We are getting ever-closer to our first Forrester Forum for B2B marketing professionals. It is great to see so many of you registered for the event, and I look forward to seeing you in Miami. While Forrester does have another Forum for marketers, which is held in New York each spring and in which we cover some B2B topics, Miami is the one where we focus only on your needs. Why? Because B2B marketing is different!

Of course, as the research director for the role that meets your needs, I get asked that question a lot — both within Forrester and by clients (especially the ones who want to sell to you). “How is it different?” Well, here’s some key data to illustrate that difference.

Take a look at the go-to-market spending of consumer companies: They have a rough ratio of 10:1 – 10 times as much is spent on marketing as on their sales force. Let’s compare that to the numbers we collected in a recent survey of B2B marketers (see below).  Statistically, another way of saying this is that, on average, B2B firms spend eight times (7.9 to be exact) as much on sales as on marketing. That is why, for the past five years, this event was called the Sales Enablement Forum.

Sales enablement is a fundamental part of all things that B2B marketers do: collecting customer insights; doing content management; managing leads. Where would account-based marketing be without sales enablement processes? As such, this Forum is full of sales enablement topics:

  • Most of the presentations at the Forum will include sales enablement elements.
  • Day 2’s keynote sessions focus on transforming the B2B sales force.
  • The marketing technology deep dive is about an end-to-end platform for marketing and sales enablement.
  • We will be presenting a preview of our sales enablement automation wave research.
  • We will provide an update of “Death of the B2B Salesman” research in a lively panel.
  • Many of the Forum sponsors provide sales enablement automation to B2B marketers.

So here is my tip or request: If you have colleagues in your organization that have “pure” sales enablement titles or who may not be in marketing but report to a sales executive, they may not have realized that this Forum is for them; they may not have heard about it all, for that matter. Please talk to them, point out the above, send them a link to this blog, and encourage them to attend as well.

If they are on the same page as you when you all leave the Forum, it will make your job so much easier!

Always keeping you informed! Peter