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Brace yourself for some bad news.

B2B marketers have scored poorly in acquiring, capturing, qualifying and converting business opportunities. How bad is it? Nearly two-thirds of lead gen and engagement strategies are underperforming, according to a new CMO Council report, produced in collaboration with WM America, entitled Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine.

More specifically, the CMO Council found deficiencies in multiple areas of account-based marketing (ABM) execution and demand gen operations. Here’s the shocking report card:

• Overall ABM effectiveness in finding, winning, and growing big customers: C-
• Scoring the most actionable leads and prospects: C
• Moving deals more efficiently from contact to closure: C-
• Finding buyers already seeking your type of product: C                     

Time for a Tutor

The CMO Council report covers important aspects of lead generation and engagement. This includes models and metrics for tracking and measuring performance, best practice demand-gen execution, ways to score effectiveness, and more.

Further, the report found significant performance gaps between highly evolved and lesser evolved marketers in lead scoring, account-based marketing, accelerated pipeline, and intention-based marketing. For instance, 78% of highly evolved marketers are satisfied with their accelerated pipeline compared to only 15% of their lesser evolved counterparts.

“Marketers must climb the evolutionary ladder and leave behind outmoded and dated practices,” says CMO Council executive director, Donovan Neale-May. “Using AI-derived, intention-based buyer data and advanced sales intelligence are among the ways growth marketers bring more precision, predictability and performance to B2B account marketing investments.”

Download: Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine

Here are the top five skill sets contributing to improved ABM-driven business outcomes:

1. Better segmentation and precision targeting of buyers and influencers
2. On-demand customer business intelligence and personal buyer insights
3. Tighter integration of demand gen, channel, direct sales, and support teams
4. Greater utilization of tools and data sources for richer prospect profiling
5. Proactive and timely pre-sales follow up and cultivation strategies

The report is based on a survey of over 170 heads of B2B marketing, sales, revenue, growth, demand gen and campaign execution in Q4 2023. It also includes content from in-depth interviews with executives from Netline, Autodesk, T-Mobile, NTT, ABM Consortium, TechTarget, IBM, B2B Marketing, Reachdesk, Momentum ITSMA, and Xometry.

LEAP To A Better Way

Bonus points: The CMO Council report tiers factors that make up a model for better identification, engagement and conversion. The model coincides with the CMO Council and WM America’s thought leadership initiative to advance lead revenue science practices through a certified Lead Evaluation and Assurance Process, or LEAP model.

“Marketers will need to take a few LEAPs of faith in the coming months, because sticking to the status quo is just not practical or possible anymore. As data becomes more critical than ever before, CMOs need to extend their visions for innovation and forward-thinking strategies,” says Lee Salem, WM America’s vice president of sales.

Download: Fire Up Your Revenue Generation Engine

Get ahead of the disruption! Become a CMO Council Member today!