The B2B Roundtable

Brian Carroll
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  • Marketing

The B2B Roundtable is a podcast about what dashboards miss in B2B revenue systems. Most GTM teams manage what their dashboards can measure. But the numbers don’t always explain why growth is slowing, buyers disengage, or revenue isn’t keeping pace. Hosted by Brian Carroll, GTM advisor and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, the show features candid conversations with B2B leaders, operators, and thinkers about what’s really happening beneath the numbers, what they’ve learned, and what they changed. Learn more at https://www.markempa.com

  1. 3d ago

    Stop Automating the Past: How AI Is Changing the Way We Work with Liza Adams

    About This Episode Most GTM teams are using AI to make existing work faster. But faster isn’t the same as different. And the teams that are actually pulling ahead aren’t automating the past — they’re reimagining the work itself. In this episode, Brian talks with Liza Adams about what separates teams that are getting faster with AI from teams that are actually changing how they work. Liza shares the story of Megan, a senior marketing leader who used AI agents to orchestrate across marketing, sales, and CS until her work outgrew her title entirely. That story illustrates the bigger idea behind the conversation: what happens when you reimagine the work first, then redesign the roles and the org around it. About Liza Adams Liza Adams is the founder of GrowthPath Partners, where she helps B2B GTM teams move beyond AI productivity into AI-driven transformation. She spent 25 years leading GTM teams at companies including Smartsheet and Juniper Networks, and has worked with AI and machine learning long before ChatGPT. She is passionate about elevating the strategic value of marketing and helping leaders use AI to become business leaders, not just functional leaders. What We Cover The AI adoption plateau and the three patterns that cause teams to stall Why your belief about what AI can do is the cap of what your team will ever build Using AI as a sparring partner vs. a validation tool, and the research behind why it matters The difference between what’s hard for humans and what’s just historically hard How AI doesn’t care about your org chart, your silos, or your titles What CEOs are starting to want from CMOs and why most marketing leaders aren’t set up for it Why reimagining the org chart starts with reimagining the work, not the other way around A Few Things Worth Taking Away AI for productivity should be the floor of our expectations, not the ceiling. If we only make old work go faster, we can project how it automates the human out. But if we use AI to do something different, we’re innovating, and when the business grows, humans are essential. People aren’t stupid. They just need to see what’s possible. Talking about AI capabilities is different from showing someone a workflow that pulses the market 24/7 and surfaces which customers are about to churn. Humans that use AI as a sparring partner outperform pure human teams and pure AI teams. But humans that use AI to validate their beliefs actually perform at a lower level than an all-AI team. In the RACI model, AI will never have the A. It will never be accountable. It will never lose the job for you, pay the fines for you, or go to jail for you. Don’t start with “what does the org of the future look like?” Start by reimagining the work. When you reimagine the work, the roles become clear. When the roles are clear, the org chart follows. A Few Lines That Stuck With Me “The cap of what our teams will ever build, do, and use AI for is limited by what they believe it can do.” “AI transformation can’t happen when we’re in a hamster wheel.” “AI will never lose the job for you, it will never pay the fines for you, and it will also never go to jail for you.” “It’s like hiring a bunch of actors before you even know what the script is.” “AI is making the mechanics a lot easier. I think our biggest challenge now is us.” Resources Mentioned AI Is Cannibalizing Human Intelligence. Here’s How to Stop It. by Vivienne Ming (Wall Street Journal) What Harvard Learned From 776 Professionals Using AI (Harvard/P&G research on AI and cross-functional collaboration) Chapters 00:00 Why Getting Faster With AI Isn’t Enough 03:20 Why Teams Hit the AI Adoption Plateau 07:43 AI as a Teammate, Not Just a Tool 10:10 Using AI as a Sparring Partner 12:35 What Work Is Only “Historically Hard”? 18:12 AI Can Do the Work. Humans Own the Outcome. 