Meta Karagianni

As we move to a “new normal,” sales and marketing leaders realize that resilience and agility are more important than ever before. When we talk about resilience in the context of annual planning, it requires a strong foundation.

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded across the globe, our personal, professional and social lives were fundamentally impacted. As a full-time working mother with two young kids who are now out of school, I found myself having to make changes in my daily routine to adjust to the new reality. Some of these changes made my […]

I have two daughters under the age of ten, and I am trying to instill in them an appreciation for and understanding of the value of money. Every week our girls get an allowance, and we discuss where and how they want to use their money. We have often been pleasantly surprised at some of […]

• As B2B CMOs and marketing leaders continue to transform their organizations, they struggle to articulate the value that marketing creates for the business
• Revenue-centric KPIs are a key component of marketing’s performance, but they’re no longer enough to articulate marketing’s value in a holistic way
• B2B CMOs/marketing leaders must expand the way they articulate marketing’s full value to the business

• Confidence among B2B marketers is high; most of the more than 200 global CMOs surveyed expect their marketing budget to increase over the next two years
• North-American, EMEA and Asia-Pacific CMOs support different growth strategies that shape their marketing strategies and influence their marketing priorities
• Although North American, EMEA and Asia-Pacific CMOs have similar plans to add resources, marketing leaders must pay special attention to region-specific needs

• As the B2B revenue engine evolves, alignment must expand beyond the way sales, marketing and product engage and convert buyers
• Revenue leaders must gain a clear understanding of all the possible areas where alignment can support the attainment of key business objectives – including growth and profitability
• Failing to understand and operationalize alignment across new areas that support revenue and profitability will cause revenue leaders to fall behind

• The time is ripe for field marketing to redefine how it provides value to the business or risk becoming irrelevant
• CMOs must encourage field marketing leaders to move from hiring generalists to building a function able to support four specialist areas: defined demand, channel, customer and account-based marketing
• CMOs should leverage the SiriusDecisions Field Marketing Job Family to define a forward-looking view of the field marketing function and address dilution and pollution causes

• The role of the B2B CMO is evolving, and we have identified six critical areas of success
• CMOs must move beyond being great marketing leaders; they must show enterprise-wide leadership, drive change and be strongly connected to business results 
• CMOs must evolve and understand the new demands and expectations being placed upon them 

• The hype surrounding agile marketing is increasing, but the definition of agile remains unclear
• CMOs/marketing leaders declare that they want their marketing teams to become more agile
• Agility does not mean chaos; agile marketing borrows agile principles and requires planning, clear processes, roles and responsibilities

• B2B CMOs report marketing planning is the number-one internal process that needs to be fixed or revised
• Cumbersome planning processes and the lack of a consistent approach inhibit B2B marketing organizations today
• There are three main reasons that drive further organizational changes across EMEA marketing teams

• EMEA CMOs continue to evolve the organizational structure of their marketing teams
• Seventy-five percent of EMEA CMOs have moved away from siloed country operations
• There are three main reasons to further drive organizational change across EMEA marketing teams

• CMOs and marketing leaders face a growing marketing skills gap that they must address
• A “spray and pray” approach to marketing enablement is insufficient, wasting resources and delivering suboptimal results
• Establish a path that connects newly acquired knowledge to application of the knowledge on an ongoing basis

• Although becoming agile has emerged as a common desire at many B2B organizations, for the majority it remains a wishful state
• When building an approach to becoming agile, Symantec first needed to ask, “how often do we need to be agile?”
• This led to the genesis of a framework that allows the organization determine the potential impact of any market-triggered event

• We still have some way to go to truly embrace digital and benefit from its potential
• Understanding buyers and their behavior is paramount to high-performance marketing and customer-centric innovation
• Develop a holistic understanding of interaction patterns, both self-guided and human-to-human

Moving toward customer-centricity is often an item on the CMO agenda. After all, what organization would say it doesn’t want to be customer-centric? So why is it so hard to make this happen?

SiriusDecisions has developed an implementation methodology that guides organizations through critical implementation decisions. Here are steps we go through with clients.

I find it fascinating to watch babies take their first steps and reach other key development milestones: They show great curiosity in learning and determination to master new and existing skills. They relentlessly practice what they’ve learned, and they thrive when encouraged and provided with the right support to avoid mishaps. Organizations must provide similar […]

As the annual planning season begins, we have been conducting an increasing number of conversations on organizational design. Especially in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, where CMOs have identified growth in a tough economy as the number-one priority for their teams, the question of how to balance regional and local resources remains […]

When introducing the Sirius Directions in Technology Model at our Summit 2013 event in May, Jonathan Block and Ross Graber emphasized the importance of B2B organizations using a phased approach to invest in sales and marketing technology. “SiriusDecisions research shows that B2B organizations are planning to increase their spending on technology,” said Jonathan. “The problem […]