This year's SiriusDecisions Summit was attended by over 1,100 executives and had to be their most successful event yet. While there, I heard that they plan for 1,500 attendees next year. Wow!

Rich Eldh kicked off the general sessions at 1:00 on Tuesday, May 22 stating that marketing and sales aligned companies enjoy 5.3 times more revenue and 6.2 times the profit of average firms. Here are some key takeaways from the summit:

1. The role of teleprospecting is more important than ever.
2. The new demand waterfall recognizes several new sources of opportunity: inbound AND outbound, rep generated, multi-touch nurture programs.
3. True demand generation health is all about balance (it is not all inbound and not all outbound).
4. Citrix has back-end analysis down to a science. Multi-variant regression analysis on data going back several years has helped them calibrate scoring in marketing automation and other marketing.
5. On demand webinars perform 5 times better than live events.
6. Marketing automation can be used to sell education and services (client buys XYZ Class 101, automatically gets offered XYZ Class 201 in four weeks).
7. Keys to SAP’s new marketing approach (culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner):
1. Control the message & orchestrate the conversation.
2. Synchronize the client/prospect/employee experience across all channels.
3. Marry the art and science of marketing.
8. All companies should be doing less selling and more story telling.
9. Don’t use the word “Submit” on forms. Try “Download this Guide” or “View Webinar” but NEVER “Submit Form”… (I have heard this before but it is worth repeating).
10. Surveys generate a tremendous amount of content that can be repurposed inexpensively.

Well worth the fee. Educational and fun. Food was great!

I am “in” for 2013.

By Dan McDade