“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

Earlier this year Scott Brinker wrote, “We’re entering a post-digital-transformation era, where companies are no longer planning to become ‘digital.’ They are digital.”

A couple months later Scott quoted LeanData: “The #1 lead capability that revenue marketing teams want is more automation/fewer manual tasks (32%). He also noted a report on Martech careers showed that 70% of marketing ops professionals spend 10+ hours a week in spreadsheets.

He states: “I propose a more realistic yardstick: Marketing has been digitally transformed when more than 99% of marketing ‘actions’ — frontstage and back-stage — are executed algorithmically by software.”

Scott provides examples of what he calls “algorithmically” executed actions vs. “not algorithmically” executed actions. Manually exporting signups for a webinar to CRM is not algorithmically executed. Signups moving automatically to CRM via API is algorithmic, as one example.

Wow. The divide between marketing and sales is not shrinking. It is expanding based on marketing’s desire to automate everything. The result? Digital transformation has made it possible to get more poor-quality leads to sales faster than ever before.

There are now over 10,000 marketing and/or sales enablement solutions. Look here for the most recent graphic listing the solutions (note that as of the date of this graphic there were 9,932 solutions and that number has already grown to more than 10,000).

From another blog by Scott  (on his www.chiefmartec.com site): “ Aside from the anecdotal evidence that I frequently hear on LinkedIn and Twitter threads, Gartner’s most recent Marketing Technology Survey frames the problem quantitatively: On average, the 324 enterprise marketing technology leaders they surveyed report that only 42% of their Martech capabilities are being used. That’s down from 58% utilization in 2020.

If your gut tells you that 10,000 marketing and/or sales tools is too many, your gut is working. From the same article, “given the economic belt-tightening that many marketing teams are likely to face in 2023, it’s certainly a good time to review your stack and shed any tools that aren’t adding meaningful value. That might not be because of flaws with those tools, but constraints in your capacity to productively harness them, at least at this moment. Either way, if you’re not getting impactful outcomes from them, they’re ballast.”

I recently decided to drop out of a consulting project implementing an account-based marketing (ABM) project for a $500 million company that is in the process of automating everything marketing. The problem is that they are automating to check a box. There is no piloting. No success center modeling. Success is rolling out technology that won’t help because there is no change management, no in-depth training, and no best practices or metrics to monitor and control the activity. They are checking the box. I felt like I was attending a funeral and dropped out.  The technology won’t help given the ad hoc way it is being rolled out. Sort of like Sherlock warns, “one begins to twist the facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

I have two recommendations. One, per Scott Brinker’s recommendation, jettison any tools that aren’t adding meaningful value. Two, identify the top 20% to 30% of your prospects and make sure they never see the inside of an automation tool. From an account-based marketing (ABM) perspective, these are the targets that require one-to-one, non-automated, touches.

Targets in the category that ABM calls one-to-few, the middle tier, should be touched by a combination of automated and non-automated touches.  

Targets in the one-to-many category, the lowest tier, don’t cost justify non-automated touches – HOWEVER – you should always be testing in the one-to-few and one-to-many categories to monitor prospects that are moving up in the hierarchy. While many will look at this approach as common sense, remarkably few will do it and far too many times top tier prospects are treated like they aren’t really that important.

For more information (and download the free eBook on the topic), visit here.

Or reach out to me at dan.mcdade@prospect-experience.com or 770-262-9021.