2017 TRENDS & TECH GUIDEFOR B2B SALES + MARKETING

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 Authors

4 Introduction

5 Managing Millennials

9 Account-Based Marketing & Sales Strategies Come of Age

12 The New CMO

17 The Segmented Sales Force

21 Customer Experience: A Unifying Force for Sales & Marketing

24 Personalize Everything: From Messaging to Management

28 The Consolidated Technology Stack

32 The Currency of Trust

36 Machine Learning: Predictive Sales and Marketing

AUTHORS

Prezi Prezi is the cloud-based presentation software that helps you connect powerfully with your audience. Unlike slides, Prezi’s zoomable canvas shows relationships between the big picture and fine details, putting ideas into context and engaging viewers in a unique and visually exciting way. Prezi is in the business of making presenters great.

Contributors: Adam Wooley, Director of B2B Marketing. Chelsi Nakano, B2B Content Strategy & Development. Bogdan Zlatkov, Content Marketing Manager.

Ambition Ambition is a Harvard Business Review-endorsed performance tracking, management and motivation platform built specifically for client-facing teams in sales, support, marketing and account management. PwC, Lyft, MemSQL, Filemaker, FiveStars, UPS, and Outreach use Ambition to enhance their culture and revenue. Accolades: #1 Sales Management Tool for 2016 (Docurated); #1 Sales Tool You Should Be Using (Datanyze); #1 Service Provider for Sales Gamification & Recognition (AA-ISP); and #2 Category Leader in Sales Performance Management (G2 Crowd).

Contributors: Jared Houghton, Chief Sales Officer. Brian Trautschold, Chief Operations Officer. Jeremy Boudinet, Director of Marketing.

LeadGeniusLeadGenius is an Account-Based Marketing and lead generation platform. LeadGenius uses a unique combination of machine learning and human intelligence to help B2B marketing and sales teams find and connect with decision makers at their ideal accounts.

Contributors: William Wickey, Content and Media Strategy.

INTRODUCTION

To evaluate, and ultimately purchase, the right technologies for your business, it’s important to understand the landscape of available solutions. Making purchase decisions based on what’s going on in your company and in your industry—in terms of people, processes and products—can keep you from making the costly mistake of selecting the wrong software.

This thoughtful guide will help you connect identifiable business needs to the technologies that can best meet them. Ideal for leaders in B2B sales, marketing, customer and technical support, operations, and data analytics, it contains valuable insights into what’s happening in various industries, what emerging technologies are rapidly gaining popularity, and how you can use innovative platforms to extend the power of your people and products.

Each chapter in this ebook explains a trend, identifies the needs relevant to that trend, and provides 10–15 product solutions—along with original analyses of product features and functionality—to meet those needs. And since we know that every company, department, and role operates differently, the 100+ platforms reviewed here span every budget size and serve a variety of job functions and seniority levels.

From all of us at Prezi, Ambition, and LeadGenius we hope you enjoy the 2017 Trends and Tech Guide for B2B Sales + Marketing.

Happy hunting!

Please submit feedback about our selections and writeups to Jeremy Boudinet or Will Wickey. Feel free to cross-reference each product with recommendations, insights, and reviews from G2 Crowd and similar industry lists.

5

CHAPTER 1

Managing MillennialsThe Trend

In 2015, millennials surpassed Gen X-ers to make up the largest portion of the American workforce—one in every three workers is a Millennial (Pew Research). These demographic changes bring with them changes in the way that businesses and teams work together.

The Needs

1. Millennials are visually driven80% of people remember what they see, compared to 20% who remember what they read. The average millennial attention span is 8 seconds. Visual learners now comprise 65% of the total population. (Neoman Studies)

2. Millennials are constantly connected88% of millennials prefer a collaborative work environment over a competitive one. (Forbes)

3. Millennials want constant feedback79% of millennials want their boss to serve more as a coach or mentor. (Forbes)

Millennials have very different expectations from the generations that came before them. Per a recent study by PwC, Gen-Y

“desires a workplace environment that emphasizes teamwork and a sense of community” and “value transparency” at higher rates than their non-Millennial colleagues. As Millennials have graduated and moved into the professional world, they’ve brought their modern expectations and favorite tools with them. An environment that for decades has largely been ruled by Microsoft is suddenly fractured, full of new-world alternatives like Slack, Salesforce, and Trello, all of which reward openness and collaboration over hierarchy and siloed information. We will be looking at three different categories of tools that Millennials are bringing into the workplace: communication tools, tools that promote transparency, and visualization tools.

6

Ambitionambition.com

Best for: Growth, mid-market and enterprise front office teams with a rhythmic daily workflow, competitive employees, and high-energy culture.

Cost: $$–$$$

Ambition’s acclaimed employee productivity platform gives 360° visibility into individual and team performance. Create accountability and recognition with live performance data from any data source. Track and broadcast key metrics to personalized dashboards and office TVs. Put holistic goals right in front of your reps. Compare activity level and goal attainment across teams to see how hard and how smart your reps are working. Benchmark success for teams, roles and individuals, then drive results via automated scorecards, contests, recognition and reporting. Perfect for front office teams that value performance-driven culture and transparent operations.

Google G-Suitegsuite.google.com

Best for: Early-stage SMBs that lack G-Suite’s essential functionality and uniformity in their current operations.

Cost: $

Google G-Suite gives you everything your team needs: email, calendar, chat, analytics, content templates, analytics, and tons of storage. Each piece seamlessly integrates across your entire company for maximum sharing, efficiency, and transparency.

Slackslack.com

Best for: Teams that want to communicate easily and often, keep project conversations organized and simple to search, and have fun while doing it.

Cost: $

Slack is one of the best ways to get your team off email. It includes internal messaging, emoji, and a millennial-worthy .gif library to boot. Users can drag and drop any documents, links, or visuals into direct messages between specific individuals or groups.

Dropboxdropbox.com

Best for: SMB, growth and mid-market teams that need a central location for their digital assets.

Cost: $–$$

Dropbox has been around for more than a decade and is still the surefire solution for cloud-based team storage. It’s dependable, trusted, and a great way to share information between teams.

Evernoteevernote.com

Best for: Business leaders seeking to improve overall team organization, workflow, and record-keeping.

Cost: $–$$$

A powerhouse in organizational communication, Evernote is an essential tool for obsessive note-takers. It allows you to easily create and share notes, reminders, and to-do lists with your entire team and even indexes all your notes to make them easily searchable.

The Tools

7

Basecampbasecamp.com

Best for: Newcomers to project management, whose marketing personnel skew heavy on the creative side but light on process.

Cost: $$

Basecamp is a great way to manage projects thanks to its appealing interface and custom collaboration settings. Perfect for design and marketing professionals, Basecamp is the ideal starting point for companies making their first foray into project management software.

Quipquip.com

Best for: Any company of any size that lacks a unified document collaboration platform.

Cost: $

Quip turns word documents, spreadsheets, and checkpoints into collaborative entities that serve a variety of purposes. Whether you’re working on a collaborative strategy session, monthly budget, or tracking progress towards project completion, Quip creates a seamless collaboration experience.

Huddlehuddle.com

Best for: Companies with complex, cross-functional initiatives that require maximum coordination and supervision.

Cost: $$

Huddle is built for maximum utility and functionality for every major department of your company. If you’re looking to go bigger with project management and truly scale team collaboration initiatives, Huddle is the solution for you.

Boxbox.com

Best for: Teams that want functionality without the frills.

Cost: $

This spartan platform helps users create branded sales assets, business plans, meeting notes, and other documents in your everyday business operations. Box is a great entry point to the world of modern content management and business collaboration.

HipChathipchat.com

Best for: Mature mid-market and enterprise teams or SMBs on an ultra-tight budget.

