Last week I attended the SiriusDecisions Summit in Orlando. This was my third summit and I have enjoyed them all.

Author Malcolm Gladwell opened the session with a witty and insightful presentation on the concept of transformation. His point was that before a business can transform, it needs to reframe. To illustrate his point, he used the example of the invention of intermodal shipping, which allows for the shipping of a container full of goods on multiple modes of transport (truck, ship) without having to load, unload and re-load ... . While the US Government experimented with this concept as early as the 1910s, it was not until 1955  when Malcom P. McLean, a trucking entrepreneur from North Carolina, USA, bought a steamship company with the innovative idea of loading entire truck trailers onto ships with their cargo inside. He realized it would be simpler and quicker to have one container that could be lifted from a vehicle directly onto a ship without first having to unload its contents. Despite the logic, it took years for the concept to catch on because it turned the shipping industry upside down and inside out. Loaders and unloaders lost jobs. People had to stop thinking that their job was to load, drive or sail. They had to think their job was to move goods from Point A to Point B as efficiently as possible. This required the entire transportation chain (standardization of trailers, strengthening of docks, ships re-outfitted to easily slide cargo on and off, etc.) to be re-engineered. What had to happen was a reframing of the goal which led to transformation. Naturally, my mind took the concept straight to the way we’ve approached lead generation, which, for the most part has not changed in twenty plus years. Clearly, there are lots of ways to make what we do more efficient and less expensive. We got started on that last Friday.

The SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall has become the de facto standard for tracking leads through the sales process and there was no shortage of discussion about MQL’s, SAL’s, SQL’s and Closed (Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Accepted Lead, Sales Qualified Lead and Closed Won) percentages.

What was different this year (probably given that the most recent SD Demand Waterfall is now two years old) was a focus on velocity – that is the speed at which leads move from one phase to the next. SiriusDecisions clients and followers have bought into the nomenclature and what I like to call the simple elegance of the Demand Waterfall. Now, measuring how fast MQL’s become SAL’s and so on is all the rage. If you want to talk about specific goals for your industry, comment below and we’ll get a discussion going.

Another key take away was the adoption rate of Marketing Automation by vertical:

Information Technology – 65%
Business Services – 38%
Manufacturing – 8%
Financial Services – 4% (regulation slowing adoption?)
Healthcare – 2% (regulation slowing adoption?)
SiriusDecisions clients – 77%

Unfortunately, a lot of SPAM continues – and vendors are trying to find other ways to make Marketing Automation pay off through activities such as lead nurturing (a good idea EXCEPT for your most strategic or major accounts).

I had a side bar conversation with a marketing automation service provider who said that manufacturing was their fastest growing segment in Asia. We have worked with one manufacturer for about three years, and I think it is time to increase attention towards verticals outside of technology.

A speaker from Cisco stated that marketing is not B2C or B2B or even B2B2C. Marketing is B2Me! I like this because I think marketing automation (as an example) has made it easy for companies to revert to a one-to-many mentality rather than focus on one-to-one (or B2Me).

I highly recommend the SiriusDecisions Summit. Next year it will be in Nashville. See you there.

By Dan McDade