The first edition of the Engage B2B Awards took place on December 8th at the Victoria Park Plaza in...
6 minute read
By Oliver Davis
Last week (7th of March), we hosted the 2024 edition of the co-located Future of Marketing & Sales Conference at The Brewery in London. We had two fantastic halls of content running simultaneously, with the whole audience of over 600 delegates coming together in the morning and closing plenaries to hear from fantastic brands such as the DMA, AWS, PwC, S&P Global, Canva, Forrester, RingCentral, Salesloft, Payoneer and Spotify, to name just a few!
OPENING KEYNOTE: ACCELERATING THE “GOODBYE MQL” TRANSFORMATION
The conference was opened up by Simon Daniels, Principal Analyst at Forrester, who presented around a topic that really got the attention of both sellers and marketers – ‘ditching MQLs’ and the popular myths and realities of qualifying these opportunities.
Simon then transitioned into a SWOT analysis of Forrester’s B2B Revenue Waterfall Model, successfully deployed by both Siemens and Reltio, explaining how it helps ensure collaboration and has led to companies maximising revenue potential while achieving their growth goals.
Simon Daniels, Principal Analyst at Forrester
HOW SOLVING “THE 2080 PROBLEM” WILL UNLOCK YOUR REVENUE EFFICIENCY
Rob Cook, VP Enterprise Sales at Salesloft, was next to address the vast audience of over 600 delegates on our Porter Tun main stage, with a fascinating insight into the modern buyer journey and how the combination of both digital and human-to-human engagement drives leads down the funnel.
Rob was keen to stress that the “experience is as important as the product/service being offered”; with that in mind, it was also interesting to hear that Salesloft have acquired Drift, a conversation personalisation product in order to create a single platform to arm the seller with all the tools to deliver the level of experience necessary.
THE INTERSECTION OF GENERATIVE AI AND SALES ENABLEMENT: A FIRESIDE CHAT
It wouldn’t be a technology-based conference without some conversation around AI. Through audience engagement and some good old-fashioned showing of hands, it was surprising to see that the percentage of delegates who were able to confirm their own companies have integrated AI into their sales and marketing activities was alarmingly low.
This really set the stage for the Senior Sales and Revenue Enablement Lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bana Kawar, who spoke passionately about Generative AI and encouraged everyone to “be a learner” and stay up to date in what is an everchanging space. Playing around with AI in a personal capacity was another piece of advice Bana provided the audience with as it allows users to become comfortable and trusting of the technology. The thirst for content and guidance on Generative AI never ceases to amaze and the large crowd was very appreciative of the expertise Bana was able to impart.
Bana Kawar, Senior Sales and Revenue Enablement Lead at AWS
“MAKE YOUR BRAND A NON-NEGOTIABLE”
Through recent studies, it has become common knowledge that text-dominated presentations are a sure-fire way to lose the attention of your audience. Canva are a global visual communication platform on a mission to drive engagement and delight customers with an incredibly impressive ‘Visual Worksuite’, a marketer’s paradise for creating visual assets. Duncan Clark, Canva’s Europe Lead, showed off some incredible videos and displays of work that elicited a lot of oohhh’s and aaaah’s amongst the crowd.
HOW CAN MARKETERS THRIVE IN AN AI-DRIVEN WORLD?
“74% of marketers are using AI weekly or frequently,” revealed Scott Monroe, Product Marketing Director at Survey Monkey.
This was a very surprising statistic, given the hesitancy the audience had shown earlier in the day when asked to confirm utilising AI in their own organisations.
Scott travelled across the pond to share some very interesting findings around how marketers are already embracing AI through automation of repetitive tasks and relying on it to extract insights from data quicker and more accurately.
So how does the marketer thrive given all this change? Well, Scott recommended the following:
- Ask: Stay on top of current trends
- Listen: Augment AI with authentic inputs by giving customers an outlet for feedback
- Act: Let feedback lead investment areas
Panellists Kelsey Fordyce, Neeta Darragh, Becci O’Shea
“YOU HAVE TO BE A TRUSTED ADVISOR TO YOUR SALES TEAM”
A short walk and a sausage roll later, it was time to turn attention to what the future landscape of sales looks like. Andrew Hough, Founder of the Institute of Sales Professionals, led an insightful panel discussion with Becci O’Shea (Head of Sales Enablement at Marcura),Neeta Darragh (Director, Portfolio Enablement at VMware) and Kelsey Fordyce (Sales Enablement Executive at Gamma). Together, they analysed the current state of sales enablement and the different strategies they are employing to drive performance amongst their sales teams.
Kelsey spoke around the use of JIT (Just in Time) training with the sales team at Gamma to continually sharpen skills and prepare the team for upcoming calls, rather than periodic training across the year which can be forgotten quickly. Meanwhile, Becci spoke about how Marcura have utilised a buddying up scheme to align marketing and sales teams, both domestically and internationally, to share ideas and best practices. It was really interesting to watch the group converse, agree and counter certain points, particularly as each organisation goes through very different stages, with Neeta highlighting the difficulties of being a sales enablement leader at a company going through so much change.
“WE DON’T LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE; WE LEARN FROM REFLECTING ON EXPERIENCE”
Head of Learning Innovation at Huthwaite, Robin Hoyle, spoke charismatically around his experiences and the importance of making your sales staff feel important to help performance. More specifically, Robin revealed that a great way of achieving this is to align sellers to the company strategy and make them feel like “quarterbacks”.
As an international training provider, it is no surprise that Huthwaite had some strong next steps for all the sales professionals in the room. These were as follows:
- Research your prospect
- Have strong product & industry knowledge
- Plan ALL calls
- Segment your market
- Ensure sellers and deliverers communicate effectively
Arup Chakravarti, Director of Sales Excellence at Equifax
EQUIFAX CASE STUDY: PROVING THE ROI FOR SALES ENABLEMENT PROGRAMMES
After lunch, Equifax’s Director of Sales Excellence Arup Chakravarti delivered an information-rich presentation around how to develop an ROI mindset and calculate the success of sales enablement initiatives. Arup detailed five key checkpoints to achieving success in this area:
- Build consensus by strategically generating buy in
- Embrace your data
- Be ahead of the curve
- Extrapolate your insights
- Leverage your network
Arup also touched on the metric of sales velocity, which was heavily referred to throughout the conference, providing priceless insight for sales enablement teams to understand opportunities for growth and set realistic revenue targets.
BRINGING IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES TO PwC’S GLOBAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Heading back into the main hall, it was amazing to have PwC’s Global Marketing Director Alex Sladen up on stage to deliver a futuristic masterclass on embracing ‘The Metaverse’ and using it to your advantage. Alex further revealed how PwC are creating their own content and virtual events as well as launching a #PWCTechTalks podcast to educate and wow customers.
The presentation also shone light on how PwC had leveraged the people creating the product to sell the brand, leaning on their expertise and passion to create authentic interest from customers. Alex showed off a range of videos including a PwC takeover of Cannes Festival, complete with exhibiting halls, PwC boats and a range of other incredible features allowing clients/prospects to engage through the Metaverse. Overall, this was a thought-provoking insight into how the future of prospect engagement could look.
JOIN US FOR OUR NEXT EVENT
We enjoyed not only a wonderful day of content but also an amazing atmosphere created by our largest ever attendance for this event, showing the importance of exhibiting the technologies shaping the future of sales and marketing.
We look forward to seeing everyone on the 25th of September for our next event, the Marketing and Sales Engagement Summit. Make sure you don’t miss out by registering here.
