The following is a list of mega-trends having a direct impact on suppliers of sales and marketing services. You will find suggestions on how to address many of these challenges in the sections on "Solution Selling" and specific marketing tactics. 

1. Growth of Integrated Marketing

Nearly 20 years have passed since the inception of integrated marketing as a field, but it has taken this long for organizations to seriously begin integrated marketing activities toward the goal of attracting or keeping customers. Historically, marketing and sales executives often have worked in separate groups with distinct goals and budgets, with managers responsible for figuring out the best way to spend their money to achieve their goals. Almost every manager learns that to keep money, they have to spend it, leading to the use of tactics that may or may not achieve specific goals, or an unwillingness to cooperate with another group that potentially could steal resource dollars.

The new, integrated approach focuses on developing an annual or periodic zero-based strategic plan to achieve specific objectives. Recommendations for specific tactics emerge from a planning process that addresses organizational goals, unique selling benefits, distribution issues and other constraints to develop a strategy specifically designed to address the factors most relevant to success. Only then is a budget created and tactics determined. This approach enables organizations to make sure resources are directed toward measurable goals, results are monitored throughout the year and the final results can be evaluated before creating the next year's plan.

The trend puts more emphasis on customer-focused, results-based planning rather than on preserving budgets for old, favorite projects that may or may not produce results. Marketing and sales plans increasingly reflect the overall needs of the organization and its customers, rather than the desire of a particular manager to preserve a time-honored marketing program and vendor relationships. This trend has placed an increasing burden on marketing and sales managers to broaden their knowledge of the marketing and motivational approaches most likely to fit a particular goal, product, service or situation.

Today, integrated marketing can include any combination of the following tactics:

• People Performance Management
• Advertising
• Incentive programs
• Direct marketing
• Internal marketing
• Meetings
• Motivational events
• Promotion marketing
• Public relations
• And much more

Implications for marketing services companies:

• More desire for substantiation and proof that a tactic or program will deliver
• Less loyalty to specific tactics and related vendors from year to year
• More interest in how one tactic will support another
• More interest in solutions-oriented selling
• Greater demand for expertise
• Involvement of more committees of multiple decision influencers

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 

Not to be confused with the technology that supports the process, customer relationship management refers to an entire organizational focus on identifying the people most likely to buy, building a long-term relationship with them through integrated strategies and tactics and measuring the results, one client at a time. Yes, CRM depends on technology, but it also depends upon a level of cooperation and communication between people across marketing, customer service, sales and operations that many organizations have yet to attain.

Closely related to integrated marketing, CRM looks at business development specifically from the customer's point of view: What type of marketing, services, prices and promotion is required to achieve a sale and generate a repeat customer or a referral, and how can this be continually measured.

Impact on marketing services companies:

• Greater need for measurement—CRM-oriented companies want to know how the needle will move with your solution, and chances are they'll be able to track at least some aspect of performance.
• More emphasis on science: CRM companies are less likely to be responsive to platitudes or assumptions about a product or service attributes; they'll need to see how it fits into their strategy and goals.

3. Emergence of People Performance Management: Integrated External and Internal Marketing 

Motivating employees to deliver marketing promises may well become the trend of the decade, as increasing numbers of organizations (and even stock market analysts) recognize the link between satisfied employees, satisfied customers and profitability. Still in its infancy, the field of People Performance Management looks at an organization's people issues from the global perspective of customers, channel partners, business development people and all other employees. PPM combines the need for understanding both external and internal marketing issues and how all interrelate to achieve sales and retention goals. It aims to break down silos between organizational elements and establish horizontal communication and management aimed at the ultimate goal of both attracting and retaining profitable customers. Skill sets include: strategic planning; understanding of organizational design and the potential impact on establishing a customer-focused organization; grasp of motivational strategies appropriate to both external and internal audiences; and the ability to deploy or coordinate specific PPM tactics, which can include traditional marketing, training and distribution of useful content and information.

Impact on marketing services companies:

• The rise of a potential new field for companies with skill sets to handle it
• The emergence of a potential new consulting entity to coordinate multiple activities on behalf of corporate clients, possibly subcontracting and managing a variety of marketing activities to keep them focused on the major goals

4. Democratization of Marketing

Technology makes it possible for even the smallest company to look big and effectively compete in myriad businesses, including the marketing services field. Having a professional Web presence, marketing materials and targeted advertising program using Internet-based keyword lookups and other target marketing activities has made it possible for even small companies to stand up to much bigger competitors. Almost gone is the advantage that once went to big companies who could muster large budgets for high-visibility advertising and trade shows or other events to smash tiny competitors. In an era when an upstart Web company, such as Myspace.com (a social networking site) can grow to mass market scale in under two years with absolutely no budget for advertising or marketing of any kind, the competitive landscape has opened up dramatically to innovation.

