I recently attended the AMA’s bi-annual conference “m.planet” where I heard some common themes among the B2B attendees. When I asked attendees about where they are focusing in today’s economy, the overall consensus was very short-term focused – “Anything to drive sales!”   As I probed deeper, I found that the B2B marketer’s role is changing as organizations move marketing spend and shift away from major user conferences and move investment to accelerating sales, especially with strategic customers.  

I spoke to marketing leaders from companies like Xerox, Halliburton, FMC Technologies, Silgan Containers, Qualcomm and others, and found many shifting their focus from broader coverage of all accounts, to targeted focus in major strategic accounts to drive account expansion and retain customers. I also heard that many organizations struggle to present a holistic view of their capabilities to strategic customers.  That practice continues to position the organizations as product-focused instead of solution-focused, making account expansion a challenge. 

What I also found was that many companies find it difficult to meet with customer executives to have business level discussions.   The B2B world is still in the product-to-solution migration, and the sales teams love to talk, rather than listen.   It was obvious that marketers see opportunities to connect with executive level decision-makers and discuss how to better serve and partner with these strategic customers, rather than dump a sales pitch. 

I’m interested to hear how B2B marketers are responding to the opportunity for marketers to accelerate sales and build loyalty through executive customer relationships.  Please let me know - Rob Urbanowicz