2 18 START

Planning Guide
for Sales, Marketing and Product Leaders
SiriusDecisions is a research and advisory company that enables b-to-b
product, marketing and sales leaders to drive intelligent growth for their
organizations. Research and advisory services are at the core of what
SiriusDecisions delivers its customers.
Through extensive work with practitioners as well as hundreds of b-to-b heads of sales, marketing and
product, our analysts understand the challenges business leaders face and apply that knowledge in
developing the models and frameworks that set us apart. We have gathered in-depth performance,
operational and peer-specific data from our work in this arena.

To help you set goals and jump-start your annual planning, we’ve developed a series of strategic steps
to generate revenue and alignment in the year ahead.

Choose your functional role below and discover your planning requirements:

Sales Functions Channel Functions Marketing Functions Product Functions

Sales Executive Channel Sales Leader Marketing Executive Portfolio Marketing

Sales Operations Leader
Sales Enablement Leader
Leader (Product,
Channel Marketing Account-Based Solution, Industry or
Leader Marketing Leader Services Marketing)
Channel Operations Brand and Product Management
Leader Communications Leader Leader

Content Strategy and

Operations Leader

Customer Engagement
Leader

Demand Marketing
Leader

Marketing Leaders at
Emerging Companies

Marketing Operations
Leader

Portfolio Marketing
Leader (Product,
Solution, Industry or
Services Marketing)

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All Rights Rights Protected and Reserved.
and Reserved.
Sales Functions
 4

Sales Executive

Sales Functions
Are you going to make plan in 2018? For most sales leaders, the 2018 planning season is about to begin, and most
likely the CEO and board of directors will have increased growth expectations. How can sales leaders ensure that
they have a solid planning process to help them arrive at a number they can deliver on and that assures they have
the right resources to make plan?

SiriusDecisions created the Sales Operating Model to guide sales leaders during the planning season. The model is a
methodical, step-by-step approach for building a powerful sales machine: strategy, organizational structure, people,
processes and data. It also outlines the key roles that sales operations, sales enablement and channel sales should
play during the planning season.

Sales strategy. Once corporate Organizational design and

goals have been agreed on, the sales
leader’s sales strategy should be
aligned with a go-to-market strategy
that has been jointly developed with
marketing and product teams.
investment. The sales leader
must determine the overall sales
investment required to hit corporate
goals and choose an organizational
structure to efficiently pursue the
target market.

Talent management. The sales Demand engine. The sales leader

leader needs to put in place
processes that will ensure that sales
can consistently attract and retain
high performers who can execute the
sales strategy.
needs to set a target contribution
level for opportunities generated
by sales and marketing and ensure
that there are demand management
processes in place.

Sales execution. Once demand has Sales productivity. Sales leaders

been created, a sales leader needs
to implement processes to ensure
that the sales team and partners
are consistently executing on
opportunities to quickly drive them
to closure.
must ensure that they have a way to
objectively assess the productivity
of their sales organization and
prioritize the productivity levers they
should apply to accelerate growth.

Although sales leadership and sales operations author the sales plan, creating alignment between executive
management, marketing, finance and human resources is crucial to the plan’s success. SiriusDecisions has developed
a standard template that facilitates collaboration so that sales operations can share each section of the plan with
the business units and corporate functions that need to review it. This is an efficient way to gather input, track
changes and ensure that owners, influencers and contributors are responsible for supporting their designated action
items. Once completed and approved, the plan should be shared across the sales organization and with internal
stakeholders for guidance and easy reference throughout the fiscal year.

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 5

Sales Operations Leader

Sales Functions
SiriusDecisions conducted a survey of 450 sales leaders, sales operations leaders and sales finance leaders to
understand their planning challenges, their methods for developing sales plans, and key outputs of the process.
Below are key findings from our sales planning survey, common sales planning pain points and recommendations
for improvements.

• The survey results revealed that 56 percent of organizations use two to three years of sales performance data
(31 percent use more than three years of data) to improve the accuracy of their sales planning, but they still
encounter plan accuracy issues.

• Using technology can make the planning process more efficient. Although 48 percent of respondents use a
purpose-built sales force automation (SFA) system and 37 percent use a purpose-built marketing automation
platform (MAP), only 29 percent use a purpose-built system for territory mapping.

• Many SiriusDecisions clients have described the entire planning process as their biggest pain point, but the
survey results showed that much of the pain actually came after the development and delivery of territory and
quota plans. Although 55 percent of respondents successfully complete the planning process before the start
of the fiscal year, the most severe pain begins shortly thereafter. Thirty-four percent of respondents stated that
between 21 percent and 40 percent of the quota plans they deliver are subsequently modified.

How to get started

When sales objectives fall short, a common cause is lack of discipline during the sales planning process. Annual
planning that is not structured frequently leads to topics not being addressed, actions not taken and programs
not executed. We’ve defined three stages of the annual sales planning process and have outlined the
responsibilities for sales operations at each stage.

