Forrester B2B Summit – day two – kicked off with a panel that included four of their analysts on some of the recent research they’ve completed around the buyer journey. Here are some of the key outcomes that I found interesting:
1) Customers want to do it on their own. BUT, they expect that you know them. We all know that 60-70% of the buyer journey happens digitally, before the sales process ever engages. It means that influencers are more important than ever.
2) Less than 25% of product leaders, in a recent survey, mentioned that KPI’s like user engagement, outcomes, and customer value are something they consider as part of their overall considerations while building products. It means that the metrics between Product, Sales, and Marketing aren’t aligned…they’re disjointed.
3) Data and insights should be used to drive and inform your sales strategy.This is data about customers, from marketing and product organizations that fulfill the brand promise. What are the user journeys and flows that enable opportunities that help the three company LOB’s align.
4) 40% of the people surveyed are spending more than 15% of their budget on technology around revenue generation (#revtech). Companies should think about how they are using technology so their aren’t a million different connection points into the business. Marketing technology, sales technology, and internal technology is starting to distill down to a single pane of glass, all around the different personas in the business. Makes my soul fill a bit warm and fuzzy given the Bridge software from Mindmatrix that takes this same approach to their partner enablement process. However, it does pose the question whether organizations should go further for the entire operation. Cisco was mentioned as a strong example of this distillation on the mainstage at the event.
5) Employees base their performance around the areas they’re measured. The measurement drives the performance. If you want outcomes that improve and operationalize the relationship between sales X marketing X product, then produce cross-functional metrics to drive the ‘experiential’ value. Customer obsessed organizations will drive improved customer success when these three areas are aligned, it’s how you build ‘experiences’ with your brand.
