It all seems very plausible from the Martech suppliers sales pitch.  You have a pipeline problem you need more leads and meetings and you need more sales.

Salesperson turns up and says "here is a piece of tech" and magically this will create you leads and meetings.

We all go wow! and sign up!

What the salesperson fails to tell you is that "a fool with a tool, is  still a fool".

You have to train your team, not just on the tool, but why to use it, where to use it.  You may have to change the way to work and or attitude to get the results you need.

Let's take Sales Navigator from LinkedIn, this is probably the best lead generator on the market.

But unless you teach the people to be "social" that is have a personal brand, have a strong network and create content (so a change in behaviour and change in habit) it will turn you into the world's best spammer.

A company said to us "we sent 250 connection requests and got nowhere".  Of course, they looked like spammers.  Would you accept a connection request on LinkedIn from somebody who looked like a spammer? No!

The second issue that, as buyers we won't put up with any digital intrusions.  Advertising, cold calling, emails, we ignore it or deploy technology to block it or we use legislation (GDPR, CPAA) to block it.

This switch, is the move from "interrupt" and "broadcast" sales and marketing to permission based sales and marketing. 

Here's an example ...

This week, I was in Barcelona.  To start my presentation I always ask the audience to stand up.  Then I say, sit down if you can remember an advert you have seen in the last 24 hours.  Nobody sits down.

I do this, conference after conference.  Nobody ever sits down.

The average person is hit with 1,000 interrupt messages every day, "buy my crap" people scream, on adverts, on emails and on cold calls.  And what do we do?

We filter it all out.

One of the skills we have taught ourselves in the digital age is to filter this out.  Or we turn to technology such as ad-blockers, the cold calling filter in iOS 13 or rules in our email.  Spam emails can then bypass junk and land straight in the dustbin without you having to see them.

Or (as mentioned already) we have legislation GDPR or CPAA.

Whenever I post articles like this, I always get a comment from the same person where they say "all evidence shows that advertising spend is increasing".  It is.

It's increasing as everybody is ignoring it and you are going to have to spend more and more and more and more and more on advertising as we all ignore more and ignore more of it.  Period.

 People are looking for insight, education, tell me something I don't know.  They are looking for content (on social), they don't want somebody's "buy my shit" "we are number one" "we are market leading" "we are award winning" crappy marketing message interrupting their day.  However it's delivered.

Interrupt and broadcast marketing is dead .... you can spend as much money on Martech as you want but it won't work.  Marketing and sales has changed, you too have to change the way you do your marketing and sales.