Did the CRO just get nixed?
Sales and marketing alignment is as much of a debate today as it's ever (always) been. But (trigger warning) it was a failed initiative from the start. And if that goes, then goodbye revenue teams.
What comes next is what ecosystem leaders have been preaching.
Market and company alignment? Ecosystem and organization alignment?
Who knows what it will be called, but it won't be about how two departments get along better. It will be about how companies organize their people to match the way buyers behave and markets work - and surrounding that process with their ecosystem to support buyers no matter where they are.
Heck, even the author of The Challenger Sale agrees
This new HBR article from Brent Adamson just dropped, and it is a banger!
Just look at the summary:
The "buyer journey" turns out to be hardly linear, so easing friction between marketing-to-sales "handoffs" seems like a fool's errand. Turns out, buyers don't like being crammed down an ever narrowing funnel.
So what might this reconfiguration look like?
The article examines an ed-tech company from Canada for possible clues. They started from the ground up and looked at buyer jobs to be done. They don't use partnerships or ecosystem language, but check out this quote:
"...the team identified five common buying jobs (Learn, Buy, Order/Install, Adopt, Support) and established an internal team specifically deployed to support each one, reassigning nearly every member of legacy marketing, sales, service, and success staff as a result."
And you thought Jay McBain was exaggerating with all this decade of the ecosystem talk!
Check out the full article in HBR.
Stats of the Day
B2B SaaS buyers during purchase process
- 17% - time spent with sales team
- 18% - time spent on independent offline research
- 27% - time spent on independent online research
- 33% - time spent with internal and partner stakeholders
Source: Gartner Research
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