Analyst Perspectives

If you’re a sales or marketing executive or manager, your window of business opportunity is closing rapidly. In fact it started closing the day you began your job. Time is not on your side – and your career may well hang in the balance. I want to help you shift that balance to your advantage.

My name is Tony Compton. I’m a new member of the industry analyst team at Ventana Research, and I’ll be leading our research on the full range of sales and marketing as the VP and Research Director. I’m going to help you drive your sales performance, perfect your marketing strategy and find value in the jungle of technology options – and we’re going to do that while the world continues to change in ways that inevitably make your job more difficult. Together, we’ll assess opportunities, refine the customer experience and deliver the superior results you need to exceed your stakeholders’ sales and marketing expectations.

I began my journey into customer relationship management and contact centers 20 years ago. I watched as many companies excitedly tried the latest offerings. The global economy of the late 90’s soared. Then, several years later, it all flipped, to downturn and bust.

Since then, I’ve held marketing leadership roles at Response Design Corp., eLoyalty, Knightsbridge (now part of HP), SAVO, Infor, KnoahSoft, Hollister and Microsystems. During those years and experiences even more recently as managing director and adviser, I aimed to become a salesperson’s best friend – and I measured my success by their successes. I learned that even with tighter budgets, constrained resources and fewer people, the corporate sales and marketing scoreboard stays in force. I stood on the front lines with some of the best salespeople on the planet in the toughest of economies. Now, as an industry analyst at Ventana Research, I’ll offer you access to the value I’ve distilled from that experience. Add the benchmarking, unique insights and research-based technological analysis produced by the analyst team here at Ventana Research, and you can start to envision the benefits of working together.

Sales and marketing practitioners have immediate business and technology needs. I’ve joined Ventana Research to advance its history of expertly addressing those needs. They come in the form of a dichotomy: On the one hand, you need to take on and win at the 90-day sales and marketing challenge to be productive, produce results and demonstrate return on investments. On the other, you have to do expert work in evaluating the rapidly changing technology landscape and implementing the most effective mix of useful systems and tools. At Ventana Research, I’ll add to the work of a dynamic team that provides its world-class customers with exclusive quantitative and qualitative research, provocative thought leadership and innovative strategies for achieving success. I’ll work to ensure that you’re receiving information, counsel and advice to meet the incessant daily challenges as well as gain longer-term perspectives. I am proud to be taking the lead on the sales and marketing research agenda and to expand on our Chief Research Officers views on the dynamics in sales and marketing to provide direct guidance on the applications and technology that matter the most to your efforts.

To be as wildly successful as you need to be in your sales and marketing pursuits, you’ll need to stay up-to-date on the latest advances in commerce, marketing automation, product information management, recurring revenue, sales talent management, sales force automation (SFA), sales performance and all the marketing and sales applications that can help increase individual and team productivity. We think that your list of competitive requirements mirrors the Ventana Research agenda, so you’ve come to the right place for the most comprehensive and actionable information available on analytics, big data, collaboration services, cloud computing, cybersecurity, the Internet of Things, mobile t and wearable technology. It’s a compelling menu of critical technologies and even others like predictive analytics and gamification, designed to match your most demanding requirements for rapid success.

Success in the sales and marketing arena often is elusive for those who wait for their ideal business situation before pursuing robust sales, marketing and technology initiatives. Experience has taught me that the window closes rapidly for those standing on the sidelines waiting for conditions or circumstances to improve, and for risk to disappear. The research at Ventana Research finds significant barriers in using the wrong technology not designed to unify marketing and sales processes with integrated technology. Then there are those sales and marketing leaders who consistently break new ground as a result of innovative positions that they’ve taken, progressive solutions they’ve created and advanced technologies they’ve introduced. Those leaders enter the executive boardroom on the last day of every quarter with confidence knowing they have enabled their team to support them with the applications that make them effective in execution and resulting performance.

With Ventana Research, you’ll never be on the sales and marketing sidelines. Using our market research and experience to form best practices and education will accelerate your ability to perform. Together, we’ll discover what’s possible, and how you can be a leader on the corporate scoreboard and in your company’s boardroom. You and I will keep that window of opportunity wide open – and climb through it to a better, more profitable world and one that provides the best possible experience for you and your customers.

Regards,

Tony Compton

Vice President and Research Director, Sales and Marketing

Follow me on Twitter and on LinkedIn