3 Major Challenges on the Road to Revenue Marketing

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According to the 2018 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Report, 28% of marketing orgs have revenue-based quotas, and nearly half of them are expected to source more than 25% of closed-won revenue. But for some marketers, the idea of being accountable feels like an insurmountable mountain they’re not prepared to climb.

The 2018 Revenue Marketing Game Changers recently shared strategies that helped them create revenue-accountable organizations, along with some of the challenges they faced as they set out to drive transformation. We’ve compiled their advice into a 100-page eBook so you can be better prepared to get revenue-focused.

How to Overcome Your Revenue Marketing Challenges 

Whether your marketing team already has a revenue quota or you know it’s on the horizon, the process of becoming a revenue-accountable organization will likely prove to be one of the biggest undertakings of your career. And there are some common obstacles that you’re likely to encounter along the way.

Obstacle #1: Resistance to Change

Preparation Tip: Adopt a Change Management Mindset

When asked to share the biggest challenge their teams have faced, more than half of the Game Changers said it was ‘change’ in one form or another.

The breadth of change is vast. It touches every corner of the organization – from the executive suite to sales, product and customer success, and of course to marketing. We must change our mindset, the way we collaborate and the tools we use.

Omar Al-Sinjari of McKesson/RelayHealth Pharmacy captures this well when he said,

“The biggest challenge is change. Change in the way we go to market. Change in the way we interact with customers. Change in the way marketing functions in the organization. Change in the way we use technology. Ultimately, we built a story, about how we were going to change. We started by adding new technology and building our tech stack to begin telling our story about how we can now engage customers. We moved to a data-driven approach to how we marketed and engaged customers. As we became hungrier for data to make better decisions, we started expanding our tech stack. Along the way and as we added new tools, we had to make changes to our existing and core tech stack to be able to focus on revenue. We proposed small changes to our CRM and received buy in from all stakeholders involved. We changed how we looked at data and the questions we received from our stakeholders changed. We have seen dramatic growth in Marketing sourced opportunities and continuing to grow with Marketing influenced opportunities. Our work isn’t done, and we are constantly evolving and changing with the focus being on driving revenue.”

Change management isn’t easy. If it were, there wouldn’t be at least eight different psychology and business models dedicated to tackling it. But the more confidently you take the wheel to navigate your team through the tumultuous waters, the more valuable you’ll be to your organization.

Obstacle #2: Lack of Alignment

Preparation Tip: Rally Around Common Goals

It often feels like “alignment” has become a throw away word. At the B2B Game Changers Conference last month, there may have been some marketers rolling eyes or taking shots anytime the phrase sales-marketing alignment was mentioned. We’ve been talking about it for so long that many wonder if it evens hold value. But the reason we’re still talking about is because we have yet to master it.

Kristen Wendel is tackling her fourth ABM transformation at FullStory, and she says,

“…without a doubt the biggest challenge is aligning with sales on an account-centric approach. Marketing has to lead the shift in aligning reps and SDRs on engaging accounts with ICP, fit, intent and engagement… In an account-based model, marketing’s job shifts… to engaging target personas at target accounts with tailored content experiences. Marketing then has to lean in training the sales team on messaging, tools, insights and processes.”

As much as we may want to toss our hands in the air whenever someone starts talking about alignment, a lockstep mindset is critical to reach out revenue goals. And it’s not just sales and marketing that need to be in sync. It’s the whole organization – sales, marketing, product, customer success, finance, ops. We must set common revenue goals, agree on our ICP and target accounts, develop shared programs and engagement strategies and get to work – together.  

Obstacle #3: Legacy Tools & Processes

Preparation Tip: Start with a Strategy

We’ve been MarTech obsessed for a few years now, some of us for more than a decade. And for every tool we’ve implemented, a dozen new processes were put into place to support its use. This means we’ve often inherited (or helped create) a tangled mess of tools and processes that wind up draining resources instead of adding value.

Matthew Mullin of Tenable empathized with this when he said…

“The largest challenge for my team has been simplifying years of process and tool bloat. When I joined Tenable, I came into an organization with over 15 years of process and unused tools. We evaluated our tech stack and determined what wasn’t being used or what wasn’t rolled out effectively and eliminated them. We then evaluated our process from lead flow, to reporting, to contracts and POs and simplified them, eliminating extra steps and approval processes where they weren’t needed. We focused on streamlining everything and making our processes easy to learn and understand.”

The tools and processes that got you this far may not be the right ones for the next leg of your journey. The road to revenue marketing takes a fresh approach and a strategy that’s purpose-built to carry you to your destination.

Be Prepared for Your Revenue Marketing Journey

This is far from an exhaustive list of the difficulties you may face when building a predictable revenue model. You’ll need to create new metrics models, identify new tools, test new methodologies. You’ll likely stumble and fail – a lot. But the more prepared you are for the journey, the more successfully you can guide your team.

The 2018 Revenue Marketing Game Changers shared the biggest challenges they’ve tackled, and the strategies they used to come out on top. The Real Revenue Marketing Strategies to Advance Your Game eBook is packed full of more than 100 pages of their collective advice. Grab a copy today so you can help your organization get revenue-focused.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Triniti Burton
Triniti Burton is Marketing & Communications Director at Integrate. Once upon a time a sales rep, she now handles all things marketing and focuses tirelessly on infusing the often gray world of B2B tech with as much color as her colleagues can handle.

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