The B2B Roundtable (hosted by Brian Carroll)

Brian Carroll
  • 4.6 (7)
  • MARKETING

The B2B Roundtable gives you practical marketing and sales strategies you can use to fuel growth. Host Brian Carroll sits down with leading GTM experts in B2B marketing and sales to uncover what’s working today — from account-based marketing (ABM) and sales development to content marketing, storytelling, leadership, and research-backed insights.

  1. Why 75% of Buyers Don’t Want Reps and How Framemaking Can Win Them Back (with Brent Adamson)

    10/08/2025

    Why 75% of Buyers Don’t Want Reps and How Framemaking Can Win Them Back (with Brent Adamson)

    In a recent Gartner survey, 75% of B2B buyers said they’d prefer a rep-free buying experience. That’s a wake-up call for sales and marketing leaders everywhere. So, is this the end of sales as we know it… or the start of something better? On this episode of the B2B Roundtable Podcast, I sit down with my friend Brent Adamson, co-author of The Challenger Sale and author of the new book The Framemaking Sale. Brent explains why buyer confidence—not more information—is the real barrier to closing big deals today, and how leaders can help their teams become the sellers customers actually want to talk to. Brent Adamson on Framemaking and the Future of Sales Key Takeaways Buyers want confidence, not more information. The real risk isn’t being ignored—it’s being irrelevant. Framemaking is the answer. Instead of persuading, sellers must help buyers frame decisions and build confidence in themselves. Four forces undermine confidence today: decision complexity, information overload, objective misalignment, and outcome uncertainty. Sales and marketing must unite. The mission is to build buyer confidence in themselves—not just in the supplier. AI won’t replace sellers, but it raises the bar. The sellers who thrive will show up as trusted guides and sense-makers. Pull Quotes “It’s not your customer’s confidence in you that matters. It’s their confidence in themselves.” — Brent Adamson “If you could be the one seller your customer actually wants to talk to, that’s an incredible place to be.” — Brent Adamson Guest Bio Brent Adamson is a researcher, speaker, and author best known for co-authoring The Challenger Sale. His new book, The Framemaking Sale, explores how sales professionals can rebuild buyer confidence and create customer interactions that truly add value. Connect with Brent on LinkedIn Get the Book: The Framemaking Sale Full Transcript Brian Carroll: Welcome to the B2B Roundtable Podcast, where we bring together ideas, people, and strategies shaping the future of sales and marketing. Today, I’m joined by my friend Brent Adamson, one of the most influential voices in sales. You may know Brent from his groundbreaking book The Challenger Sale, which reshaped how we think about commercial conversations. I’m excited because we’re talking about his new book, The Framemaking Sale. And it couldn’t come at a more urgent time. In a recent survey, 75% of B2B buyers said they’d prefer to purchase without ever talking to a sales rep. Is this the end of sales as we know it—or could it be the start of something better? Brian Carroll: We’re going to talk about why buyers have lost confidence in sales, what’s driving this shift, what it really means to be a framemaker, how leaders like CMOs and VPs of Sales can build teams customers actually want to talk to, and what the future of selling looks like in an AI-driven world. Brent, you open your book with that stat—75% of B2B buyers would prefer a rep-free buying experience. That’s wild. Brent Adamson: First of all, it’s great to see you, Brian. Thanks for the invite. That statistic comes from Gartner research, one of the last pieces I worked on before leaving in 2022. We asked thousands of B2B buyers: “If you could buy a large complex solution without ever talking to a sales rep, would you prefer that?” Seventy-five percent said yes. Now, that doesn’t mean they actually buy without sellers—it means they’d prefer not to. The data shows a big and growing gap between customer preference and customer reality. That gap represents risk for sellers. Brian Carroll: So it’s not the end of sales—it’s the end of salespeople not adding value. Brent Adamson: Exactly. The question at the heart of this book is simple: What would it take to be the one seller—or the one team—that customers actually do want to talk to? If you can be that person—showing up less like a seller and more like a human—you can differentiate not only from competitors but also from the overwhelming flood of information customers already face. Buyers Don’t Want More Info, They Want Confidence Brian Carroll: What are the ways sellers unintentionally undermine buyer confidence? Brent Adamson: One of the biggest findings is around decision confidence. When customers feel highly confident in their decisions, they are up to 10x more likely to make a high-quality, low-regret purchase. But most sales and marketing teams focus on building confidence in the supplier— “trust us, our brand, our product.” What actually matters more is the buyer’s confidence in themselves. The real opportunity is helping customers feel confident in the questions they’re asking, the research they’ve done, their alignment as a team, and their ability to execute. That’s what Framemaking is all about. Brian Carroll: Can you define Framemaking? How is it different from Challenger Selling? Brent Adamson: Framemaking is about creating the context—or “frame”—that helps customers make sense of complexity and move forward with confidence. It’s built around two key moves: prompting and bounding. Prompting = introducing ideas or perspectives they may not have considered. Bounding = narrowing focus so they can prioritize what matters most. Together, those moves create a frame that gives customers both ease and agency—the decision feels simpler, and they feel like they made it. Challenger is part of this lineage—it’s about teaching and reframing—but in today’s world of overwhelming content, simply adding more insights isn’t enough. Customers don’t need another “smart idea.” They need help making sense of all the smart ideas already on the table. Four Forces Undermining Buyer Confidence Brent Adamson: In the book we unpack four big challenges that undermine buyer confidence: Decision Complexity – too many people, too many steps. Information Overload – endless content, conflicting advice, and AI adding even more noise. Objective Misalignment – different stakeholders with competing priorities. Outcome Uncertainty – even if they believe the solution works, buyers fear their team won’t implement it well. The job of a framemaker is to help buyers navigate these challenges—simplifying, prioritizing, and guiding them without taking away their sense of ownership. From Challenger to Framemaker Brian Carroll: If I’m a VP of Sales or Marketing, how do I coach my team differently? How do I stop undermining confidence? Brent Adamson: Challenger was about showing up with powerful insights. That still matters, but in today’s content-saturated world, simply adding more insights can overwhelm customers further. What buyers need now isn’t just more ideas—they need help making sense of all the ideas. That’s where Framemaking comes in. It’s not about proving how smart you are; it’s about helping customers feel smart and confident in themselves. Brian Carroll: That word—sensemaking—is powerful. Buyers are overwhelmed. They don’t want another rep adding noise. They want someone to help them make sense of it all. Brent Adamson: Exactly. And that’s the opportunity. Show up as the one person who helps buyers cut through complexity and feel good about moving forward. That’s how you become the rep they actually want to talk to. A Story of Framemaking in Action Brent Adamson: One of my favorite examples is from a sales rep we call “Tara.” She sold human capital management solutions. In a discovery meeting with the head of HR, she suggested bringing procurement into the conversation early. Most reps would avoid procurement until late in the process. But Tara said: “In working with other customers like you, we’ve found that when procurement gets involved earlier, things go much smoother. You might consider inviting them now.” That simple nudge reframed the process, avoided future roadblocks, and built customer confidence. That’s Framemaking in action—it doesn’t have to be grand. Sometimes it’s just a well-placed phrase that frames the decision differently. Marketing’s Role in Framemaking Brian Carroll: What role does marketing play in this shift? Brent Adamson: A huge one. Marketing can gather stories, lessons, and pitfalls from customers and feed them back into sales plays and content. Instead of just creating thought leadership about the supplier, marketing can create confidence content—tools, checklists, benchmarks, diagnostics—that help buyers feel more confident in themselves. Imagine win-loss analysis focused not on why customers chose you, but on what they wish they’d done differently in their buying journey. That insight is gold. It can shape sales plays, create powerful collateral, and make your content strategy far more valuable. AI and the Future of Selling Brian Carroll: With AI moving so fast, what does the future of sales look like? Brent Adamson: AI can surface options, compare vendors, and even create frameworks. But at the end of the day, customers are still human. After all the data, many will say, “I just wish I could talk to someone.” The sellers who thrive will be the ones who become that “someone”—the trusted guide who helps customers feel clarity, confidence, and connection. That’s the future of sales. Closing Thoughts Brian Carroll: Brent, you landed it. At the core, this is about empathy and human connection. Brent Adamson: Yes. There’s never been a better alignment between doing what’s right for sales and doing what’s right for humanity. If you want to hit quota, win big deals, and earn that President’s Club trophy, the way to do it is by helping customers feel confident in themselves. Brian Carroll: And that’s what The Framemaking Sale is all about. If you want to dive deeper, get a copy—it’s packed with strategies, stories, and tactics that w

