Yes, the headline is a bit blunt…we are working so hard these days, weaving together our program for you, that my creative juices are a little fried. 

If you’ve been to one of our Sales Enablement forums, you know we put a lot of effort into ensuring a core event theme and message that’s solid, consistent, and woven throughout every presentation and session.  You also know we strive to create a cohesive community experience where you and your team can leave with strong new perspectives, a rolodex of new contacts, and a sense of purpose to help drive success at your company.

What I’d like to do is share with you some of what we have in store.

The title of our forum is: Accelerating Revenue In A Changed Economy.  Is this just hyperbole, or are we really up to something?

As you know, we’ve been researching the growing divide between buyers and sellers now for the last four years.  Recently, however, we’ve been shining a brighter light into this chasm…and illuminating the gaps between the articulation of the corporate business strategy and the different tactics used by members of the executive committee to execute that strategy. 

What have we uncovered?

Well – to put it kindly – many of the tried-and-true tactics, successfully used by these leaders in the past, no longer work in today’s changed economy. 

Why? 

Major tectonic forces – such as the emergence of our “do more with less” economy and the increased empowerment of buyers – are having fundamental and transformative impacts on how B2B companies sell and market their products and services. 

Forrester hosts its Sales Enablement Forum in Scottsdale, Arizona, on March 4 and 5, 2013. Attendees will engage as a community with a shared focus on driving revenue, hear success stories in process from their peers and leading B2B practitioners, become immersed in the latest thinking and data from Forrester including face time with analysts, all in the comfort of the Camelback Inn Resort & Spa. Over the next three weeks, Marketing Mondays will spotlight the

This is the Don't Miss The Forum edition of my running effort to connect you to all the value, ideas, analysts, and happenings from my team at Forrester.  As we ring in 2013, I want to share the key date above all others in Q1 you won't want to miss.

That is our once-a-year major forum on March 4th-5th in Scottsdale, Arizona. The theme, "Accelerating Revenue In A Changed Economy".  You can explore the agenda, speakers, theme, and register to attend at this link.

I am often asked about that theme and what we will focus on at the event.  So here are those answers.

The theme reflects a simple reality we see across B2B businesses and the leaders we support. These companies are experiencing a gap between their strategic goals and in-the-trenches execution. Be that rolling out a new product and services capability, entering a new segment, or expanding in existing accounts. And it's not getting easier given the do-more-with-less reset of the economy. What does that feel like?  The executive sposnsors of major programs at your prospects, to whom you aspire to sell, bring a "how can you help me and my busienss succeed" lens to their side of the conversation. When they don't hear that, they disengage. Making the shift from pushing products to solving problems is at the core of the change your buyers seek today.   

I (Lori Wizdo) am on a plane, flying to San Francisco, to participate in Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum. As I was prepping for my (limited) role in the event, I had a flashback to one of the most famous disses of the sales profession ever written. 

It’s contained in the 1960’s article "Marketing Myopia”, written by Theodore Levitt, which has become one of the best known and most quoted of Harvard Business Review's articles. The article is essentially about having a business strategy that concentrates on meeting customer needs rather than selling products. A key take away, which most marketing or business school grads remember, is the observation that “had railroad executives seen themselves as being in the transportation business rather than the railroad business, they would have continued to grow.”

However, it is also in this article that Levitt was breathtakingly critical of the sales profession: "Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about." He went on to explain that sales "does not...view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs. The customer is somebody 'out there' who, with proper cunning, can be separated from his or her loose change."

Well, that might have been true then (who I am to disagree with a marketing legend) but it’s definitely not true now – and certainly not in the tech industry.