19:32 From Org Charts to Work Charts 26:19 What CEOs Need From CMOs Now 34:33 Reimagine the Work Before the Org Chart Transcript Brian Carroll (00:00): Well, I see this a lot in sales and marketing teams. People are using AI, some are using it really well. They built workflows, they built custom GPTs, they’re getting faster and better. But there’s a big difference between getting faster with AI and actually changing how your organization works. Welcome to the B2B roundtable. I’m Brian Carroll. And my guest today, Liza Adams. She’s the founder of GrowthPath Partners. And she spent 25 years leading GTM teams at companies like Smartsheet, Juniper Networks, and she’s worked with AI and machine learning long before ChatGPT. And now she helps teams figure out how AI can actually change the way they work. Something Liza recently said that stuck with me is you can’t reimagine the future by automating the past. Liza, welcome to the B2B roundtable. Liza Adams (00:50): Hi Brian. I’ve been looking forward to this all week long and it feels like every time you and I get together we’re always laughing. So I’m still kinda laughing over here. So always a pleasure. Brian Carroll (01:02): I’m so glad to have you on today. And it’s funny, I’ve had multiple people tell me, Brian, you should talk with Liza Adams. And it was fun to be able to say, Well, guess what? We’re talking this week. Brian Carroll (01:16): So the question I wanted to ask you first is what’s really separating teams that are changing how they work from teams that are just getting faster? Liza Adams (01:25): Yeah, you know, the biggest aha moment for me is really mindset, right? Like I’ve always said that the cap of what our teams will ever build, do, and use AI for is limited by what they believe it can do. So if we primarily think that this is gonna be just a chatbot or a fancy search engine. Guess what? That’s all we’re ever going to use it for, right? And I do have a lot of empathy because if that’s what we believe, and our companies are expecting us to build fully agentic workflows that cross functions, guess what? There’s a big grand canyon between those two beliefs, right? And that’s just one. You know, there’s also this mindset around AI used for productivity, making existing work go faster. And I actually believe that that should just be the floor of our expectation of AI. Because if we simply make old work go faster, you can almost project how it can automate the human out. But if we actually use AI to push our thinking so that the outputs are better, so better, not just faster, but better. And then better yet, if we actually use AI to do something different, meaning reimagine the work. We now are innovating, do things that weren’t possible before. With innovation, you know, we have a better shot at growing the business. And when the business grows, humans are essential. Right? And I actually can’t see a business continuing to grow without needing more humans. But if we simply improve productivity, then we can see how humans are not as essential to the business. Brian Carroll (03:14): Something I’ve noticed with companies is when they do start using it, and every company has to varying degrees, there’s this AI adoption plateau. And I wanted to talk to you about it because I hadn’t really heard that until our conversation. So what does that look like inside a real company? Liza Adams (03:34): Yeah, a few things come to mind and again, Brian, you and I have talked about this before the show, right? That I don’t have best practices because I do believe best practices are still being written and they’re evolving and they’re moving so quickly and oftentimes the shelf life is relatively short. But what I do have is pattern recognition, having worked with and continuing to work with a lot of go to market teams. So I’ll share with you my thinking on what I’m seeing. Time and time again, and some of these patterns, you know, tell me what generally might work and what generally is going down the wrong way, right? And I think again, the mindset, right? Like what you believe AI can do is the cap of what you will ever build. So if we don’t shift that mindset, there’s a plateau there at some point, right? The other thing is, being able to see what’s possible. So people, I know this so well now, people aren’t stupid. They just need to see what’s possible. I mean we can talk to them till they’re blue in the face, that you can build agentic workflows across functions. And then these agents can use tools, it can use our browsers, it can you know, navigate our systems and our laptops and put files in the folders. But those are features of AI, those are capabilities of AI. We actually have to show them what’s possible, right? So you know show them how it can pulse the market consistently and give us insights 24 by seven and be able to tell us what is still aligning with positioning and what isn’t. Like show them what that looks like, right? Show them how we can use signal from various sources, and those various sources might have lots and lots of data. AI can collect all that, synthesize it, give us insights and anomalies, and determine which customers are about ready to churn, or which customers are giving us enough signal that they’re probably a good candidate for an expansion. So think about those workflows, not just the capabilities. Until they see what’s possible, there’s gonna be a plateau, right? So the whole notion of inspiring people, what’s possible, sharing you know, these use cases, sharing these workflows, everybody doing it, because the ideas are brand new, right? No one’s ever navigated this before. So we need like absolutely the rising tide lifts all boats in many instances. The other place where I’m seeing a plateau is where we do workshops and we do trainings and things like that. So we inspire people, they get going, but then we go back to our day jobs. And what happens is I’ve always said, you know, AI transformation c