    43 min

  2. 05/24/2021

    Brand Activism and Modern Marketing with Dr. Philip Kotler

    Customers care more about the values of the companies they buy from than ever before. That includes B2B buyers, even when they pretend it doesn’t. It’s not just about what you sell. Buyers want to know what kind of company you are. What you protect. What you tolerate. What you’re willing to be held accountable for. That’s why I interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler, often called the “father of modern marketing,” and co-author of Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action, about what brand activism actually is and why so many companies get it wrong. Author’s note: This transcript is edited for clarity and readability. Quick Answer: What Is Brand Activism? Brand activism is when a company publicly commits to values and causes beyond selling products, and backs that commitment with real actions. It’s not a “purpose statement.” It’s not a rebrand. It’s not a social post. Brand activism only works when leadership owns it, operations support it, and customers can see receipts. Key Takeaways Brand activism is a business decision, not a marketing tactic. Buyers are looking for signals of integrity, not slogans. Purpose without action becomes brand risk. B2B isn’t exempt. It’s just slower to admit this matters. “Greenwashing” (or any version of performative values) erodes trust faster than silence. Why This Matters in Modern GTM In complex B2B, buyers don’t just evaluate your product. They evaluate the risk of tying their career to your company. So they look for signals: Do you behave consistently, or do you “pivot” values when it’s convenient? Do you treat employees and customers like humans, or like inputs? Do you stand for anything that costs you something? Brand activism sits inside the buyer’s trust filter. Not because buyers are idealists, but because they’re risk managers. The Interview Brian: To start, what is brand activism? Dr. Kotler: Brand activism is a movement toward making a brand do more than tout the virtues of a product or service. It identifies values that the company has and cares about. For example, The Body Shop under Anita Roddick was not only selling skincare products. It was fighting for animal rights, civil rights, fair trade, and environmental protection. More and more consumers want to know what kind of company this is and what it cares about. Our society is saddled with many problems. Does the company care about any of these problems, or does it just think it’s supposed to make money? An increasing number of companies want an identity that goes beyond making products and services. That is what we call brand activism: the brand connecting with causes. Why Kotler Wrote Brand Activism Brian: Why write this book now? Dr. Kotler: If you look at barometers like the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in society has been falling. As a result, companies are not going to be trusted either. Companies ought to fight against bad companies rather than stand near them or be part of them. The reputation a company has can be whatever happens through its actions, or it can be designed better. Consciously better. The Evolution of Branding: From Products to Values Kotler described brand development as a series of stages, moving from product-driven to values-driven. Brands evolved like this: Stage 1: Product identification (the brand name as a label) Stage 2: Positioning (lowest price, family entertainment, highest quality) Stage 3: Company qualities (integrity, innovation, multi-trait reputation) Stage 4: Corporate social responsibility (supporting a cause) Stage 5: Brand activism (a defined stand with real commitment) Brand activism, in his view, is one of the latest stages of this evolution. Translation: you can’t fake your way into stage five with stage two tools. How Customer Expectations Changed Brian: What’s driving brand activism? Dr. Kotler: Customers have concerns about immigration, ethics, gun control, debt, and education failure. These social issues become the ground out of which brand activism becomes essential. An increasing number of people argue that companies do not have the right to be silent about these issues. They want companies to show they care about more than making money. Is Brand Activism Different in B2B? Brian: Do you see a difference between B2B and B2C companies? Dr. Kotler: No, I don’t see a difference. Both will want reputations that go beyond making products. There are many B2B and B2C companies in the list of brand-active companies. Salesforce is a good example. Marc Benioff has been a pioneer in this area, including actions around homelessness and affordable housing in San Francisco. B2B companies have been slower as marketers. Most modern marketing came first from the consumer side. But B2B companies are close to their customers. Through their salesforce, they know buyers and what they’re like. There can be less “need” for B2B to signal values publicly because values show up in relationship and reputation anyway. My take: that’s true, but the world changed. Buyers still talk. Employees still post. Partners still notice. Silence is also a signal now. Brand Activism Is Not a Marketing Department Project Brian: Brand activism isn’t just marketing, right? Dr. Kotler: Absolutely. No CMO will move a brand into activism on their own. Choosing issues like the environment or gun control is a corporate-level decision. This is about designing and protecting the firm’s reputation and meaning. Purpose is now a major question: What is your purpose as a company? What are you contributing? How are you making life better in society? If It’s Top-Down, What Can Marketers Do? Dr. Kotler: Marketers can surface issues that matter to the business and bring them to senior leadership. Example: water scarcity. If you’re Coca-Cola, water is not “an issue.” It’s your future. The CMO’s role is to refresh the brand with meaning, and to research risk. If there’s real risk, brand activism probably won’t be adopted. But the marketer can initiate the conversation with leadership. Kotler’s Brand Activism Framework Kotler broke brand activism into categories that companies might choose to engage with. Examples included: Social activism (education, healthcare, civil rights, aging) Workplace activism (compensation, CEO pay, labor relations) Political activism (voter rights, lobbying, gerrymandering) Environmental activism (pollution, emissions, conservation) Economic activism (wage policy, tax policy, inequality) Legal activism (policies impacting corporations, employment laws) He also emphasized the need for measurement: how the company is viewed before, what it’s expected to accomplish, and how outcomes show up in market response. Not because you can reduce trust to a dashboard. But because performative activism is expensive, and buyers have gotten good at spotting it. Evolution of brands from marketing-driven to values-driven Authenticity: Where Brand Activism Usually Breaks Brian: How does empathy fit into brand activism? Dr. Kotler: This can get lost in superficial talk by the company with no real commitment. If you say you’re against pollution, what have you done? If you only talk about it and don’t act, customers are not impressed. “Greenwashing” is appearing to be green through talk and not doing much. Customers will ask: is the company sincere? Is it genuine? Or is it just marketing? That’s where empathy shows up. Not as a vibe, but as credibility. What This Means for GTM Leaders Here’s the part most GTM teams miss. Brand activism is not about being louder. It’s about being coherent. Buyers don’t need you to have perfect values. They need you to have consistent ones. They need to know: What you will not do to win a deal What you will protect even if it costs you Whether your internal incentives match your external claims If your company wants to “stand for something,” it has to show up in how you sell, how you onboard, how you support, and how you treat people when nobody’s watching. Otherwise, it’s not brand activism. It’s brand exposure. Bottom Line Customers aren’t begging companies to be political. They’re begging companies to be real. If your values only exist in a slide deck, buyers will treat your messaging like a campaign. And campaigns don’t earn trust. They rent attention until the budget runs out. Additional Resources The Case for Brand Activism – A Discussion with Philip Kotler and Christian Sarkar Purpose matters to marketing Get the book: Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action