#1 Prepare # 2 Define #3 Implement

Collect Typically occurring 60 to 90 Territory design
Validate days before the start of a Quotas and compensation
new fiscal year, the planning
Analyze Systems and processes
session should produce sales
Brief goals for the year. Gaps and risks
Communications and change
management
Stakeholder review

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 6

Sales Enablement Leader

Sales Functions
The sales enablement function continues to evolve into a dedicated function with a strategic mission and clearly
defined outcomes. SiriusDecisions data collected over the past five years reflects these significant changes:

• In 2014, 53 percent of sales enablement organizations indicated that they would be seeing an increase in their
sales enablement budget in the coming year. That number has jumped 19 percent, with a full 74 percent of
respondents indicating an increase in funding in the next 12 months.

• Sales enablement is increasingly a centralized standalone function reporting into top leadership. Forty percent
report into the top sales officer and a full 26 percent report directly to the office of the CEO. This is a significant
shift from the past. In 2012, 32 percent of enablement teams reported into marketing vs. only 10 percent today.

• Directly measuring the results of sales enablement has always been challenging, but this focus has become a
hallmark of organizations that consistently meet or exceed quota. These organizations are five times more likely
than lower performing peers to be focused on installing or improving program metrics in the coming year.

Sales enablement has mindshare and money...so now what?

Effective planning and prioritization are foundational to successfully executing sales enablement programs, but
effective enablement is a collective effort across many corporate functions. The challenge is to resist distractions
and focus on initiatives that drive measurable outcomes tied to rep success.

High-performing sales enablement functions align their efforts to the most pressing needs of the organization and
the risks or value associated with executing a program. This effort is clearly not a one-size-fits-all proposition, and
the range of responsibilities is extensive and diverse. The SiriusDecisions Sales Enablement Range of Responsibilities
Model helps sales enablement leaders consider the scope of possible efforts that can improve sales effectiveness
and efficiency to drive increased revenue.

Priority One: Sales Priority Two: Sales Priority Three: Sales

Talent Management Asset Management Communications
Attract top performers Aggregate assets Management
Onboard new hires Create assets Govern sales communications

Optimize rep performance Management assets Deliver communications

Advocate on behalf of sales

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Channel Functions
 8

Channel Sales Leader

Channel Sales, Marketing and Operations

B-to-b channel sales leaders need to create a sales planning process that begins at the inception of a channel
program and achieves channel sales objectives each year. However, many channel sales leaders lack a formal
process for mapping sales activities to yearly goals. We’ve applied the SiriusDecisions Channel Program Model
to channel sales planning to describe key planning processes, organizational interlocks and a recommended
sequence of activities to create effective planning.

The planning stage includes five processes:

#1 Route-to-Market #2 Channel Revenue #3 Channel Sales
Definition Goals Alignment
Produce an ideal- Define the channel’s Ensure that sales functions
partner profile. contribution to revenue are aligned to avoid
by determining how channel conflict and
much new or additional improve the partner and
revenue is required from customer experience.
channel partners.

#4 Channel Pricing Strategy #5 Channel Compensation

Set a channel pricing strategy that allows for
a competitive discount or margin for resellers.
Incorporate geographical differences, street
pricing and any variable pricing elements
(e.g. rebates, promotions) that may impact
overall channel profitability.
Review channel compensation on three levels:
compensation for partner account managers,
discounts or commissions paid to partners, and
any incentives or rebates that partners can earn
throughout the year.

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 9

Channel Marketing Leader

Channel Sales, Marketing and Operations

Channel programs undergo frequent adjustments and transformations. The absence of a flexible plan blueprint can
impact the ability of a channel program to support company initiatives and achieve performance goals. To avoid
unexpected or subpar results, channel marketing must complete an annual planning process to revisit core areas
vital to the success of the program.

As we have done for channel sales, we’ve applied the SiriusDecisions Channel Program Model to channel marketing
planning to describe key planning processes, organizational interlocks and a recommended sequence of activities
that drive planning effectiveness.

The planning stage has five processes:

#1 Plan #2 Recruit #3 Engage

Planning processes and
strategies for each channel
function, and sequences
to follow that drive
channel effectiveness.
Functional responsibilities for Comprehensive enablement
identifying and acquiring new and engagement of new and
partners. existing partners to ensure
channel readiness and partner
productivity.

#4 Grow
The processes each function must follow to
manage, grow and drive maximum partner
performance in channel demand creation and
indirect revenue-producing activities.
#5 Measure
Insight into metrics and reports that are required
to measure channel performance and define
opportunities to optimize the channel.

