BMA Atlanta welcomes Eduardo Conrado, SVP and CMO at Motorola Solutions, to its Sunset Keynote Event series on Tuesday, January 24 at the Ravinia Club.  Conrado will discuss how business-to-business marketing must evolve in the coming years to meet changing customer needs. He will focus on how companies—having clearly defined their purpose—can implement a customer-centric marketing approach.

The traditional B-to-B marketing model that was created in the 1960s mainly by consumer packaged goods marketers is overly simplistic, given rapidly emerging changes in the business landscape, according to Conrado. Now marketers must move beyond the traditional “four Ps” (product, price, place and promotion) to a higher goal of purpose, he contends.

As Motorola split into two firms earlier this year, Motorola Solutions rebranded internally and externally on the following core purpose—to “help people be their best in the moments that matter.” This rallying cry for employees helped to focus the company on service to government and enterprise customers. Motorola Solutions is now focusing beyond the four Ps by emphasizing solutions, education, value and access.

This example demonstrates the evolution of marketing. Internally defining the organizational purpose mobilizes a company’s resources to meet its external objectives in integrated fashion. “CMOs tend to have short tenure at companies because they focus on running campaigns,” Conrado says. “For us, it’s critically important to work closely with the product development and product management teams. And, to have the most impact, we also need to closely align with the field sales team. This creates a continuum among the marketing, product and sales organizations that ties our message and our success tightly together.”

The result, Conrado says, is a potential impact on quantitative measures of performance, including revenue and stock price. The ability to directly develop sales solutions and positively impact performance is good news for the marketing function, which has often struggled to gain a “seat at the table” in many organizations.

Just four years ago, Conrado says, the thought of developing sales enablement tools had not even occurred to many B-to-B marketers. But very soon, B-to-B marketers’ day-to-day activities will change significantly, he says. “The skill sets that most of our people have will not necessarily match the skills that will be required for the marketer of the future.” He will provide examples of skills that B-to-B marketers will need in the years to come.

“The sales process in BtoB is a long one,” Conrado points out. “It has to evolve over a multi-quarter and sometimes multiyear period. It’s an ongoing conversation that you have with customers. We have to think about how a creative idea evolves across the multiple touch points you have with the customer. IT-enabled marketing and sales will play a bigger and bigger role in the future.”

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