    27 min

  3. 11/07/2019

    Mean people suck in marketing and what to do about it with Michael Brenner

    Why does most marketing stink? According to Michael Brenner, “Most of the marketing that we do that stinks and doesn’t work is that some executive with a big ego asked us to do it.” On top of that, marketers are not in a happy place. According to MarketingProfs 2019 Marketer Happiness Report, “Only 10% of marketers say they were very fulfilled in their work.” The report looked at the dimensions of feeling fulfilled, valued, and energized by the work, that our work is impactful, and engaged. That’s why I interviewed Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael), the CEO of Marketing Insider Group to talk about his new book Mean People Suck. We need more empathy inside our companies to empathize more with our customers. Michael Brenner states, “The most counter-intuitive secret to success in business and life is empathy.” I’m excited to share his thoughts on empathy with you. In this interview, you’ll learn about asking what’s in it for the customer, rethinking your organizational chart, and making the changes you need to make to be more successful today. Why did you write Mean People Suck? Michael: Again, I must give you credit. You were out in front of this empathy topic in marketing. I think long before me. Kudos to you. It just took me a little longer, but mainly as a content marketer and as a former internal corporate marketer, I reached out to folks that I know that are still living and breathing corporate marketing struggles every day. I found a couple of things, the number one being that marketers were miserable. It’s like that scene from, I think it’s Poltergeist where the obsessed woman has help written on her. Was it Poltergeist? Anyway, there was a woman possessed, and the words help showed up on her stomach because I feel like a lot of internal corporate marketers feel that way. They’re miserable. Why are marketers so miserable? Michael: When you get down to it, I’ve found that it’s mainly because they hate their boss. They don’t love the corporate culture. They’re not happy with what they’re being asked to do. They feel they don’t have an impact. When I looked at why content marketing programs aren’t successful, the answer superficially was content ROI. What’s the ROI of content? And if you don’t mind me, I’m not being promotional, but I wrote a book called The Content Formula, All About Content Marketing ROI. And when I went back to folks I sent the book to, but I found that it wasn’t enough. The math isn’t enough to get people over the challenges that we’re facing and how to do marketing that doesn’t suck. Most marketing stinks for this reason Michael: The answer is that I wrote the book is that most of the marketing that we do that stinks and doesn’t work, because some executive with a big ego asked us to do it. Executives love seeing logos on stadiums, and they love seeing Super Bowl ads, and all the things that we make fun of marketing about primarily come from a request from sales or marketing or product people. And the companies where content marketing is successful or marketers are happy are making an impact because there’s a culture of empathy. Their cultures don’t suck. The companies don’t suck. The leaders don’t suck. That’s why I wrote the book. Maybe a long-winded explanation, but that’s why. Why empathy is more important now Brian:  It’s hard for marketers to care about the customer when they don’t feel cared about too. They don’t feel safe. They’re anxious, or they’re frustrated, or they’re overwhelmed. You also talked about empathy. Why does empathy matter, especially to marketers and does it lead to better results? Michael: Yeah, One of the stories that I tell in the book, the very first corporate book that I read, and I have to give credit to the former CEO at Nielsen, my first company who made most of us in the company read the book. And I was like, “Oh, here we go. And I read the book. I was like,” Wow, this is actually really pretty cool.” It’s called the Service Profit Chain. I write a lot about it. The book isn’t talked about much, but the premise is simple. Three or four Harvard business review professors got together, and they said, wait for a second, we’ve seen this correlation between engaged employees are happy employees, happy customers, and higher stock prices more satisfied stock investors. They did some actual research and found that where there’s employee engagement, there is customer loyalty. Where there’s customer loyalty, there’s higher spend rates and retention and higher stock prices. The counter-intuitive secret to success  Michael: The key to those environments, those cultures, those companies where there were happy employees, was empathy. The company’s purpose was to make their employees happy because they knew happy employees created delighted customers. It’s totally intuitive, and yet it’s counterintuitive. That’s one of the reasons we reconnected. my LinkedIn post’s empathy is the counterintuitive secret to success. The thing is, I think that life has beaten us down and gotten us to believe that we should take what we want, and we should put our elbows out and get to the front of the line. It’s the opposite. It’s counterintuitive that if we help people, we can get what we want. It’s right for marketing, which really has a bad reputation. Most people think marketing is propaganda and promotion, but the companies that have effective marketing are those that are empathetic. It’s those that are empathetic to their customers and don’t just create advertising and propaganda. Empathy really is the key to marketing and business and in life. I kind of wrote the book kind of really trying to straddle all three of those perspectives. I hope your listeners look, and hopefully, they can maybe get back to me and tell me how well I did to try to straddle those three. Brian: Well, I just want to say I’m excited for you. I’m passionate about this book because big-picture empathy or caring for customers or wanting to help people it’s easy to talk about. Right? I think if you were asking your own executives, do you care about your customers? Do you have empathy for your employees? I don’t think anyone would argue with that, but it’s easier to talk about than it is to do. Getting customers to care (begins with caring)   Brian: One of the things you talked about was just the customer journey, and what the experience is for customers, why they don’t care about brands anymore and how the brand doesn’t matter. So why is that? Michael: Well, the first thing is I think it’s essential for marketers and especially brand marketers, corporate marketers, but I also believe those who are in the trenches there need to understand how to explain this to executives. And that is that we just aren’t that important. We’re not as exciting or important as we think we are. My former company, Nielsen, did a survey of brands and found that consumers wouldn’t care, 77% said they wouldn’t care if the brands they use disappeared completely. We’re seen as replaceable in many aspects. While we think we’re super important, and we believe we are fascinating. Our customers are just trying to get through every day and trying to meet the challenges they face. They’re trying to stay awake. The bar is low. Yet so many brands don’t create any kind of messaging or sort of stories that resonate. And so that’s really the trick is if you genuinely care about your customers, you don’t talk about yourself as much. When I meet somebody new, I don’t say, “Hi, my name is Michael Brenner, and I’m awesome.” That’s the last thing I would ever say. If I want somebody to listen to me, I say, “Hi, how are you?” My first thing is outreach. It’s empathy. It’s not promotion and propaganda and ego. I think we just forget that sometimes when we’re sitting inside the corporate marketing department. Brian: Well, you’re illustrating the point, and then I’ll come back, that empathy is more comfortable to talk about than it is to do. We’ve got to overcome our own bias, thinking that we have the answer. How to use empathy in your marketing approach Brian: I believe marketers come from the perspective: If I were the customer, how would this appeal to me? Or, as you talked about the leader who wants to see the logo, well, that’s not a customer-focused decision in their calculus. How might marketers use empathy in their approach to customers? Michael: In my first book, The Content Formula, I talk about my year-long struggle to get my colleagues inside SAP to see and to have empathy for our customers. I started with data. The data often leads to the conclusion. For example, at SAP, we were selling a cloud computing solution called SAP HANA, which now has a little brand awareness but then didn’t have any. What I tried to show my colleagues in marketing was that people weren’t searching for our product name. They weren’t searching even for SAP cloud computing solutions. They were searching for things like what is cloud computing. In every industry, no matter what thing you sell, if you sell, cybersecurity solutions, and you sell the world’s most excellent cybersecurity solution named alpha, I’m just making this up, people aren’t searching for alpha as much as they’re searching for cybersecurity solutions. When I found the data didn’t work, I moved to fear, FOMO, in a way, but really fear. I went to the sales team and showed them that I use this term, the buying journey doesn’t start with a search for our product. And the sales team understood that better than my peers in marketing. And I use search. I said, “Hey, look, when, when I, when I type cloud computing into Google, IBM, and Oracle and Salesforce show up, but SEP didn’t show up at all.” They got angry. That anger then translated to direct m

