A packed day that started at 7:15 a.m. and did not end until well into the evening and well worth the time!

Here are today's bullets and an observation:

• By 2015, a majority of B2B organizations will be using social media throughout the waterfall (prospecting to closing business).
• Sales will, out of necessity, have to overcome the fear of marketing getting involved in late stage deals ... marketing can and will help.
• The composition of the pipeline can be thought of as a shape. If, for example, you have sales stages 0 - 5 with 0 representing marketing qualified leads and 5 representing win/loss; there shouldn't be a deep valley in the middle nor should the number of opportunities in any stage from 2 - 4 cause the shape of the pipeline to change dramatically quarter to quarter.
• By 2015, 75% of responses will come from your website and other inbound tactics.
• In-sourced and outsourced inside sales will grow as companies identify strata within their customer base that are inefficient and ineffective to cover with field sales.
• SFDC is filled with assets for sales and scales from small to very large companies—however, to get sales to use it they must know that commission is at risk if they don't.
• Get sales and marketing to "interlock" by making sure issues are addressed and accountabilities owned before things break down into rumors and blames.

The number of tools available to marketing and sales is going to grow exponentially over the next couple of years. The challenge is going to be picking "future proofed" technology. Sirius Decisions' Joe Galvin stated that technology is going to be the backbone of success. Based on today's sessions, I see business intelligence solutions following marketing automation as "must have" technology in late 2010 and 2011.

More tomorrow!

By Dan McDade