Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, May 21, 2010 @ 10:42 AM
We'd like to thank all the attendees and sponsors for making our 2010 Summit such a success. I had originally planned on providing a recap of some of the content we presented, but a number of folks have already done a fantastic job at that so I'll just provide links to the summaries out there.
Adam Needles (@abneedles) has written the most comprehensive report on the Summit, which we encourage everyone to read:
Click here for Adam's summary
Here's a few more links to other insights:
From Kate Maddox (@kate_maddox) at BotB Magazine Online:
Click here for Kate's first article
Click here for Kate's second article
From Andrew Gaffney (@agaffney) at DemandGen Report:
Click here to read Andrew's article
From Bill Lee (@bill_lee) of the Customer Reference Forum:
Click here to read Bill's blog post
Thanks to all who took the time to write down their thoughts and if you know of any other, please post a link in the comments below. We look forward to seeing you in 2011!
Posted by Jonathan Block on Mon, Apr 26, 2010 @ 11:08 AM
I'll start off saying by way of a disclaimer that this post will mainly be an advertisement for our upcoming Summit, May 12-14 in Phoenix, so feel free to hop off now if that rubs you the wrong way.
With that out of the way, I've heard a number of comments recently about the lack of B2B content at many marketing and social media conferences. This isn't too surprising as it's a lot easier to determine the value of a marketing program that is essentially a transaction rather than the months-long sales cycles that typifies a B2B deal. And when B2B marketers tag either the first or last interaction as the magic tactic, it's tough to get a clear picture of the optimal marketing mix.
Which brings us to our 2010 Summit. We've assembled a great cast of guest speakers that will share case studies and best practices on the ROI of optimizing marketing and sales through function alignment. Our guests are senior-level marketing and sales leaders, including:
- Maxine Graham - senior director, global integrated marketing and operations; Blue Coat Systems
- Peter Johnson - senior manager, marketing operations; Blue Coat Systems
- Heidi Melin - senior vice president and chief marketing officer; Polycom
- Andrew Miller - executive vice president, global field operations; Polycom
- Rene Saltzherr - senior director marketing, global demand marketing services; Oracle
- Doug Sechrist - vice president of demand marketing; Taleo
- David Shirk - executive vice president of global marketing; Siemens PLM Software
We hope to see you in Phoenix! If you can't make it, be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter by using the tag #sds10
Posted by John Neeson on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 @ 12:47 PM
The theme for our 2010 Summit is “Measure – Align – Transform.” A fitting tone for what lies ahead in 2010. While marketing and sales in b-to-b experienced a rocky road in 2009 with longer sales cycles, reduced budgets and a fickle customer base, the two functions also relied on each other more than they have in the past. Pipeline acceleration programs doubled indicated sales reliance on marketing for downstream, as well as upstream, programs. In addition, solution marketing increased with companies segmenting further and changing their messaging and approach to be more precise and relevant to their core markets. Finally, for the eighth straight year field marketing budgets increased. Yes, marketing and sales budgets changed often with big decreases, but these changes indicate the need for the relationship for marketing and sales to continue to change and evolve into a more and more strategic partnership, and not organizations competing for budget.
Summit 2010 research is currently underway and it’s an outcome we are eager to see. As we experienced in 2001 when marketing and sale investment changed, it did not go back to where it began, nor do we expect this to occur in 2010 or beyond. Instead, marketing will become more leveraged and more measurement based, and sales will transform its channels and revenue for the future, with more coming from inside and indirect while partnering more with marketing to increase sales readiness.
We believe that b-to-b sales and marketing is at an inflection point of change and look forward to do our best to draw what the outcome might look like at the upcoming Summit.