Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

Predictive analytics is one of today’s hottest B2B marketing technologies. Fueled by drivers such as big data, SaaS delivery models, and data-driven marketing and sales, predictive analytics garners a tremendous amount of attention, particularly given how few customers are in actual production. While the hype can sometimes be excessive, early adopters are realizing demonstrable ROI as they use statistical modeling, machine learning, and scoring technologies to identify and prioritize accounts, leads, contacts, and customers at specific points in the marketing and sales funnel. It’s this demonstrable ROI that’s causing more and more marketing organizations to look at predictive analytics as a new, non-negotiable element of their marketing technology stacks.

Latest research reveals Account Based Platforms are core to marketing tech stack. Earlier this month Demandbase raised $30 million in its latest round of funding. After starting in 2006 as the “iTunes for contacts,” the company has pivoted and morphed over time into one of the early leaders in the emerging Account Based Marketing (ABM) stack. As a matter of fact, Demandbase was one of the first vendors to start talking about Account Based Marketing in 2011. Its funding is further validation that Account Based Marketing is one the biggest trends in B2B sales and marketing. At TOPO, we have been tracking and researching Account Based Marketing for the last two years and have seen a surge in analyst inquiries over the last six months. Now, an ABM technology stack is emerging.

TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the world’s fastest-growing companies. Today, we interview Daniel Barber, the Director of Sales Development and Operations at ToutApp. He’ll share his thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.

The TOPO Sales Development Councils have been a tremendous success. At each council, we bring together sales development practitioners to listen to presentations from a TOPO Analyst, as well as two sales development leaders. The room is filled with some of the best sales development leaders in the business and the conversations are lively. This event had 40 attendees who shared best practices and collaborated on high growth strategies for sales development organizations.

TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the world’s fastest-growing companies. Today, we interview Chris Flores, the Manager of Inside Sales at Namely. He’ll share his thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.

TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the world’s fastest-growing companies. Today, we interview David Dulany, the Manager of Sales Development at OpenDNS. He’ll share his thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.

David will be speaking at our upcoming Sales Development Council meeting on April 10. 

The most recent version of the TOPO Sales Benchmark found that 59% of companies lack a well-defined sales process. It’s a shocking statistic given that your sales process represents the step-by-step plan for how you will win a deal. A good sales process moves prospects to a final purchasing decision, applies to many customer and deal types as you grow, and scales across your sales organization as you hire. By definition, it is one of the most important things your sales organization can design, build, and optimize.

In this post, we present 7 best practices used by high growth companies when designing their sales processes. It includes content from the recent TOPO webinar: How to Design Your Sales Process: 7 Best Practices.

One important note – there is a big distinction between your sales process and your CRM. Sales process is NOT CRM. Most sales organizations confuse the two. The sales process is a strategic plan for winning business, while the CRM is the platform you use to manage, enforce, and track the process.

At a recent TOPO Demand Generation Council event, Marketo co-founder Jon Miller gave a provocative presentation on account based marketing (ABM). Although ABM has been around for some time, we’ve seen growing interest on the topic the last few years. In fact, there’s been a major uptick in ABM interest in recent months, particularly among companies that have grown to approximately $100 million in revenue using inbound, demand generation tactics.

TOPO is committed to bringing the sales development community the latest trends, data, and best practices from the fastest-growing companies in the world. Today, we interview Liz Cain, the Senior Director of Global Business Development at NetSuite. She’ll share her thoughts on sales development best practices, goals, challenges, technology, and metrics.

One surprising question we get frequently when providing advisory support to clients is: “Do you have any good icebreakers for our upcoming sales meeting?” We recommend the “biography test” icebreaker for sales meetings with between 4 to 20 attendees. The idea originated with a learning and development professor at Stanford who developed an icebreaker called the biography test. They have successfully used it for years with everyone from students to dignitaries. At TOPO, we’ve used it successfully for numerous sales kickoff and training meetings. Feedback from clients has been 100% positive.