“I did my homework.”

Having a live training session however, where there is a specific date / time the class will begin and end, is key. And I should know… I’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into eLearning for sales.

The reports don’t lie. Most won’t log in and finish courses that would otherwise help them close more sales until their get their notice that the time period for access is almost up.

I’ve found (based on client feedback) that one hour a week live online training sessions with active q and a / role playing and comprehension exams followed by the ability to access on-demand modules that cover the material that was presented live seems to be working best.

I agree that “Revenue Management” sounds too CFO-related and is not anchored enough in the Marketing lexicon. My company uses “Data Driven Revenue” and that seems to click with people, but it’s a tagline, not a metaphor.

I believe there is a “unifying metaphor” for Marketing Automation, and it’s based on what has been around in the defense industry, which is clearly B2B or better yet B2G (government).

In what is known as “network centric warfare,” much emphasis is placed on creating a reliable, efficient system that gathers, stores, analyzes, and shares data which enables action.

In the case of defense, it enables action that advances or protects interests in a battlespace. In the case of our realm (the private, B2B sector), it fundamentally enables action that optimizes the chance of a sale.

Obviously, B2B marketers are not engaged in true warfare and recent events have called for language that does not allude to war/violence, but I submit that the application remains appropriate for metaphor, not necessarily rhetoric.

Company closings, product obsolescence, and job loss are the private sector’s equivalent of fatality in the battlespace, and those events can be tied to a company’s inability to adequately move data across the enterprise.

I used to frequently replace the defense industry phrase “network centric warfare” with “network centric marketing,” but we appear to be approaching the point where “network centric” is assumed.

But what really needs to improve before we all become “network centric” are the processes that enterprises use, online and offline, to get qualified leads into the hands of salespeople, or at least get buyers to place an order online for the more commodity-like B2B purchase.

So my long winded response to this excellent interview ends with the real metaphor -

In defense, the object of “network centric warfare” is also described as “sensor to shooter,” implying the remote device that relays real-time information to the “boots on the ground” shooter that pulls the trigger.

For us, we need to think “sensor” or “system to salesperson,” implying the application (email, social media, RFID, any interaction that can be transformed into a piece of online data which is relayed to the appropriate person that then begins to interact to a customer to bring a deal to a close.

So “System to Salesperson” is my two cents.