He added, “But, we’re seeing the CMOs are starting to own a lot of IT budgets, so it could be the CMO that owns that [technology].”. Heidi Melin, CMO, Eloqua , obviously has a certain amount of vested interest as a MA software vendor, and she pointed out the value of MA for marketers. Now, according to Forrester analyst Lori Wizdo , two-thirds to 90% of the buying cycle is completed before a B2B buyer ever speaks with a sales rep. Tweet Customer relationship management (CRM) is defined a number of different ways. Marketing, Sales (and IT) alignment.