Glad to have Marketo’s listing visible again on the @Salesforce AppExchange http://t.co/cOG6WqOkyX

— Marketo (@marketo) June 18, 2013

Sales development has been on the forefront of my mind recently. I just wrote a well received post on the TOPO blog on why sales development teams fail.

So I love, support, recommend and help build sales development teams. One vexing question for me has been “who should own it?”. For this post, I have done three things: First, to understand where these teams report today, I borrowed data and information from The Bridge Group Inc.’s Lead Generation report. Secondly, I reached out and asked inside sales influencers and practitioners for their take. Finally, I did a poll with sales, marketing, and inside sales people to gather some of my own data.

The Current Scenario

As I mentioned previously, these charts and data are courtesy of The Bridge Group Inc.

First thing you will notice is that currently the vast majority of sales development (called lead generation in the report) report to sales.

Interestingly, The Bridge Group Inc’s report shows that the activity mix is a major factor in deciding where a sales development group may report.  Sales development teams primarily report to sales when the main process is heavy outbound prospecting but marketing is the more likely owner (it’s close) when the main goal is qualification of inbound leads. From the report:

Expert Analysis

I reached out to inside sales influencers to get their take. I asked the question: “Who should own phone-based lead generation/lead qualification (sales development)? Sales, marketing, or it doesn’t matter as long as there is an owner”.  The analysis is interesting:

The “it doesn’t matter as long as there is an owner” camp:

Trish Bertuzzi from the Bridge Group Inc

We don’t care where the team reports. The only criteria is that it report to an organization that has the expertise, passion and bandwidth to pay attention to it.

The “it should be owned by marketing” camp

Jon Miller from Marketo

• Aligned incentives. At the end of the month or quarter, marketing and sales development are concerned with leads and pipeline creation, while sales cares about whether or not deals have closed.  It’s in your best interest to align these incentives up the SDR management chain.
• Streamlined measurement. When sales development reports to marketing, it makes it easier for marketing to be measured – and compensated – for creating sales pipeline. This is because marketing is responsible for everything before pipeline (e.g. they are only one step away from their goal).   When sales development reports to sales, it puts marketing’s key metric (sales pipeline) two steps away from their control.
• One throat to choke. From a management perspective, putting marketing in charge of sales pipeline development can do wonders for eliminating finger-pointing. Put another way, if marketing is responsible for lead follow-up, you can say goodbye to “we sent over X leads; they just didn’t follow-up well.”
• Better closed-loop feedback. Increased synergy between marketing and sales development means increased transparency around lead quality feedback, which is essential for refining the process.
• They play by the same rules. Like B2B marketing, lead qualification is a number and metrics game.  Why place a golf ball on the tennis court when it’s intended for the green?

Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing

The Pros

• Marketing is closer to revenue responsibility by owning greater portion of sales cycle
• Sales can focus only on qualified opportunities
  *If your inside sales team is focused on qualifying leads, make that a marketing function and allow your sales team to focus on selling.

The Cons

• This is a sales management job and that is a skill marketers typically don’t have
• Sales development management is a full time job and few marketing organizations plan for or expect this time of commitment
• Marketing needs to commit resources (creative, content, training, tools) to the success of the sales development team
• Sales leadership typically don’t like the idea giving up what they view as part of the sales organization

The “it should be owned by sales” camp

Tom Scearce, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Sales should own it but marketing should fund it. And sales and marketing leaders must co-present regular status updates at the executive level. It’s too important of a function — because getting it right  requires considerable investment and coordination over a sustained period — to be left to one or the other group. Through sharing these budgetary, operational, and readout responsibilities, sales and marketing are strongly encouraged to agree on execution details, expected outcomes, and the metrics that will be shared with their peers.

Chris Snell, Inside Sales Manager, SMB at Care.com

I believe sales development sits right in the middle of marketing and sales.  They filter all of what marketing produces (the MQL), and because they work so closely with sales, they know what does and doesn’t make a prospect an SQL.  Sales should own lead qualification because of the desired result of the lead; a closed deal.  Marketing sends all leads, all potential targets to sales, (who should own training and development of teleprospecting), and the phone team sifts through it all like a ’49er looking for gold.