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 10

Channel Operations Leader

Channel Sales, Marketing and Operations

To enlist partner engagement and ramp up performance, channel marketing and sales must have a well-defined
operational planning process. Whether launching a new program or fine tuning an existing one, you can think
of channel operations as mission control, guiding the planning process for both functions and executing its own
planning steps.

Within the SiriusDecisions Channel Program Model, the operations planning stage contains six processes that
make up an end-to-end channel operations planning methodology:

The planning stage has five processes:

#1 Capacity Planning
Begin operational planning by
setting channel leadership’s
revenue goal as the capacity
plan target. Next, separate
partners into three phases
of development: early,
intermediate and evolved.
#2 Program Tiers and
Benefits
Start by identifying what
commitments partners
should make (e.g. dedicated
sales resources). Next,
choose performance criteria
(e.g. revenue attainment)
to form the basis of the
program tiers.
#3 Coverage and
Competencies
Conduct research on
coverage and competencies
to assess what resources the
organization needs to recruit,
enable and create demand
with partners to support
growth goals.

#4 Partner Terms and #5 Partner #6 Deal Registration

Conditions
Using the commitments
described in partner tiers and
benefits, consider which need
should be hard-coded into
partner agreements and
which should reside in sales
or marketing plans.
partner portal and collect any
Relationship
Management
(PRM) Platform
When planning an
assessment of the current
PRM application or the
deployment of a new one,
conduct an audit of the
data or feedback available
from partners on usability
and navigation.
Deal registration systems
are essential for minimizing
channel conflict and tracking
partner opportunities.
Whether choosing a new
system or enhancing an
existing one, make sure
operational planning includes
both supplier generated and
partner generated leads.

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Marketing Functions
 12

Marketing Executive

Marketing Functions
To chart a course, a fleet of ships must have a destination in mind, know its current location and be aware of
potential hazards. During the journey, each ship must constantly monitor its own position relative to the other
ships in the fleet and maintain appropriate spacing while executing its own maneuvers.

The process of planning and executing a marketing strategy is similar. After the CEO and board of directors
set the company’s destination and strategic course, marketing must create and execute plans that align with
corporate goals as well as the plans and objectives of other functions within the organization.

Focus on selecting and refining marketing goals based on their effectiveness so as to fuel business progress.

Corporate Goals
Best-in-class, complete marketing planning starts by identifying corporate goals and determining their
implications for marketing.
Characteristics. Corporate goal setting usually results in a set of far-reaching objectives whose achievement
requires the participation of multiple functions over several years.
Alignment. Identify which goals marketing will address and which are not appropriate for marketing to support.
Next, identify any goals whose achievement marketing can address on its own; for other goals, list the functions
or business units that marketing must collaborate with.

Marketing Goals
Characteristics. Marketing goals focus on outcomes of reputation, demand creation, sales enablement
or market intelligence actions deployed in support of corporate goals.
Alignment. Begin with goals unique to marketing. Note their relationship to corporate objectives and
weight the priority and effort required. Next, identify goals that are shared with other groups.

Sales Goals
Characteristics. Sales goals tend to be financial – based on the achievement of bookings, revenue or
contract value.
Alignment. Understanding sales goals is the basis for determining marketing campaign strategy.
With knowledge of the targets for sales achievement, marketing can begin to define the scope and
relative importance of campaigns.

Continued on next page

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 Marketing Executive 13

continued

Marketing Functions
Business Unit Goals
Characteristics. Business units (BUs) have overall responsibility for developing and launching products,
services and solutions that meet market needs. Their goals tend to focus on revenue and market share.
Alignment. The mission of product marketing and solution marketing is to intersect with BU goals. However,
marketing must balance each BU’s desire for exclusive marketing focus on its offerings with a campaign
strategy that effectively blends multiple products, services and solutions under an overarching theme.

Triangulation
# 1 The next step is to combine and consolidate the lists of goals from the corporate level, marketing
and other functions that marketing collaborates with.
# 2 List the specific objectives defined by marketing or other groups to help achieve this goal. Identify redundant
goals and consolidate them, noting how each function will participate.
#3 The outcome of this stage is a final list of carefully vetted goals for marketing to support. The priority and
level of effort required from marketing should be included in the list. Document how progress toward each goal
will be measured.

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 Account-Based Marketing 14

Leader

Marketing Functions
A marketing organization risks becomes irrelevant when it fails to connect to sales and customers because
it’s focused on the wrong things. When organizations identify where account growth is most likely to occur,
they can begin to support these growth goals by realigning their resources and balancing investment levels
for potential opportunities.

When organizations seek to launch an ABM program, they often impede their own success by failing to appoint
a dedicated point person, and by asking marketers to add ABM activities to their set of responsibilities without
identifying responsibilities that are no longer relevant. Marketers need to understand what ABM replaces so that
their portfolio of work effectively delivers on ABM goals. Organizations should consider updating marketers’
MBOs when adding an ABM approach.