    Stop Automating the Past: How AI Is Changing the Way We Work with Liza Adams

  2. Aug 18

    AI Scaled Activity. It Didn’t Scale Relevance with Craig Rosenberg

    For years, B2B teams tried to make SDRs more efficient. More calls. More emails. More activity. Then AI arrived, and many teams tried to automate the same model. But what if the problem wasn’t needing a faster version of the old playbook? What if the real opportunity is to use AI to make people better at the things only humans can do? That’s the question behind my conversation with Craig Rosenberg. Craig has been gathering some of the best SDR and pipeline leaders in B2B through Scale Venture Partners’ Pipeline Council. What he’s seeing feels less like a completely new playbook and more like a return to fundamentals, with much better tools. AI can help us choose the right accounts, recognize signals, research buyers, practice conversations, and move faster. But the last mile still comes down to relevance, judgment, taste, trust, and human connection. About this episode Craig and I have known each other since the early days of B2B marketing and demand generation. I followed his Funnelholic blog back in 2008, and he reminded me during our conversation that my book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, was one of the first B2B GTM books he read. Several things Craig had recently been sharing from Scale’s Pipeline Council brought us back together. One of the big questions they’re working through is simple: What does a high-performing SDR motion look like now that AI can do so much of the work SDRs used to do? The answer isn’t fewer humans everywhere. In fact, Craig is seeing AI companies hiring SDRs and experienced enterprise sellers as they move beyond product-led growth and into harder-to-reach markets. Craig and I discuss: Why automating the old activity-based SDR model didn’t solve the pipeline problem How Glean uses AI to help SDRs get better at human conversations Why Craig believes the “last mile” of selling is still human What unmistakably human outreach looks like when buyers are surrounded by AI-generated messages Why AI companies are hiring SDRs and experienced enterprise sellers again How ICP and signals help teams focus on the accounts most likely to buy Why selling AI is becoming harder and business process may become the new software moat About Craig Rosenberg Craig Rosenberg is Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners, where he helps build and lead Scale’s go-to-market platform for software companies. Before joining Scale, Craig was Distinguished Vice President in Gartner’s sales practice. He joined Gartner through its acquisition of TOPO, the research and advisory firm he co-founded. Long before that, many B2B marketers and sales leaders knew Craig as the Funnelholic, where he built a following writing and speaking about demand generation, sales development, and B2B go-to-market strategy. He also co-hosts The Transaction podcast with Matt Amundson. Connect with Craig Craig Rosenberg on LinkedIn Scale Venture Partners The Transaction podcast Chapters 00:00 What Top SDR Leaders Are Figuring Out 04:41 How Glean Uses AI to Make SDRs Better on the Phone 09:09 The Last Mile Is Human 12:46 Why AI Companies Are Hiring SDRs Again 15:33 What Does “Unmistakably Human” Look Like? 22:06 Why Enterprise Prospecting Shouldn’t Always Scale 23:36 ICP, Signals and Choosing the Right Accounts 25:25 Why Selling AI Is Getting Harder A few things worth taking away The old SDR model treated people like “human robots.” Automating the same activity-heavy motion with AI didn’t solve the underlying problem of relevance. The better teams are using AI to prepare humans, not replace them. At Glean, AI supports account selection, research, signals, and practice while SDRs focus on getting better at live conversations. The last mile is still human. AI can provide information and suggestions, but judgment, taste, relevance, trust, and relationship building still require people. Being unmistakably human sometimes means admitting what you don’t know. AI can help you understand a buyer’s situation, but it shouldn’t create expertise or experience you don’t actually have. AI companies are hiring SDRs and experienced sellers as they move beyond product-led growth into enterprise markets. As Craig put it, “The minute you want to talk to people that aren’t coming to you, you need people.” ICP matters more when data is abundant. Craig shared an example where ICP opportunities converted at 37% compared with 17% outside the ICP. Signals then help determine when to reach out and what may matter. AI is also changing software competition. As products become easier to build and replace, Craig believes companies need to expand from TAM to “Total Available Problem” and become deeply embedded in customer workflows and business processes. A few lines that stuck with me “The reality is the most important thing now is trust building, humanity