Cost: $

HipChat is team communication software with unbeatable pricing, simple and intuitive functionality, and high customization potential. HipChat is great for teams looking for a simple alternative to email without any frills.

Trellotrello.com

Best for: Outbound teams that struggle with ambiguity and inconsistency in their daily workflow, and that love a good sprint.

Cost: $

Trello has become one of the most popular task management solutions for outbound teams and is ideal for agile practitioners. Using boards, lists, and cards allows users to create easy-to-follow workflows to keep projects on track.

8

Asanaasana.com

Best for: Pretty much everyone who works in a front office position.

Cost: $

Asana easily owns the title of “Most Agile” in the business collaboration space. Simple interfaces let teams build transparent tasks, projects, and analytics programs that seamlessly integrate with existing data sources. Worth noting: Asana’s premium plan comes at a sub-$10 monthly price point per user.

Breezebreeze.pm

Best Best for: Disorganized teams, siloed departments, and people who appreciate accountability.

Cost: $$

A highly-affordable and pain-free task management workspace built perfectly for large sales and marketing teams, Breeze lets you establish strategies, deadlines, to-do lists, scheduled tasks, and progress benchmarks. A product that lives by its name.

Wrikewrike.com

Best Best for: Creative and design-oriented marketing teams that need next-level project management support.

Cost: $–$$

An enterprise-grade project management platform for marketing, Wrike’s most striking feature is how it keeps your creative processes, KPIs, and collaborative efforts all under one umbrella. A great prescription for overextended teams having trouble meeting deadlines, sharing workloads, or executing projects.

9

CHAPTER 2

Account-Based Marketing & Sales Strategies Come of AgeThe Trend

Account-based everything is everywhere. As a B2B marketing and sales leader, you’ve heard it from every angle: Account-Based Marketing (ABM), Account-Based Sales, Account-Based Lead Generation, Account-Based Sales Development, Account-Based Customer Success. The list goes on.

The Needs

1. Personalized-messaging to multiple decision makers in a scalable wayThe number of people involved in a large tech purchase has increased from 5–7. (IDC via Salesforce)

2. A shorter sales cycleThe majority of organizations that do not conduct ABM have sales and marketing cycles exceeding 120 days. The majority that do use ABM: 90 days or less. (Bizible)

3. Maximize efforts across revenue generating departments91% of those with an ABM program in place said they were “tightly” or “somewhat or moderately” aligned with sales. (Sirius Decisions via eMarketer)

The noise behind ABM has been deafening at times, but the buzz has been building for good reason: when used correctly, account

based tactics can shorten the buying cycle, increase lead-to-opportunity conversion rates, decrease Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and reduce churn. Again, the list goes on. A well-run account based strategy can have a positive impact on most marketing and sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

At its core, an account-based strategy is a holistic business-to-business strategy that enables companies to more effectively sell into a targeted list of accounts. Highly-personalized messaging, through a variety of channels, is used to target to multiple decision makers to help speed the buying process along. The idea is to no longer have a massive, wide open marketing funnel, but rather to channel efforts efficiently and strategically.

So how is Account-Based Marketing different than “Enterprise Sales?” The difference is scale. An account-based strategy can be used to target a company of any size. Instead of messaging only to decision makers within a company, all revenue generating teams (Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Product, etc.) work together to simultaneously target multiple decision makers, with different roles and responsibilities. The concept involves leveraging dynamics of group psychology to close an account. New technology is making the tried-and-true personal approach approach of enterprise sales scalable and cost-effective for targeting SMBs.

2016 ushered in a great deal of discussion around account based strategy—much of it high-level and aspirational. In 2017, more B2B companies will put account based theory into practice.

10

LeadGeniusleadgenius.com

Best for: Sales and marketing teams that want to function as two limbs of the same organism, supporting each other’s goals, evolving together, and perfecting the buyer journey.

Cost: $$–$$$$

As your target database begins to grow, LeadGenius helps you prune prospects, cultivate customers, and zero-in on company decision-makers. Use it to ditch bad leads, unearth new stakeholders and decision-makers, and scale your best-performing campaigns with A/B test-ready email outreach capabilities. Plus you get unlimited users, so you can scale up without scraping the bottom of your budget barrel.

DiscoverOrgdiscoverorg.com

Best for: Mid-market-enterprise teams selling complex deals to accounts with multiple decision makers.

Cost: $$$–$$$$

DiscoverOrg is the most robust solution in sales and marketing intelligence on the planet. Get full contact lists that auto-update (in your CRM!) as prospect and account information changes. Email, phone, and social information is included.

Datanyzedatanyze.com

Best for: Hard-hitting sales organizations that are ready to fight the competition using hyper-targeted information and gutsy tactics.

Cost: $$–$$$

Datanyze is like a secret sales agent that really wants to get to know you. Use it for unparalleled competitor analysis, building and vetting prospects, and organizing key targets—plus, see tough-to-find info, such as which targets have adopted or dropped competitors.

DataFoxdatafox.com

Best for: Sales and marketing organizations frustrated by dirty and missing prospect data.

Cost: $$

DataFox assesses the overall health and quality of your data, identifies and resolves discrepancies, and enables you to quickly discover and add targeted accounts and prospects on the fly. For good measure, DataFox also has a Company Signals feature that adds continuous value and insight to your prospecting efforts.

ZenProspectzenprospect.com

Best for: B2B sales and marketing teams who want to synchronize, streamline, and spruce up their prospecting process.

Cost: $$–$$$

ZenProspect is the only complete, all-in-one sales intelligence and automation tool on the market. You can import current leads and run outbound email and call campaigns complete with scheduling, segmentation, messaging analytics, and A/B testing, all from a single interface.

The Tools

11

LeanDataleandatainc.com

Best for: Sales organizations that lack coordination and insight into sales lead management.

Cost: $$

LeanData focuses exclusively on all things lead management. Get total transparency on attribution, routing, workflow, and sales cycle progression with drag-and-drop self-serve interfaces and visually compelling real-time reporting.

InsideViewinsideview.com

Best for: Account-based teams and challenger sales organizations with complex sales cycles.

Cost: $$–$$$

InsideView embeds relevant targeting intelligence throughout your workflow and funnel by using key data points for prospects and contacts, real-time insights from social and press sources, and a view into your connected network within each account.

Engagioengagio.com

Best for: Companies that are running account-based anything.

Cost: $$–$$$

Engagio is leading the account-based movement by equipping marketing, sales, and customer success with account-centric analytics and orchestrated outbound interactions. Account insights range from who to target, who’s engaged, and who is getting touched by marketing and sales.

Terminusterminus.com

Best for: Entry-level account-based marketing teams using Salesforce.

Cost: $$–$$$

Terminus brings an amazing 3-step level of simplicity to B2B marketing leaders. If you’re new to ABM and need a platform that can show you the ropes while you see your strategy through to completion, Terminus is a great option.

Demandbasedemandbase.com

Best for: Mid-market and enterprise B2B companies leveraging an account-based marketing strategy.

Cost: $$–$$$

Demandbase is built to tackle all four corners of an account-based marketing strategy, offering robust solutions for identifying target accounts, running tailored advertising campaigns, routing insights to sales, and analyzing your sales funnel through an ABM lens.

12

CHAPTER 3

The New CMOThe Trend

Operations and revenue. Add those skills to the laundry list. As the roles and responsibilities of the B2B marketing organization evolve, so too do those of their chief officer. Marketing organizations are being given increased responsibility for revenue and marketing operations. These new demands require an updated skill set from marketing leadership.