We have identified three ABM strategy options, including when they work best, their primary focus, as well
as detailed resource considerations:

#1 Large-Account #2 Named-Account # 3 Industry/Segment

Marketing
Large-account marketing
support is appropriate when
a company recognizes that
much of its potential is
contingent on a very small
number of companies, and
when sellers can benefit from
concentrated marketing help.
These typically are centered
around existing key accounts,
but may also include some
really large strategic
net-new opportunities.
Marketing
Named-account marketing
focuses on a moderate to large
set of named accounts assigned
to sellers, and typically includes
a blend of existing customers
and prospect accounts. When
sales is exclusively focused
on delivering business growth
from a defined universe of
specific accounts, typically
across multiple geographies,
marketing should consider this
ABM deployment strategy.
Account Marketing
An industry-account or
segment-account marketing
strategy also targets a
moderate to large list of
specifically named accounts,
but the accounts targeted with
this strategy are restricted to
defined industries or segments
(e.g. a specific group of
pharmaceutical companies, a
specific group of accounts that
currently use two particular
competing platforms).

Account-Based Models

Large Account Named Account Industry/Segment

A very small number A moderate or large A moderate or large
of large existing or number defined existing number of new or existing
targeted accounts or targeted accounts accounts in the same vertical
or other specific segment

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 Account-Based Marketing 15

Leader continued

Marketing Functions
Singing ABM’s praises – communicating
the value of ABM to sales
A disconnect in communication between teams and sales can slow the
93%
momentum of a new ABM program. Sales leaders are often unclear of respondents say
about what ABM is and its value in helping sales achieve it objectives. ABM is “extremely”
We have outlined a three-step process for ABM teams to communicate or “very” important
with their sales colleagues and foster successful collaboration between
to overall company
marketing and sales for a defined universe of accounts.
success
Sales Leadership — Because ABM changes how marketing and sales
— SiriusDecisions
go to market together, marketing leaders must formally propose the
Command Center®
ABM program to sales leaders via face-to-face meetings to gain initial
input and agreement.

Sales Operations — The ABM lead should engage the sales operations
lead as soon as possible to develop an ABM charter that documents
the program’s objectives, teams, roles, processes, infrastructure,
resources and measurement.

Sales Reps and Channel Sales — Recruit reps who are open-minded
and eager to evangelize the ABM program and build momentum.
Clearly communicate program roles, responsibilities, tactics,
ongoing communication and collaboration requirements, and a list
of targeted accounts.

91%
state that the average deal size is
larger for ABM accounts vs.
non-ABM accounts
— SiriusDecisions Command Center®

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 Brand and Communications 16

Leader

Marketing Functions
Each reputation program must have defined objectives in order to drive measurable results and actionable insights.
Start by determining the organization’s reputation health in three areas:

Awareness Perception Preference

Measure awareness level initially through brand perception research and then through the performance of other
marketing programs that indicate awareness (e.g. number of Web site visitors or branded searches, size of social
following, amount of media coverage relative to competitors).

Perception can be uncovered through surveys or inferred through the performance of other programs (e.g. low
traffic to a specific part of the Web site, negative comments in social media or from influencers, feedback from
customers). Perception-related objectives include increasing positive coverage and commentary from relevant
influencers in relation to the specific issue, increasing clicks through search engine listings or reducing negative
comments online.

The target audience may be aware of the organization and its offerings – and have a reasonably correct and positive
perception – but still prefer other providers. Preference-related challenges can be inferred from poor performance
observed in marketing tactics (e.g. lack of social media sharing, low event attendance, low response rates), purchase
behavior (e.g. failure to buy or make repeat purchases) and advocacy (e.g. failure of customers, employees and/or
influencers to advocate on the organization’s behalf).

Understanding these three elements allows campaign planners to prioritize their objectives and select the paid,
earned or owned tactics that will most effectively help them reach those objectives.

If you build it, they will come

We’re all familiar with the question, “Would you jump off a bridge just because everyone else is doing it?” In many
respects, that’s what companies are doing when they set up their social sites. They see that other organizations have
Twitter accounts, LinkedIn groups and Facebook pages, so they simply establish corporate accounts for these social
media platforms and treat all three with an equal amount of effort. Instead, organizations need to understand how
their key audiences use social media so that they can gain maximum value from any campaign exposure on each
platform. This approach encourages visitors to access the organization’s content across multiple social sites as part
of an integrated network.

Continued on next page

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 Brand and Communications 17

Leader continued

Marketing Functions
Setting the State
When determining how to connect corporate social properties, consider the following:

Lack of insight Social outlet Enhanced data

preferences collection

Once the organization has a clear picture of which social properties to focus on, it’s easier to connect them. Content
is the glue for these connections, not only in terms of spreading reach but also exposing individuals to the existence
of other social platforms. Leveraging social content ensures that as many social sites as possible can be addressed
without the need for duplicate and disparate efforts.