and relationship building.” “It’s that last mile, which is the human.” “The minute you want to talk to people that aren’t coming to you, you need people.” “Getting into AT&T doesn’t scale.” “There are accounts that are the absolute best fit for you right now. Why would we spend time on anything else?” “We’ve moved from TAM to TAP, which is Total Available Problem.” Listen and subscribe Subscribe to The B2B Roundtable wherever you listen to podcasts. Transcript Brian Carroll: Welcome to The B2B Roundtable. I’m Brian Carroll, and I’m excited to have our guest today, Craig Rosenberg. Craig is the Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners. What Craig’s doing is helping them build their go-to-market platform so that they can bring this expertise to help software companies drive growth. I’ve known Craig quite a while. We go way back in terms of what we were doing in the early days of B2B marketing and complex sales. I started following Craig’s blog, The Funnelholic, going all the way back to 2008. Craig first shared a Pipeline Council they’re doing with some of the top SDR leaders in enterprise and software sales. And then Craig did a post with Jason Vargas talking about the “taste layer” and bringing that to the SDR rep. What I’m excited about, Craig, for us to talk about is, you know, the more things change, the more they are the same. What’s coming up in the Pipeline Council that the rest of us aren’t talking about yet? Craig Rosenberg: Well, first I thought it would be important for the audience to know that, yes, you found me through The Funnelholic, but everyone found you through your book. Was it Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, I think was the name? Brian Carroll: Yeah, yeah, it was. Craig Rosenberg: And that was like the book. I mean, Brian, you were the OG out there with the book and talking about it. So I think that’s amazing to bring up. And even the fact that you brought me here because you saw these posts, for everyone who’s wondering if it’s important for you to share what you’re working on and thinking about on social, I mean, look, that’s how I met Brian in the first place. He had a book and was doing the speaking circuit. I had a blog. And then recently, he brought me back here after he read one of my posts on social. So there is a lesson in your intro in and of itself. Brian Carroll: That is true. And you also do a podcast, which is awesome. Craig Rosenberg: Thank you. Brian Carroll: So let’s go back to what’s coming up in the Pipeline Council that the rest of us aren’t talking about. Craig Rosenberg: I have two councils. I’ve got one where I brought together the folks that have figured it out. I’ll talk about that in a second. Then I’ve got my regular councils, which bring together people who are still trying to sort this out. Brian, from our conversation before, I’ll just go on the negative side. There was a moment where SDRs were basically human robots, right? They were basically conveyor belts of information. It was about how many emails could you get out, in some cases how many calls, and then the messaging was sort of one message. It was all about output. Or I think you said they were activity-based, right? They were machines. So we had that moment. We had to come out of that and sort of accept that the original iteration of AI here, and the way people thought AI would work, would be to somehow automate that motion, which was a highly generic, activity-based motion. We had this run of SDRs being these human robots and delivering activity. And frankly, let’s face it, they got meetings. Then everything changed and it got really hard. Then we said, “Well, we’re going to solve it by using AI to deliver what they were doing as robots,” and that didn’t work. Everything got really confusing. That’s why I put the Pipeline Council together at the Rosewood, so I could start learning more. I work with a woman named Christina McMillan, who I’ve worked with for years. She was at TOPO with me, but she was an SDR consultant for years. I said, “You know what? We don’t know anymore. We’ve got to go figure this out.” So we bring together the Pipeline Council, and it’s really interesting because we actually do know. The reality is the most important thing now is trust building, right? Humanity and relationship building. What we missed for, call it eight or ten years, was that, because we didn’t need it. Now, the truth is, from watching you, reading you, and listening to you for a long time, you would say, “Wait a minute. That’s what I was talking about back then.” But the truth is, I think we kind of lost sight of that. There were some really interesting things I learned from the Pipeline Council. I’ll give you an example. This guy Joey Lopez, he’s at Glean, and this guy amazed me. So I’m just going to give you this example of what he does. Most everything is AI and automated. Who they’re going to talk to, what types of companies, those things ar