The Needs

1. Optimize marketing-sales alignment• Aligned companies earned 208% more revenue via

marketing. (MarketingProfs via HubSpot)• When sales and marketing are in sync, 67%

increase in closed deals. (Marketo via HubSpot)

2. Reporting on pipeline performance68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. (MarketingSherpa via HubSpot)

3. Supply sales with educational content and assets

• 82% of buyers viewed 5+ pieces of content from winning vendor. (Forrester via HubSpot)

• 95% of buyers chose a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.” (DemandGen Report via HubSpot)

4. Manage full-funnel marketing teams64% of CMOs have an informal/no process for managing marketing automation. (HubSpot via Thought Process Enterprises)

For “The New CMO,” the scope of the role is rapidly expanding beyond brand vision, people management, creative development,

market research, advertising, agency management, and being the voice of the customer in the organization. The baseline has shifted. The modern CMO now leads a full-funnel marketing team, responsible for driving not just acquisition, but customer success. In many B2B companies, product marketing, retention, upselling, customer happiness, and even user experience now fall under the CMO’s purview.

Technological savviness in 2017 isn’t about digital channels, social media, or interactive experiences. It’s about wrenching accurate and actionable insights from an often unwieldy and complex technology stack. It’s about having the confidence and capability to go beyond steering “marketing strategy” and towards steering “business strategy.” The technology landscape is evolving so quickly that many senior marketers have never touched key tools in their stack—especially when it comes to analytics and reporting. Having a rich understanding of the character and capabilities, the nuance and nature, of new technology is critical for today’s CMO.

The New CMO doesn’t have to get their hands dirty, necessarily, but they need to be able to work a pivot table, and work it well. He or she cannot command a siloed department, but must be a unifying voice on the executive team. Finally, the new CMO must savvily handle data—lots of it.

13

Prezi Businessprezi.com/business

Best for: Businesses that want to stand above the competition with engaging presentations and real-time analytics.

Cost: $–$$

Prezi Business is an entire suite of presentation and analytics tools for those wishing to break through the noise of their slide-wielding competitors. Unlike slides, Prezi Business lets users navigate between topics at will, following the natural flow of discussion. “Conversational presenting” feels more personal, more relevant, and better-prepared for your specific target than traditional one-way slide shows. And when you’re done, powerful analytics let you see who’s viewing your materials and which parts they find most interesting.

Marketomarketo.com

Best for: Experienced marketing automation users with an extensive library of existing content, a complex sales cycle, multiple decision makers, and varied ICPs.

Cost: $$$–$$$$

Marketo is heavy machinery when it comes to marketing automation. Under the right circumstances, it’s the most powerful weapon a marketing team can own, as it provides the most complete suite of features that high-growth and mid-market companies need.

HubSpothubspot.com

Best for: Any marketing or sales team that wants to get started the right way or make what they’re already doing the very best it can be.

Cost: $–$$$

HubSpot is king of the content marketing universe. It’s an all-in-one tool that has everything you need to start a successful marketing program—including marketing automation, templates, email campaigns, and landing pages. Plus it has endless content explaining how to be a blogging and social media superstar.

Oracle Eloquaeloqua.com

Best for: Large marketing teams with equally large budgets, complex operations, and plentiful marketing automation experience.

Cost: $$$$

In terms of sheer functionality, Eloqua is without equal. A sophisticated, enterprise-grade platform that covers every inch of the field for modern digital marketing operations, Eloqua is built for big-time companies with Ph.D-level digital marketing practitioners at the helm.

The Tools

14

Pardotpardot.com

Best for: Mid-Market and Enterprise companies running robust sales operations via Salesforce.

Cost: $$$–$$$$

Pardot has all the functionality your team needs to smarten and segment inbound lead generation, outbound nurturing, and sales-marketing alignment. The prospect segmentation features are especially impressive, allowing you to run complex segment analytics on your entire prospect database in less than sixty seconds.

Act-Onact-on.com

Best for: Businesses in growth-mode who count customer satisfaction as a competitive edge.

Cost: $$–$$$

Act-On distinguishes itself among marketing automation platforms with its nonexistent ramp time and affordable pricing. For newcomers to marketing automation who’d prefer to get a quality platform up-and-running as quickly and painlessly as possible, Act-On is a solid choice.

Mailchimpmailchimp.com

Best for: Marketing teams light in existing marketing automation and budget. Client Success teams in larger organizations looking to send product newsletters and alerts to existing customers on a separate, standalone platform.

Cost: $–$$

Mailchimp has one of the most passionate fanbases in all of sales and marketing software. It’s a godsend to newly-minted startups and SMBs that can use its email templates, drag-and-drop builder, mass distribution capabilities and analytics with up to 2000 people—free of charge.

Emmamyemma.com

Best for: Sophisticated marketing teams with a dedicated email marketing role.

Cost: $$–$$$

Emma delivers the most granular email automation experience you’ll find. Its segmentation, design, and reporting capabilities allow for customization and insights that drill down to a practically molecular level. Integrations with Salesforce, Litmus, and other key software providers make Emma a great option for the committed email marketer.

SumoMesumome.com

Best for: Small, growing, and mid-market businesses that need an affordable, lightweight website enhancer.

Cost: $–$$

If you’re looking to optimize your website on a budget, SumoMe offers a suite of affordable solutions that are dead-simple to set up and help you start driving immediate results. SumoMe’s ease-of-use and measurable impacts on conversion rate and shareability are nothing short of guaranteed.

Optimizelyoptimizely.com

Best for: Marketing leaders with high ICP variation and a dedicated inbound strategy.

Cost: $$–$$$

Optimizely is a pure website optimization tool that includes features like A/B testing, site conversion analytics, traffic flow visualization, and mobile toggling. Optimizely’s personalization capabilities enable companies to create variables of each page that appeal most directly to site visitors based on handpicked data points.

15

Unbounceunbounce.com

Best for: Marketing leaders looking to aggressively ramp up inbound leads in 2017.

Cost: $$–$$$

Unbounce developed a pure landing page creation and optimization platform for the coding-challenged marketing team to help tackle the problem of high bounce rates. With Unbounce you can build self-serve hosted sites, design landing pages, and execute A/B testing and analytics with ease.

Hootsuitehootsuite.com

Best for: Experienced social media gurus who have a core strategy in place, but need a simple way to track, execute, and report.

Cost: $–$$

HootSuite helps you streamline, organize, and schedule posts across all of your social channels. Track keywords, measure the ROI of your team’s social media efforts, and generate detailed reports that demonstrate your share of voice.

Bufferbuffer.com

Best for: Companies that derive value from a strong social presence.

Cost: $–$$

Buffer is beloved by marketing managers and social sellers for its intuitive publishing and scheduling functionality across social media channels. The ability to repurpose and analyze prior posts across Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram in a single click is worth the price of admission by itself.

Sprout Socialsproutsocial.com

Best for: SMB and mid-market companies with strong, unique content and buyer demographics that include younger targets.

Cost: $–$$$

SproutSocial helps you significantly amplify your social media voice through synched company and individual accounts. Schedule, publish, and analyze posts across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels using a single, powerful platform.

Canvacanva.com

Best for: Companies with limited design resources, but creative people with a vision to realize.

Cost: $

Canva is an intuitive, user-friendly design platform to create slick assets for your brand, marketing, and sales materials. No need for experience designing banners and infographics—Canva has tons of pre-made templates and makes it easy to share new creations with the rest of your team.

Infograminfogr.am

Best for: Companies with limited design resources but that need professional, sophisticated visuals to help them close bigger deals.

Cost: $–$$

Infogram is an essential tool for marketing and sales teams that don’t have access to design resources, but that need a quick, easy way to create professional-looking charts, infographics, and reports.

16

Screenflowtelestream.net/screenflow

Best for: Companies that want to create beautiful, shareable software demos and presentations without worrying if everyone will be able to see them.