    19 min

  4. 06/20/2019

    How to stop the hustle and establish work-life boundaries with Carlos Hidalgo

    Has our devotion to work and hustle turned into the UnAmerican Dream? Some of the hardest working people I know are in sales and marketing. We often read success stories about how hustle and grit drove fantastic success. That said, the relentless pursuit of success can leave behind damaged relationships and personal life carnage in its wake. Take me, for example. Shortly after building up and selling a successful company, my 17-year marriage ended. There’s a reason entrepreneurs have a higher divorce rate. For me. My pursuit of business success left my health and my personal relationships in a severe need of help. I needed to redefine the kind of life I wanted to live, make different choices, and set better boundaries. It wasn’t easy. Now, my health, relationships, and personal and professional happiness are so much better. That’s why I was excited to interviewed Carlos Hidalgo (@cahidalgo), CEO of Digital Exhaust and author of the new book The UnAmerican Dream. In this interview, you’ll hear Carlos’s story about finding personal and professional happiness and establishing work-life boundaries. This is a must-read for sellers, marketers, and entrepreneurs. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Carlos:  Yeah. Hey Brian. Always a pleasure to talk to you. I have been in B2B marketing and sales for over 20 years. I think right now it’s about 25 years, which is hard to believe. I’ve been both client-side, and then in 2005, I co-founded an agency. That agency is still running. I left that agency at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017 to start another business. So, could say I’m a bit of an entrepreneur. I love creating things. Now, I work with B2B companies in the whole area of customer experience under the new brand VisumCX, and then just wrote my second book. The first book was on demand generation, so if you ever have insomnia, go for it. You can read that. But this book was the UnAmerican Dream, which is more my story and a whole lot more personal than the first one. Why did you write The UnAmerican Dream? The UnAmerican Dream   Brian: Can you tell the story about why you wrote this book, The UnAmerican Dream, and why now? Carlos:  Yeah, great question. When I left Annuitas, which was the first company that I had co-founded and started, I put a post on LinkedIn about why I was going. It was more to get back to what I should have been doing in the first place, which was cultivating those meaningful relationships, especially with my children and marriage. I was struck by the number of calls and emails I got from fellow entrepreneurs and fellow business leaders who were saying, “So, how did you do this? What steps did you take because I am at my wit’s end? I’m never seeing my family,” or “My marriage is falling apart,” or insert whatever they were going through. I was shocked. Wow, this is not just me going through this. So, that’s why. But the why now, is the idea of that book came to me over two years ago. But I needed to work on me first. I had to get some things straight in me, and one of those things that I start with the introduction, I believe, saying I first had the idea in 2016. When I told somebody the title, they said, “It sounds like an angry book.” I believe if I had written it then, it would have been an angry book because I had a lot of things that I had to work through and deconstruct some things that I had held to be true which weren’t right. So, I needed to wait. Waiting, I believe, made it a much more authentic book, a much more vulnerable book, but not an angry book in any way. Walking away from the UnAmerican Dream Brian:    I’m going to ask the same question you got asked by many people on LinkedIn. How did you walk away from this UnAmerican dream, and what do you mean by that? Carlos:  Yeah. Wow. How I did it … From the outside, it probably seemed like, oh, he woke up one day and was like, “I’m done.” It was a 10-month process for me. I really wrestled with the decision. And you know, Brian, you’ve started businesses. You’re an entrepreneur yourself. When you start something from scratch, and you put everything you have into it, you really … The term I hear often is, “This is my baby.” I wanted to make sure that, first and foremost, I had come to a place where I’m like, “I’ve got to do everything I can to get back those relationships that I had neglected for so long.” So, I tried to do that within the context of the first business. That took me 10 months. I kept wrestling with what should I do and how should I do it? Getting the courage to make the decision Carlos:  It was a conversation which I’ve told many times, so I want to elaborate in case there’s an overlap with people who have heard this before. But, a conversation with a colleague in the lobby of the Westin who encouraged me. He said, “You know what you need to do. You just need the courage to do it.” I called Suzanne, my wife, at that point, a few hours later and said, “I’m leaving.” When it came down to it, I really just pulled the ripcord because I didn’t have a big buyout waiting. I didn’t have this significant hoard of cash in the savings account where I could run for months and months. It was a risk. It was scary. It was like, “Okay, so what am I going to do now?” But everything panned out, and everything worked out. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was the best professional decision I ever made. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Brian:    Well, Carlos, for our listeners, it will come through. You and I are good friends. I was just thinking about you as an entrepreneur and as I know you. I mean, entrepreneurship is in your blood. It’s part of your history, part of your family history. As I was reading the book, you wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What’s getting in the way of that? Carlos:  Wow, so much is getting in the way of that. I think, first and foremost, is we as Americans are on this treadmill and this pace, and we have made work our God. We work more than any other group, any other nationality in the world. So, just think about that. I just read a stat last week where 32% of Millennials will not take more than a four-night vacation because of work. 70% of the population says, “I don’t have work-life balance.” I was at Nashville this last weekend, and the people we stayed with, he’s like, “I didn’t take all my vacation. I can’t.” I think part of what’s getting in the way of our happiness is we’re slaves to our jobs, we’re slaves to our career, we’re slaves to our businesses, and that’s a choice that we have made. I know people will debate me on that all day long, but it is a choice that we have made. Quitting weekend work I literally, before this, saw a LinkedIn post that said, “If you’re reading this on the weekend, it’s clear that you’re a top performer.” So, if you’re not connected to your profession on the weekend, the message is that you’re not a top performer. That is a total fallacy because I don’t work weekends anymore. I used to all the time. I don’t any longer. That means I’m not on LinkedIn, I’m not promoting anything, I’m not doing anything for my clients, and everybody knows that. That’s a boundary I chose. I think that’s one thing. How social media impacts happiness The other thing that I think that it’s really getting in the way of our happiness is social media, and these stinking things. We are so attached to, and I will use the word addiction, to our devices, and to social media. To the point where we’ll put something on Facebook and then 20 minutes later we’re going and seeing how many likes. We retweet. “How many followers do I have?” We have created what I call social loneliness where we are so socially connected, but we are so utterly lonely because people don’t really know us. We haven’t built a relationship, and as human beings, we’re wired for connection. I think when we put those things ahead of what we’re wired for, our happiness or our ability to choose joy, severely wanes. Brian:    There’s so much there, Carlos, as I’m listening to you. Something I remember from a conversation you and I had a while ago, and you had been going back to when I was trying to start my company again, as I was starting something new. You talked about setting boundaries instead of trying to get a work-life balance. Why is that? Why Focus on work-life boundaries, not balance I don’t believe in work-life balance because I tried it for … At different parts of my career, I tried it. At other parts, I was like, “I’m completely unbalanced, and I’m good with that.” Now, when I think about it makes me want to shake my head. The stats will show you 70% saying I can’t achieve work-life balance. So, when I see that, I know the reality is it doesn’t exist. The picture I get is my daughter, who was a gymnast for 14 years. Upon that balance beam and nothing made me more nervous. I had kids in theater and kids in sports, and they could perform, and I’d get a little nervous, but man, when she was there, you think about that. It’s hard to balance. It’s hard to balance across a trajectory of time. So, what I did is I rejected the idea of balance. Maybe it’s semantics, but for me, the idea of boundaries is they are more permanent. It takes work to move if I draw a boundary or install a limit. So, I’ve adopted boundaries, and when I say “I have,” we have because I’ve done it in the community, first and foremost, with my wife. Building boundaries in the community Brian, you and I have talked about my boundaries, and I’ve invited you into that community of people who have permission to be like, “Hey, I’m kind of seeing this stuff,” or “What’s going on here and how are