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 Content Strategy and 18

Operations Leader

Marketing Functions
In its ideal state, the b-to-b content engine is a community of people, processes and technologies that create an
interconnected, mutually beneficial ecosystem. Many organizations, however, struggle with content management,
cross-functional alignment and other issues. Here are four trends, along with expert tips, that b-to-b organizations
need to focus on to improve the health of their content ecosystems:

Strategic Content Planning: Content Management and Technology:

Optimize Content Marketing
Strategy to Improve Inbound
While many factors can affect inbound marketing
performance, a common cause of poor traffic is a
lack of search engine optimization best practices in
content strategy and content factory processes.
Tips:
• Align content marketing strategy around a
defined keyword universe.
• Search best practices to improve inbound
results.
• Integrate keyword strategy more prominently
into upstream content strategy and planning.
• Improve tactical integration by documenting
keywords within planning documents and
calendars for social media marketing and
content creation, as well as content/creative
briefs, asset repository taxonomies and
reporting dashboards.
Master Metadata and Taxonomies
Content taxonomies are important for enabling
findability, searchability, filtering and gap analysis
of content assets across multiple audiences and
systems. They also support rationalization and
personalization of buyer’s journey mapping,
marketing program development, content
sequencing and sales enablement.
Tips:
• If a content taxonomy is not in place, collaborate
with a cross-functional content council to
develop, implement and govern a universal
taxonomy as part of the council’s charter.
• Ensure the taxonomy is championed and
supported by marketing and sales senior
leadership.
• Audit and maintain the taxonomy and all
content, updating any assets that are missing
attributes or tags.

Continued on next page

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 Content Strategy and
Operations Leader continued
Content Factory: Atomize
Content Assets
External audiences and internal sales, marketing
and product functions all need and expect
content that can be customized to their needs.
By embracing modular content, organizations can
better address a complex matrix of content needs
as well as escalating requirements for content
adaptation from internal and external audiences.
Tips:
• Identify opportunities to use system fields,
content briefs, authoring templates and
automated workflows to embed modular
content development into standard content
production processes.
• Consider how to improve the use of existing
content technology – or identify needed
investments in new content technology – to
support process changes that enable modular
content development.
19
Marketing Functions
Functional Design and Development:
Define and Align the Global Content
Supply Chain
Content process role clarity and alignment
issues are a perennial problem in many b-to-b
organizations. Misaligned go-to-market approaches
across sales, marketing and product teams
combined with poor cross-geography process
definition create a great deal of downstream
dysfunction in the content lifecycle.
Tips:
• Use the SiriusDecisions Content Model as a
framework for clarifying content ownership
and reducing process confusion between
geographically distributed teams.
• Audit, define and document roles and
responsibilities for every deliverable and activity
within the end-to-end content lifecycle.
• Identify content responsibility and ownership
(corporate, regional or local level) for each core
deliverable, activity and process depicted in the
Content Model.
• Use the SiriusDecisions Localization Model
as a guide to define content process
requirements within the context of global
content requirements.
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 Customer Engagement 20

Leader

Marketing Functions
Many b-to-b organizations continue to focus on acquiring new
customers and miss an opportunity that’s right in front of them – to We’ve found that
grow faster and more profitably by improving their engagement with
existing customers. 80 percent of b-to-b
buying decisions are
Evolving Definitions based on customer
The term “customer experience” has permeated the b-to-b world for experience, which can
more than 20 years. Depending on whom you ask, it can mean many
things. It’s essential for b-to-b practitioners, stakeholders, executive be direct or indirect.
leadership, analysts and investors to have a shared understanding of
the key definitions of customer engagement:

#1 Customer Engagement #2 Customer Experience

How organizations fulfill their brand promise
through thoughtful strategy implemented as
appropriate customer-centric programs yielding
measurable business results.
Includes the direct experience that customers
have with the company and brand. Ideally,
customer experience is supported by multiple
functions and coordinated by a team that serves
as a centralized function.

#3 Customer Marketing #4 Customer Success

A customer marketing team builds engagement, The customer success team is dedicated to post-
loyalty, advocacy and retention within the existing sale customer engagement and retention.
customer base and is primarily focused on
improving relationships.

As customers do not view organizations in terms of functions or departments, the post-sale environment
requires an emphasis on alignment, smooth hand-offs and coordinated program support. Investments in
customer engagement need to leverage data gathering, analytics and the program management skills of
the customer experience team, marketing skills of the customer marketing team, and the sales skills of the
customer success team.

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 21

Demand Marketing Leader

Marketing Functions
As technologies and buyers have evolved, b-to-b demand marketers have refined their roles and capabilities
to maintain control of the buyer’s journey and increase their likelihood of success. Demand creation leaders
need to constantly ask themselves, “Am I doing everything I should be doing as well as I should be doing it?”
and “Am I in alignment with other functions?”

