The Sales Engagement Landscape And The Case For The Single Pane Of Glass
I found the above sales engagement blog post from Forrester‘s Seth Marrs and Amy Hawthorne very insightful and wanted to share it. And I want to drop a couple of thoughts of my own regarding the “blurred lines” in the category.
First, the post says that this blurring is because “different categories are adding useful sales engagement capabilities to their products”.
On the one hand, this is actually good. It shows a shift away from the internalized and siloed focus on operations and tactics most businesses have had – toward a more Buyer-centric, cross-platform approach. In other words, until very recently, marketing and sales teams have had very different fundamental strategies and objectives (e.g. – “MQL” anyone?).
But, this also means that these teams have selected the technologies/platforms they use now because those successfully serve very specific operational/tactical needs. And, as mentioned, these platforms are now adding sales engagement capabilities to reflect this shift.
So, the question, as posed in the article, is this: Should the existing categories be reinvented into a singular platform – or should they just be more effectively leveraged?
This fundamental question definitely drove our overall design of Splashmetrics.
From the collaborative strategic planning for the last mile of the Buyer Journey, the to the personalized smart content discussed in the post, to the CRO-level analytics that measure the efficacy of this last-mile pipeline and resulting revenue – our focus is providing a STRATEGIC single pane of glass for these efforts (not just tactical/operational).
Why? For us, it’s simple…operations and tactics are only ever as good as the strategy driving them. And in this regard, the technology becomes somewhat secondary. If a MA/CRM platform is doing a good job of serving the teams’ operational/tactical needs – why reinvent it? So we built Splashmetrics to integrate with these leading platforms – and make them more effective instead of trying to replace them.
Additionally, we are currently working on an AIML solution that will help provide automated opportunity insights and next best actions as mentioned in the post – but, again, from a STRATEGIC perspective (not just tactical/operational).
So the question is this: Is Splashmetrics a #salesengagement or #salesenablement platform? Back to the blurred lines…
We obviously think we’re both. But such labels are sometimes for others to assign.
We do know this for certain, starting every marketing and sales initiative with superior collaborative strategic planning will definitely yield superior results in revenue and ROI. If that layer is missing – regardless of what platforms you’re using – your pane of glass will be fundamentally broken.
#revops #b2bsales #b2bmarketing #abm #revenuemarketing #contentmarketing