When I was asked to give a keynote at DemandCon on the past, present, and future of demand generation, I wondered what new wisdom I could share about the past and present. We've all lived it; we all know how bad marketing and sales teams have been at generating demand. So I shared some research data that validates what we know about the poor current state and then shared four counterinituitive mindset shifts that marketing and sales leaders need to make if they want their future to be rosier than today:

• Fight funnel vision.
• Stop trying to align marketing with sales.
• Don't talk about what you do.
• Take a stand.

You can watch the presentation, or click Watch A Segment to go directly to The Future:

One of the reasons I enjoy working at Forrester is the unique opportunity to turn data into actionable insights that tech marketers can use to drive more revenue for their companies by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their marketing.  

Based on this data and our work with clients, five simple but powerful guiding principles have emerged around targeting, marketing vehicles, content strategy, and messaging that all tech marketers can apply. Over the next five weeks, I’ll be sharing them with you via this blog, one per week on Tuesday mornings, starting today.

Guiding Principle Number One: Targeting

We all know that high-consideration technology purchases at medium and large enterprises involve multiple stakeholders. However, all too often, marketers and/or sales associate a disproportionate amount of influence to one or two particular influencers; for example, the CIO or line of business (LOB) professional. The reality is that no one influencer has more than 30% of the total power through the purchase process. You must ensure that you are allocating your marketing programs proportionally across all of the appropriate influencers and that you don’t get fixated on simply engaging one or two influencers, thinking that they control all of the necessary power.

So, the next time you are deciding whom to target, remember the 30% rule — it will serve you well.

Cloud computing and CRM giant salesforce.com has acquired Radian6 to add real social media monitoring and engagement to its suite of clouds, in a deal valued at $326 million. Why do I say "real"? Salesforce.com has been talking about social CRM and the importance of feeding social media mentions into sales and service processes for quite some time, but this acquisition will let salesforce.com deliver on that vision in a much bigger way. 

I wrote about social listening platforms in my February report on "Emerging Technologies B2B CMOs Should Watch In 2011." CMOs should take notice of this acquisition because it represents the first foray for salesforce.com into capabilities that CMOs at large enterprises should care about, and since salesforce.com is aggressively trying to increase its penetration in the large-enterprise market, it could be followed by other additions to form the strikingly missing marketing cloud, namely marketing automation to support lead nurturing and closed-loop marketing. Salesforce.com will also likely take Radian6, or a version it ports to the Force.com platform, to its bread-and-butter midmarket, making social listening a bigger part of the marketing strategy for smaller and midsize firms, as it should be. 

Here are a few valuable use cases that will result from this marriage that can improve sales and marketing effectiveness and/or the customer experience your firm delivers:

• Find more leads. Marketers can listen for buying signals in the postings and discussions on social sites, blogs, and communities and use these signals to identify new warm leads to add to the system and start marketing to these people. 

CMOs need to be orchestrating the brand experience across channels, departments, and the customer life cycle, but it can be hard to keep up with emerging technologies that can enable significant improvements in how your firm engages customers. To help you do this, I've started a series of reports for B2B CMOs and marketing leaders to highlight technologies that they should have on their radar over the next 12 to 18 months.

We select technologies that meet the following criteria: 1) The technology can improve how companies engage prospects and customers at one or more points in the customer life cycle; 2) it is easy for the business to implement; 3) enterprise-scale companies have started to use it; and 4) it does not have enough hype to be on everyone’s radar.

The first installment focuses on four emerging technologies:

• Online content curation to build thought leadership and authority relationships.
• Listening platforms to monitor brand sentiment and gain customer insight.
• Brand advocate platforms to energize word of mouth (WOM).
• Appointment scheduling applications to engage people ready to buy.

Learn more about what these are and why they are important by reading the new report, "Emerging Technologies B2B CMOs Should Watch In 2011." And let me know about other emerging technologies you'd like to see profiled in the future or about experiences with these platforms.