Gemma Mailhot, Head of Inside Sales at BMC Software

It can work in either area, however two key reasons to have it in sales. One, if you want a top notch sales development team you want them to be more like sales people then marketing people. Two, to attract the best of the best…..they need to have a career path and 90% of the best sales development reps want to be in sales not marketing. There are several other reasons why you might have it under sales but to me those are the key reasons.

Lars Nilsson

IMHO, if the role in question is to use the phone or email to generate “sales” activities, like meetings, appointments…then the role should reside in sales.   If the role to is qualify in or out marketing leads for then another role to do the actual follow-up, then I think the role could end up in marketing.  This (latter) role is more of a data-scrubber, lead flow manager, lead triage’r, than an activities based sales person (Former).

Survey Results

I sent out a survey to inside sales influencers and practitioners to “take a vote”. It seems that sales continues to be the place to be for sales development:

My take

Do you mind if I hedge a bit? My preference is for marketing to own as much of the demand generation process as possible and allow sales to focus on closing qualified leads. For that reason, I lean towards having marketing own the group. However, like Trish, I just want organizations to have a sales development group, and I have seen sales organizations run these types of groups extremely well. So: I prefer marketing and completely support sales ownership. (wimpy, but truly how I feel)

What’s your take? Let me know in the comments field…

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic and a co-founder of Topo. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

1. The b2b buyer is never going to read all of her email.
2. The biggest innovation in marketing is our ability to communicate in a relevant, appropriate way based on who people are and what they are doing.
3. The coolest thing happening in b2b marketing is the shift from out-of-context to in-context communication.
4. My favorite marketing book is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
5. My favorite social media channel is LinkedIn Groups (if they are well-run)
6. Social media for b2b is part of the fabric of the job.
7. b2b video is yet another reason I wish I paid more attention in art class.
8. In b2b, the idea of a funnel is still a useful way to focus on key conversion points in the customer journey.
9. The first thing every marketer should do is spend several weeks a year living with their target buyers like Jane Goodall lived amongst the chimps.
10. Content marketing is essential but it is only a prelude to the rest of your digital experience.
11. The biggest mistake marketers make is trying to do 50 things ok instead of 10 things very well, 20 things just well enough, and not doing the other 20 things.
12. The biggest myth in b2b marketing is that xyz is the holy grail that will replace all my blocking and tackling with rapid success.
13. My favorite marketing technology besides marketing automation is Evergage’s real-time onsite personalization based on behavior and user attributes.
14. Besides revenue, the metric every marketer must track is conversion rate at each key conversion point.
15. My most forgettable marketing experience is my attempt at drawing xkcd-like cartoons to illustrate our company’s value prop.  (see comment above about art class)
16. Mobile marketing is harder than we all thought.
17. The next “hot-thing” in marketing will be the next next “yet-another-part-of-the marketing-mix”
18. In 2015, marketing will stop spending 5 times more on demandgen than it does on converting interested visitors/leads who arrive onsite.
19. Over the next couple years in marketing, I can’t wait to see every marketer easily personalizing the digital experience for their visitors and customers without dev involvement.
20. Madlibs with the Funnelholic is better than Cats.

Karl Wirth is the CEO and Co-Founder of Evergage. He is passionate about helping businesses improve their conversion through relevant, in-context communication. Karl is a software executive who has led product and marketing functions at Red Hat, Sentillion, and RSA Security. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Physics.

Hold on to your hats folks..because here we go:

I will start with this article on Business Insider, the title should tell you everything: Fresh Off A Hot IPO, Marketo’s Biggest Partner, Salesforce.com, Is Now Its Biggest Threat

Ok, follow along – then there is this tweet:

@marketo and @eloqua have officially been removed from the public @salesforce AppExchange. Fires are a-blazing #marketingnation

— Katie Bullinger (@KatieBullinger) June 12, 2013

How about this Tweet from Adam Blitzer from Pardot:

Anyone else getting spammed by a Marketo switcheroo campaign? They even sent it to us by accident. Awesome. #desperatetimes — Adam Blitzer (@AdamBlitzer) June 13, 2013

Mike Volpe from Hubspot going over the top at Blitzer:

@adamblitzer but all the Pardot hail mary campaigns are ok?Are they doing something you don’t do?