    24 min

  5. 06/05/2019

    How to Get Sales and Marketing Operating as One Team with Heidi Melin, CMO of Workfront

    Working together as one team in marketing and sales alignment is about the customer. Why? Because today, buyers are in control. For this reason, we can no longer have an artificial divide between marketing and sales. I interviewed Heidi Melin (@heidimelin), CMO at Workfront, on how to get sales and marketing to operate as one revenue team. Brian: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Heidi: Absolutely. I’m a career CMO. I’ve been in marketing my entire career, having started on the advertising side but primarily focused on fast-growing software businesses. So, I recently joined Workfront and am the CMO at Workfront. How can sales and marketing operate as one team? Well, throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work well with some sales teams, and I’ve also learned my fair share of working with sales teams and marketing teams that don’t align very well. Also, all those lessons learned include ensuring that the goals are aligned and ensuring that the marketing team has the same goals as the sales team. Indeed, the marketing team tends to have a broader view of the marketplace in the long term. But the immediate-term goals must be aligned. So, being aligned on lead generation or demand goals with the sales teams is critical. We talk about it inside Workfront as one view of the truth because so many times we’ve all probably sat in meetings with sales and marketing executives, and you spend most of the meeting arguing about whether or not the number is right instead of diagnosing what we need to work on to improve. So, ensuring you’re working on a standard set of numbers is hard. It sounds straightforward, but it’s hard. One key to success, I think, is ensuring that measurement, all programmatic activities, and the process-oriented partnership between sales and marketing are aligned because it’s one business process. One business process focused on revenue. I think that marketing and sales historically have been thought of as two separate business processes; we talk about it as a critical handoff. But I think about it because it’s one business process, and inside a company, it’s really focused on the revenue of your business. It starts when a marketing team targets a specific customer or prospect, and they raise their hand and ask for more information or engage all the way through to close business. So, it’s one business process, not two separate business processes. And, oh, by the way, it’s aligned to something way more important than a sales team or a marketing team: it’s aligned to how a buyer buys your product. And we forget that sometimes, we’re like, “Oh, well, the marketing process does this…” I’m like, oh no, no, no. We’re just trying to facilitate a buying process. Flip your focus on the customer Heidi: Yeah, and so when you flip that, and you look at the focus on the customer, all of sudden marketing and sales from an outreach, from an engagement perspective, has one unified goal, which is to move a buyer through a buying process. And when you have that change of mindset that becomes important. I’ve worked in businesses where we focus cleanly on that critical handoff, and that handoff is the most vital piece. And frankly, it’s an essential piece, but it’s not the crucial piece. Heidi: Yeah, it should support, and we have the tools to help that entire life cycle. When I first joined Workfront one of the things that we did was as soon as we handed off an opportunity to the sales team, it was like, we’re out, we’re done, check, we’re finished. Frankly, there are so many tools in a marketing toolkit that we can align with a selling motion and be more successful in helping to nurture prospects through a buying process. To me, that has been an evolution that has been enabled by technology and is one that is critical in ensuring that sales and marketing are aligned. Brian: As we talk about this whole idea of alignment, and you brought up measurements sounds easier said than done to get marketing and sales to agree on what common goals and measures are. How to get sales and marketing using the same numbers Heidi: I think it must start a big picture and really understanding targets and targets by sales teams and working backward from there. Because if we realize that as our goal, our goal from a marketing perspective is undoubtedly to raise awareness for the business and drive demand for the business. Our goal is to drive revenue for the business. And so, we can all understand our revenue goals and then the steps that we all need to take to get there. So, to meet our revenue goals, backing out of that, what kind of demand generation volumes do we need to have to achieve those revenue goals. We then agree with the sales team not only on what we are going to use as our qualification criteria, how we are going to evaluate whether or not a lead is indeed a good lead or a bad lead. Also, ensuring that, from a volume perspective, the marketing team is lined up to support the company’s revenue goals. So, backing it out from revenue is critical. And we’ve all been in situations where there’s a pendulum swing that goes from, “The leads are terrible, and we’re getting way too many of them” to “The leads are high quality, but we’re not getting enough of them.” That’s a constant balancing act with engaging with the sales team. And there may be reasons to shift or change a qualification criterion based on the maturity of a field sales organization or a time during the market, like during market seasonality. There are lots of reasons to make those changes, and you can’t do that in a vacuum. What works to remove barriers of teamwork? Heidi: You must go back to the customer, and you must understand the buying process of a customer. And if you can look at the buying process of your customer and map that out to not only the activities and programs that you engage with to move that prospect or customer through a buying cycle but understand how it maps to a sales process, is essential. So, if you can get to a place where you can map out the buying process from the time someone raises their hand or engages in some way through to closing business and revenue. Also, understand how the customer or the buyer operates during that and how that maps to our internal process, you can actually really demonstrate where marketing adds value and where sales is adding value and where both of us add value. Heidi: That’s where you can look at language and metrics and ensure that at each stage, you have the right metrics that you all agree on and the right language that you’re using to describe. You must go back to, “how does your customer buy your product?” If you don’t know that process and you don’t know how your marketing programs or your sales teams operate aligned to that, then you’re missing a big piece. Brian: What have you found that works or what advice might you have for someone who would like actually to go back to that beginning? Is it journey mapping? Is it interviewing customers? What are the steps you would recommend? Understanding how your customer buys Source: Journey map based on what they are doing, thinking, feeling via markempa Heidi: I think that there is nothing more valuable than interviewing customers that have just been through that process. As marketers, we don’t always have as much engagement directly with customers as I think we should. So, sitting down with customers that have just gone through a sales cycle, understanding the process that they went through, really listening to what their needs are and starting to look at that; you see commonalities for how customers buy whatever product it is. Then taking that, making some assumptions, standardizing it, and then mapping it to internal processes. I know we just did this recently at Workfront and we learned a lot. One of the most valuable things that we learned is that there were stages that we weren’t touching. We weren’t touching the buyer in the buying cycle, and we were getting them to engage, but then we weren’t continuing that conversation in a way that helped move them forward or we weren’t providing the kind of nurture programs that we could in the early stages of the sales cycle. Spend time listening to how customers buy Just taking the time to step back, and to spend time with customers, listen to how they buy is the place to start. It’s excellent practice for marketing teams to do that work and creates many synergies with the sales team because many times the criticism of a sales team is that they’re on the front lines. They’re the ones on the phone; they’re the ones in person talking to customers. And a common criticism is that the marketing team is sitting in a back room somewhere developing programs and campaigns and not listening and touching customers. So, having and leading that discussion with a sales organization is beneficial because it demonstrates the engagement that we all need to have with those customers as they go through a buying process. Brian: I’m so glad you brought this up because I do find that, to your point, for the most part, marketers often do get isolated, especially in B2B, because salespeople are usually having more conversations or sales development reps are or whomever. And so, what you’re saying is, get this buyer insight and from that marketers will have a different perspective. Marketing must understand the customer perspective Heidi: That’s correct. It brings a different level of perspective, and it also takes away from where marketing teams can sometimes get stuck which is in activity-driven programs where they’re doing just a lot of programs that are generating volume and activity but not necessarily moving the ball forward. So, paying attention to how we can do things at different points in time to move the ball forward

