As we close out the year and begin to prepare for 2023, many revenue leaders are wondering what the next year will bring…
Good news! We’ve got some ideas to share.
Mediafly CMO Lindsey Tishgart sat down with our featured guest speaker Forrester Principal Analyst Rick Bradberry on a recent webinar to discuss the top 5 predictions for B2B revenue teams in 2023. You can watch the entire webinar here. Or, if you’re short on time, read my recap below.
Top 5 revenue predictions for 2023
1. Customer health will be a top priority for (a lot!) more CMOs
In 2023, marketing leaders will shift their primary focus from demand gen to their existing customer base. Why? It is easier to retain existing revenue than add net new, partly because your organization knows so much more about current customers than prospects. Work with your Customer Success team (who likely already has a great relationship with your customers) to understand where growth opportunities are and how likely they are to materialize.
Use this formula to make customer health a top priority in your organization:
- Deliver more value & protect revenue
- Formalize reporting relationships
- Implement joint planning processes around current customers with internal teams
- Adopt shared objectives with customer success
- Add customer health scores to CMO dashboards
2. Organizations will consolidate tech stacks to reduce point tools
As budgets shrink and buying requirements grow, companies can and should reassess their current tech stacks for redundancies, inefficiencies, and untapped potential to drive higher ROI and foster growth.
Thinking about consolidating your existing tech stack? Here are some tips to get started:
- Conduct an audit
- Rationalize, consolidate, integrate
- Close the gap in customer & experience expectation
- Understand why we win and why we lose
When re-evaluating the tools you are using, start with the data. Look at the usage, cost, and value of any software you are fighting to keep and see if your findings justify keeping it. If the technology is high-value but low-cost, that is an easy sell. If the tech is high-value and cost, consider reducing the number of seats or licenses you have to make the software more affordable.
3. Many B2B organizations will eliminate channel marketing
Cost, a lack of value realization, and route-to-market evolution have changed how organizations look at traditional channel marketing.
As a result, many B2B organizations are shifting their channel marketing to partner ecosystem marketing, creating co-experiences across a spectrum of ecosystem business models:
- Build: Are they a partner that will help us build a solution?
- Influence: Are they a partner that will influence a purchase?
- Sell: Will this partner actually sell the product?
- Service: Is this partner just here to service the business?
- Manage: Will this partner help manage the business with us?
Technology and changing customer preferences are driving this change — look closely at what it takes for customers to buy your solution and products and how they prefer to purchase. B2B buying will increasingly occur on vendor websites, e-commerce sites, internal app stores, external marketplaces, and customer-driven e-procurement portals.
4. More demand teams will report into sales
Demand, sales development, and other presale positions are the most dynamic roles within sales and marketing. As revenue and growth leaders strive to deliver an integrated customer process that helps the buyer progress, purchase, and get value quickly, a reorganization of marketing and sales teams may be necessary.
Many sales and marketing leaders have made small and incremental improvements or changes in their go-to-market organizational structure, taking them further away from customer practices and expectations. Now, they have an “organizational design debt” to deliver the buyer experiences that prospects expect. To relieve this “debt,” sales and marketing leaders must address multiple buying groups and opportunity types and create meaningful value, not more tactics.
These buying groups are important, complex, and more hesitant to pull the trigger on purchase decisions. More than 80% of purchases now involve complex buying scenarios, and 60% of purchase decisions involve four or more people. (Source: Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buying Study Reveals Seismic Shifts That Amplify Long-Term Trends In Buying Behavior)
5. Events are not making a comeback
Large event budgets are not expected to rebound. 2023 will likely bring more hybrid events, which means digital engagement needs to be more meaningful and accountable.
However, there is still a need for interactions — whether in-person or virtual. Think about reshaping your post-pandemic B2B events to focus on audience needs and set clear goals with quantitative selection criteria and revenue impact.
Enable buyers with self-service resources
Digital buying, self-service journeys, and buyer enablement are here to stay. Follow customers and meet expectations, whether virtual or in-person. Understanding self-service buying scenarios will be critical in 2023.
Many organizations remain stuck in the “traditional” buying scenario of digital discovery and evaluation with in-person purchasing. Consider adopting a hybrid-buying approach with digital discovery, in-person evaluation, and digital purchasing. Or, take a digital buying approach, where the customer has an entirely self-service experience — discovering, evaluating, and purchasing online.
Here are some more tips to enable buyers with self-service resources
- Enhance website interactions and visitor experiences
- Satisfy knowledge and education requirements
- Leverage the clout of peer-validated resources
- Make product information easily accessible
- Allow users to try your product before purchase
- Simplify pricing and contracting
- Open purchase and renewal transaction pathways
Action items for you to take into 2023:
- Make customer health a top priority.
- Consolidate your tech stack to reduce silos & cut costs.
- Optimize partner ecosystems to meet buyer expectations.
- Don’t just align commercial teams, integrate them– revenue enablement is key!
- Reimagine digital & in-person experiences to connect with buyers in more impactful ways.
Want to hear more about these predictions in detail? Watch the full webinar here.
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