To answer these questions, demand marketers/leaders need to define their breadth of responsibility, assess
their current capabilities, and create a roadmap that pinpoints where more advanced skills and expertise
would be beneficial.

We’ve defined the scope of today’s demand creation function across four priorities, each of which can be broken
down into capability stacks that combine to form a roadmap with a range of standard to advanced practices.

#1 Prospect Insights #2 Lead Management #3 Demand Waterfall

Utilize enriched data from Process Performance
external sources such as insights While all demand creation Management
gathered via social media and leaders have some definition The basic use case for
digital behavioral data collected of what a lead is and how to the Demand Waterfall is
beyond the corporate Web site pass it to sales, more advanced performance measurement
that reflects prospect activity. companies document definitions rather than performance
Aggregate with additional contact that have been vetted by sales management. When
and account information (e.g. and marketing, update them measurement is robust, it can
past purchases, indicators of regularly, and fully distribute and be used to diagnose where
next purchase intent) for deeper enforce them. improvements are needed.
insights into the target buyer as
well as tactical segmentation and
content delivery.

The SiriusDecisions Scope of Demand Creation Model

= Advanced = Intermediate = Beginner

© SiriusDecisions Inc. All rights reserved. Continued on next page

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 Demand Marketing Leader 22

continued

Program Design, Planning and Execution
#1 Program Management
Discipline
For companies that recognize that
their planning is done in tactical
silos, the first step is to adopt a
disciplined approach to planning
that connects business goals to
demand creation efforts.
#2 Program Execution
and Offers
The first step toward best
practice is to define the
program objective (e.g. new
logo acquisition, pipeline
acceleration) and the
target audience. With that
accomplished, a sophisticated
and coordinated mix of tactics
that includes multiple channels
can be developed.
Marketing Functions
#3 Program Performance
Management
As companies become more
advanced in program planning
discipline and execution, their
measurement approach must
keep pace and be used to
diagnose opportunities for
program optimization.

Demand Program Delivery Mechanism

#1 Delivery Mechanism Management
Delivery mechanisms must be carefully selected
to meet the needs of the company’s demand
creation programs. Each delivery mechanism must
be optimized individually to ensure that it delivers
marketing as efficiently as possible.
#2 Digital Capabilities
Demand creation leaders today often have
responsibility for digital marketing, so ensuring
capabilities in this area is critical. Demand creation
leaders become more advanced as they integrate
digital tactics (e.g. from digital advertising to
syndicated content to Web conversion).

Functional Design and Development

#1 Demand Technology Landscape
The overall demand technology landscape
requires proactive attention as platform
capabilities evolve and new data sources are
introduced, impacting delivery mechanisms and
the workflows that execute them. Companies
typically start with a landscape of point solutions
and begin to integrate existing technologies.
#2 Organization Design
This capability stack involves much more than the
drawing of an org chart, which is ultimately the
outcome of decisions made about the affordable
mix of required skills, the goals for demand creation
and the workflow of demand creation processes.
Organizational design must reflect functional
alignment and shared services, with a roadmap for
providing a centralized and consultation center of
excellence for demand marketing.

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 Marketing Leader at an 23

Emerging Company

Marketing Functions
The annual marketing plan might be a simple concept, but building an effective plan that’s aligned to business
goals, is actionable, cascades the marketing leaders goals to individual team plans and that optimizes the use of
limited resources – is not an easy task. For companies with less than $50 million in revenue, the potential complexity
of the planning process, the lack of required information, and the rapid pace at which emerging companies move
can produce misaligned or unachievable marketing plans. Without a straightforward, structured yet flexible
approach, emerging companies develop marketing plans based on what they have done in the past, what they
are currently executing or what they are most comfortable doing. As a result, these plans can be biased toward
tactics and execution.

We’ve built the SiriusDecisions Emerging-Company Marketing-Plan-on-a-Page Template to provide emerging

companies with a guide to transform business objectives into marketing priorities and goals, define strategy
and establish execution guidance and effective measurement.

The SiriusDecisions Emerging-Company

Marketing-Plan-on-a-Page Template

Business Marketing Marketing Marketing Key

Measures
Goals Objectives Goals Strategy Actions
What the How marketing What marketing The approach How the How the key
company wants will support will contribute marketing marketing actions will be
to achieve business goals to business takes to achieve strategy will be measured
goals its goals executed

(numbers) (words) (numbers) (words) (words) (numbers)

Dependencies and Risks

What must be addressed for the process to work

(numbers and words)

• Business goals. These are quantifiable goals based on what the company wants to achieve in the new fiscal
year. These are derived from the company business objectives and are given to marketing as part of the annual
planning process – reflecting current targets.

