But this is not a “shark eats minnow” acquisition. There were several events that influenced Forrester’s acquisition of Sirius that will likely also drive its strategy going forward: the explosion of Martech vendors and the purchasing power of the B2B CMO the rise of CEB in B2B marketing, primarily via the work done by Brent Adamson and team for the Challenger franchise the rise of boutique advisories like TOPO and MarTech Advisor Gartner’s acquisition of CEB the rise of disruptive information services providers such as G2Crowd and the newly-minted Aberdeen/Big Willow merger SBI’s entry into the Marketing organization via its core Sales audience ongoing consolidation of the Martech ecosystem from large-scale acquisitions and lastly, the overall maturing of the B2B ecosystem including organizations such as G3, the parent of this publication.Īs most of you know, Forrester is more diversified than Sirius, serving CIOs, HR leaders and other roles in both B2B and B2C. Now that I’m back on the client side at Cvent, I wanted to share my perspective on some key aspects on the Forrester/Sirius that stand to have the biggest impact on the industry. I played a small role in one of the most unheralded growth stories in B2B, collaborated with some fabulous colleagues, and met countless folks, like you, along the way. As of this week’s closing, Sirius is approaching $100M in revenue for its FY19 which ends March 31. I joined Sirius as its first CMO in the summer of 2012 as employee #73. After relocating our young family from Atlanta to Wilton, I set about on the most impactful four years of my marketing career. I jumped at the chance to work alongside some of the industry’s best and brightest minds. I was well down the path of “v2” at my new company when John Neeson asked me to join Sirius to build the marketing organization there. Zanett would be acquired by KPMG in 2012 after four consecutive years of record growth, due in large part to our adoption of SiriusDecisions best practices. Our 2010 results topped 2009 and I was recruited to join my SVP of Sales at his new gig at ROLTA ( he, too, was a believer). Our work in the second half of 2008 set us up for a record growth year in 2009. I signed on as a SiriusDecisions client the week following the conference and went straight to work implementing the Demand Waterfall and core philosophies around alignment with sales - Demand Type, Lead Definition, SLAs, etc. No doubt I met many of you at that Summit or in the ten years since. They had the map, the compass, and knowledgeable guides to help me and my fellow travelers navigate the journey to modern marketing. As I recall, Marketo made its commercial debut at the Summit that year. Sirius became the catalyst for my vision. Timing such that it was, we were on a plane a month later bound for my first SiriusDecisions Summit in Scottsdale. My new hire politely let me finish and replied, “Are you familiar with SiriusDecisions?” I wasn’t. Marketing is a process, like any other, that can be optimized I surmised. My first hire was a whip smart marketing ops leader with whom I shared my vision for a “process and data-driven marketing function.” This was born from recent experience working with high-tech manufacturing orgs where everything is measured and understanding quality and productivity KPIs is existential. It was 2008 and I had just taken my first pure marketing leadership role at a company called Zanett after eight years of entrepreneurship. Hopefully, this overview whets your appetite for some additional context and perspective.
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