I have the privilege of talking with many of our clients and, surprising as it may sound, many don't have titles that match their real jobs!  Who does these days? Maybe the CFO. So, as we gear up for our second annual Sales Enablement Forum, I want to make sure we don't miss inviting any of our Tech Marketing friends who do a little enablement on the side, or a lot of it as their full-time focus, title or not...

We chose the lead image for this year's Sales Enablement event to grab your attention because we believe you can truly be a HERO to your CEO. But it won't be an everyday task – it will take new skills and strong powers!

Vendor CEOs today want deeper relationships with customers to become their trusted suppliers. And that puts pressure on sales teams – and those who enable them – to cross-sell at higher levels. Is that working?

Our Buyer Insight study found that 13% of executive buyers believe that a salesperson can clearly show they understand their business issues and articulate a way to solve them. When we ask vendor CEOs, "Are you satisfied that your sales force is getting your company to its strategic objectives?" the answer is a resounding "No."

This is the strategy to execution gap that takes up a lot of sales and marketing energy today. It is also filled with well-intentioned but often uncoordinated activity intended to help sales sell.

Understanding the priorities of fellow tech marketers is a great way to tune one’s own 2012 initiatives.   Over the past two months, my Forrester Technology Council colleagues and I have spent quite a bit of time surveying and talking with members (~ 50 tech CMO’s and VP’s of Marketing) about their priorities for 2012.  Before the champagne pops up here in Boston, I wanted to share a few of the priorities my colleagues and I are hearing most about for 2012:

• Demand management wins out across the board.   In years past, the top priority for our tech marketing members centered around "driving leads into the funnel."  In 2012, tech marketing execs still care about driving leads, but there is an increased desire to trade lead volume for better lead quality.   Quality that comes from strong nurturing activities to help leads move from the top of funnel into the middle and ultimately into a position where they are "sales-ready."  A vocal number of members expressed commitment to building a more comprehensive demand management process where they would balance their lead nurturing and lead generation initiatives appropriately.  

• Brand/rebranding comes into vogue.  Many of our members have put brand and/or rebranding at the top of their lists for 2012.  The need to create greater market differentiation against competitors and to build market awareness in new markets (e.g. verticals, geographies) were cited as the top reasons for steering funds, resources and time in brand or rebranding initiatives.     

"Branding & rebranding" is rising fast on the list of priorities for tech marketers in 2012.

Over the past few months, my colleagues and I in the Tech Marketing Council have been engaging in a rising number of client discussions around the topic of “brand.” These conversations with our CMO and VP of marketing clients have come in a few different flavors:

• Branding for Emerging Firms. Small, but not startup, vendors seeking to create better brand position and differentiation to take on the established sector players. (e.g., David and Goliath)
• Rebrand for Maturing Firms. Midsize growing tech companies ($250M+) with designs on being the next $1B+ firm in their sector. (e.g., “Good to Great”)
• Post M&A Brand Integration. Both emerging and large tech firms are working to integrate newly acquired companies, personnel and products. (e.g., House of Many Brands)

Peter O'Neill here. I took advantage of an invitation to dine with around 15 CIOs this week in Frankfurt and our topic of conversation was “Managing The Online Customer Journey.”  This is the regular event organized by CIO Magazine, and I go along, calendar permitting, when I am invited to present or if the topic interests me. In this case, my fascination was to hear what these CIOs think about the prevailing trends of IT consumerization and social media.

But I was most interested in their ideas on how marketing aligns with the IT organization; a concept that I’ve encountered a lot recently in my engagements with tech marketers as well as working with tech automation vendors in their go-to-market activities. Forrester has published a lot on this recently, led by my illustrious colleagues Nigel Fenwick and Luca Paderni who serve the CIO and CMO, respectively.

 My fascination with the topic is that I see a new business opportunity for savvy systems integrators. I am calling it the “emerging digital marketing service provider,” and I will focus my next Forrester Teleconference on this observation next week. That provider will need to be tooled with marketing creative skills plus IT skills and services and it will sell to the CMO and CIO equally: a new market coming together out of the marketing budget and the IT budget, as the figure shows.