CEO — DRIFT
David is best known for creating hypergrowth products and product teams at companies such as Drift, HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery and Compete. He was named one of the top-ranked CEOs by USA Today and has been featured by media outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Fast Company.
David has guest lectured on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management, Bentley, and other universities, and is also the author of the best-selling book, Conversational Marketing.
2020 accelerated digital transformation by ten years, and a new era of marketing is here. So how did we get here? We need to look back at the three eras of marketing.
THE BRAND ERA: BEFORE 2000 The first era was the Brand Era. The Brand Era was pre-internet. Marketing was in service of the CEO, reliant on agencies, focused on brand and PR, and measured by press mentions and “buzz.” Driving revenue was certainly a goal, but demonstrating ROI on brand campaigns was difficult at best, impossible at worst.
THE DEMAND GEN ERA: 2000-2019 The shift between the first and second era was then brought on by the advent of the internet. During the Demand Gen Era, the old technology paradigm was updated for the “cloud,” and marketers were reliant on do-it-yourself and human operations.
During this time, the CMO role gained a seat at the table, marketing organisations marketed to prospects and were measured by leads.
Whereas marketers in the Brand Era were in service to the CEO, marketers in this era were in service of the Chief Revenue Officer.
THE REVENUE ERA: 2020+ We are now in the Revenue Era. Everyone is online, everyone is a buyer, and whoever provides the best experience wins. To succeed here, marketing and sales teams need to come together to demonstrate their ability to drive not just leads, but lifetime revenue. And marketers are no longer in service to the CEO or the CRO, they’re in service to the customer.
In the old world, marketing and sales teams shared different goals: Marketing was responsible for driving leads and sales was responsible for bookings, but both would struggle in their own silos.
The resulting misalignment created a bad customer experience that was harmful to the business. With marketing focused on leads and sales focused on bookings, both teams failed to deliver what really matters: customer experience and revenue.
B2B buyers have come to expect the same buying experience they have as consumers -- and they’re tired of businesses being slow, or unavailable to respond. Beyond that, 70-80% of seller’s interactions are now digital, and the majority of ways sales used to hit their number simply don’t exist anymore. The “field” for sellers is now the website. Marketing and sales must come together to deliver a new experience for buyers. One that is real-time, personalized and human.
There are three opportunities to seize in the Revenue Era:
Bring marketing and sales together once and for all.
Connect revenue teams directly to buyers.
Communicate with buyers in real time on the website.
Part of the problem with all of the rich data stored in marketing automation platforms and CRMs is that marketing isn’t able to action it in a way that is helpful to both your sales team and the buyer in real-time. We can help solve that.
Now, your website becomes the single touchpoint for customers and your team. Buyers and sellers can communicate live to get prospects the answers they need quickly, which speeds up the entire buyer journey and accelerates revenue. What's more, if a member of your team isn't available, Drift's patented AI technology steps into help with chatbots that converse like your very best reps.
Event-based AI chat systems like Drift drive the prospect by being helpful but also by asking qualifying questions to determine if the visitor is not just marketing ready, but truly sales ready.
When AI has qualified the lead, the correct seller can either be connected to the visitor in real time or the bot can schedule a meeting. This way, sales is finally supported with sales qualified leads (SQL) that come from marketing.
This experience solves marketing’s problem of being able to tie digital experiences to revenue, meeting the buyer in real-time, and giving sales a more effective way to leverage the website in the new digital world.
We believe that the stakes are high for the Revenue Era. And that the winners will emerge with amazing customer experience, more revenue & lower costs, and faster sales cycles.
Finally, for the first time ever, true marketing and sales alignment where impact on revenue is the center of the conversation.
