We started out 2012 with a post asking this question, \u201cWhere Does the B2B Sales Model Go From Here?\u201d More than halfway through the year, we continue finding and reporting evidence of what today\u2019s B2B sales model must look like to achieve best-in-class results.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are two recent and very significant indicators.<\/p>\n
Today, best-in-class B2B marketing is a demand generation engine for sales.\u00a0 For most companies this is a massive change from marketing\u2019s traditional role.\u00a0 As Forrester<\/strong> principal analyst Jeff Ernst puts it in a recent blog post<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cB2B marketing is going through an essential transformation. Historically, our focus has been on events, PR, and collateral. Now, our CEOs and board are demanding that we\u2019re directly driving revenue growth. This requires a whole new set of skills and activities across marketing and sales teams: content marketing, inbound marketing, lead-to-revenue management, revenue-cycle analytics, account-based marketing and selling<\/strong>, to name a few.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s a big change, but there is plenty of data that validates the importance.\u00a0 Here are two significant success factors identified by leading market researchers in recent surveys of hundreds of B2B sales and marketing teams.<\/p>\n