    24 min

  6. 03/26/2019

    Bring more innovation to your demand generation now with Jeanne Hopkins

    Do you routinely look for ways to drive innovation with your demand generation approach? Or do you feel behind the curve? According to Circle Research, marketers are split. Half say they’re “old school,” while the other half believe their approach is innovative. Circle Research found that most marketers (93%) who describe themselves as innovative say that it has made their marketing more effective. However, 83% of lagging marketers plan to bring innovation into their approach this year. I interviewed Jeanne Hopkins (@jeannehopkins), CMO at Lola.com, on how marketers can bring more innovation to demand generation. Share a little bit about your background. Jeanne:  Thanks, Brian. My undergraduate degree is in Accounting. Believe it or not, the accounting office where I started told me in my annual review that I probably didn’t have a future in accounting because I was too loud. Everything was balanced andhing was good, but I was too noisy for a nice, cut-and-dry accounting office. That’s when I moved into toys. I worked for Milton Bradley Company’s in-house advertising agency. Then, I moved to LEGO and then to other consulting companies. I got into the software, an internally funded company called Datum E-business Solutions, which delivered a trusted time application. A long time ago, way back in the year 2000, it used to be that you’d send an email. Maybe somebody would send it again, but it would be like three hours later or three hours before, and that’s because networks were not on the same timing device. So, the whole concept of having timing and having to be secure became something that became critically important to all networks. From there, selling into IT, B2B technology companies, that sort of thing. So that’s my gig. What does Lola do? Jeanne: Lola.com is a corporate travel management solution that allows finance people, office managers, and business travelers themselves to be able to see their full travel details and integrate with an expense platform. I know, Brian, you’ve probably done some expenses before- Brian: Yeah. Jeanne: You take a picture of the expense, you watch it go into the cloud, you fill out the form, and it takes half an hour or hour and, I bet you avoid it, right? It’s like one of those things- Brian: You wait until the last minute to do it, and if the reports are due on Monday, you’re doing it Sunday night. Jeanne: Of course, taking away from family time. Brian: Right. Jeanne: We integrate with Expensify, Concur, a whole bunch of different finance applications, as well as travel. You can book all your travel with us. We have a complete support network that helps you get checked in and makes sure that when disruptions come up (reroute people, get people back sooner or back later) and any other hiccups that business travelers endure. We’re trying to mitigate that for them. Brian: I wanted to highlight you because you’ve done so much, you know, since you and I met, and we could date ourselves a bit here but- Jeanne: That’s okay. Brian: Way back, as we spoke, I think, at a MarketingSherpa Conference. Jeanne: 2006, yeah. Brian: Yeah! I was impressed by you and just how you were bringing innovation and creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking. Also, you’ve continued to do that throughout your career. Driving more innovation with demand generation How did you start thinking differently to drive innovation with demand generation? Jeanne: Well, I can’t claim the credit myself, so I’d say that there would be a couple of different influences. I would say both of my parents are artists of a kind. My dad paints, he plays music, he writes. My mom sings, plays music, and paints. So, when I was in high school, I majored in Art. We had to submit a portfolio, and I enjoy thinking from an artistic view of the world. That’s the left-handed component of me. However, then, when I graduated from high school, I went to college for Accounting because I’m ultimately practical, right? I said I could always get a job adding things up. I read constantly. I’m trying to always look for something a little bit different, a little bit ahead of the curve. I don’t want to be an early adopter, but I want to be at the forefront before the competition catches up with us. So, I’m lucky to have a kind of a creative outlook, and I think. Start seeing stories My dad was a newspaperman. He was a managing editor of the newspaper in western Massachusetts, in Springfield, and I can look at things and look at story ideas. This a story, like just us having a conversation right here, Brian. Jeanne: So, we each have a story, we have a back story that goes back some 13 years now- We know each other. We worked together, you know, you have a family, you know my family, and that’s a story. So, I sent a note to my internal content team, and I said, “Hey, I’m doing this podcast. When it gets published, I think we should do a press release and post it on the blog and backlink to Brian’s blog because that’s where he’s going to be posting it,” but, that’s not creative. Don’t you think that’s where people kind of drop the ball? Getting it done Brian: I do. I think it’s like bringing the two pieces together and what I’ve respected about you is that you were always willing to try something new, you know? And you would see it through and wouldn’t let it drop. Jeanne: Are you saying I’m a nag?! Brian: Well, I think a little bit. You want things done well, and you own it. Being creative is great, but being creative or innovative isn’t going to matter much unless you can get it done. Generating revenue Jeanne: A place that I worked at a few companies ago, one of the salespeople contacted me and said, “Oh, they’re completely rebranding. They’re doing all this kind of stuff.” I feel like marketers who go the rebranding route, the new logo route, they’re arts and crafts marketers because while that’s important and a brand is essential, it’s not as important as generating revenue. Brian: Yeah. Jeanne: But almost a thousand of them were untouched by sales because we don’t have enough salespeople, so working with an organization to make sure if people are downloading content, you want them to get touched. They may not be ready to buy, but you want to be able to make sure they’re touched. So, I’m trying to come up with a solution to that internally. To go figure out what I can do to help the sales organization achieve the revenue targets that we have as an organization? Seeing the whole business Jeanne: I think that one of the challenges that many marketers have is that they don’t look at the whole business. Because our job is not just as marketers, and this concept of arts and crafts marketer and saying, “Okay, I’m going to change this logo from orange to pink,” and therefore all these people are going to come to us and say, “Oh, I love your new logo and can I buy from you?” That’s not going to happen. Generating revenue and building a great relationship with sales You haven’t given anybody anything of value. I feel and have always felt that my job is to generate revenue. And that becomes challenging for many marketers. If I looked at what this brand person is doing, you’re going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars with an agency, and you’re going to go through this whole process. I understand this individual has been there for eight months, and the sales team hasn’t seen a single lead. I would stick a fork in my eye if that were the case. My job is to generate leads. I want to have an excellent relationship with sales. I want to make sure that the sales leader that I’m working with is somebody that I like, and respect and we’re joined at the hip to grow the business together. Brian: I want to call attention to something you’ve said that it’s so important that you go beyond the lead. You’re looking at the whole business and focused on revenue. I think it’s just part of being a good marketer is looking at execution. Getting and keeping customers How do we take this person we built a relationship with or start a conversation with and carry it through to helping them become a customer? Jeanne: Yes. Also, stay a customer. The four circles Jeanne: Because when you think about it, I feel like there’s like four circles, if you will. 1. Employees The center ring is employees, and if employees don’t have a sense of what’s going on and they’re not being communicated with, like here are the events that are coming up, here are the PR things that are coming up. What’s the full transparency so that the employees know what’s going on with the product, marketing, sales, team, and everything? 2. Customers The next one is customers; unfortunately, customer marketing as a concept is not something marketers dig. But they don’t think about them until they’re gone. 3. Prospects Then the next level is prospects. Many marketers focus just on prospects.  Then, what’s the conversion rate, visit-to-lead, visits-to-CTA, CTA-to-opportunity, the opportunity-to-customer? 4.Community Oh, that’s all great, but you also have a community, and when I worked at HubSpot as an example, we had a million people that were part of the community. They were not going to become customers, but you know what they did? They amplified content, so we had a new E-book on something, sent it out, the community would leverage it, and that’s what you want. But if you don’t start with employees and customers, the rest are all for naught, and prospects look at reviews and what other people are buying. You must have a solid core of employees and customers, and that’s the holistic view in my mind. Brian: Well, as I talk with CEOs, I hear the metrics they care about looking at customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) because they tie back to the diagram you just share

    25 min

  7. 01/30/2019

    Why Conversational Marketing and New Book with Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift.com