— Mike Volpe (@mvolpe) June 13, 2013

Things were quiet for awhile…but it’s chippy, very chippy.

1. The b2b buyer is spending more time researching on the internet than talking to salespeople.
2. The biggest innovation in sales is relationship selling instead of transactional sales.
3. The coolest thing happening in b2b sales is the ability to connect with prospects on social media.
4. My favorite Sales 2.0 technology is Socedo!
5. My favorite sales book is To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink
6. My favorite social media channel is Twitter
7. Social selling is utilizing social media to make your sales process more effective.
8. I use Linkedin to find information about my network.
9. Cold calling is dead.
10. In b2b, the idea of a funnel is crucial to sales and marketing.
11. The first thing every sales person should do is learn what their target customers are talking about online.
12. Voicemail is essentially a junk mail box.
13. The biggest mistake sales people make is not building their personal brand on social media.
14. The biggest myth in sales is that sticking to the script is most effective.
15. My most forgettable sales experience was when I forgot to follow up.
16. The hardest part of selling is putting yourself in the buyer’s shoes.
17. The next “hot-thing” in sales will be “always-on” selling through mobile devices.
18. In 2015, sales will be almost completely dependent on the Internet.
19. My favorite sales saying is “customers buy from people not companies.”
20. Over the next couple years in sales, I can’t wait to see social media become a primary channel in sales efforts.
21. Madlibs with the Funnelholic is a nice break in my day!

Aseem Badshah is the Founder and CEO of Socedo and a leader in the social selling space. With 7+ years in the social media industry, Aseem has worked with top brands like Microsoft, Breaking Bad and Grand Marnier. Before Socedo, he created Uptown Treehouse, a seven person social media marketing agency based in Los Angeles. Today, Aseem is focused on helping brands utilize social media to identify relevant leads and connect with them in an effective manner.

I didn’t get the chance to give my personal take on the acquisition so here we go. First I will start with some random notes on a scoreboard:

1.  The Salesforce Marketing Cloud wasn’t really a good Marketing Cloud as far as Marketing Clouds go.  A lot of analysts have talked about the acquisition in terms of why it was good for Salesforce.com. In the context of the Marketing Cloud, I agree. The Marketing Cloud probably needed email and marketing automation pieces.  Considering all that was happening in marketing technology, Salesforce had a truly incomplete offering – this helps.

2.  What’s my take on the overall acquisition from a market perspective? Bunch of dudes from Indiana made fat stacks -  that’s my analysis. Maybe I am just not that smart but I don’t feel like speech making on this one. Organizations will still choose to buy marketing automation and email marketing from other vendors. There is no evidence that Salesforce would put their customer relationships at risk by messing with the API or the AppExchange. I think we move on. As a matter of fact, one week later and it feels like no one is talking about it anymore.

P.S. Congrats to the “dudes from Indiana” – I am very happy for them. (I wanted to make this point in case the annoying commentor “ihate@you” comes on again and accuses me of being jealous.)

3. Oh and a hearty “shout-out” to all the false acquisition rumors over the years. “Craig I heard…” Now that acquisitions and IPOs have happened, the rumors mostly didn’t come true. I won’t mention them here. Next time you see me, I will give you one or remind you of one you gave me.

