Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

We surveyed our sponsors for TOPO Summit 2018 and asked them to identify three trends their companies are following in 2018.  Based on those responses, we will be publishing a series of blog posts over the next several weeks, categorizing their thoughts into six themes: AI and Data, Everything Account-Based, Content and Experience, Sales and Marketing Alignment, Marketing and Sales Development Orchestration, and Sales Focused.

Want to hear more from these companies? Be sure to meet with them at TOPO Summit, where these topics, and more, will be covered by our speakers and our sponsors.

Over 30 sales development leaders from the Bay Area’s fastest growing companies once again convened last Friday for TOPO’s Sales Development Council #15. These Councils offer a unique forum for sales development leaders from high growth companies to learn from each other and share best practices. Each Council features three speakers who share the processes, plays, organizational elements, and technologies they use to drive key revenue metrics.

There is a movement underway to deliver more valuable engagement with buyers. TOPO’s ongoing research on sales organizations shows that sales leaders overwhelmingly rank “improving the quality of engagement with buyers” as their top priority. The key to achieving better quality engagement is to arm the sales reps for buyer-responsive selling.

The ultimate measure for sales development success is closed won business. If SDRs are not contributing opportunities to the pipeline that result in closed business, it’s hard to justify the effort. That said, looking at other key conversion steps in the overall sales and marketing process can highlight needed improvements to sales development process and execution.

Over 25 sales leaders from the Bay Area’s fastest growing companies once again gathered last Friday for TOPO’s third Sales Council. These Councils offer a unique forum for sales leaders from high growth companies to learn from each other and share best practices. Each Council features three speakers who share the processes, plays, organizational elements, and technologies they use to drive key revenue metrics.

Sales and marketing technology leaders joined us at the Four Seasons SF for our 3rd Sales and Marketing Technology Council. These particular councils offer leaders from high growth companies perspective on their target markets and the opportunity to learn from each other.  This council featured three speakers in panel format allowing for questions from attendees as well as moderated questions from our CEO, Scott Albro.

In a previous post, The Framework for Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Development, we defined the Ideal Customer Profile and provided the framework for ICP Development. In this post, we provide recommendations for the key questions to answer when collecting qualitative data in the ICP development process.

Over 20 sales development leaders from the Bay Area’s fastest growing companies once again convened last Friday for TOPO’s Sales Development Council #14. These Councils offer a unique forum for sales development leaders from high growth companies to learn from each other and share best practices.

TOPO launched its Demand Generation Practice with a mandate to help companies adopt account-based go-to-market strategies. A year later, the account-based movement dominates the B2B sales and marketing landscape. During this time, the TOPO Analyst team has identified two major trends that dictate whether companies will succeed or fail with their account-based efforts.

Over 30 sales development leaders from the Bay area’s fastest growing companies once again convened last Friday for TOPO’s Sales Development Council #13. These Councils offer a unique forum for sales development leaders from high growth companies to learn from each other and share best practices. Each Council features three speakers who share the processes, plays, organizational elements, and technologies they use to drive key revenue metrics. This Council produced a few key themes, including discussions about SDR effectiveness and performance, how companies define qualification criteria and creating effective outbound emails.