Impact on marketing services companies:

• Bigger is no longer necessarily better: The clever and nimble have greater chances than ever, with or without significant financial resources.
• Cost pressures will continue to mount: It has become increasingly difficult to charge high prices and get fat margins from big companies.
• It's necessary to rethink every assumption about how to get and keep business.

5. Changing Distribution Patterns

The Internet and other technology have made it easier for buyers to find the cheapest alternative, no matter what the source. This has caused a breakdown in traditional distribution channels, especially in commodity-type or branded products where the buyer needs little support and has confidence in the reliability of the product, whatever the source. It has also led to an increase in so-called channel conflicts, organizations selling direct while still relying on resellers.

Impact on marketing services companies:
This trend has particular impact on those that sell products rather than services. Product-oriented companies have to increasingly find ways to lower costs or add value or market more effectively to stay ahead and hope their category has more growth opportunities than effective competitors. Service companies, by nature high touch, usually have to have a much closer direct relationship with the customer and can distinguish themselves from competitors through quality of service.

6. Commoditization

Anything that can be easily bought on the Internet or compared side-by-side with other products faces risk of commoditization, i.e., subject to evaluation solely on price and delivery specifications. Commodity suppliers have no choice but to stay focused on lowering costs, more efficient marketing or finding a niche that requires specifications or related services competitors can't easily provide.

Impact on marketing services companies:
Any company that sells products or discrete services, such as meetings, knows the impact of commoditization: more emphasis on price and delivery and less loyalty.

7. More Committees

Growth of integrated marketing and customer relationship management has lead to the emergence of more committees of planners representing different areas of the company. Although individual department heads still have much of the vendor selection latitude in an integrated environment, more people may be involved in the review or oversight process.

Impact on marketing services companies:

• Although it's still necessary to find a champion for your products or services, it is increasingly likely you will need to equip that decision maker with tools they can use to convince others.
• The old rule of treating everyone with respect rarely has applied more; you never know when anyone in a meeting can end up an important decision maker.

8. More Interest in Motivation 

A topic out of favor for almost 50 years, motivation has begun to get a new respect at the C-level, as more organizations recognize that to compete they will have to address not only the process parts of their businesses but the human elements that affect productivity, quality and customer satisfaction. Originally a 1950s-era marketing craze, motivation became discredited when it was associated with manipulative or other attempts to affect consumers through subconscious techniques. The topic's new manifestation, under the field of People Performance Management  looks at legitimate ways to inspire loyalty, commitment and desired behaviors through a more holistic approach that encompasses both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Now that more and more stock analysts are recognizing the role of happy workers on long-term share price performance, executives increasingly have to demonstrate how they are engaging employees to help attain measurable sales and retention goals.

Impact on meeting services companies:

• The opportunity to better understand the psychological advantages of your marketing tool kit—how do your services specifically affect behaviors and outcomes?

9. The Closing of the Gates 

With demands for expertise on the rise, more and more organizations seek marketing services suppliers with knowledge specific to their industry. The days when a decision maker would make time for almost any legitimate supplier are gone. Managers have become much more selective about opening their schedules to ad hoc presentations.

Impact on marketing services companies:

• Relationships are still key: Salespeople or marketing programs that can open doors have more value than ever before.
• Industry expertise means more than ever: Managers in more specialized businesses, notably pharmaceuticals, simply won't do business with companies lacking expertise in their field, creating a difficult chicken-and-egg proposition.

10. Technology

As costs continue to decline and ease of use increases, more and more companies have begun to embrace CRM technology to manage their marketing and sales operations. Because even small companies can now afford sophisticated systems, large companies, in fact, face a disadvantage: It can be more difficult for them to install technology across a large organization and both motivate and train salespeople and marketing managers to effectively use it. Even more daunting is the need to often integrate different types of marketing and sales technology so that managers can correlate marketing with sales activities. However, for those organizations that implement truly integrated CRM solutions, the advantages are enormous. Such technology makes it easy for them to quickly deploy target marketing activities follow them up methodically with the sales force, and target resources and other offers specifically to the people most likely to buy.

Impact on marketing services companies:

• Companies will face increasing pressure to install up-to-date integrated marketing and sales solutions in order to quickly target messages and relationship-building strategies at likely prospects.