Cost: $–$$

Screenflow makes it possible to easily edit, improve, and add to your screencasts. You can also instantly download or share recordings in a variety of ways through several different platforms.

17

CHAPTER 4

The Segmented Sales ForceThe Trend

A surprise to no one, specialization and division of labor has become the norm for the modern B2B sales force.

The Needs

1. Data storage on prospects and accounts5.4 people now have to formally sign off on each purchase decision for complex enterprise sales. (CEB via HubSpot)

2. Coordinate, communicate and de-silo across all roles88% of missed opportunities were caused because sales couldn’t find or leverage internal resources. (Qvidian via HubSpot)

3. Maximize efficiency via automation and concentrated activityOnly 33% of inside sales rep time is spent actively selling. (CSO Insights via HubSpot)

4. Turn data analytics into insights that optimize your attackOnly 44% of companies are using any kind of lead scoring system. (DecisionTree via HubSpot)

Sales is about numbers: revenue, conversion rates, retention, renewals. As a result, leaders in this organization are especially

practical—they want to know what’s working so they can push it further. They also want to know what’s not working, so they can eliminate it at the root.

This highly logical approach makes optimization key. It’s necessary to fully understand how complex processes function, and how various elements of those processes work together, in order to drive action. Leaders who want to do that effectively know that it all comes down to people.

It’s people that define the roles that make up B2B sales organizations. From inbound and outbound SDRs, to AEs, inside sales reps, field sales managers, and more, it’s the individuals who grow and learn in these positions that are a business’s direct line to the consumer. They are invaluable resources for information, and are ideally positioned to gain the most intimate understanding of markets and buyer personas. But in reality, it’s rare that B2B sales organizations and the markets they serve are as neatly segmented as they appear to be on paper.

This means that collaboration between different segments of the B2B sales org is critical. It is the only way for different roles to adapt, optimize, organize, and coordinate their actions for maximum impact. The “qualified sales process” has split B2B sales teams down into lean, purpose-driven units. Because of this, it’s now more important than ever that sales leaders keep track of all of the moving parts while they’re in motion.

18

Ambitionambition.com

Best for: Growth, mid-market and enterprise front office teams with a rhythmic daily workflow, competitive employees, and high-energy culture.

Cost: $$–$$$

Ambition’s acclaimed employee productivity platform gives 360° visibility into individual and team performance. Create accountability and recognition with live performance data from any data source. Track and broadcast key metrics to personalized dashboards and office TVs. Put holistic goals right in front of your reps. Compare activity level and goal attainment across teams to see how hard and how smart your reps are working. Benchmark success for teams, roles and individuals, then drive results via automated scorecards, contests, recognition and reporting. Perfect for front office teams that value performance-driven culture and transparent operations.

Salesforcesalesforce.com

Best for: Sales organizations with multiple tiers, international targets, and legions of fractured verticals to handle.

Cost: $$–$$$$

Salesforce is the kingpin of inside sales software. This platform has it all—millions of users, a phenomenal pedigree, and an App Exchange with thousands of plugins that help make your sales operation a well-oiled machine.

The Tools

Close.ioclose.io

Best for: Growing sales organizations that do it all, from prospecting to process management to customer service and beyond.

Cost: $$–$$$

Close.io features an all-in-one sales acceleration package wrapped up with a proprietary phone system. Perfect for growing sales teams and sales leaders obsessed with streamlining operations, creating the perfect conditions for scaling, and pushing for massive growth.

Basegetbase.com

Best for: Sales orgs that are data-obsessed and want to ramp up response time, lead capture, and profits from a single CRM hub.

Cost: $$

Considered by many to be the most prolific up-and-coming challenger to Salesforce, Base includes analytics that encourage a deeper, broader understanding of sales performance that goes well beyond leads and revenue, but that still makes sense to folks without data-heavy backgrounds.

Pipedrivepipedrive.com

Best for: Small and growing sales organizations that need to swiftly adapt and scale for new customers, markets, and verticals—but still need to keep costs down.

Cost: $

More affordable than almost every other comparable CRM on the market, Pipedrive offers everything you need to get your sales team up and running. It’s a perfect CRM for early-stage startups and is amazingly robust for its price.

19

Microsoft Dynamics 365microsoft.com/dynamics-365

Best for: Sales orgs that are new to the automation game, but want to ramp up quickly and be prepared to scale.

Cost: $$

Dynamics comes at a price-point that’s slightly better than Salesforce, but doesn’t quite offer the resources, plugins, or community of SFDC. It includes expansive apps integration capabilities and a buffet of tools that allows you to pick and choose how you use it as your needs evolve.

Outreachoutreach.io

Best for: Any sales team entering the new year with a quota and a CRM.

Cost: $$–$$$

Outreach lets managers establish workflow, analyze effectiveness, and keep segmented teams in sync. The value for reps is spectacular, enabling individual team members to absolutely manhandle daily workflow with coordinated, multi-channel prospect communication.

Velocifyvelocify.com

Best for: Heavy Salesforce users who hit the phones like it’s still the 1980s.

Cost: $$–$$$

Velocify is an all-purpose sales acceleration platform with three major product suites. Use Pulse for process enforcement, LeadManager for prospecting automation, and DialIQ for cold calls. No matter what type of sales organization you have, there’s immense value to be gained from this platform.

KiteDeskkitedesk.com

Best for: The sales organization that wants to spend way less time finding leads and way more time turning them into customers.

Cost: $$–$$$

Kitedesk helps you hand deliver highly-targeted leads, complete with verified phone numbers and email addresses, to your sales team. Never again will you pay for a bad list or experience the fury and frustration of junky emails, disconnected phone numbers, and bogus prospects.

SalesLoftsalesloft.com

Best for: SMB and mid-market companies looking to scale outbound sales development.

Cost: $$–$$$

SalesLoft is an established sales automation platform that comes equipped with auto-dialers, voicemail templating, email tracking, call recording, and tight synchronicity with Salesforce. There’s tons of functionality for streamlining and improving account-based sales development efforts quickly.

ToutApptoutapp.com

Best for: Highly-collaborative sales organizations who are still on the road to full maturity.

Cost: $$–$$$

ToutApp is an all-in-one team communication, outbound email, and calendaring tool that syncs with Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Salesforce, and Marketo. Stellar and diverse functionality helps you drive both inbound and outbound sales campaigns.

20

Yeswareyesware.com

Best for: Front office reps who conduct outbound communication primarily via email.

Cost: $–$$

If ‘read receipt’ is the extent of your outbound email tracking, you need Yesware. Get live notifications of prospect interaction plus real-time reports on opens, clicks, and more. Yesware is also souped-up with email templating, prescriptive analytics, and its very own auto-dialer.

GetAcceptgetaccept.com

Best for: Growing B2B sales teams focused on improving conversion rates.

Cost: $–$$

GetAccept is a sales document automation platform specifically designed for the lower half of your sales funnel. It’s the only platform that offers 1-to-1 prospect communication, video, reporting, and eSignature. Additional features such as remarketing tools and live notifications on prospect interaction make it a great choice.

DocuSigndocusign.com

Best for: Rational sales organizations who think like Don Draper—not Harvey Specter.

Cost: $–$$

DocuSign lets you manage, send, sign, and redline legally-binding documents electronically with next-to-zero hassle. DocuSign is the fastest, most secure way to put the finishing touches on a hard-won sale.

HelloSignhellosign.com

Best for: Sales organizations who use team chat and collaboration tools, and that have a swiftly growing rotation of contracts coming in.

