Yesterday at Eloqua Experience, Megan Heuer, “The Marketing Therapist” at SiriusDecisions delivered a presentation, “The Rise of Account-Based Marketing and How It’s Saving the Sales and Marketing Relationship.” Megan is smart, engaging, and a beacon of knowledge about sales and marketing alignment – hence her “Therapist” moniker..
Her premise was that if you believe that 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers, you need to think differently about how to manage your marketing spend. Despite what they know about how revenue breaks down, marketers are spending the majority of their budgets driving demand from accounts that will never buy. Ultimately, this creates friction between sales and marketing.
She shared some signs that indicate an organization is misaligned:
Megan has a six-step program that helps marketers evaluate their current strategy and move to Account Based Marketing. She shared a case study featuring Demandbase client Nick Panayi, Director of Global Brand and Digital Marketing at CSC. As part of her presentation, she mapped out how these six steps were applied by Nick’s team:
Speaking of measurement, Megan shared early stage results for Nick’s team. CSC saw a 40% increase in digital interaction and 30% lift from their target accounts. Their results are strong evidence in favor of Megan’s Account-Based Marketing premise and prove the value of sales and marketing alignment.
At Demandbase, like Megan, we’re committed to building great tools for Target Account Marketing and sharing insight on implementing account-based best practices. We love sharing content from thought leaders like Megan who are guiding marketers to the next level. You can follow Megan on Twitter – @megheuer – to learn more.
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