I do have one concern:

Let’s Not Make this the End of the Era of the Marketer

We have just witnessed an incredible era for marketers. Before this “golden era,” b2b marketing was tough on the ego. Sales hated marketing, no respect, viewed as a cost-center…blah blah.  The rise of marketing automation meant multi-millions of dollars spent on educating, enlightening and empowering marketers to allow them to stand tall(er).  It has been a grand ole time – Over the last five to seven years, marketers have been able to move from the “little kid’s table” to the “big boy’s table.”  Part of the fun have been these shrines to marketers the marketing automation companies have built. These shrines educate marketers, make them feel better about themselves, help them deal with sales and upper management — you name it. Think Stuart Smalley: “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!” Stand-alone marketing technology companies care about marketing and spend all day trying to make marketers better. I don’t want it to end.

Now let’s play Big Bank take Little Bank

But it might end if big companies buy the rest of the stand-alone marketing software vendors. Instead of companies devoted to marketing, marketing again becomes a feature in a bigger suite. That’s not as fun. All this time making marketing believe in themselves, and then BOOM they are a feature again…just another part of the machine.

It’s hard, because this is all about the “cheddar” and the money is hard to resist. And certainly, the consolidation isn’t over – there are still some sharks in the water and there are some GREAT companies left to have. I get it…

But wouldn’t it be cool if there were big honking companies who only cared about marketing?

Someone is probably saying “Craig doesn’t understand business.” Of course I don’t, otherwise, I’d be writing this from my house in Hawaii…but I can dream right? Actually, I do have hope. There are some amazing stand-alones left in the space:  Act-on, Marketo, and HubSpot are great companies. Really great companies, not just great marketing technology companies – great, well-run companies (I know there are others left like Silverpop, Neolane, InfusionSoft but I don’t know you that well). I know everyone will be wondering who will get bought next but my hope is that they keep fighting the good fight.  Get really big, hire lots of people, keeping fighting it out, and get better and better but staying focused on the person who needs them – the marketer.

But maybe that’s my dream…I just don’t want it to end.

1. The B2B buyer is sad and lonely because they have been digesting content that your marketing team hit them with all day long. Call them…have a sales conversation.
2. The biggest innovation in sales is social data generation from companies like Social123. By far the most accurate source for contact information we find out there today.
3. The coolest thing happening in B2B sales is a grassroots movement, started by me, right now to eliminate the use of the phrase “net net” in B2B selling. If you use it, it makes you sound pompous. I’m not even sure what it means.
4. My favorite Sales 2.0 technology is our click to call from Insidesales.com. Overnight productivity and accountability increases just for signing up!
5. My favorite sales book is Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Group. Not a true “sales” book, but learning emotional intelligence and how to get out of your own way are critical skills to have in sales.
6. My favorite social media channel is Google+. Doubles as news feed and communication platform for me. It’s also not widely adopted yet so I still sound like an expert when asked about it.
7. Social selling confuses me. I think Trish Bertuzzi said it best on these pages when she called it a “misnomer”.
8. I use Linkedin like I use Facebook but for my business life. Facebook allows me to keep tabs on the people from high school who have gotten fat, bald, divorced, or generally just strange. LinkedIn gives me the same level of deep visibility into what is going on in the professional lives of my network. Great intel for my prospecting efforts.
9. Cold calling is dead. It ended the with the advent of corporate email. If you are dying to label the type of calling you are doing why not adopt the Gracey Temperature Scale to describe our calling efforts from here on out. Mildly Warm Calling, Luke Warm Calling, Warm Calling, Hot Tub Temp Calling, Scalding Hot Calling. Given the amount of senseless debate I see surrounding this term I think it makes sense to become painfully descriptive when describing what type of calling you are doing.
10. In B2B, the idea of a funnel gets brought up too much. We all know it and get it. We agree that it’s important. You put lots in up top…smaller amount comes out of the bottom. Got it!
11. The first thing every sales person should do is embrace your CRM. Great way to immediately differentiate yourself from every other sales person at your company by actually using the expensive tool they bought for you. I know I would like you more than the rest.
12. Voicemail is the single most misused and undervalued tool at your disposal. Teleprospectors and sales people do more to torpedo themselves via voicemail than you think. When part of an integrated call planning strategy, voicemail can be the thing that puts your connect rate over the top.
13. The biggest mistake sales people make is avoiding and\or battling marketing. They are there to help you. Do them a favor and make a point of thanking them for that. Then take it a step farther and ask them to collaborate on a small net fishing campaign for your territory. They’ll appreciate the effort.
14. The biggest myth in sales is the 80/20 rule that 80% of productivity comes from 20% of your reps. It’s not accurate. There a ton of good salespeople out there. I believe companies that feel they are living the 80/20 rule should look in the mirror first. Organizational issues or lack thereof drive sales performance more than the level of talent.
15. My most forgettable sales experience was falling into a hot tub while giving a young engaged couple a tour of the hotel I was working at. They were looking at it for their wedding and I walked right into the hot tub while explaining some nonsense about the ventilated roof of the pool area. They made me wear a polyester suit for that job and the chlorine from the hot tub caused it to disintegrate later. Low point for me.
16. The hardest part of selling is generating the proposal. It’s boring and involves typing. I wish you could just record the prospects “yes”, then say “do we both agree not to sue one another”…”yes”. Done!
17. The next “hot-thing” in sales will be the continued emergence of Enterprise level inside sales reps. Big deals being closed over the phone in the cubicle right next to you. Or even from home.
18. In 2015, sales will be Salestastic!!!
19. My favorite sales saying is…..none….anyone who knows me knows I hate “sayings’.
20. Over the next couple years in sales, I can’t wait to see the continued growth of reps requiring deep qualification in the leads that they receive from Teleprospecting. I’m wildly biased, but its the right way to go.
21. Madlibs with the Funnelholic is WAAAY more fun than blogging.