Cost: $–$$

This eSignature solution is quickly dominating the market, thanks to its full integration with Google Apps, Box, Dropbox, Slack, and Evernote. Status notifications, templates, and branding are just some of the cool features that help you secure the bottom level of your sales funnel.

21

CHAPTER 5

Customer Experience: A Unifying Force for Sales & MarketingThe Trend

The more expensive or complex a product, the longer the sales cycle. The longer the sales cycle, the more touch points needed to shepherd the customer through the buying journey. The more touch points, the more chances you have to screw the whole thing up.

The Needs

1. Guide prospects through a coherent and deliberate buying process57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before the buyer talks to sales. (CEB)

2. Create feedback loops for communicating with customers and implementing insights91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers simply leave. (Huffington Post)

3. Turn buyers into repeat buyers, advocates and channel partnersIncreasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25–95%. (Bain & Company via HubSpot)

A single negative experience during a brand interaction is enough to turn off many customers, or at least get them thinking about

alternatives. Customer Experience (CX) has been on the radar of many business leaders for some time now. It’s one of those things that sounds good in a board meeting but never gets the attention it deserves. To date, investment and execution in CX, market-wide, has been lacking. Companies that make it a priority, see results.

Customer Experience will be the defining element in marketing and sales strategy in 2017. The increased importance in creating seamless CX will push companies to align not just Marketing and Sales departments, but Customer Success and Product as well.

Customer Experience is critical to growth and competitive differentiation. CX cannot be a separate and final phase of a business strategy, or limited to interaction with the product itself. It is a function of marketing and sales, and how well those departments coordinate communication with the customer.

CX starts with awareness and ends when … well, it never ends.

22

LeadGeniusleadgenius.com

Best for: Sales and marketing teams that want to function as two limbs of the same organism, supporting each other’s goals, evolving together, and perfecting the buyer journey.

Cost: $$–$$$$

As your target database begins to grow, LeadGenius helps you prune prospects, cultivate customers, and zero-in on company decision-makers. Use it to ditch bad leads, unearth new stakeholders and decision-makers, and scale your best-performing campaigns with A/B test-ready email outreach capabilities. Plus, you get unlimited users, so you can scale up without scraping the bottom of your budget barrel.

Intercomintercom.io

Best for: SMB, High Growth and Mid-Markets who rely heavily on client renewals and upsells.

Cost: $$–$$$

Intercom’s platform is essentially four separate products bundled into one. Allowing your personnel to chat with clients, onboard and upsell more effectively, and leverage customer feedback, makes Intercom great for both inbound and outbound sales.

Zendeskzendesk.com

Best for: Maturing support teams that default to online correspondence with customer issues.

Cost: $$–$$$

Zendesk began paving the way for streamlined, effective, and tech-enabled customer service almost a decade ago. Zendesk features like Help Center builder, their ticketing system, and real-time chat offer the perfect suite of functionality.

The Tools

Frontfrontapp.com

Best for: SMB, High Growth, and Mid-Markets who struggle with silos—and with timely internal and external communication.

Cost: $–$$

Front allows business teams to coordinate external communication: routing all incoming, outgoing, and internal communication from email, social media, phone, and messaging to a single organized inbox. On top of that, it’s also a full-fledged internal team communication platform.

Talkdesktalkdesk.com

Best for: High growth and mid-market companies with growing headcount in support.

Cost: $$–$$$

Talkdesk enables call center levels of client support—without the actual call center. It’s an auto-dialer that also routes calls, integrates with your CRM and Helpdesk, tracks response time, and provides detailed analytics about the quality and efficiency of your interactions.

Gainsightgainsight.com

Best for: Software providers looking to thrive—not just survive—at managing client success.

Cost: $$–$$$

For software providers, Gainsight’s platform is jaw-dropping in its totality. The potential breadth and scope of its application and value-adds range from improving customer retention, to driving client advocacy and increasing upsells.

23

Mixpanelmixpanel.com

Best for: Software providers who place product development and customer success above all else.

Cost: $–$$$

Mixpanel is built specifically for digital software products. Mixpanel specializes in tracking granular activity trends across your user base, so you can see what’s driving retention, renewals, upsells, and much more.

KISSmetricskissmetrics.com

Best for: SaaS companies looking to kill 2+ birds with one stone.

Cost: $$–$$$

An innovative platform that goes deep with buyer behavior tracking, event notifications, and actionable funnel analytics, KISSmetrics also has a marketing suite which includes laser-focused functionality on prospect behavior, digital marketing effectiveness, and A/B testing capabilities.

Driftdrift.com

Best for: Companies with tightly-aligned marketing, sales, and client success strategies—that want their clients and prospects to really feel heard.

Cost: $–$$$

Drift is a breakthrough communications tool that enables sales teams to communicate with prospects in a Google chat- like experience whenever they visit your company website. Catch prospects while they’re hot and address client support issues instantly.

Influitiveinfluitive.com

Best for: Businesses in growth-mode who leverage customer satisfaction for competitive edge.

Cost: $$–$$$

Influitive allows companies to activate their customers and use them to generate referrals, warm leads, and word-of-mouth inbounds. A full suite of features helps organize and propel user review campaigns, reference call lists, and incentivized promotion programs.

Allboundallbound.com

Best for: Companies with pre-existing sales partners, or a nascent partnership program.

Cost: $$–$$$

Allbound has one purpose: drive channel sales and marketing success with your company’s closest partners. Allbound is a software bridge that streamlines collaboration, content sharing, partner engagement, and business intelligence across each of your channels.

24

CHAPTER 6

Personalize Everything: From Messaging to ManagementThe Trend

There is an inverse relationship between personalization and scale. Personalization is labor-intensive. It takes effort. A highly-personalized customer experience consumes more resources than one-size-fits-all.

The Needs

1. Prospect intelligenceNearly 57% of B2B prospects and customers feel that their sales teams are not prepared for the first meeting. (IDC via HubSpot)

2. Outbound communication with prospects and clientsPersonalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%.(Aberdeen Group via HubSpot)

3. Employee onboarding and managementIt takes B2B sales reps nine months, on average, to get fully up to speed when joining a new company. (E-Strategy Trends)

What do companies stand to gain with that investment? A chance to compete in a crowded market. Consumers can only

absorb so much noise, and personalization is an opportunity to cut through the clutter.

The push to personalize everything goes hand in hand with the rise of millennials in the workforce and the need for well-designed customer experiences. From outbound sales and marketing to employee performance management, technology is helping businesses create more personalized, beneficial experiences for prospects, customers, and employees alike.

B2B buyers have been conditioned to expect B2C-like personalization. However, in this area, business-to-business companies lag well-behind their business-to-consumer counterparts. B2B companies see the need for personalization—they just have yet to get there.

A blanket approach to content and strategy is no longer enough to get the job done. More empowered customers can see it and feel it. Personalization is necessary to survive and thrive at each stage of the buyer journey.

Luckily, technology is making it possible to heavily reduce the resource-investment gap between a highly-personalized customer experience vs. one-size-fits-all.

25

Prezi Businessprezi.com/business

Best for: Businesses that want to stand above the competition with engaging presentations and real-time analytics.

Cost: $–$$

Prezi Business is an entire suite of presentation and analytics tools for those wishing to break through the noise of their slide-wielding competitors. Unlike slides, Prezi Business lets users navigate between topics at will, following the natural flow of discussion. “Conversational presenting” feels more personal, more relevant, and better-prepared for your specific target than traditional one-way slide shows. And when you’re done, powerful analytics let you see who’s viewing your materials and which parts they find most interesting.

Cirrus Insightcirrusinsight.com

Best for: Sales professionals who use Salesforce and Gmail in their daily workflow.

