Waterfalls and Frameworks: Two Key Takeaways from SiriusDecisions 2018 Summit

The SiriusDecisions 2018 Summit was lined up with tons of activities, starting with a plethora of information about the SiriusDecisions frameworks to waterfalls to brands swaggering their case studies, and included keynotes from unconventionally famous celebrities, and concluded with a performance by “Fall Out Boy”.

The action-packed three-day summit in Vegas, designed to have more networking sessions and a shorter duration than previous years’ summits, consisted of a lot of learning and oodles of entertainment. The summit focused on digital marketing for B2B companies and introduced new research material. Here are two key learnings from the summit with my insights and perspectives.

• The New Nurture in the Demand Unit Waterfall World: Sirius claims to have over-architected the demand waterfall. The flaws in the old nurture model were taking personas as a group instead of the individuals, misunderstanding the role of the nurture, and using rules and linked programs to control the buyer. The new nurture simplifies the action in a three-step buyer journey process: activate, validate & accelerate, and map it to buyer action (signal, response, and action in each phase).
  My Serious Perspective: I completely agree that the old nurture program was over-complicated. The simple process is easier to design and build content. It’s aligned with the buyer requirements and reduces assumptions on buyer behavior. An interesting thought is to take the Nautilus messaging framework and map it to the new nurture model. This will be an effective and to target the right persona at the right time.

  

• Sales & Marketing Alignment: There was a huge emphasis on keeping sales & marketing aligned. To make the Sirius models and frameworks successful, the alignment between these two disparate teams is crucial. Many case studies discussed strategies & technologies they used to attain this alignment. Statistics show that sales reps forget 87% of what was taught in the first 30 days. The Sirius perspective on sales knowledge transfer is to build a framework which provides a consistent approach to enabling sales with knowledge needed to maximize buyer interactions. When it comes to sales knowledge transfer, content has to be modular, informed by selling motion, aligned to sales talent lifecycle, and integrated with learning strategy to work well. The building-block approach “creates learning that is easily consumable in a variety of formats and accessible over time to promote rep engagement, retention, and just-in-time reference.” The teams involved in the knowledge transfer include channel marketing, marketing operations, product marketing, sales enablement, and communications. In addition to this training, it’s imperative to introduce new technologies to simplify access to sales material and automate certain aspects of strategic selling.

Representation of the Sales Learning Framework

My Serious Perspective: This framework is a great tool to re-structure the process for sales training, access marketing enabled content, and run sales automation. It was established earlier that sales teams would easily pick up the lead, assume the intent of the buyer, and select content which he/she felt right for the sales journey. With the introduction of this framework, we can evaluate the skill sets of the sales team and then recommend the right technology for automation and accessibility, define the process, and build specific content to assist the sales team through their sales journey in accordance to the buyer journey

We also learned about the SiriusDecisions Program Pendulum, AI in the B2B journey, building the playbook for intelligent growth, and digital transformation in the B2B space. The inspirational keynotes consisted of celebrities whose stories were a great revelation on how you need to adapt to different personas and pave your way through various odds. Molly Bloom discussed how she created the largest high-stakes poker network by networking and building relationships. Planton Antoniou, a portrait photographer, spoke about his journey of taking snapshots of top political leaders, tech tycoons, and sport stars, including the portrait of Vladimir Putin for the cover of Time Magazine. Each picture told a story of the persona.

The summit ended with a terrific performance by Fall Out Boy. We are already looking forward to next year’s summit! Want to discuss more or have a conversation about any of the SiriusDecisions frameworks or case studies? Share your thoughts below or contact us!