Pete started AG Salesworks in 2002 with his business partner, Paul Alves, with a goal of providing technology companies with high quality and fully qualified sales leads. As Chief Operating Officer, Pete oversees the daily operations of AG Salesworks, which includes client engagement, personnel management, business strategy, across-the-board data analysis and long-term strategic planning. He is also Adjunct Professor of Sales and Marketing for the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

We have a couple tweets on content marketing:

Blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog…it works. If you are one of those people who doubt the need for a blog, don’t worry – I was once with you. I was into content marketing, but just didn’t see the whole blog thing. Now that I have seen real-world examples of blogs driving real inbound marketing results and now that I am blogging regularly and generating leads — I can tell you: IT WORKS. On the other hand, I am increasingly start to think that if you can’t blog regularly – then you should not even have a blog.

RT @socialmedia2day: Once blogs index 52+ posts, they enjoy 77% higher lead generation than #blogs with 0-23 posts. ow.ly/kRXdb …

— Shelly Kramer (@ShellyKramer) May 14, 2013

— Shelly Kramer (@ShellyKramer) May 14, 2013

This number seems high. If it’s real, I am very encouraged. In the world of  “Competitive Content”, companies will have to allocate real resources to their content efforts.  If these numbers are real, a lot of companies realize this…

Check out these 6 stats! 39% of avg marketing/comm budget dedicated to #contentmarketing in 2013 via @contentcouncil bit.ly/18YIAs5

— Kapost (@kapost) May 20, 2013

Is this stat surprising to you? Seriously? I rarely post photos on Twitter and rarely look at photos on Twitter. Someone talk to me here…

Infographic: 36% of all shared links on Twitter are photos bit.ly/13O5lMZ

— Koka Sexton (@kokasexton) May 30, 2013

Mobile marketing is such a no-brainer, I try to pick up any data or tips on the topic and post it to Tweets of the Week.  Not sure what else to say except: “Mobile Marketing, believe it.”

Good mobile email drives revenue. 71% said mobile purchasing decisions are most influenced by Emails from companies (Adobe).#ETCafe

— Simms Jenkins (@SimmsJenkins) May 23, 2013

Have a great weekend!

