Looking back on 2018 from Mainstay’s
point of view
By Craig LeGrande, CEO, Mainstay
It’s hard to
believe 2019 is already upon us. But as they say, time flies when you’re having
fun. Now’s the time to reflect a bit on the past year and highlight some of the
trends and accomplishments from my vantage point here at Mainstay.
A Year of Technology Innovation
We are
fortunate enough to work with many of the world’s leading technology innovators,
which makes our small contribution to their success so exciting for us. This
past year we witnessed some exciting new technology launches – everything from innovative
networking solutions that automate and centralize core IT capabilities, to
self-healing databases, to applications employing machine learning and
artificial intelligence to drive business outcomes. These next-generation IT
solutions are helping industries reduce costs, boost productivity, strengthen
security, and create a competitive advantage. It will be exciting to see how
these solutions mature in 2019 and what new technologies will emerge.
Marketers are Broadening their
Toolkits
We look at marketing
through a very focused lens – namely, as the ability to accelerate and grow sales
by differentiating your solutions with value-based content. This year, we’ve
seen our tech clients large and small continue to broaden their marketing
assets to encompass new high-impact formats and channels. We attribute a lot of
this diversification to the growing sophistication of CRM and marketing automation
solutions, which have helped our clients better measure the effectiveness of their
programs and assets. One of the fastest-growing areas of demand has been in cloud-based
business value tools. This asset class isn’t new by any means, but
the integration of these tools with marketing automation platforms has added significantly
to the business impact these tools deliver.
Sales Organizations are ‘Getting It’
Many enterprise
sales organizations – especially traditional product-based ones – are facing stiffer
headwinds in their markets. As we argue in our book, Competing
for Customers, the game is changing quickly for tech companies as
more and more customers adopt subscription-based business models. But the good
news is that the leaders at many global technology companies “get it” and many are
rapidly changing their compensation models, adding customer success teams, and
pushing their channel partners to adapt. In other words, more and more
companies are moving from mere lip service to putting all their chips in. Not
that enterprise sales organizations can turn around on a dime, but these
companies have finally put the right mechanisms in place to move towards a
successful long-term sales model.
Customer Success Growing Pains
This past
year, customer success organizations took a lot of baby steps. On the upside,
more and more companies are making significant investments in customer success
teams to support new subscription models. On the downside, many companies are doing
little more than rebranding existing customer services resources. What they
should be doing is empowering customer success teams to accomplish more strategic
goals and closely aligning these teams with sales to achieve long term success.
We still hear sales teams question the value of their customer success brethren,
and customer success managers complain about being marginalized and frustrated
in their efforts to help customers improve business outcomes. Part of the problem
could be that many companies are only dipping their toes in the water when it
comes to customer success. Much work is still needed around gaining full
alignment at the executive-level on goals, responsibilities, and success
measurements for these new organizations. As we highlight in Competing
for Customers, the key to success lies in tightly integrating the customer
success organization with every part of the customer experience – from presales
to renewal. It will be interesting to see how these teams mature in 2019 and gradually
earn a well-deserved seat at the executive table.
Onward!
As we close
out the year, we want to thank our customers and our partners for all of your
support. We are blessed to have such talented people like you to collaborate
with every day. We wish you and your families all the best this holiday season
and cheers to 2019!