially started, I had met a ton of people. But in the past, I would have measured initial networking primarily on business cards captured. Now it’s different. On Wednesday I had picked up about 15 business cards, but had gained approximately 80 new Twitter followers from amongst the attendees. The relationship is what’s important, and there are far more channels by which to engage and continue new relationships well after the event.

10. Everyone has best practices to share
Maybe it’s because we’re perfectionists, are too hard on ourselves, or focus too much on the things we’re not doing. But I lost track of the people who said this week that they were intimidated by what others in the room are doing, then a moment later would share a brilliant best practice they were doing themselves. Everyone is doing something valuable that others need to hear about. Or, maybe better, has made mistakes that the rest of us would like to avoid repeating.

11. Attention is the currency of marketing
If you think about it, everything we are trying to accomplish in marketing comes down to attention.  That comes in a lot of forms of course, and includes not only gaining attention in the first place but keeping it, improving it and eventually converting it into a paid relationship.  But attention also implies more than just reach.  You can reach just about anybody.  But is what you have to say interesting enough to get their attention?  That’s more difficult, and far more valuable.

12. People, content and process are the foundation of world-class marketing organizations
It was implicitly clear listening to speakers and other leaders this week that they prioritize their people, their culture and the systems they use to help execute. But many of these speakers made that point explicitly as well. People and process have been on our priority list for some time, but it was clear this week that content deserves a spot in that conversation as well. Effective, customer-centric content is the lifeblood of a good marketing strategy.

13. Marketing needs to act like a business leader & innovator, not a service provider to the organization
Yes, marketing’s job is to support the sales efforts. Yes, marketing is often called upon to support initiatives across the organization. But today’s most successful marketers think and act like business leaders, focusing on metrics that don’t just govern their campaigns but drive the business as a whole.

14. Sales & marketing alignment is table stakes now (even though most of us are still really bad at it)
The idea (or should we say issue?) of sales & marketing alignment comes up at every conference I attend these days. It’s clearly no longer a “nice to have”, but has become a fundamental requirement for organizations to successfully navigate an increasingly complex, competitive and crowded selling environment. Most of us still suck at this, but we’re getting better. And at every new conference, there are more best practices, more success stories and emerging frameworks to make it a little easier.

15. You will be overwhelmed if you try to do all this at once (pick a few, triage the rest)
At the airport on the way home, I spoke with a few attendees who were clearly both impressed and overwhelmed with what they’d just learned. They had dozens of ideas and best practices to get started on, not to mention the fire drills and existing priorities waiting for them back at the office. But instead of tackling everything, pick just 1-2 things. Put those on your immediate to-do list and table the rest (at least until next week). If you can be disciplined enough to continue making progress on that list over time, you afford yourself the luxury of not burning yourself out too quickly.

Matt Heinz brings more than 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations, vertical industries and company sizes. His career has focused on delivering measurable results for his employers and clients in the way of greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. Matt has held various positions at companies such as Microsoft, Weber Shandwick, Boeing, The Seattle Mariners, Market Leader and Verdiem. In 2007, Matt began Heinz Marketing to help clients focus their business on market and customer opportunities, then execute a plan to scale revenue and customer growth.

Some things to consider when designing a lead lifecycle may be:

Starting with the end game in mind guarantees that your process supports capturing all of the data you need.  And of course, you shouldn’t define your reporting requirements in a vacuum. Engaging key stakeholders and management in this part of the process is a great way to create alignment across Marketing & Sales to ensure successful adoption of the data post launch.

I am not going to go so far as to say that marketers will drive all technology innovation moving forward but I think that it is very reasonable to say that in the enterprise B2B and B2C world that marketers play (and will continue to play) a large role in creating new business needs (or continuing to provide old ones) that many new technologies will be created to fill.

Harper goes on as an aside to mention three key things people should take away from the 2012 presidential campaign and for me his most important point here was to say that metrics drive everything.  In fact he even said that on the Obama campaign the mentality was if there was not a metric then it did not exist.  This sentiment is becoming more and more true for marketers across the spectrum.  The caveat to this though is that metrics that are not accurate are just as useless as not having any metrics at all.

With digital engagement making up so much of what we do, it is absolutely critical for marketers to have the ability to pull accurate metrics from our CRM and Marketing Automation solutions so we can better understand, duplicate, or iterate on the campaigns we run.

This is where marketers can truly drive the future of technology – our need for more creative ways to reach our audience and better means to track and analyze those efforts definitely lead to new technology innovations and help drive digital technology forward.