    AI Scaled Activity. It Didn’t Scale Relevance with Craig Rosenberg

  3. Jul 28

    Why GTM Rebuilds for the Enterprise Start With Clarity, Not Campaigns, with Corey Livingston

    A company reaches a key moment. The strategy changes, the target buyer shifts, and leadership decides to focus on the enterprise market. But the go-to-market system underneath the business may still be built for an earlier stage of growth. Corey Livingston shares why rebuilding your GTM should start with understanding and clarity, how marketing can build trust with sales before results appear, and what leaders should measure before the pipeline is visible. About this episode Financial reports show how a business is doing, but they don’t show if the go-to-market engine is ready to support the company’s next phase of growth. That is the tension at the center of this conversation with Corey Livingston, Vice President of Marketing at DartPoints. Corey has spent more than two decades leading B2B marketing through growth and change. She has worked inside companies moving upmarket, entering new segments, and trying to build several GTM motions at once. Her starting point is not another campaign. It is understanding the growth hypothesis, determining whether each motion is in the build, activate, or scale phase, and getting the organization aligned around what it can realistically produce next. We talk about why moving into enterprise requires more than changing the target account list, how marketing earns credibility with sales, why alignment must extend below the CRO, and what leaders often get wrong during the first 90 days of a GTM rebuild. About Corey Livingston Corey Livingston is the Vice President of Marketing at DartPoints. She has more than two decades of B2B marketing experience, including leadership roles at Level 3 Communications and OneNeck Solutions, as well as fractional CMO work across multiple companies. Her work focuses on GTM strategy, sales and marketing alignment, enterprise growth, and helping companies build the operating systems required for their next stage of growth. Connect with Corey Follow Corey Livingston on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Why healthy dashboards can hide a broken GTM system 00:49 What dashboards miss in a GTM rebuild 02:36 Why moving upmarket changes the entire motion 05:35 How to diagnose the gap between strategy and execution 09:02 How marketing earns sales’ trust before results 17:58 How to decide which GTM motion comes first 21:00 What to measure before pipeline shows up 26:23 What leaders get wrong in the first 90 days A few things worth taking away GTM is a lifecycle, not a switch. Leaders need to know whether a motion is being built, activated, or scaled before deciding what to measure. Moving upmarket is not just a strategy shift. Enterprise buyers require more credibility, stronger proof, deeper content, and tighter coordination with sales. Sales trust comes from clarity, follow-through, and quick wins, especially while the longer-term GTM system is still being built. Alignment with the CRO is not enough. Marketing also needs to earn the trust of frontline sales leaders and the people doing the work every day. You cannot scale every motion at once. Investment decisions should connect to the company’s growth hypothesis, resources, timing, and near-term revenue needs. Pipeline is a lagging indicator. Operational readiness, engagement from the right accounts, and qualified meetings can show whether the motion is beginning to work. For an early enterprise motion, one of the most useful questions is: are we meeting with the right person at the right account, and are they moving to a next step? A few lines that stuck with me “I look at GTM as more of a lifecycle, not a switch.” “A corporate strategy and vision is not a go-to-market strategy.” “Sales trust comes from creating clarity. It comes from follow-through and quick wins.” “You can’t scale everything at once.” “You can’t get to pipeline without engagement.” “Are we getting a meeting with the right person at the right account?” “Most leaders try to fix things too fast in the first 90 days.” Listen and subscribe Subscribe to The B2B Roundtable wherever you listen to podcasts. Transcript Brian Carroll: Welcome to The B2B Roundtable. I’m Brian Carroll, and we’re going to talk about something people don’t often talk about. A company hits an inflection point. The strategy shifts, the buyer changes, and the dashboard shows green. But the system underneath was built for a different version of the business. The gap doesn’t show up in a report. It shows up when things start to stall, and nobody can explain why. My guest today is Corey Livingston. She has spent more than two decades in B2B marketing, leading at companies including Level 3 Communications and OneNeck Solutions. She has also done fractional CMO work across multiple companies. Today, she is serving as the Vice President of Marketing at DartPoints. I invited Corey because she has been through these inflection points in several different seats. Corey, welcome. Corey Livingston: Thank you, Brian. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Brian Carroll: We’ll dive right in. When you step into a GTM rebuild, perhaps at a mid-market company, what are the things you usually see first that dashboards don’t show you? Corey Livingston: When you step into a company that is evolving its strategy, in my experience, in almost all cases, that evolving strategy involves moving more upmarket. You look at the numbers. You look at the financial reports. You talk to all the right people. It tells you what is happening in the business, how it is performing, and its underlying health indicators. But it doesn’t tell you whether the go-to-market engine is mature enough to support the next stage of growth, the next inflection point, or the new segment you want to penetrate. You have to start by diagnosing where you are. Where is the business in the go-to-market lifecycle? Are you in the build phase, the activate phase, or the scale phase? I look at GTM as more of a lifecycle, not a switch. You don’t just declare that you’re moving upmarket or moving into a PLG motion, or whatever it might be, and then it happens. You have to understand where you are. If you don’t know where you are in the lifecycle, you’ll end up measuring the wrong things, investing in the wrong places, and expecting outcomes the operating system isn’t ready to produce yet. Brian Carroll: That makes a lot of sense. Could you give an example, without naming the company, of where that stood out to you and what you did? Corey Livingston: As I mentioned, I’ve worked across many different companies that were operating in either SMB or mid-market. That was their customer profile, and many of them wanted to move into enterprise. The deals are larger. The revenue is stickier. There is more opportunity to differentiate. I used to have a boss who would say, “Where there’s mystery, there’s margin.” There is also more opportunity to be consultative. Brian Carroll: Mm-hmm. Corey Livingston: But going into enterprise or moving upmarket, whether it is the lower end of emerging enterprise or the Fortune 500, is not just a strategy shift. It is a motion shift. The go-to-market operating system for enterprise is fundamentally different from SMB or mid-market. I’ve worked in environments where companies were pursuing all three segments: SMB, mid-market, and enterprise. In SMB, buyers move fast. There are fewer people involved in making the decision. The stakes are lower, and the go-to-market engine can rely on lighter content, simpler messaging, and more transactional motions. You also tend to get much more inbound from SMB than you would from enterprise. Enterprise is the opposite. The cost of entry and the burden of proof are much higher, not just in what you need to spend, but also in the credibility you need to get the door open. Enterprise buyers operate in much more complex environments. In my case, I’ve always worked in the IT and technology sector, where IT environments are highly complex. The stakes are much higher for the people influencing or making the decision if something goes wrong. There is much more risk involved. They want credibility and familiarity. It is the old saying, “Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM.” There is still a version of that in our modern marketing world, especially when you move upmarket. That means your GTM system has to evolve. What worked for SMB and mid-market is not necessarily going to work. It may provide some foundational elements, but the system still has to change. You need deeper content. You need much clearer use cases. You need reference customers who have worked in these enterprises before. You need strong stories, proof points, more orchestrated outbound, and much tighter alignment with sales. You’re going to be working hand in glove with sales. You also need a sequencing model that matches how enterprise organizations actually buy, which is a more complicated buying journey. Brian Carroll: How do you tell when a strategy has changed, or needs to change, but the GTM system hasn’t caught up yet? Corey Livingston: In my current role and my previous role, I had a significant part in helping shape the GTM strategy. The first thing I do is understand the growth hypothesis. When I walk into a business, the first question I ask is: What is the hypothesis for how we are going to grow? What channels are we using right now? Are those the right channels? I interview the executives, the C-level team, and everyone on the go-to-market team. The go-to-market team is not just marketing. It includes product, sales, and, in my industry, solution architecture. It is about doing the research, conducting interviews, and asking the right questions. Where do people think the go-to-market system is today? How well is it working? Where is it not working? I’m looking for areas of agreement and areas of difference. I want to make sure those differen