Cost: $

If you use Salesforce and Gmail, go download Cirrus Insight from the AppExchange right now. This is the 2nd highest-rated Salesforce application of all-time for two simple reasons: it’s remarkably user-friendly, and consistently upgraded with new features and functionality.

The Tools

PersistIQpersistiq.com

Best for: SMB and high-growth companies looking to discover the secret sauce to help them scale outbound efforts.

Cost: $$

PersistIQ is a unique outbound platform that refines messaging and creates repeatability via intuitive A/B testing and set-up- and-go email campaigns. Instantly build new email lists from SFDC, LinkedIn, or CSV and even auto-detect duplicate leads and reply emails.

Groovegroove.co

Best for: SMB and high-growth sales organizations using Salesforce and Gmail to run email-heavy outbound campaigns.

Cost: $–$$

If your sales team uses both Salesforce and Gmail and runs outbound almost exclusively over email, then it’s time to meet Groove. Groove allows you to sync your Google Calendar and Gmail account to Salesforce, create targeted prospect lists, multi-step touchpoints, and synchronized campaigns.

SendBloomsendbloom.com

Best for: SMB and high-growth sales organizations using Salesforce and Gmail to run email-heavy outbound campaigns, and that are dedicated to standing out.

Cost: $–$$

SendBloom’s automated prospecting software is built to enable more personalized 1-to-1 email campaigns using a fraction of the typical time and labor. Create granular segmentations, build and clone frictionless campaigns, and tailor messaging based on prospect data fields.

26

Zoomzoom.us

Best for: Business teams of all sizes that are disillusioned with their current web conferencing provider.

Cost: $–$$$

Zoom lets you run slick marketing webinars, interface with sales prospects, onboard new clients over video, and record it all so you can review and analyze it later on. If you’re looking to ditch your old web conferencing approach, the quality, usability, and support that Zoom delivers warrants your attention.

BlueJeansbluejeans.com

Best for: Mid-market and growing companies in competitive, innovative markets.

Cost: $–$$$

BlueJeans is the market leader in cross-functional video communication for modern business teams, largely because it’s the most versatile in terms of functionality, and the most primed for opportunistic companies looking to gain an edge via video.

Join.mejoin.me

Best for: Inexperienced web conferencing users looking for a simple, low-impact solution.

Cost: $–$$

With no cost and no need to download anything, Join.me is many business teams’ first brush with web conferencing software. Additional benefits like call recording, analytics, and versatile attendee preferences make virtual conferencing a worry- free experience.

GoToMeetinggotomeeting.com

Best for: Serious web conferencers who want zero frills and a utilitarian software that attendees are most likely to be comfortable with using.

Cost: $–$$

GoToMeeting allows you to run video demos, international conference calls, and virtual meetings. It also has the added functionality of screenshare, recording, and virtual execution of PowerPoints and other presentations.

Vidyardvidyard.com

Best for: Companies with a strong array of existing video assets and strategies ready to launch.

Cost: $$

Vidyard offers the most robust solution for leveraging video content across sales, marketing, support, and internal team channels. Tailor and embed videos across your website and communication channels with maximum efficiency, analytics, and personalization.

Consensusgoconsensus.com

Best for: Growth and mid-market B2B teams with a substantial video asset library.

Cost: $$

Consensus lets you dynamically stitch together videos with unprecedented personalization, automation, and analytics. Slide in different clips, attach PDFs, and track prospect interaction with branded videos to help your sales team close more deals.

27

LearnCorelearncore.com

Best for: High growth, mid-market and enterprise companies that use Salesforce.

Cost: $–$$

LearnCore takes sales, account management and customer support team onboarding, training, and coaching to the next level with its versatile array of features. Track new hire onboarding, coach and train using in-game footage, and create a dedicated system to get the most out of your front office personnel.

ExecVisionexecvision.io

Best for: Mid-sized inside sales teams that hit the phones throughout the entire sales process.

Cost: $$

ExecVision delivers the full suite of features needed for optimum call coaching, including live call feeds, feedback channels, recording, analytics, scorecards, storage, organization, and reporting.

Gong.iogong.io

Best for: Sales organizations that primarily conduct calls and meetings via web conferencing.

Cost: $$

Gong.io is like an instant replay system with in-game analysis that’s powered by AI. Gong.io also provides teams with a call recording library, auto-routing to managers and peers, and a time-specific comments section for each recording.

28

CHAPTER 7

The Consolidated Technology StackThe Trend

Marketing and sales teams are beginning to consolidate their stacks.

The Needs

1. Seamless integration and reportingThe marketing technology industry has seen a 3,400% increase in technologies and solutions in about 5 years. (MarTech)

2. Force multipliers on technology and personnel investments31.3% of companies achieved all or a majority of sales effectiveness initiatives implemented during the past two years. (CSO Insights)

3. Inter-department communication and collaboration59% of sales enablement initiatives containing a formal process for cross-functional collaboration achieved all or a majority of expectations. (CSO Insights)

The B2B marketing technology stacks are getting heavy. The integrations, mergers, and partnerships of 2017 will shape the

landscape for the next decade and beyond. Integrations are key, and marketing and sales tools are becoming multi-purpose instead of point solutions.

In this new ecosystem, companies should make buying and renewal decisions based on four key measurables: adoption, effectiveness, efficiency and synchronicity. B2B Marketing and Sales teams need (and will be more apt to adopt) tools that give them an edge, not slow them down. Broad-reaching functionality, automation and integration capabilities are all huge pluses.

Across functions, it’s important for managers and operations leaders to proactively ask reps for their own assessment of current enablement tools. Oftentimes, reps will also have adopted their own tools to help drive their individual daily efforts. Find out what’s working and try to ensure consistency.

29

Ambitionambition.com

Best for: Growth, mid-market and enterprise front office teams with a rhythmic daily workflow, competitive employees, and high-energy culture.

Cost: $$–$$$

Ambition’s acclaimed employee productivity platform gives 360° visibility into individual and team performance. Create accountability and recognition with live performance data from any data source. Track and broadcast key metrics to personalized dashboards and office TVs. Put holistic goals right in front of your reps. Compare activity level and goal attainment across teams to see how hard and how smart your reps are working. Benchmark success for teams, roles and individuals, then drive results via automated scorecards, contests, recognition and reporting. Perfect for front office teams that value performance-driven culture and transparent operations.

Prezi Businessprezi.com/business

Best for: Businesses that want to stand above the competition with engaging presentations and real-time analytics.

Cost: $–$$

Prezi Business is an entire suite of presentation and analytics tools for those wishing to break through the noise of their slide-wielding competitors. Unlike slides, Prezi Business lets users navigate between topics at will, following the natural flow of discussion. “Conversational presenting” feels more personal, more relevant, and better-prepared for your specific target than traditional one-way slide shows. And when you’re done, powerful analytics let you see who’s viewing your materials and which parts they find most interesting.

The Tools

LinkedIn Sales Navigatorbusiness.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/sales-navigator

Best for: B2B sales and marketing personnel who are never finished prospecting.

Cost: $$

Sales Navigator gives you the keys to the largest prospect database in the world with targeting, list building, and integrations that are nothing short of spectacular. Combine Sales Navigator with a high-powered CRM and you’ll have a never-ending supply of targeted prospects.

InfusionSoftinfusionsoft.com

Best for: SMBs yet to adopt CRM or marketing automation, but that care deeply about alignment.

Cost: $$–$$$

In terms of sheer versatility, InfusionSoft is on a level of its own. This double-sided sales and marketing automation platform caters perfectly to SMBs looking to streamline operations as tightly as possible.

Zohozoho.com

Best for: Companies looking for a total connector across all of their chosen business software solutions.

