What the World Needs Now: A Revenue Revolution

Marketo’s CEO, Phil Fernandez was invited, once again, to share his thoughts on the weekly SLMA Radio show. In case you missed it, download the recording here or read below for a quick summary.

Phil was recently inspired by reading Michael E. Porter’s book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, which talks about the value change in business, and how business needs to change  their processes as well as understand the investments that are associated with these processes. More importantly, it discusses how we must learn to bring measurement to these processes and encourage continuous improvement.

This idea made Phil think of the big picture: How technology has changed the world and, in particular, business, effectually changing business efficiency and production processes. While there have been so many advances, it is important to pay attention to how companies create revenue. Take this shocking stat: 80% of sales leads are wasted, and 80% of sales’ time is spent cold-calling and prospecting. Isn’t this a disgrace in a world that has achieved such amazing change?

The world needs a revenue revolution. Why? Because functions like sales and marketing are still the least optimized and the least understood. Marketing is still treated as an art form. The good news is that this can change. Every CMO needs to start talking about marketing investments and not marketing costs or marketing expenditures. Marketing needs to:

• Take responsibility for their role in revenue.
• Start seeing themselves as a revenue organization in the company by creating improved processes, taking measurement and making marketing forecasts.
• Be part of the organization that puts revenue on the board.

By joining this revenue performance revolution, organizations need to change processes to promote productivity and efficiency. It’s time to bring all of these procedures and methods together, and turn the art of marketing and sales into the science of marketing and sales.

Want to hear more? Download the radio show here.