• Marketing objectives. These objectives tell the story of how marketing will contribute to the achievement
of specific quantifiable business objectives.

• Marketing goals. These are quantifiable statements about how marketing will support marketing objectives.
Goals state, in greater detail, what marketing will do in a numerical fashion. The goals are created by converting
the objectives into specific targets (numbers) by which marketing performance can be measured and linked
back to the business targets.

Continued on next page

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 Marketing Leader at an 24

Emerging Company continued

Marketing Functions
• Marketing strategy. Strategy defines the consistent approach marketing will take to achieve its goals.
Strategy establishes how things will get done.

• Key actions. This element specifies how the strategy will be executed by enumerating the specific actions
that will be taken. Note that this element should not be a laundry list of tactics; it should provide direction
for downstream functional plan development (e.g. demand leader plan, product leader plan). Key actions
reflect the current environment and available resources.

• Measures. The key performance indicators (KPIs) that directly support the achievement of the key actions.

• Dependencies and risks. Rather than being considered a separate seventh element, dependencies and
risks must be identified and mitigated during each stage of the planning process for the plan to work.

Adopting a standardized planning template that transforms business goals into marketing objectives and goals,
defines strategy, establishes execution guidance and identifies how success will be measured is an important
step in improving plan development. The Emerging-Company-Plan-on-a-Page is designed to further support role-
specific cascades of the plan to operationalize major initiatives such as planning and executing campaigns, and
standing up new functions such as channel marketing, ABM or customer engagement.

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 Marketing Operations 25

Leader

Marketing Functions
What are the key elements of effective marketing planning?
The planning person or team is responsible for creating an environment where the various participants in marketing
leadership and execution can determine objectives, execute the marketing plan and assess its performance.

Understanding the operating parameters. Many executives are surprised to discover they have few opportunities
to make sure that sales, marketing and product share the same goals. If these organizations do not achieve this
alignment at the beginning of their planning activities, they are unlikely to realign them later without incurring
substantial costs.

Designing campaigns, budgets and measurement. With the organization’s objectives in mind, use an integrated
campaign planning framework to define initiatives that clearly target the key segments and other defined, prioritized
initiatives (see the Core Strategy Report “The Anatomy of a B-to-B Campaign”). Next, map the strategy to the central
and regional marketing teams that are responsible for execution, along with the budget and measurement criteria
that enable them to do the required work and communicate results.

Communication and change management. Through participation in corporate and marketing- only periodic
business reviews, the planning team facilitates performance reporting, assessment of results and consideration of
proposals for change. An effective planning process must recognize that no plan can be static and that all functions
must adapt when the environment shifts – and adapt tactics so that activity results can be improved.

Let’s talk tech

There are a number of plausible reasons why b-to-b marketing organizations have seen their technology expenses
double as a percentage of their total budgets. However, it’s important to understand that this budget may not always
be allocated to the right technologies.

Marketers are often entranced by exciting new technologies that offer great promise, but they are not as rigorous
about determining if their organizations are capable of fully leveraging these tools or fixing processes that the
technology would automate.

We’ve developed a set of best practices that marketing operations must adopt to effectively assess, plan, manage
and evolve marketing technology.

Assess the current state. Technology should deliver a return on investment.

Determine future state and develop strategic roadmap. Based on the current-state assessment, identify gaps
that must be filled to meet current and future needs.

Align technology to process and data flow. SiriusDecisions defines b-to-b marketing’s core jobs in terms of
six mission-critical processes: seeding demand, creating demand, nurturing demand, enabling the sales force,
accelerating deals and engaging customers. Marketing operations should document these core processes across
marketing and aligned functions (e.g. sales, channel or product teams) to identify how technology can be leveraged
for process improvement and data management.

Continued on next page

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 Marketing Operations 26

Leader continued

Marketing Functions
Partner with IT and other functions. Marketing cannot manage technology in isolation. Sales operations,
product operations and IT can help.

Clarify roles and responsibilities across teams. To effectively manage a growing portfolio of technology,
an organization must establish a common understanding of roles and responsibilities across functions,
including those outside marketing.

Support procurement and implementation. Marketing operations should serve as a program management
office, providing the support and standard processes for requirements definition, business case development,
vendor selection, change management, training and integration with other systems.

Develop technology enablement curricula. A common outcome of a technology assessment is the identification
of systems that have little or no user engagement.

Consolidate reporting and analytics. New systems mean new sources of data for marketing measurement.

Conduct inventory of license agreements. With the rise of recurring license agreements, the organization may
receive invoices for systems that supported employees who have left the organization, addressed a problem that
no longer exists or have been replaced by another solution.

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 Portfolio Marketing Leader 27

(Product, Solution, Industry or Services Marketing)

Marketing Functions
Product or solution marketing plans articulate the go-to-market strategy for a new offering and guide execution for
creating awareness and generating demand. By using a standardized, repeatable template to communicate across
all functions, organizations ensure consistent guidance from one master source, which boosts the effectiveness and
efficiency of their go-to-market efforts.