11. Bigger Role for Purchasing

Anyone in a commoditized portion of the marketing services world has faced the almost unprecedented involvement of purchasing departments in their attempts to do business with large companies. As soon as an organization believes that a product is a commodity whose physical attributes and delivery reliability are the key factors, vendors often end up on the planning matrix of a purchasing manager who likely has very little real industry knowledge.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• Unless they can add solutions to their tool kit and become a resource to the management who actually decides what strategies or tactics they use, marketing services suppliers trying to do business with major companies will increasingly find themselves filling out lengthy RFPs.
• Expertise sells. Marketing services suppliers with the right solution-selling approach, expertise and ability to build relationships actually can get paid to help an organization write the very RFP their competitors will get. Normally, the company that advises on how to write the RFP has a much better chance to win in the end.

12. Targeted Pricing 

Another trend still in its infancy in many fields: the ability of companies to selectively market products to specific audiences and adjust prices up or down accordingly to measure results. Technology now makes it possible for organizations to easily identify specific customers, track their buying habits and focus specific offers via e-mail or other direct marketing based on actual buying behavior. Like many trends, this likely will take a decade or two to reach its full fruition. 

Implications for marketing services companies:

• Any company that sells products to specific audiences has an interest in studying the growing ease of directing specific offers to specific customer groups.
• There are opportunities for companies with services that can facilitate the implementation and communication of targeted pricing.

13. Permission Marketing

Another trend touted by marketing gurus for some time is the rise of permission marketing. People who opt in to receive information generally have a much higher likelihood of reading and responding to messages. Getting permission has even greater value when the marketer distributes content, entertainment, promotions or other strategies to enhance the perceived value of that permission, so that consumers actually open up the messages they have opted in to receive.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• Business opportunities abound for companies with services or products that can help promote permission or message open-rates.
• Marketing services companies themselves can benefit by implementing their own permission marketing strategies to identify qualified prospects willing to hear from them over time.

14. The Rise of the Get-It-Now Generation 

An entire new generation will soon enter the workforce that has grown up getting what it wants, when it wants. The people of this new generation communicate with friends whenever they want, get entertainment on demand, get answers instantly and probably will have less and less patience with waiting. They will desire more flexibility; will want services and even jobs on their terms and will value lifestyle as much if not more than money. They have an almost innate understanding of the role of technology and will generally lack patience with those who don't.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• To get the best talent, you may have to offer more flexible working environments.
• To sell to this generation, you'd better be up-to-date with the level of technology of your decision maker.

15. The Looming Demographic Shift 

When the baby boomers soon begin to retire en masse, the nation, at the same time, will face an enormous decline in young people entering the workforce. The lower birth rate of the baby boomer's children—who fall mainly into the Generation X category—as well as their propensity to delay parenthood, has lead to a sharp decline in the number of young people, currently starting at about the middle school level. So, within eight years, businesses will face a major drop in the number of young people entering the workforce and will have to rely increasingly on older workers, automation or offshore resources to fill the gap. At the same time, marketers may find that the market's sweet spot is no longer the 18-40 crowd, but now the 50-plus crowd, where they'll find the majority of the population and buying power.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• Beware of the "out with the old, in with the young" mentality; it's not only illegal and unethical, but the type of experience, relationships, and work ethic sought after in the next decade may not be as plentiful in the younger ranks.
• Marketers will have to stay constantly aware of their clients' target markets to make sure they are not facing a tipping point toward an older customer demographic in their market. This has a profound impact on everything from product design to marketing.

16. The Time Constraint 

That's it, people are out of time. Between business, family, hobbies and volunteer work, most Americans have maxed out. This fosters a fundamental impatience with anything unless it's important, and you have to convince them that it's important to get their attention. This applies in both sales and marketing activities.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• Whether in your own selling efforts, or marketing on behalf of clients, you need to find a simple sound bite to get attention, whether expressed in an ad, direct mail piece, voice mail at the top of a letter, in the Web site, or at a trade show, etc.
• Generally, that sound bite has to have a unique benefit or make a statement that resonates with the target audience.
• Gradually add benefits and information. After getting their attention, don't pile it on. Add an intermediate level of information to your presentation, sales letter or Web site that amplifies the sound bite without overwhelming the recipient.
• Reserve all of your heavy-duty information, white papers and resources for a third tier of communication to those serious prospects or planners ready for the detail necessary to make an intelligent decision.
• In personal presentations, give people an opportunity to start talking about themselves or their company as soon as possible. The more people speak about themselves, the more receptive they are to providing information.

17. Credibility Marketing

Consumers have become increasingly cynical about the tendency of marketers and salespeople to exaggerate and even deceive. The deliberate complexity of pricing in many industries, rebate complexities intended to lower redemptions and fine-print restrictions or deceptive ways to reduce costs or liabilities often end up costing more than such tactics deliver in terms of long-term sales and customer retention.

