The problem with most approaches to marketing automation in B2B settings is that we’ve completely ignored the complexity and centrality of sales interactions to the B2B sales process. Marketing Sherpa released a study earlier this year in which they noted that the average B2B purchase involved 21 people on the buyer’s side. Booz Allen and the American Marketing Association have done very thorough research on the primacy of sales executives in customer minds. According to them, 60-70% of all perceptions are driven by the sales exec, and those human interactions are BY FAR the most important customer experiences that customer’s have with B2B firms. Wow, have you ever heard a “marketing automaton” mention that?

I’m currently re-implementing a CRM solution for my personal entrepreneurial and sales efforts. As a 25 years B2B sales veteran who sold CRM for number of years, I have a fairly good idea about what’s possible with the technology out there. In fact I built my own first system in ’89 using a Q&A database [...]