    Traditional sales and marketing methods have failed to keep pace with how modern B2B buyers purchase goods and services. Meetings, phone calls, and email are still important B2B channels but how can you have immediate conversations? Conversational Marketing is about having direct one-to-one conversations to connect with customers and offer help. By using targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage with leads in real-time (while they’re on your website), you can connect with people in real-time and convert leads faster. That’s why I interviewed Dave Gerhardt (@davegerhardt), VP of Marketing at Drift.com and co-author of the new book Conversational Marketing. Dave is also known as DG. Share a bit of your background and what does Drift do? DG: So, my background. I don’t even know where to start. I love marketing. I do marketing at Drift. VP of Marketing; been here for three-ish years right since the beginning of the company. The way that I talk about Drift is that Drift connects you now with the people who are ready to buy now. Which is a significant change from how traditional marketing typically works, where most of the traditional marketing and sales systems were kinda built for later? Go to my website, fill out this form, and somebody on the team is going to follow up with you later. But you know, there’s just been a huge shift in the way that we all behave and communicate online, and the now is more important than ever. I think about walking outside this building: if I called Lyft on my phone, the driver would be there in about one to two minutes, and that’s what we expect from everything. Except in the B2B world, where the rules, for some reason don’t apply to how we actually all do things in real life. Brian: Right. DG: So, our mission at Drift is really to transform the way businesses buy from businesses, and the way that we do that is through conversational marketing. Brian: Well, that’s awesome! And so, that sets us up actually. Tell us about Conversational Marketing? And what motivated you to write the book? Why now? The reason we wrote the book is that we’ve just heard so much about the power of conversational marketing, we felt it firsthand. We use conversational marketing and Drift to run our whole business, and we have become one of the fastest-growing companies of all time in this industry. And it’s not because we have some secret, but our secret has been we’ve used our own product and really made conversations the center of our business. And so, as we created this category of conversational marketing and started to educate more people about it late last year, we were like, “You know what? It’s time to write the book.” We’ve wanted to write a book. We had enough stuff to say, case studies, examples, methodologies, playbooks, blueprints, and all that stuff. And so, you know we said, “Let’s make 2019 the year that we write the book, and really do the best job we can trying to help educate the future of marketing and sales on this next wave.” Brian: Well, it’s really well done. Why do marketers need to rethink their content/lead generation? DG: Because content’s a commodity, right? Everybody has a podcast. Everybody has a blog. Everybody’s into videos. Everybody’s on social media. Content five, ten years ago you could be like, “You know what makes us unique? We are a B2B company, and we have a blog.” And people are like, “Blogging? No way!” Today, all that stuff is a commodity, and nobody’s going to be on their commute home tonight being like, “You know what I wish I had more of? I wish I had more content from a B2B brand. Like, I need another B2B podcast. That’s what I need.” Right? And so, there’s got to be some other way to compete. You can’t just write a four-page PDF and slap a form in front of it and say, “Here you go sales team. Here are some leads.” Because we’re all kind of starting to ignore that, right? I try to avoid filling out forms if I can. I hate talking on the phone. I never answer numbers that don’t usually call me. I never reply to cold emails. And so, something had to give. And that’s really the shift that we’ve seen in the market. And something that David (who I wrote this book with; he’s the founder and CEO of Drift) the thing he talks about is, he calls it the shift from supply to demand. Right? Customers have all the power today. Ten years ago, they didn’t have any of the power, and so if you sold iced coffee, you could be the only person that sold iced coffee. And you could say, “You know what, Brian? You’re going to have to go through my process, and you want one of my iced coffees? Great! Come back at 5 o’clock tonight. Call me on this number, and I’ll talk to you.” Where now, customers have all the power, right? By the time I’m ready to buy an iced coffee, I’ve already evaluated four or five other companies, and I’m there in your store for a reason. Really, the concept that information is free now, it’s not something that can be a differentiator for you anymore. Brian: I was just thinking you sell to marketers, right? And so, naturally, we’re kind of a snarky bunch. We know how things are played, and so it’s about building trust with people as well. I just wanted to hear the story; I was reading the book, but also, I first heard about it, I think it was a year ago. This whole idea of the #noforms movement. How did the #noforms movement get started and what do you mean? DG: What do I mean by “no forms”? That’s a loaded question. So “no forms” is pretty, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not a rhetorical question, but you know what I’m trying to say, right? Brian: Right. Right. DG: You need no forms because of the whole process that I think marketers got into this world of just abusing forms, right? And I’m not preaching to anybody; I did this too, right? I remember one of the first things I did at Drift. I wanted to write an article about the Growth Marketing influencers you should follow on Twitter. And so, I made a Twitter list, I put it in a Google sheet, and I put a form behind it. And I said, “Hey! You want to get my list of 50 people to follow on Twitter? Put your email in here.” Like, that person’s not a lead. Right? There’s no intent there. I’m just gating this thing that is a commodity, and so we kind of started this whole “no forms” movement to challenge marketers to rethink how they do demand gen and how they capture leads. It started because about three years ago David Cancel called me one morning on my way into work and he’s like, “Hey! You got a second?” And I knew something was wrong because he never talks on the phone. He only texts. He only sends IMs, Slack, WhatsApp, and text messages. So, when he called me, I was like, “I’m getting fired. Here we go.” It was actually worse than getting fired. He was like, “Hey! I think we need to get rid of all the lead forms on our website and our content.” And I was like, “Okay. And do what?” Like, I’m your first marketing person here. You pay me to generate leads, and you’re taking that away? So, what are you going to measure me on? And he’s like, “No, idiot.” He didn’t say that. But he’s like, “You’re missing the point. If we’re going to build a business around conversations, we need to lead the way, and we need to remove all of our forms and show businesses how to generate demand and drive sales without having to gate content and use lead forms.” And so, it was really like a pivotal moment for us, because it’s like, “Alright. If we’re going to build this thing, we’ve got to live it firsthand.” And it was amazing because it wasn’t just a marketing lesson, right? I remember sitting next to two of our engineers, we shared a little table together and they’re like, “Okay. You’ve got no forms, so what would you do here?” And they’re like, “We’re building this thing as we go on the spot.” It was super transformational for our business because we were able to see how it worked firsthand. But then we got to go and educate the world, right? Because you say “no forms” to marketers, people are going to jump off the side of the boat. But for us, we were like, “Hold on. Let me show you how you would do a webinar registration without a form. Let me show you how you would do this on your pricing page without a form.” And so, it gave us an opportunity to really go out there and educate the market. And the results since then have been amazing. Brian: You know it still stings and feels a bit like heresy, this idea of “no forms.” because every marketing automation provider has been built in forms. We have tons of popups. I have popups on my blog and on my website, and the question is if I get rid of forms, then how do I engage people Engage and capture leads with no forms DG: So, the short answer to that is to have a conversation, right? And that’s really why Drift exists because the way you’re going to capture leads now is by having an actual conversation with somebody. I’ll give you an example. Forms work. And in reality, the best advice I could give you is, don’t replace your forms. That’s what you’re going to do eventually after you’re very successful with conversational marketing. But I want you to use conversational marketing in addition to your forms to start, right? And you’re going to create a second net that’s going to create this fast lane for the best people because if somebody has very high intent and they land on your website, they don’t want to fill out a form. They want to get an answer now. And so, Drift is going to create a fast lane for those best people. So, part one is, use Drift or conversation marketing in additio

    28 min

  8. 01/09/2019

    How to improve your account based marketing results an interview with Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio

    B2B lead generation has had to reinvent itself over the last decade. Sales have always used an account-based approach. Now,, marketing is adopting account-based marketing. But it’s not an easy road. Here’s why: In B2B, you’re never selling to an individual. He or she is almost always part of a buying team. Moreover, the bigger the potential deal, the more people, departments, and functional areas get involved. For this reason, many B2B marketers using a leads-based approach hit a wall with their account-based marketing efforts. ABM isn’t just about marketing. ABM works best in companies where all revenue-generating areas are closely aligned as one team. So, how can you improve your account-based marketing results? To help, I interviewed Jon Miller (@jonmiller), CEO and Co-Founder of Engagio. Jon and his team just released the Second Edition of The Clear and Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing. He brings a fantastic perspective on how to complement a leads-based approach and adopt account-based marketing. What inspired you to start Engagio? Jon: Great.  I’m excited to be here and to have a chance to hang out with you again. It’s been a while since we talked. So, my background: I’ve been in marketing technology almost my entire career. My undergraduate degree is actually in physics, and when I was coming out of college, I ended up doing a lot of work with companies that were trying to take advantage of all the customer data they had [in order] to make decisions. Because I came to marketing with that quantitative and analytical background, that led me into a series of marketing technology companies that were basically all about really trying to use all that data to drive better customer decisions and one to one interactions. You know, very much inspired by the Don Peppers and Martha Rogers book The One to One Future. I worked at Exchange and then as an early employee at Epiphany, which was probably the leading marketing technology company of the mid-’90s. After we sold Epiphany, I co-founded Marketo, along with Phil Fernandez. And I think that’s arguably, or maybe not even arguably, the leading marketing technology of the last ten years or so. Recently, it was sold to Adobe for just under 5 billion dollars. I had a long career in marketing technology, but one of the trends I think is always true is marketing is changing all the time, and the underlying technologies are changing all the time. I just felt about four years ago that Marketo wasn’t, frankly, moving fast enough to kind of keep up with all the new trends and changes in how marketing was done. I was inspired to start a new company that would be seeking to build out the next generation of marketing products that could really take advantage of all these new trends. One of those significant trends is what’s now known as account-based marketing. And so, that’s where I decided to start, to focus, to have Engagio be a platform for account-based marketing. How do you define account-based marketing? Brian: Well, there’s a lot of definitions out there about account-based marketing, and I’ve talked with CMOs and VPs, and they see account-based marketing as just good marketing. But I’d love to ask you: you just had this new book come out, The Clear Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing and you’re on your second edition, so how would you define it? Jon: Yeah. So, first of all, let me just say, really excited about the book. You know, it is a second edition; I wrote the first one about three years ago. I’ve learned a ton more about ABM in the last three years. I’ll start with a colloquial definition of ABM then I’ll give you my formal one. I think the colloquial one I like to use is a comparison back to the kind of marketing that we did with Marketo. And that is the marketing that I like to describe as fishing with nets. When you’re fishing with nets, you run your campaigns, and you don’t care which specific fish you catch. You just care– did I catch enough? That you can then do lead nurturing, and lead scoring to kind of run it through the system. But when you’re going after bigger or more strategic accounts, or maybe because you’re going after your existing customers for expansion, or you’re in a narrow industry. Any time you have a specific list of named accounts, you don’t want to wait around for those big fish to swim into your net. You’re going to find ways to reach out to them proactively. It’s much more like fishing with a spear. And so, to me that’s the simple definition of account-based marketing: it’s spearfishing as opposed to net fishing. A breakout of account-based marketing Jon: My formal definition is that account-based marketing is a go-to-market strategy that will coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land and expand at target accounts. Can I just explain what some of those words mean? Brian: Yeah. If you could break that out that would be great. It’s a strategy Jon: First of all, I’m very precisely calling it a strategy. ABM is a way of running your go-to-market. And how your sales and marketing and customer success teams work. It’s not a campaign or a tactic. So, you really do need to kind of say, “We use ABM as our go-to-market strategy or at least one of our go-to-market strategies.” Personalized to the right people and accounts Jon: Second, ABM is really all about being personalized. There’s so much noise in the market today; if you’re spearfishing and you’re trying to reach out to the right people at the right companies, somehow you’ve got to break through all that noise and the best way to do that is with relevance, resonance, and empathy, which I know we’ll talk about. ABM is a misnomer because we’re saying it’s account-based marketing but right there, in my definition, I’m talking about marketing and sales. And let’s talk about that a little bit later. Landing and expanding revenue Jon: ABM is about landing and expanding. I think that especially today, so many companies earn revenue through subscription and recurring revenue models. Just focusing on that new business, which is what the net fishing is all about, is a minimal myopic focus, and ABM expands, or changes, the marketer’s mindset to focus on the entire revenue journey: landing/creating new pipeline accelerating existing deals expanding and retaining existing relationships. ABM plays across all that. So, that’s why I chose that definition. From leads-focus to account-focus Source: The Clear & Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing (p. 132) How is ABM is different than demand generation? Brian: Well, it makes sense, and I appreciate what you’re talking about, just the overarching trend. CEOs focus on lifetime value (LTV) and CAC (customer acquisition cost). And so, ABM is providing answers to that. There still is so much confusion out there, and you say, ABM isn’t just about marketing. How do you mean? How is it different from demand generation? Because I still think people out there, even though we’ve just talked about the definitions, yet are getting confused. Jon: Yeah. Well, so I always thought it was ironic that we called the category Marketo played in marketing automation. People think marketing automation means that you have fewer humans doing less work. The reality is the exact opposite. When you buy a tool like Marketo, or any marketing automation platform, it requires work. People have to do stuff. ABM is not just about marketing; it’s about everything So, in many ways marketing automation is a misnomer in the same way that ABM is a misnomer because ABM is not just about marketing. If you’re focused on the entire revenue journey (creating new pipeline, accelerating existing deals, expanding and retaining relationships) that can’t just be marketing: it has to be an orchestrated business initiative between the different functions. And frankly, if it’s just marketing, it’s not a strategy; it’s a campaign. At Engagio, a lot of our customers have their strategies, and they’re not called ABM. They call it something like account-based everything. Or the account first initiative, or something as simple as account-based sales and marketing. I’ve seen all of those at play, and I think it really is the right way to think about it because otherwise, as I said, it’s just a campaign. Unteaching that it’s about leads Brian: Well, I think that’s a vast distinction, especially as people are considering the future. I liked in your book, as I was reading it, you have a quote, “Salespeople never talk about how many leads they close, they talk about how many accounts they closed.” And do you find that marketers see this differently, and why? Jon: Well, yeah. I mean this is my fault, and a little bit your fault. Brian: Sure. Jon: We taught marketers to talk about leads. Brian:  Right. Jon: Literally, we called it lead nurturing, and so on. And the technologies that we use, like Marketo for example, they were built to be really lead-based systems. Marketers focus on leads. Salespeople care about accounts. Which, almost by definition, meant they were not on the same page. And that’s not the only reason marketing and sales have trouble getting along, but it certainly didn’t help. I think a big part of ABM really put is merely just marketers, frankly, adopting the language the salespeople use. And just, again, being on the same page. Brian:  Yeah. I think salespeople have practiced, in some ways, the very things that you’re talking about in your book. They may have called it strategic account selling, major account selling, and target account selling. But they did focus on these accounts, and as you talked about, now marketers are coming alongside salespeople and working on these accounts together. So, we’re going to talk about some process steps, but I wanted to step back

    23 min
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The B2B Roundtable gives you practical marketing and sales strategies you can use to fuel growth. Host Brian Carroll sits down with leading GTM experts in B2B marketing and sales to uncover what’s working today — from account-based marketing (ABM) and sales development to content marketing, storytelling, leadership, and research-backed insights.

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