UPDATED
Survey Poll
Results
How well is your organisation leveraging external data to improve selection of target accounts?
The respondents in our survey all felt that they are somewhat successful at using external data to improve the selection of target accounts for their sales and marketing campaigns. On a scale of one to ten, organisations scored their success at a six, on average, with only one organisation awarding a score of nine.
Should your organisation spend more on AI tools to improve target account selection?
65% of the respondents told us that they wanted to increase spending on AI to improve the richness of leads they supply to their sales teams. 35% said their use of AI technology is limited, perhaps due to budget constraints and a lack of knowledge about the ‘right’ tools.
As the B2B sales become increasingly remote and digital, how important is it for sales teams to maintain a ‘human’ element to the customer journey?
60% of the industry leaders we interviewed said that it was vitally important for them to retain human involvement in the buyer journey, assigning the issue a top score of 10 for importance. 20% of the respondents assigned this issue a score of 9, and another 20% responding that this issue ranked 8 to 6 in importance. It is clear that most B2B sales and marketing organisations agree that humans will continue to play a vital role in the buyer journey.
One respondent did note that the importance of human engagement depends on the specific point in the sales journey – at the early stages, perhaps the efficiency and ease of use the digital part of the buyer journey is appreciated more than at the point of making a buying decision, when human expertise and support would be more optimal at getting buyers across the line.
How important is outbound outreach as acquisition play to achieving your revenue goals?
Organisations gave an average rating of 6 to signify the importance of outbound outreach to achieving their revenue goals.
What is your investment in digital channels versus outbound outreach?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how highly respondents rank the importance of digital, most organisations placed a large emphasis on investing in digital versus outbound outreach.
Which of the following 3 present the greatest challenges?
Sales and marketing organisations report that personalisation is one of the most challenging things to deliver at scale. Personalisation depends on a deep understanding of the customer: their needs, preferences, choices and behaviour. This is challenging to deliver at scale in organisations where IT systems and data are siloed, and it is hard to create a single version of the customer.