B2B Marketing Leaders Forum event review

The B2B Marketing Leaders Forum brought senior marketers from leading brands together to discuss and share marketing issues. Gemma Huckle reports

There’s still a long way to go when it comes to achieving sales and marketing alignment. This was just was one of the main points that continually cropped up throughout the day at B2B Marketing’s first annual Marketing Leaders Forum. Held on 20 September at Bishopsgate Institute in London, a venue that appropriately describes itself as ‘a home for ideas and debate’, the event provided senior marketing professionals the opportunity to work directly with their B2B peers from different sectors. Keynote sessions were interspersed with roundtable discussions designed to further enhance delegates’ understanding of core marketing issues.

Kicking off the day was B2B Marketing’s director of editorial and content, Joel Harrison, who was keen to dispel some common myths associated with marketing leaders. He proceeded to bust each myth with a ‘reality-check’ – each of which was supported with findings from B2B Marketing’s Marketing Leaders Report, which surveyed over 100 marketing leaders. One interesting statistic from the report revealed less than one in four organisations had achieved alignment between sales and marketing.

Synchronisation for success
On the subject of the future of marketing and sales alignment, John Neeson, co-founder and MD of SiriusDecisions said marketing will have an increasing role in the early stages of the buying cycle, with the first sales calls occurring from marketing.

Neeson highlighted how marketing leaders are educating themselves on the internet before they engage with sales. He commented, “Decision makers are self-serving when it comes to completing research – they don’t pick up the phone and talk to sales.” He added engagement with sales is currently happening later in the buying cycle, by which point C-suite execs have already done their rsearch. “By the time a sales person engages with the CXO, a digital dialogue has begun and opinions have already been formed.”

Neeson also revealed 58 per cent of leads currently come from the web, and predicted that by 2015 this will grow to 71 per cent. Furthermore, he added organisations where sales and marketing understand the buyers’ journey together, and leverage the web to market to them, will have the strongest alignment.

He urged delegates to invest in technology and build a ‘digital architecture’ as content consumption preferences shift closer towards digital.

Structure and investment
Deloitte’s brand and marketing director, Annabel Pritchard’s presentation got off to a candid start when she openly admitted that Deloitte’s go-to-market approach is poorly structured. The room appreciated Pritchard’s honesty when she revealed, “We have 37 marketing plans across four divisions – these people don’t talk to each other, so we’re not very integrated or aligned at the moment.”

Continuing an animated talk on how to develop a dynamic marketing team structure and realign a go-to-market strategy, she recommended professional service firms base their marketing activity strategy on impact – not on what they’re doing. Pritchard confirmed that Deloitte is going through a similar restructuring process to shift its focus on developing client relationships, delivering fewer products and services that are more integrated and insightful in order to send highly bespoke, tailored messages to suit each individual’s needs.

On staff development, Pritchard said Deloitte attracts the most gifted people by offering employees a ‘talent contract’ where they are rewarded with salary increases and training for each development stage they pass. She told senior marketers that building a sustainable development programme will make employees feel valued and motivate them to not only progress their careers but give back to the company. Pritchard stressed her point when she reiterated, “Your people are your product.”

Outside-in thinking
Meanwhile, a presentation from Paul Wilson, CMO of financial software provider SunGard, titled ‘Going global, acting local’ explored the challenges of worldwide B2B marketing.

Using slick cloud-based presentation software Prezi, he focused his talk on the application of customer focus. His opening line referenced American entrepreneur and founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton’s infamous quote, ‘There is only one boss – the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.’ Wilson stressed the need to put customers first and adopt and institutionalise outside-in thinking Underlining the importance of giving customers a social voice, Wilson said SunGard put their customers at the heart of the business by going to speak to them directly.

He stated, “We didn’t have the money to create a brand, but what we did have was trusting customers that enabled us to create a brand with them.” Wilson showcased a number of videos featuring customers, industry analysts and SMEs talking about what they do and how SunGard technology has improved their business’ performance.

In what seemed a digression, Wilson displayed the iconic slave ship drawing of The Brookes, used by campaigners for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. But he was quick to point out that this early infographic still has resonance today, when he declared, “I believe infographics have the ability to save the world!” illustrating that often there isn’t enough visibility and clear insight to see what’s really going on. He revealed SunGard had applied this to its customer-centric approach by creating 3D virtual tours, featuring interactive office layouts and customer videos, that enabled it to explore and understand its customers’ businesses in detail.

Wilson’s final point to delegates was to take campaigns global by using creativity as a local differentiator and think about the buyer, rather than the seller to link everything back to the customer.

Closing the day, Wilson joined Lisa Hutt, VP EMEA marketing at Concur Technologies, Nick Eades, CMO at Psion and Drew Nicholson, MD of DNX on stage to discuss issues and topics raised by earlier keynote presentations. The thought-provoking day didn’t end there as conversations continued over drinks and canapés in the downstairs courtyard room. A reminder that in these tough times B2B marketing leaders can’t afford to be nonchalant.

The B2B Marketing Leaders Report is available for free for premium members and to buy for non members. Download the free key findings now

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