We’ve developed guidelines designed to help product marketers develop a product or solution marketing plan:

• Strategy definition. Descriptions of business goals, objectives and metrics.

• Target audience. Descriptions of the target audience and target personas, including their attributes,
the buying journey, value propositions and messaging.

• Offering overview. Descriptions of the product or solution, its position in the portfolio, branding guidelines
and legal considerations.

• Competitive snapshot. A description of the competitive situation, including key competitors and positioning.

• Pricing. A summary of pricing, including average discount, margins and special or promotional pricing.

• Routes to market. A description of applicable sales channels (e.g. direct and indirect sales).

• Campaign project plan. A summary of the activities that must be executed to generate awareness,
create demand and enable sales.

• Regional requirements. Descriptions of potential obstacles to execution at the regional level and
any specific requirements for regional success.

• Resources. A summary of primary contacts and other resources where additional information about
the product or solution can be obtained.

The industry marketing plan

We’ve developed industry-specific guidelines that industry marketers can use to develop the industry marketing plan:

Strategy definition. Descriptions of the high-level business goals, objectives and metrics for the target industry.

Industry overview. Descriptions of the target industry, market drivers and trends.

Offering overview. Descriptions of the offerings that align to the target industry and the use cases.

Target audience. Descriptions of the target personas, their attributes, value propositions and messaging.

Competitive landscape. A description of the competitive situation and the key competitors in the industry.

Pricing. A summary of pricing for the offerings in the target industry.

Routes to market. A description of applicable sales channels such as direct and indirect sales.

Continued on next page

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 Portfolio Marketing Leader 28

(Product, Solution, Industry or Services Marketing)

Marketing Functions
continued
Campaign project plan. A summary of the marketing activities that must be executed to generate awareness,
create demand and enable sales.

Regional requirements. Descriptions of potential obstacles to execution at the regional level and the
required changes.

Resources. A summary of the primary contacts and related documents with additional information about
the target industry.

Throughout the go-to-market process, the marketing plan is the key deliverable that ensures intra-marketing
alignment, orchestrating all the functions within the marketing organization. It is important to maintain the
marketing plan as an active, living document by making continual updates to the plan as needed to meet
changing market conditions or internal triggers. After campaigns take flight and the new offering has been
commercially released, the product marketing plan can be used to measure performance against agreed-upon
metrics and help ensure that stated business or marketing objectives are met.

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Product Functions
 Product Management 30

Leader

Product Functions
For product management, product planning needs to start with product strategy. However, many product managers
find it difficult to clearly communicate product strategy clearly because they lack a consistent definition of what
product strategy is or what it should include. SiriusDecisions defines product strategy as how customer needs and
business strategy will be fulfilled through a product offering.

A product-strategy is not created all at once; the process of defining it begins as soon as an idea or need is
identified, and continues as the offering takes shape. The product strategy should guide the innovation and go-to-
market process, influencing – and influenced by – other deliverables (e.g. business case, product roadmap, product
requirements). We’ve outlined the elements of product strategy and the SiriusDecisions Product Strategy-on-a-Page
Template provides a structure for product managers to codify it on a single page.

Product strategy should cover five different areas, and within each area, there are two questions that need to
be answered:

#1 Market #2 Business #3 Product

The market section looks at the
target market for the offering
and its needs.
Audience. Who is the audience
we are targeting?”
does this offering support the
Customer needs. “What
audience needs will we try
to address?”
Product managers define
how the audience and
its needs relate to the
organization’s business.
Innovation strategy. “How
company’s strategy?”
Portfolio architecture.
“How does this offering
relate to other offerings
in the portfolio”?
This section defines the
offering that is intended to
address the audience’s needs.
Offering definition. “What
will the offering have or do to
address the identified needs?”
Differentiation. “How will this
offering be different and better
than the alternatives?”

#4 Delivery #5 Results
This section discusses what it will take to get the A product strategy’s success is defined by its
product created and into the market. ability to deliver the intended results.

Organizational capabilities. “What will we need Revenue model. “How will this offering generate
to be able to deliver this offering?” or contribute to revenue?”
Offering delivery. “How will we deliver this Success metrics. “How will we measure success?”
offering to the market?”

Once product strategy is defined and completed, it must be monitored and updated. Changes in organizational
priorities, the competitive landscape and new target audiences will drive the need for reviews and changes in
product strategy.

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 Resources
SiriusDecisions is the leading global b-to-b research and advisory firm. We deliver the actionable
intelligence, transformative frameworks and expert guidance that equip executives to modernize
and elevate sales, marketing and product performance.

For more functional role support and expert research, click here for a multitude of resources.

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