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In celebration of durhamlane’s 10 years in business, we wanted to mark the occasion by looking forward as well as back. And so, we asked over 50 industry leaders for their top 10 predictions for B2B revenue generation in 2021 and beyond.
Profit was once the ‘be all and end all’ performance metric in business. Interestingly, revenue-centric metrics seemed to be moving up the line; rates of growth, conversion and retention are now all seen as vital contributors to an organisation’s ability to build future profit.
If there’s one positive that can be prised from the jaws of the pandemic, it’s that it has opened the gates to a wider talent pool. Remote working has broken down geographic barriers and fuelled productivity, giving businesses access to the best-fit people that will drive their company’s success.
The alignment of sales & marketing is not a new concept, but it’s usually much easier said than done. With many revenue leaders predicting the two functions will actually become one (Smales? Smarketing?), it leads us to wonder what exactly this is going to look like. Either way, it’s a move we’re already seeing high-growth teams begin to make.
Not quite the same as Smales, Smarketing, or whatever you want to call it, RevOps is a business process that aligns all of your revenue-centric functions under one umbrella to drive predictable revenue. Frankly, it’s never been more obvious that higher visibility and efficiency across sales, marketing and service processes should be developed to fuel revenue growth.
We know that personalisation has never been more important in B2B marketing and selling. So, it makes perfect sense that businesses are turning to account-based strategies to generate revenue from higher value net-new deals through to cross-sell, up-sell, referrals and renewals.
Tying seamlessly into the previous two predictions, improving customer lifetime value is taking back its rightful place at the forefront of revenue generation. Many companies may have been guilty of placing all their eggs in the net-new basket, when the key to unlocking predictable revenue was already in their hands – and on their books.
But seriously, you have nothing to fear from the robots. In fact, conversational marketing is one of the biggest trends to watch this year due to its real-time, human elements. Companies like Drift reckon you can harness it to power buyers through the marketing and sales funnels, by moving them directly from qualification to conversation to customer in one fell swoop.
Sales enablement is already a prevalent B2B trend in North America, so it’s great to see Europe is catching up. Not only do sales teams need to be equipped with the right marketing content to reach buyers at every stage of the customer journey, but marketers should also strive to be more sales literate. You need to speak your customers’ language, so what could be more valuable than knowing what and how they’re talking to sales about your products or services?!
And by this we mean; Chief Revenue Officer, VP/Head of Revenue and Growth, Revenue Director, etc. According to LinkedIn, there are already 45,000+ users in revenue leadership roles worldwide. With the growing understanding of and investment into RevOps, this figure is undoubtably set to skyrocket over the coming years.
We thought we’d end on a high, because this is a prediction we’re really happy to see. Let’s face it, times are tough and many sales, marketing and revenue leaders have seen their targets multiply whilst their budgets stay idle, or even decrease in some cases. Whatever the post-COVID landscape may bring, we’re looking forward to hitting the ground running this financial year, and we wish you all the best in achieving your revenue goals!
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