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My friends, a new report from the CMO Council seems to show that sales and marketing executives are doing a better job of working together.
The marketers surveyed believe they made some significant progress in driving the top line by working more closely with their sales counterparts in 2008. This appears to be one of their top priorities in 2009 also. 51% of marketers surveyed in the CMO Council study cited “realigned marketing to better support sales and drive demand generation” as their top accomplishment for 2008. 64.5% of marketers surveyed also said the #1 way they measure the performance of their marketing initiatives now is through the status of the sales pipeline.
The report also finds evidence that investment in online tools and techniques for demand creation is growing. The survey respondents expect to spend 50% more on online techniques than on traditional media in 2009. There’s not such quite rosy news on marketing automation yet with only about 13% of marketers planning to deploy such systems in 2009. This is still a bit ahead-of-the-curve it seems.
Maybe because of their great work “reaching across the aisle” to their sales counterparts, and their focus on the sales pipeline, most marketers who responded to the survey were confident that they, and their teams, would keep their jobs in this economic downturn. Only 12% of CMOs surveyed planned to cut their team’s staffing levels as of the time of the survey (conducted at the beginning of 2009 so well into our “economic crisis”).
Working with the sales force, filling the sales pipeline, using online tools…this all sounds so “Sales 2.0”. Good work marketers. Keep it up! We could all come out of this recession in good shape if you do.
Some Background
The CMO Council surveyed 650 marketers. 78% in the US, 13% in Europe and 4% in Asia. 58% of respondents were in B2B businesses, 11% in B2C and 31% in businesses involved in both areas. Company size went up to $10 billion in revenue — the biggest segment was 46% of respondents in companies less than $50 million in revenue.
You can grab a complimentary executive summary of the report from the CMO Council’s website.