Cost: $–$$$

Zoho brings it all to the table: CRM, helpdesk, accounting tools, email, analytics—you’d be hard-pressed to find a more complete suite of business operations features anywhere else. Zoho is also the perfect solution for integrating with Google G-Suite or Microsoft Office 365.

30

Sendgridsendgrid.com

Best for: Email marketing teams built on strong engineering and developer principles.

Cost: $–$$$

Sendgrid approaches email automation with an engineer’s perspective, providing unique advantages for tech-savvy operations specialists and marketing leaders. Sendgrid’s key benefits are its powerful segmentation and API integrations, flexible workflow, and reporting clarity.

Autopilotautopilothq.com

Best for: SMB marketing teams looking for an effective alternative to marketing automation.

Cost: $$–$$$

Autopilot gives you complete control over how prospects are directed down the sales funnel, using personalization, automation, and integrations with other apps. The ability to map complex paths with unique outreach methods, like SMS, as well as auto-updates to Salesforce makes Autopilot a very compelling tool.

Zapierzapier.com

Best for: Business operators who want an extinction event for team busywork.

Cost: $–$$

Zapier helps you swiftly direct your data across separate apps to make things as streamlined as possible. By selecting the apps you’re currently using and connecting with Zapier, this workflow efficiency machine can reduce your busywork by leaps and bounds.

Segmentsegment.com

Best for: Ops-minded business teams looking to leverage more value from existing software.

Cost: $–$$$

With over 180 integrations available, Segment is perhaps the most versatile bridge builder among existing sales, marketing, and support technologies. Segment is great for creating connections between any number of different platforms including helpdesk, payments, referrals, live chat, attribution, and SQL.

Calendlycalendly.com

Best for: Companies whose employees have meeting after meeting after meeting—and who can’t afford to miss a single one.

Cost: $

Calendly takes away the pressure of managing multiple calendars and schedules. Simply set your availability preferences in the platform, share a link with people who want to meet with you, and leave the time selection and booking to them.

Docurateddocurated.com

Best for: Companies with lots of great content, but no streamlined processes in place to help sales reps leverage it.

Cost: $$–$$$

Docurated allows your sales team to easily access relevant content like case studies, infographics, and videos. Docurated ensures that the right assets are readily available by allowing you to transform disparate content systems into a single, powerful knowledge base.

31

Octivoctiv.com

Best for: High growth, mid-market, and enterprise teams that are content-driven and that interface B2B prospects digitally.

Cost: $$

Octiv understands that creating sales collateral is only good if you can find it. That’s why Octiv empowers your team to access all of your sales collateral with seamless customization, storage, routing, and integration capabilities.

RingDNAringdna.com

Best for: Call centers and phone-centric inside sales teams of all shapes and sizes.

Cost: Contact

For sales teams that still hit the phone with abandon, RingDNA is an auto-dialer that comes equipped with powerful automation, intelligence, and analytics. RingDNA helps spur more efficient workflow, more effective conversations, and insights between sales and marketing.

Troopstroops.ai

Best for: Sales organizations who rely heavily on Salesforce and Slack.

Cost: $–$$

Troops is a GIF-driven Slackbot that auto-sends Salesforce updates to team members via Slack. Get live updates on prospect activity and newly closed accounts, coupled with compelling, humorous visuals, to ensure that everyone in your sales team stays happy.

32

CHAPTER 8

The Currency of TrustThe Trend

From security, to customer service, to data quality, usability and beyond, trust will become a key differentiator for marketing, sales and business intelligence technology vendors in 2017.

The Needs

1. Quick access to organized internal and external dataA study of 61 million customer records by Dun & Bradstreet found that 84% of marketing databases are barely functional and 64% lack basic data such as industry, revenue and employee fields. (Dun & Bradstreet)

2. Integrated cross-channel data sources leveraging client data84% of B2B decision makers start the buying process with a referral. (SBI)

3. Proactive, actionable insights74% of marketers prioritize lead quality over lead quantity, with 59% asserting that better database depth and accuracy is a top priority. (Dun & Bradstreet)

The world is getting smaller; the market more competitive. B2B customers have the ability and willingness to shift spend. B2B

companies want to business with partners they can rely on—as they should. To stay competitive, B2B sales, marketing and support leaders must leverage prospect, employee, and customer data to prospect smarter, enhance their funnel, and drive renewal and referral channels more powerfully than ever before.

In the past, buyer decision-making and internal decision-making had two trust centers: brand and gut. Today, trust has three new trust centers: data, referrals, and support. To that effect, savvy business leaders will lean heavily on data to make strategic decisions across sales, marketing and support. Data will be the North Star for increasing demand, prospecting smarter and creating shorter sales cycles and better customer experiences.

Word gets around. Marketing and sales leaders rely on their peers for recommendations. Solutions that do not deliver on their promise of smooth onboarding, easy integrations, and reliable service will see churn rise and adoption slow. Onboarding is more important than ever. Dedicated support is a baseline expectation. Handing over a technical product with the equivalent of an instruction manual does not cut it because buyers have options.

The companies that win will leverage key data insights from their current client base to influence their entire marketing and sales funnel. Add in a strong, data-driven employee management strategy and you have foundations of a scalable, successful business.

33

LeadGeniusleadgenius.com

Best for: Sales and marketing teams that want to function as two limbs of the same organism, supporting each other’s goals, evolving together, and perfecting the buyer journey.

Cost: $$–$$$$

As your target database begins to grow, LeadGenius helps you prune prospects, cultivate customers, and zero-in on company decision-makers. Use it to ditch bad leads, unearth new stakeholders and decision-makers, and scale your best-performing campaigns with A/B test-ready email outreach capabilities. Plus, you get unlimited users, so you can scale up without scraping the bottom of your budget barrel.

ZoomInfozoominfo.com

Best for: Sales and marketing leaders new to sales intelligence software, or that are unhappy with their current provider.

Cost: $$–$$$

This is the most powerful sales and marketing intelligence tool at this price level. If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to start conducting targeted prospect collection, enrichment, and data cleansing, ZoomInfo is for you.

Clearbitclearbit.com

Best for: Prospectors, operations leads, and anyone who serves the top of the sales funnel.

Cost: $–$$

Clearbit is the most efficient way to get quick sales intelligence, update your prospect list, and assess the viability of new inbound leads you may be capturing. If you need help finding key decision makers and their contact info within an account, Clearbit is for you.

The Tools

RingLeadringlead.com

Best for: CRM and marketing automation users struggling with poor data quality.

Cost: $$

RingLead is a data health specialist that analyzes database quality, corrects duplicate contact entries, and auto-routes leads to appropriate personnel. A great investment for those who suffer from the ailments of bad data.

MatterMarkmattermark.com

Best for: B2B sales organizations that use Salesforce and are highly data-driven in their sales process.

Cost: $$–$$$

MatterMark uses automation and integrations with Salesforce, Google Sheets, and web browsers to enable targeted data discovery, import, and enrichment across the board. MatterMark is for those who are in need of some enrichment to their lead data.

Hunterhunter.io

Best for: Anyone vetting new (and existing) contacts, and who needs more accurate contact info.

Cost: $–$$$

Hunter is the perfect starting point for a sales ops leader who is looking to find prospect data quickly and easily. Simply install the Email Hunter plugin into your Chrome Browser, and whenever you access a prospect’s LinkedIn page, Email Hunter will find their email for you.

34

Ghosteryghostery.com

Best for: B2B sales and marketing teams that consider marketing technology to be a crucial data point in prospect accounts.

Cost: $

A neat little app that reveals the entire marketing technology stack of any company via their URL, Ghostery is a must-have for any sales or marketing team that derives value from finding information about anything from IT budget to front office pain points and target markets.

Qualtricsqualtrics.com

Best for: Mid-market and enterprise teams that see the value of proactive, tailored, continuous feedback.

