Creating an Unfair Advantage

Don’t you just love that phrase? I do. For me, it represents the real opportunity before all demand generation marketers today.

As I reflect on that phrase, it is clear that we now have a whole new genre of tools at our disposal that cross both marketing and sales and that use the power of the web to help us make better pursuit decisions – from the very top of the lead funnel all the way deep into the sales funnel. For example, if I’m a demand generation marketer or a sales person, I want to know the minute my top prospects are responding to my emails, visiting key pages on my website or tweeting about my offerings. Insight to this kind of on-line behavior helps me make better decisions that result in more business for my company. AND, I can respond manually or automatically to this behavior.

I bought my first marketing automation system 5 years ago when I was looking for a way to produce high quality leads for our sales team that would have a measurable impact on revenue. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a marketing automation demo. I sat in my chair amazed at how it worked and thinking furiously how this was going to dramatically change not only how we created leads but also how we sold. This was beyond gaining a competitive advantage, this was going to give us an unfair advantage – and it did.

Yet, the market has been slow in the uptake with only about 2,000 companies currently using the more sophisticated marketing automation systems with sales extensions. But we are seeing phenomenal growth in this category in 2009.

Fast forward to 2009. “Gaining an unfair advantage” is a phrase that popped up last week while interviewing Jon Miller of Marketo for our iGNITE Demand Generation Series. We were discussing Marketo’s new Sales Insight solution and I had asked Jon how their customers were responding to it. He said one of his customers said that Sales Insight gave his team an “unfair advantage.” I got goose bumps! Who doesn’t want an unfair advantage in this challenging and hyper-competitive market?

My contention is that the current genre of marketing automation tools and sales extensions can provide a company with an unfair advantage. “Gaining an unfair advantage” needs to be the rallying cry for all demand generation marketers in 2009 and beyond. You have access to tools, processes and best practices that can create this “unfair advantage” for your company. Use them!

What have you seen?