#58: Modern Distribution #1: Same Team Generates, Manages + Closes Demand

Getting Demand Generation and Sales on the same page is arguably the highest impact lever any B2B company can pull to unlock growth.

So when it comes to this 5 part Micro Essay thread, let's start with having the same team generate, manage + close demand.

1. Unify goals / incentives to unlock agile execution aka Next Best Action (N.B.A.)

   1. Even the smallest of teams can accomplish big things when they're all on the same page.

   2. Eliminates wasted efforts rooted in conflicting definitions of success (i.e. MQL vs SQL), optimizing for activity vs outcomes, etc.

   3. Enables cross-functional teams to become laser focused on a pre-determined segment, obsess over their buyer journey and customize collective team's effort based on stack-ranked opportunities calibrated in real-time.

2. Eliminates echo chamber

   1. Companies overinvest in developing top-down vs bottoms-up led, iterative strategy development.

   2. One isn't more important than the other as they should be toggled between but what you learn from building-in-public is priceless.

   3. You're interacting with the market vs making assumptions about the market. You don’t know until you ask.

3. Depth of specialized intelligence

   1. Lot's of different forms and sources of intelligence that can impact distribution efforts.

   2. Everything from relationship related, knowledge graph, time sensitive, strategic, primary / proprietary etc.

   3. How / where you collect vs how / where / when you apply them to impact distribution is art + science. 1:1 vs 1:few vs 1:many...it all depends but doing this well is a major success lever.

4. Application of specialized intelligence to owned content to navigate complexity of buying committees

   1. The lenses that CFOs vs CMOs vs CIO / CTOs use to evaluate a proposition in relation to their areas of focus can have a much broader spectrum than anyone in the distribution game would care to admit.

   2. This is where an aligned, cross-functional team is able to shine.

   3. Not only by the owned content they generate, cross-platform strategy they commit to but how quickly / effectively they iterate and customize it to support the team's Next Best Action. $1 in, $10+ out.

April 15, 2021 (Tweet Link)