Businesses perhaps can justify the economics of deceptive marketing in a process-oriented management environment where the goal is to get as many sales at the lowest possible cost every single quarter, with no reward for taking steps that could contribute to higher sales a year or two from now. But, the shift toward customer-focused marketing and management, in which customer satisfaction and retention get prized above all else, diminishes the economics of deception by running the risk of alienating customers over the long term and reducing invaluable word-of-mouth marketing.

Credibility marketing focuses on finding a product's unique selling benefits and appropriate marketplace, consistently delivering the promise and helping customers while selling by providing useful, objective information.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• A natural tendency to play it safe prevents many marketing companies from discouraging clients from using deceptive practices. The new solution-selling environment allows for a polite, fact-based reminder about the potential for the unmeasured negative economics of a dubious offer.
• Providing useful information to clients to build credibility requires an investment in training to make sure that customer-facing employees can provide adequate information and also in developing useful content for interested parties seeking objective information about your product or service category.

18. Behavioral-Based Research

Not only has it become increasingly difficult to find consumers to survey, but the information derived from surveys often differs from actual behavior. People often say one thing and do another. The advent of the Internet, sophisticated point-of-sales technology and loyalty programs deliver an almost overwhelming amount of behavioral information that, when correlated with marketing, displays remarkably specific patterns of sales versus marketing activities and other outside trends. This could lead to a significant shift in the way researchers go about their business, toward research that uses the Internet or other means to stimulate and measure a behavior, rather than a simple response uttered while the research subject is multitasking at home or showing off in a focus group.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• If you want to predict the future, look for research that tells you what people have done or will do, rather than what they say they will do.
• If possible, test a direct mail or Web offer against an actual audience with a real offer. This works much better than a survey in that you test actual response.

19. Change Takes Time, but Change Takes Place

Sometimes, distinguishing a fad from a major trend thwarts even the smartest prognosticators. Who would have thought that fax machines would have less than a 20-year dominance in the office and that they would gradually fade away altogether in less than 40 years? Many of the dot-coms failed not because they misread the potential of the Internet but because they didn't adjust their spend levels and investor expectations to the reality that change takes time. Even huge marketing budgets couldn't change the fundamental fact that people would not immediately rush to the Internet for travel and shopping. It took a few years. Most organizations have yet to take advantage of customer relationship management software or other technology marvels for managing business, let alone begun to understand the implications of podcasting.

As a general rule, change usually takes longer than the optimists or entrepreneurs will tell you, but sooner than the naysayers assert.

Implications for marketing services companies:

• Great ideas don't always take off on your schedule. Look at history or behavior-based models (see trend 18) to make realistic projections of adoption or penetration rates of new technologies or concepts.
• The more people have to change what they already do, the more time it will take, unless the benefits are sufficient to induce consumers to give up their most precious commodity: their time.

20. Everything on Demand: Your Life in Your Pocket 

Subject to the caveat in trend 19 above, it has become clear that information distribution will sooner or later make a complete shift to on-demand. People will still pick up their daily newspaper, read books, listen to the radio, or some form of recorded music, in the car, but the next generation of Americans will use the Internet to supplement old media by grabbing whatever they want whenever they want, wherever they are, in terms of entertainment, games, music or anything digital. Inevitably, with the rapid rise of miniaturization in memory, a company will come up with a wallet-sized Personal Library Device that enables consumers to hold their entire lifetime of favorite music, writings, videos, photos, games and films in a card in their pocket, with a backup at home or anywhere, and use this card every which way through their home computer and Internet—wirelessly, of course—to access or run their files. These devices will talk to our stereos, televisions and game players so that we can get everything the way we want to see, hear or play it. For many, this device will also house their cell phone, so that their entire personal libraries exist in something the size of an iPod. (A big question in wills of the future: Who gets mom's or dad's Personal Library Device or access to the files in it? What a legacy to one's heirs!)

In the shorter term, such concepts as RSS (accessing updated information via your Web browser) and podcasting (downloading, often from RSS links, audio or video programming of any kind from any source on demand, to watch on your computer or on your portable music player) will continue to gain ground as the interface gets easier for the mass market to use. 

Implications for marketing services companies:

• The ultimate marketing battle in 10 years may be for face time on the color screens of hundreds of millions of Personal Library Devices used daily by consumers to manage every aspect of their lives.

For more articles for Results Marketing practitioners, click below:

• Client Conditions 
• Solution Selling
• Business Development Tactics