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic and a co-founder of Topo. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

1. The b2b buyer is drowning in information.
2. The biggest innovation in marketing is always-on access to data.
3. The coolest thing happening in b2b marketing is it’s increasing resemblance to B2C marketing.
4. My favorite marketing book is Switch.
5. My favorite social media channel is Twitter.
6. Social media for b2b is unfortunately still a PR distribution channel.
7. b2b video is generally lame.
8. In b2b, the idea of a funnel is omnipresent.
9. The first thing every marketer should do is get a win under his or her belt. People follow winners.
10. Content marketing is the fuel that drives social media.
11. The biggest mistake marketers make is to not empathize with the buyer.
12. The biggest myth in b2b marketing is that marketers can structure the buyer’s journey.
13. My favorite marketing technology besides marketing automation is the people who run the marketing automation system.
14. Besides revenue, the metric every marketer must track is cost per quality lead.
15. My most forgettable marketing experience is every silly argument I’ve had on social media.
16. Mobile marketing is not quite here (at least in the US).
17. The next “hot-thing” in marketing will be mobile marketing.
18. In 2015, marketing will get a little more data driven, a little smarter, a little more creative.
19. Over the next couple years in marketing, I can’t wait to see new verticals being exposed to some of the tactics that have changed B2B tech marketing.
20. Madlibs with the Funnelholic is a great excuse to connect with Craig.

Joe Chernov is the VP of Marketing for Kinvey, a mobile backend as a service start-up in Boston, MA. Joe joined Kinvey from Eloqua, where he served as VP of Content Marketing. The Content Marketing Institute named him “Content Marketer of the Year” in 2012. He serves on the board of advisors for Little Bird, a search engine for influencer discovery and engagement.

Here we go!

Brian Vellmure
Independent Analyst

It took about 18 months longer than expected, but Salesforce finally filled a hole in its marketing cloud with marketing automation capabilities. I didn’t necessarily see ExactTarget coming as Marketo was was being mentioned in most circles once Oracle scooped up Eloqua.

With ExactTarget, Salesforce picks up a company with a large install base with at least twice the revenue of Marketo and for likely less than twice the multiple of trailing twelve months revenue. In short, it was simply a better deal.

The ExactTarget install base also likely leads to more new business opportunities as their customer mix is more diversified from a CRM perspective than Marketo is. A disproportionally large % of Marketo customers are also Salesforce customers.

ExactTarget brings with it the marketing automation capabilities of Pardot, which will need to be retrenched to move up into the enterprise, following the upstream path that Salesforce has been on over the last several years.

In short, a good acquisition that seems to make a lot of sense.

Raghu Raghavan
CEO, Act-On Software

The e-mail marketing sector has produced multiple winners in the past, such as Constant Contact (CTCT) and Responsys (MKTG). However, the public markets have not valued them fairly due to their singular focus on e-mail. Now, Salesforce is telling everyone that e-mail marketing is important after all. It is very clear that this acquisition is aimed purely at the financial markets as Salesforce tries to bulk up against the likes of Oracle and Workday, but it doesn’t serve Salesforce’s long-suffering customers. ExactTarget has a legacy e-mail marketing platform, and Salesforce has done very little to advance their own platform, so this leaves their joint customers squarely back in the 20^th century.

Matt Heinz
Heinz Marketing

I’m a fan of ExactTarget and Pardot, but Salesforce is really late to the party on this.  They haven’t been very quick to integrate products and platforms either, so I expect this acquisition might deliver quick value in terms of revenue and sales, but it’ll be quite awhile before we see the true product integration that will make sales & marketing’s lives much easier.

Adam Needles
Annuitas

I think when someone sees the Salesforce acquisition of ExactTarget (and Pardot, which is ET’s stand-alone marketing automation platform), that they probably are thinking, ‘Well, another CRM acquisition of MAP, just like Oracle/Eloqua … wonder who’s next.’  But that’s the wrong way to view this news.

First, this is not analogous to the Oracle acquisition of Eloqua.  Salesforce has been rumored for years to be more interested in email marketing than marketing automation, and this is ExactTarget’s DNA; moreover, their Pardot platform is a recent acquisition, operated as a stand-alone company, and Pardot’s DNA is more SMB.  Also, many of ExactTarget’s largest customers are B2C.  This is very different than the B2B-centric acquisition of Oracle of a marketing automation platform — Eloqua — which has its roots in the hairy, complex issues unique to the largest enterprise organizations.  So not the same acquisition.

