In Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, he makes the claim that for anyone to become an expert at something, it takes 10,000 hours of practice.
From Outliers:
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin.” — p. 40
Since the book was published, there has been a lot of criticism of Gladwell’s book from people citing professional athletes or Olympians who reached a high level of accomplishment in their field without the prerequisite 10,000 hours of practice. Last month, however, Gladwell responded to critics in a New Yorker editorial and claimed the rule still applies to activities involving a high degree of cognitive complexity:
“The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him no.
It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large, round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly. What Simon and Chase wrote forty years ago remains true today. In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals.”
At Gabriel Sales, we wholeheartedly agree with Gladwell and believe this concept can be applied to the world of B2B sales and marketing.
As a sales and marketing outsourcing company with over 13 years of experience specializing in B2B, we were an early adopter of marketing automation. After implementing a marketing automation platform for ourselves and seeing the dramatic results it brings, we have done over a dozen more implementations for our clients.
Our status as an early adopter means that by the end of 2012, we reached the prerequisite 10,000 hours of experience needed to be classified as world-class marketing automation experts.
Current Challenges with Marketing Automation Implementation
In a July 2013 report from BtoB, companies were asked to name their top challenges to adopting marketing automation. One of the top five responses included the complexity of marketing automation software itself (23%).
After more than a dozen implementations, we understand the software and know the best practices as well as what to avoid. Over the years, we have learned new ways to optimize the software and retired old tactics that were not producing results. As a sales outsourcing organization, we also understand how to integrate your sales process with your marketing automation platform to track buyer lifecycles, nurture leads, identify buyer personas and more.
We have seen that companies that try to do this on their own can take up to three years to see any results. By bringing on Gabriel Sales to help with your marketing automation implementation, you can start to see results within a year—saving yourself countless hours that would be better spent generating new revenue and serving your customers.
To learn more about marketing automation implementation, you can download our Marketing Automation Implementation Checklist. To learn more about the consulting we provide as marketing automation experts, you can visit our services page or contact us.
