One of the Most Important Things We've Published This Year

saraboostani

Happy Friday to all who celebrate!😉

It's been a little quiet over here on Research Road lately because we're deep in the analysis of new buyer research that's turning out to be quite the story🤩. We're practically bursting at the seams to share it with you all in a few months.

In the meantime, I wanted to call attention to a piece that I don't think has gotten enough readership yet.

A few weeks ago, we published The Lead-Based Approach Has Failed Us: It's Time to Move On. As the title suggests, it's about moving on from leads:

• the research supporting that move
• what organizations should be doing instead
• how to execute that transition effectively
• what to measure

Yes, we've done the homework for you 🙂

BUT optimizing revenue production isn't simply a matter of abandoning a lead-based approach. B2B teams need to align themselves with the full reality of how buyers buy, which includes the go-to-market (GTM) environment in which they operate.

For companies that occupy commanding positions in their categories, that reality can be a significant competitive advantage. For everyone else, especially those competing in crowded markets, it presents a different challenge. Buyers tend to determine which vendors will even make it into consideration before they formally enter the Selection Phase of their journey. In other words, your most important competitive window often occurs before the buying journey even begins.

Our head of research @Kerry has done a fantastic job presenting the Category-Brand Matrix in this paper — mapping the four quadrants organizations can occupy across the spectrum of category and brand maturity, and explaining the jobs modern B2B revenue teams need to prioritize based on where they sit within that matrix.

Not to toot our own horn (toot toot!), but there's a lot packed into this one. This piece deserves more eyes on it.💛

Kerry

I'm late to this one, but it really is the most important thing since last year's buyer experience study. It brings all the research together and provides a lot of guidance around what to do to move past the lead-based model that I think we all know is obsolete.