In our experience, companies that have undertaken this transformation and achieved the benefits highlighted in Figure 1 have built such connections, adopted new marketing technologies and tools to gain more insights from existing data, and optimized and improved processes across the funnel shown in Figure 4. They also made complex transformations less intimidating by breaking them down into smaller integrated initiatives.
The primary deliverable of the demand center is the marketing qualified lead (MQL). Each should contain required and optional qualitative elements that enable the sales team to efficiently convert these leads into sales qualified leads or SQLs. The automated demand center in the funnel in Figure 4 uses available data to qualify and evaluate potential new business and prospects from existing business (upsell and cross-sell opportunities and churn risk). The highest priority leads are sent to sales for further qualification and eventual conversion, while others are given lower priority and sent back to the nurturing process or demoted. Demand Center’s GenAI module can incorporate a wide range of contextual data to scale and personalize lead generation and enrichment while accelerating the process.
Marketing teams are responsible for generating leads, nurturing and enhancing leads, and creating content to qualify marketing-qualified leads. Optimizing this process is necessary because too many or too few leads can kill sales efforts. To optimize the activity of the sales team, it is important to manage two parameters: the number of MQLs per week or month and the associated potential estimated SQL volume. With a weak MQL flow, there is a risk that the sales team will be underutilized and sales targets will be compromised. With an excess of MQLs, there is a risk that leads will be wasted or become stale if the sales team does not have enough capacity to contact all leads in a certain time.
Generating SQL is the first important activity of the sales team that processes MQLs. While the generation, maintenance and evaluation of MQLs are usually highly automated in the demand center, converting them to SQL often requires an initial detailed one-to-one interaction with the prospect.
Finally, companies need to enter into clearly defined and specific service level agreements between marketing and sales. This includes underlying KPIs and goals along the entire funnel or process. Clear service level agreements between demand center and sales ensure uniform certification of SQL and division of responsibilities.
This typically requires investments in marketing and sales technology stacks such as CRM and marketing automation systems. But more importantly, definition of services and process elements.
Despite technological advances and fundamental changes in how customers buy products and services, many B2B companies still view technological change as a smoldering platform rather than a flaming platform. The combined force of these fundamental changes – the consumerization of B2B buying, the fluidity of customer relationships, and the emergence of new tools – is bringing B2B companies to a tipping point. Companies that invest in platforms like demand centers and integrate their marketing and sales functions are in a better position to optimize their marketing investments, convert leads more efficiently, and strengthen customer relationships.
