For someone who’s been around Marketo for over 3 years, it was exciting to see just how much the customer base has grown. On Thursday, December 9, about 400 people (or more?) attended the last Marketo Rock Star Roadshow for the year in Redwood City, CA. Here are a few highlights (and even a few quibbles!).

I’m always happy to hear Bill Binch speak. He provided a great presentation about how Marketo uses Marketo, along with details about their SDR (Sales Development Rep, or inside sales) team and the timing on their follow ups. He even included the percent chance they would connect with the lead, based on the time it took for the SDR to follow up. When a company shows you that much detail, you know they’re confident of their processes. When a company shows you that much detail, you know they’re watching their reporting, and adjusting to match.

A great example of this was how they adapted the way they measure SDRs in comparison to AE (account executives). The AEs are all on monthly targets. That means that the last week of each month, they are REALLY busy. Previously, the SDRs had the same timelines. They were also measured beginning to end of month. That meant that at the same time AEs were trying to close business, SDRs were trying to get the AEs’ attention with new leads and the AEs just didn’t have time. Having realized this, Marketo made a change: The SDRs now have monthly targets, but they run from the 10th of the month through to the 9th of the following month. This means in their last measured month, they are passing new leads to AEs…just when the AEs have finished with the previous month and are ready for new qualified leads. The result is that the teams work together more efficiently, their targets match, and the prospects get better service. Win-win-win.

I’ve probably seen Jon Miller give his “Special Sauce”  presentation 8 or 10 times over the years. It changes. It adapts. It focuses on new things each time, as Marketo’s own marketing team learns and fine-tunes. Like the Pedowitz Group, Marketo measures impact from increased revenues. Their, and our, customers want the proof for their marketing investments and need reporting and numbers to show that marketing is not a cost center, but that the revenue derived from marketing expenditures more than compensates for the investments. Also, as always, marketers should focus on quality, not quantity of leads, and also on the qualification stages as a lead progresses through the revenue funnel.

One great highlight from Jon’s presentation was his discussion of the metric “cost per lead”. While this is a commonly used metric, Jon pointed out that it frames the discussion of marketing in terms of cost, not benefit. Instead of cost per lead, how about added revenue per lead? How about percent return on investment per lead? Marketers need to market their own departments, and not in terms of cost, but in terms of value add. I’ve said for years that you can have the best marketers on the planet, but without good sales people to close the deals, the leads just sit there. Similarly, you can have awesome sales people, but without quality leads, they spin their wheels doing lead sourcing. Sales and marketing need to work hand in hand to deliver revenue for their companies.

There were some fabulous customer presentations, including Pedowitz Group superstar FusionStorm, and the audience, as always, responded well to hearing real-life cases of marketing automation making a huge difference in revenue gains and lead acquisition. If you didn’t make it this time, make sure to attend the Marketo User Summit coming May 22-24, 2012, in San Francisco. I’m sure there will be even more customer presentations there.

I know this was a vendor-specific event, and while Marketo needs to focus on how their clients can optimize the use of their product, no technology is the be-all-end-all. To achieve what Marketo and many of their clients have done first requires a tremendous focus on the people and processes which are then enabled by the technology. In the same way that marketing and sales TEAMS need to work together, marketing and sales SYSTEMS need to work together–this means optimizing your CRM as well as your Marketing Automation platform. It doesn’t matter how good your marketing data about your prospects is if you’re not transmitting the essentials and activity over to the sales team in actionable ways. Similarly, you need to align your sales and marketing PROCESSES. The software is only a tool and the people are great resources, but unless all of these things work together with shared definitions, processes and reporting, you won’t get your maximum value.

What does it take? Business process reviews, regular meetings, teamwork, and periodic health checks. A drive to align your teams and work cooperatively. The daring to try new things, measure yourself, and try again. Closed loop reporting. You don’t have to accomplish all of this overnight, but you do have to drive to it. The first step is making sure you start today — forget those new year’s resolutions, get something in place now and drive forward!