Mike Belden

• Every function in the B2B revenue engine must overcome operational challenges related to content
  
• Few organizations have achieved an advanced maturity level in developing and managing content
  
• An organization’s roadmap to content operations excellence should contain action items in five key areas

• Steve Silver of Forrester introduced the latest version of the SiriusDecisions Sales Operations Sunburst at Summit 2020
  
• The Sales Operations Sunburst Model defines the core responsibilities of sales operations
  
• The new version of the model provides a detailed breakdown of six key accountabilities

• In their keynote session at Summit 2019, Lisa Nakano and Amy Bills provided insights into the typical causes of customer retention issues and how organizations can remedy them
• If there is no team or individuals whose primary mission includes customer retention – and no one gets paid less if customer churn rises – the focus just won’t be there
• Customer retention improvement efforts can be ramped up using a pilot program as part of a step-wise, continually improving approach

• Many organizations that implement sales asset management (SAM) technology achieve some level of benefits, but over one-third still cite content findability as a top challenge
• To maximize the benefits of SAM technology, sales enablement practitioners need a realistic understanding of how reps spend their time and prefer to engage technology
• Sales asset creation and curation must align to specific selling motions and be informed by the behavior and preferences of top-performing reps as they interact with buyers

• At Summit 2018 in Las Vegas, Steve Silver and Craig Moore of SiriusDecisions introduced a new model that helps organizations align their sales and marketing planning processes
• Failing to align sales and marketing during the planning process results in disconnects during execution
• Sales and marketing leaders must agree on points of intersection during the planning process and participate in joint planning sessions as a checkpoint

• The British photographer and philanthropist Platon, celebrated for his portraits of world leaders and celebrities, spoke to the Summit 2018 audience in Las Vegas
• As Platon showed his award-winning photographs and told stories about his interactions with his subjects, he also spoke eloquently about what makes a good leader
• Platon urged the B2B leaders attending Summit to uphold the leadership values of courage, empathy and respectful debate

• Just because a partner was a strong performer in the past, does that mean it will continue to produce at that level in the future?
• How can suppliers identify emerging superstar partners that may be sitting in the bottom 80 percent, just waiting for some attention?
• The Channel Partner Segmentation Model provides a structured, objective methodology for assessing partners

• By understanding the factors that drive revenue, B2B leaders can make better decisions about which actions and investments to prioritize
  
• Top-ranked revenue drivers include factors owned by sales, marketing and product as well as external market conditions
  
• The categories of revenue engine performance include growth rate, productivity and efficiency

• Dell implemented predictive analytics for a broad range of marketing tactics
• A consistent cycle of planning, piloting, testing and measuring results is required to effectively leverage a new technology
• Marketing practitioners should take an expansive view of how a new technology can impact their organizations

• At Summit Europe 2016, Meta Karagianni and Christina McKeon focused on the importance of regional portfolio marketing for global B2B companies
• Portfolio marketing is an organization’s go-to-market function
• An org’s regional and centralized portfolio marketing capabilities should coexist across five core disciplines of the function

• At SiriusDecisions 2016 Summit, Stephanie Sissler gave an update on the Channel Program Model with implementation examples
• The model organizes channel activities by function and by five cross-functional process areas that every channel program must have
• Stephanie also explained several new elements and areas of emphasis that have been added to the model in the past year

• How does a chief sales officer who missed his or her numbers diagnose the shortfall’s causes and identify what needs to be fixed?
• The SiriusDecisions Sales Productivity Quotient helps sales leaders gain insight into the true drivers of sales productivity
• To help sales leaders understand factors affecting their results, the model focuses on five categories of productivity indicators

• At the 2015 Technology Exchange, Kerry Cunningham gave a talk on B2B analytics capabilities, which have evolved rapidly
• Kerry focused on how B2B leaders and data experts can overcome common issues with analytics
• There are many ways that analytics can yield answers to hard questions that can drive more effective decisionmaking and results

• Jay Gaines and Mark Levinson presented the SiriusDecisions Revenue Ecosystem at Summit 2015
• Customers and buyers must always be at the center of the ecosystem
• The SiriusDecisions Revenue Ecosystem provides a method for organizations to ensure that they maintain alignment and growth

B2B leaders must balance their focus on execution and performance improvement with a readiness to respond to new trends and opportunities

At Summit 2014 in Orlando this afternoon, SiriusDecisions’ demand creation experts described several advanced techniques that B2B companies can use to improve the results generated by their demand programs.

When polled about the state of integration among B2B product, sales and marketing functions within their organizations, 98 percent of Summit 2013 attendees agreed that at least one of those functions was not well integrated with the other two. Twenty-six percent of those polled said that product functions were not well integrated with sales and […]

Today’s Summit proceedings included a full day of presentations on B2B sales, marketing and product strategies and best practices, including the following sessions: The day’s first speaker was Joe Levin, head of sales enablement and site experience for technology solution provider CDW, which won a Return on Integration Honor in recognition of Levin’s efforts to […]

Today SiriusDecisions kicked off its eighth annual Summit, which drew a sell-out crowd of attendees eager to focus on B2B marketing, sales and product issues and best practices, at the San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt. Today’s highlights included: For first-time Summit attendees, the SiriusDecisions 101 pre-conference workshop laid the groundwork for the rest of the […]