B2B Sales and Marketing Exchange (#b2bsmx) Trip Report

Normally I would go to a conference like the B2B Sales and Marketing Exchange in Boston and take better and more cited notes. However, my primary goal for this conference was networking for jobs whilst at the same time learning.?So, this trip report is more listicle in format.?

This list is short “things I learned or heard or saw.” It is clearly biased based on my filter.?YMMV. Nevertheless, I hope you can learn something from it.?And sorry to people who said or showed things I didn’t cite well enough!

One: Reread What Color is Your Parachute.

Two: Message disconnect - ?There is a huge pain point in the connection between executive elevator pitches, what product leaders are saying, what sales people are saying, and what PR firms are pitching to the market. ?This could be a market opportunity.?Regardless, it seems to be a pain point to at least 4 senior leaders I chatted with (and some after the conference).

Three: Ego versus Experience - ??There are a lot of organizations, from small to huge, where C-level decisions are often made based on ego rather than experience.?Or where “data driven” decisions (which can be awesome things!) are often made based on “selections” of data that support a pre-ordained direction - not a truly open mind about where the data leads.

(And hey, I get the "art" part of art and science and the right (and the need!) to sometimes ignore some data. Because it was collected wrong. Or it asked the wrong question. Or the leader is a visionary that sees things beyond the data!)

Four: Random acts of marketing - Too often, product marketing and marketing are driven by “random acts of marketing” (such as “create an explainer video!” and “write a blog post about this!”) rather than a strategic plan into which messages, assets, and programs are thoughtfully placed.

Five: Keep the storytelling and creativity alive - ?As marketers we are all (or should be) storytellers.?Without a story, your marketing stack is probably worth a whole lot less. (Worthless? The 'painter' who has supplies but no talent. The 'wood carver' with sharp tools but no technique. The 'book designer' who knows InDesign but can't design.)

The actual use of the word “storytelling” seems to be more prevalent in the last 18 months. And not everyone is a good storyteller, or at least not all the time.?You need to practice! And that doesn’t necessarily mean practicing the slide decks. It means being able to retrieve and tell a story that is relevant and interesting to your audience at the drop of a hat.?It’s not easy. You need to be willing to fail.?Failure is a part of practice. (Believe me, I know... lol.)

Morton M. Grodzins came up with “The Tipping Point” years before Malcolm Gladwell popularized it.

Slide: Leslie Talbot from Corporate Visions

Six:?Sales and marketing need to be connected at the hip - ??This is the theme of the 2022 B2Bsmx as far as I am concerned.?

Said a hundred ways with a hundred details and 25 tools in the marketing stack.?

And now, we are all GTM people, one way or another.

Identify, Attract, and Engage.?I’m pretty sure this is what people have always said, but here it is in a pretty good 2022 format.?(Yes, we have better intent tools, better attraction tools, and better engagement tools, but wasn’t this always the core framework??And we need to be good storytellers, or isn’t this for naught?)

Slide: Randy Frisch, Uberflip (I think! Sorry...) Editorial = me.

Look at the slide above. Turns out that people are pretty good at identifying and attracting but a lot less good at knowing how to engage them once they've been attracted. Storytelling much?

Seven:?B2B on TV can actually make sense. See the company MNTN

Eight:?Raving fans travel - OK, this one was a straightforward one, but bears repeating, and with this phrase said by Corinna Owens from Gong it has new life:?Raving fans travel.?You may have a fan at your current gig, but that fan will likely be at another company in the future.?Keep in touch, and maybe they will bring their fandom (and be a customer) at their next gig!

Nine:?Fewer accounts can sometime be better - Convincing execs that smaller number of much better targeted accounts with a realistic ACV (what similar accounts have generated and what these could generate) is often a better idea than a giant big bucket of accounts with a more general “wish” of what they could generate.

Ten:?Ask for the referral – For goodness sake, ask for the referral!

Eleven: 55% of B2B buyers are self-guided

Forrester says so!

Slide: John Arnold, Forrester Research

And here's where they usually get guidance from.

?Forrester says so!

Slide: John Arnold, Forrester Research

Twelve: We think we are in control of the buyer journey – We don’t really control when or how buyers find out about and choose as much as we think or wish we did. Buyers have tools too.

Thirteen:?"Funnel" formats and metaphors and shapes are, um, changing - ?Funnels are either the best thing since sliced bread or they are out of date or they need to be modified or… Umm.?Maybe we need a better conceptual artist to help us on this?

OK, I get this one.?The traditional Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (or is it five steps??Or three??Or six? And what are the words, exactly?) exists.?But it needs an update based on today's B2B realities.

But with points 11 and 12 above, and a lot of stories, I heard/learned that we are really a lot less in control of any funnel than we think we are.?Thus we need to create a nice base of materials, programs, and sales enablement programs that are able to support the various buyer and influencer programs in a “self service, meet them where they are” approach. And try to measure them in the well lit and in the dark funnel as best as we can.

I am fairly sure that’s the message I got, but I am not 100% sure vendors are ready to really do that.?Or are they? Are we?

It’s a funnel!?It’s a flywheel! It’s a mobius strip!?I’m joking (a bit) and understand how an evolving look at how things are changing makes sense.?There’s just so much to keep track of! But my point still stands:?If you can’t tell a relevant story at every “stop” on the graphic, it’s all for naught.

Slide: Mason Crosby from Gravity Global (I think dervived from Terminus and other sources... Editorial= me)

OK, that’s it for me for now.?I missed a whole LOT at this conference.?I was only there for the first two of three days.?And I spent a lot of great time meeting people 1:1 for career networking.?Which also taught me a lot, but I'm not sure that is for public consumption (especially the mistakes *I* made whilst networking).?

It was a great and energizing experience to listen and learn from so many awesome industry leaders.

Thoughts??Feel free to comment. Be well,

Gary