Sales Development Market Map V3 Release

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The ecosystem of tools and services aimed at helping your Sales Development efforts continues to expand.

After releasing the Tenbound Market Map V2 a few months ago, we were inundated with inbound responses of new vendors asking to be identified on the map.
Several new developments have taken place since V2:

DiscoverOrg is eating the world. DiscoverOrg has identified a clear need in the marketplace. Data is the oxygen of Sales Development and programs live or die based on the quality of the data available. It’s table stakes. DiscoverOrg has figured how to supply clean data through their homegrown processes and to augment through the acquisitions of Datanyze, Zoominfo and Neverbounce. They also have the ability to execute and whip-smart marketing. We see this domination trend continuing with more acquisitions and increased investment in 2020 and beyond.

Outsourced services continue to expand. They can really be bucketed into three main categories, maybe more, and probably will be grouped on upcoming versions of the Market Map. Basically, you have your “Dial-only” boiler rooms, appointment setting companies using mainly phone and email, and now a new generation of full-stack outsourced SDR programs using all the latest tools and tactics. Some of these firms, in a different category, augment human beings with robots. You’d need to select which works best for you based on your requirements.  G2 Crowd has a several listed, however, they conflate them with Digital Marketing agencies, making selection difficult. Bookmark Tenbound Research page for upcoming Buyer Guides in several Market Map categories.

Conversational Marketing. Clearly, buyer behavior has forever changed and will continue to change in the digital age. Drift has been successful in creating a category to capture this, and is now reflected on the map. Heck, they even wrote the book on it. Just like Marc Benioff did 20 years ago with his ‘No Software’ marketing, so does David Cancel and crew with Drift’s ‘No Forms’ pledge. Think about it; if you walked in to a retail store and there was no one there to help you, it would be very weird. Yet many companies do that every day with their website. How many customers walk away never having that critical first conversation?  Conversation Marketing attempts to make everything happen now. Watch this space as we see continued emphasis on this in 2020.

Prehire Assessments. Your strength as a Sales Development leader is based on the strength of your team. Yet so many leaders put ‘butts in seats’ as quickly as possible without a thorough screening process, and are left with a group of people scared to pick up the phone and seeking to blame others (and you) for their lack of success. A new crop of pre-hiring assessment companies have begun to address this. Check these out and be careful who you let on the bus!

These are just a few of the changes on this version of the map.

What did we miss, or what would you like more information on?

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