Cost: $$–$$$

Qualtrics is the undisputed leader in survey-driven customer experience, employee engagement, and market research. Qualtrics lets you ask the questions that matter most and have your employees, customers, and markets answer them loud and clear.

Domodomo.com

Best for: Forward-thinking mid-market and enterprise companies who rely heavily on disparate data tracking systems.

Cost: $$

Domo demonstrates the changing tides in business intelligence and performance management. Slick visuals, goal-oriented graphs, team communication channels, and real-time notifications distinguish Domo as a unique solution built to maximize deliverability, actionability, and visibility.

Tableautableausoftware.com

Best for: Mid-Market and enterprise-level organizations with relatively complex business operations.

Cost: $$$

Tableu’s souped-up business intelligence platform connects with hundreds of data sources, enabling instant data visualization, sharing, and on-the-go mobile insights. Create every conceivable graphic and build your business intelligence war room.

Gooddatagooddata.com

Best for: Experienced, resource-backed, enterprise-grade analytics and operations teams.

Cost: $$$–$$$$

GoodData offers a treasure trove of functionality that savvy analytics professionals will turn into an arsenal for hyper-efficient business operations. This includes prescriptive guiding interfaces, versatile insight distribution, and predictive analytics that span channels and departments.

Lookerlooker.com

Best for: Mid-Market and enterprise companies with disconnected data systems.

Cost: $$–$$$

If you’re using a disparate array of platforms to store key performance data, Looker is here to bring order to the chaos. Want to see the big picture insights from Oracle, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Salesforce all in one place? Looker was born to make that happen.

35

Chartiochartio.com

Best for: Operations leaders that need to reduce lag time, broaden relevance, and increase synchronization across business intelligence tools.

Cost: $$–$$$

A sleek, streamlined business intelligence platform, Chartio has quickly established itself as a leader of agile platforms predicated on taking massive swaths of disconnected data and fusing them into simplified, actionable business analytics.

ClearSlideclearslide.com

Best for: High growth, mid-market, and enterprise sales organizations seeking granular insights from inside the trenches.

Cost: $$–$$$

ClearSlide is a tool that provides deep insights into how prospects are responding to your sales collateral. If you want to test the mettle of your marketing collateral, phone effectiveness, and follow-up emails, this is the total package for managers and reps alike.

36

CHAPTER 9

Machine Learning: Predictive Sales and MarketingThe Trend

Many platforms already used by marketing and sales team have or are developing predictive capabilities. However, many companies lack the data volume and/or quality needed to get the value from these features. Opportunities are hiding in messy and incomplete data.

The Needs

1. Lead scoring and prioritization61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (Marketing Sherpa via Marketo)

2. Data volume and qualityBig data has emerged as the critical factor to achieving an enterprise-wide, customer-centric culture, according to 40% of CMOs and 51% of CIOs. (CMO.com)

3. Data organization and completeness 24% of companies said that ¼ of their lead data is complete: that means ~75% of lead data is missing. (RingLead)

4. Dynamic, personalized customer experiences must be scalable

• The biggest challenges with personalization cited in the study are gaining insight quickly enough (40%), having enough data (39%), and inaccurate data (38%). (Experian via MarketingCharts)

• In-house marketers who are personalizing their Web experiences and who are able to quantify the improvement see, on average, a 19% uplift in sales. (CMO.com)

Many SaaS companies have been incorporating machine learning technology into their platform. In 2017, these companies will

have gathered enough data to make machine learning a true value-add to their platforms.

Predictive is on the rise because lead prioritization, personalization, and content output are all time-consuming to do at scale. Having clean, complete data is the first step. Forming a cohesive plan of attack for each is the second. Third is implementation, execution and adaptation based on what the data instructs.

Done right, machine learning has the opportunity to advance B2B sales like never before by doing all of the time-consuming, inefficient dirty work that data-driven outbound teams must do in order to drive more successful conversations.

37

Prezi Businessprezi.com/business

Best for: Businesses that want to stand above the competition with engaging presentations and real-time analytics.

Cost: $–$$

Prezi Business is an entire suite of presentation and analytics tools for those wishing to break through the noise of their slide-wielding competitors. Unlike slides, Prezi Business lets users navigate between topics at will, following the natural flow of discussion. “Conversational presenting” feels more personal, more relevant, and better-prepared for your specific target than traditional one-way slide shows. And when you’re done, powerful analytics let you see who’s viewing your materials and which parts they find most interesting.

InsideSalesinsidesales.com

Best for: High-performing mid-market/enterprise sales organizations looking to become elite.

Cost: $$$–$$$$

InsideSales is an incredibly powerful tool with unmatched versatility. ISDC includes predictive forecasting, auto-dialing, lead scoring, email tracking, and playbooks. It’s a potent Swiss Army knife that will impress even the most watchful of sales leaders.

The Tools

Inferinfer.com

Best for: High growth, mid-market, and enterprise sales organizations with defined ICP(s) and maturing sales and marketing processes.

Cost: $$–$$$

Infer offers amazingly granular insight into prospect characteristics and interactions at all levels of your sales and marketing funnel. Its customizable analytics give you a surefire way to assess the evolution of ICPs and the warmth of target accounts.

InsightSquaredinsightsquared.com

Best for: SMB, high growth, and mid-market and sales organizations with reliable data.

Cost: $$–$$$

InsightSquared provides sales forecasting, process insights, and granular pipeline trends, all in one platform. Perfect for SMB, Growth and Mid-Market companies (SaaS companies are its specialty), InsightSquared offers just the right level of functionality for science-minded sales managers, ops, and reps.

Biziblebizible.com

Best for: Companies that leverage a hybrid inbound and account-based marketing model.

Cost: $$

Bizible provides incredible value by spotlighting the full impact of marketing efforts throughout the entire B2B funnel. Bizible’s true trick is how it predicts account interest and viability using the behavioral data of leads within that account. This is a great application of two key trends—ABM and machine learning—driving modern B2B sales.

38

SalesWingssaleswingsapp.com

Best for: Companies new to lead scoring/tracking who conduct a transactional sales cycle.

Cost: $$

SalesWings is a website tracking and lead scoring add-on that identifies, scores, and updates sales leads based on website activity. SalesWings is an easy way to start analyzing past and future visits from leads and attach scores based on their level of engagement and interest.

Charliecharlieapp.com

Best for: Business pros that interface with prospects/clients and have meeting-filled calendars.

Cost: $

Charlie is the ultimate personal assistant for salespeople and executives who regularly meet with external stakeholders. Its specialty is researching the people attending your upcoming meetings, then providing you with timely, insightful briefs on recent developments, shared interests, and mutual connections pertaining to everyone involved.

Nudgeneednudge.com

Best for: B2B sales reps with larger target accounts and more complex sales processes.

Cost: $–$$

Nudge plugs into Gmail and shows you comprehensive information on your prospect and their company, including latest news, press hits, and social media posts. Nudge is a great tool for gaining insight into your prospect’s behaviors and getting timely updates on the state of the accounts you’re trying to close.

Owlerowler.com

Best for: B2B reps pitching solutions to hard-to-impress decision-makers.

Cost: $

Researching a prospect can help you walk into a meeting and use their own words to sell them on your solution. Owler lets you do efficient, on-the-spot research on prospects—for free—and offers comprehensive insights that you can modify and slice as you see fit.

Crystalcrystalknows.com

Best for: Sales and marketing pros looking to improve internal and external communications.

Cost: $–$$

Crystal gives amazing insight into what type of person your prospect is and how to communicate with them based on how they write emails, their DISC profile, and other bits of information. Crystal integrates with Gmail, and is a favorite of sales reps who use it for cold outreach.