Second, Salesforce is one of the best examples of proving that building ecosystem around your platform is one of the best ways to drive its value — so Salesforce wouldn’t do anything to hurt that value.  Salesforce has done other acquisitions, such as Jigsaw and Radian6, but it does not preclude a customer from bringing and integrating their own data sources and social media platforms to the table.  And Salesforce won’t shut out other marketing automation platforms.  If anything, ExactTarget and Pardot, which will be the right choice for some customers, and not for others, will whet the appetite of Salesforce customers overall for marketing automation, and that is good news for firms such as Marketo and Silverpop, which are currently some of the top, best-in-class, stand-alone marketing automation platforms.

Third, this move by Salesforce, when compared to the Oracle acquisition but also compared to acquisitions by Adobe, and acquisitions by Marketo and Silverpop, actually point the reality that there is not an emergence of a singular CRM-centric gravitational pull.  (Sorry, David Raab.)  In fact, there are three major ‘mindsets’ around marketing and sales technology architectural stacks that are emerging:  Web/Inbound-led, exemplified by Adobe and Hubspot; marketing-automation-led, exemplified by Marketo and Silverpop; and CRM-led, exemplified by Oracle and Salesforce.  All are viable and have are the right approach for different companies with different needs and different go-to-market strategies.  No ‘one’ of these will be dominant.

And this speaks to the overall counsel we always provide to clients, and the big-takeaway here, IMHO — that there is not a one-size-fits-all marketing and sales technology architecture.  Instead, different organizations have different go-to-market models — different Demand Process Architectures, as we call it at ANNUITAS — and it is this architecture, not a technology architecture, per se, that should dominate choices made about marketing and sales technology investments.  Technology decisions should support business process, not vice versa.  And in the marketing and sales world, Demand Process should dictate the right technology architecture for each company, whether B2B or B2C, and whether enterprise or SMB.

As a final comment, I’ll say I believe this is a great move but should not be evaluated as ‘Is this a good move for CRM … for marketing automation … etc.’  Rather, I view this as, ‘This is a great development for marketing and sales organizations because it will help drive awareness, education and maturity, as well as integration, to help organizations get closer, faster to the right systems and data architecture for their individual Demand Process needs.

Congrats to Salesforce, ExactTarget and specifically to the Pardot team.

Justin Gray
LeadMD

Two and a half billion dollars. This is Salesforce.com’s largest acquisition ever – and the money is being spent on an idea. It’s Salesforce.com saying that if a company wants to grow and is not focused squarely on marketing to drive that growth, it will die. This acquisition means that all CRM applications will need to embrace enterprise marketing functions with open arms. ExactTarget has a long way to go in the enterprise space, but Salesforce.com can take it there.

But for these systems to be successful, even with the cohesion between these two marketing powerhouses, skilled marketers are needed more than ever. This acquisition doesn’t eliminate the need for the endangered species of adept humans – it increases it. Without the people and those skill sets, companies don’t buy, marketing technology doesn’t sell and all of this posturing is for naught.

David Lewis
DemandGen

The acquisition will serve as a catalyst for fusing demand generation and customer relationship management into a unified process and system for companies.  For most firms, these initiatives are still treated as separate functions, but the best strategy for increasing customer acquisition and loyalty can be best achieved when treated holistically.

Mike Volpe
Hubspot

The deal shows that the marketing software industry is big and growing. It is so important that Salesforce now seems scared of the up and coming marketing software companies, and have spent over $3.5 billion on 3 different acquisitions to try to protect themselves from being disrupted. There are two questions we should now ask. Are email and social media the right technologies for the future of marketing when we’re all moving to inbound and content marketing? And will they be able to effectively integrate the 5 separate marketing products they now own (core CRM database, Buddy Media, Radian 6, Exact Target and Pardot) into a good customer experience? Time will tell.

I will keep adding as more roll in!