    Why GTM Rebuilds for the Enterprise Start With Clarity, Not Campaigns, with Corey Livingston

  4. Jul 14

    Why B2B Buyers Really Buy: The Hidden Buyer Journey with Scott Gillum

    Most GTM teams have gotten very good at tracking what buyers do. They can see form fills, intent signals, CRM activity, demo requests, and pipeline movement. But those systems often miss the people, pressure, risk, trust, and hidden stakeholders shaping the actual decision. In this conversation, Scott shares what he learned from studying more than 10,000 buyers across 15 industries, including why so many people who influence a deal never appear in the CRM, why B2B buying is more emotional than we admit, and how personality, culture, and hidden stakeholders shape complex deals. The big question behind this episode is simple: Even if our lead systems worked perfectly, would they really explain what drives a buying decision? About this episode In complex B2B sales, the visible buyer journey is often only part of the story. The CRM may show one set of contacts. The real buying group may include several others. The business case may look rational. The actual decision may be shaped by fear, trust, confidence, internal pressure, and personal risk. Scott Gillum calls this The Hidden Buyer Journey. His research shows that many of the people who influence deals are never entered into the database, and many of the signals that matter most are not captured by traditional lead and pipeline systems. Scott and Brian discuss: Why human-to-human selling still matters as AI and rep-free buying grow How one sales team nearly missed the real executive concern in a deal Why 85% of buyers in a buying group may not be visible in the database Why complex B2B buying is emotional, even when the process looks rational How personality and culture influence buying decisions Why empathy is not a soft skill in complex sales How sellers can use AI to become better with people, not just louder at scale About Scott Gillum Scott Gillum is the founder and CEO of Carbon Design, a marketing services firm focused on understanding buyer behavior and improving B2B growth. He is the author of The Hidden Buyer Journey: How Personality, Culture, and Hidden Stakeholders Decide Your Deals. Scott’s work focuses on the hidden forces that shape B2B buying decisions, including personality, buying-group dynamics, organizational culture, and the stakeholders who influence deals but often never appear in CRM or marketing automation systems. Scott Gillum on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Introduction: Scott Gillum and The Hidden Buyer Journey 01:06 The human-to-human selling relationship 02:15 When the CRM tells the wrong story 04:10 The 85% of buyers missing from the database 06:14 The emotional gap in complex sales 08:03 Buyer confidence versus vendor confidence 11:28 The two-thirds rule and personality-based selling 15:16 Why empathy is not a soft skill 18:18 How sellers should adapt under pressure 20:44 Using AI to move closer to the customer 23:42 Closing thoughts A few things worth taking away 1. The CRM may not show the real buying group Scott shared an example of a deal where the sales team thought the need was real-time project profitability. But late in the deal, the CEO’s behavior showed a very different concern: cash flow. The visible activity told one story. The person with the most influence over the decision was telling another. 2. Hidden stakeholders are not a small problem Scott said his team found that 85% of buyers in a buying group were not in the database. In one example, a company gave its team 100 contacts for an opportunity. After reading the email threads, they found nine people in the actual buying group, and only two of those nine were in the system. That changes how we think about attribution, lead management, sales process, and account strategy. 3. Complex B2B buying is emotional because the risk is real Scott put it plainly: buying the wrong iPhone may be frustrating, but nobody gets fired for it. Making the wrong million-dollar SaaS decision is different. That risk creates pressure. And that pressure shapes how people make decisions. 4. Buyers need confidence in themselves, not just confidence in the vendor One of the most important ideas in the conversation is that sellers often believe their job is to make the buyer confident in the vendor. But in a complex sale, the buyer also needs confidence in their own decision. They need to believe they can defend the choice internally, manage the risk, and survive the consequences if things do not go perfectly. 5. Personality and culture shape how people buy Scott explains what he calls the two-thirds rule: certain personality patterns tend to concentrate in industries, roles, accounts, and buying groups. That does not mean every person is the same. But it does mean sellers and marketers can get smarter about how different buyers process information, evaluate risk, and build trust. 6. Empathy is not soft. It changes outcomes. Scott shared an example from email analysis where a seller who showed empathy and understood the buyer’s situation had a much better path through the deal than sellers who tried to drive the process harder. In complex sales, empathy is not about being nice. It is about understanding the pressure the buyer is under and adapting accordingly. 7. AI should make sellers better with people, not just louder at scale Scott’s warning is direct: we chose scale because we were not good at conversion. AI can make that problem worse if it simply produces more outreach. But it can also help sellers understand buyers, buying groups, and corporate culture more deeply. A few lines that stuck with me “We have a tendency to make purchase decisions emotionally, and we rationalize them later.” “You buy the wrong iPhone version, you’re not going to fire yourself. You make a bad decision on a million-dollar SaaS implementation.” “Turns out they’re not putting the people in.” “Titles and roles don’t make decisions. People do.” “We chose scale because we weren’t good at conversion.” “We train on tools. We don’t train on buyers.” Resources mentioned The Hidden Buyer Journey: How Personality, Culture, and Hidden Stakeholders Decide Your Deals Scott Gillum on LinkedIn Carbon Design Listen and subscribe If these conversations are useful to you, subscribe to The B2B Roundtable: What Dashboards Miss. A short review also helps other B2B leaders find the show. Thanks for listening. Transcript Brian Carroll: Welcome to The B2B Roundtable: What Dashboards Miss. I’m Brian Carroll, and here’s the question behind today’s conversation. Even if our lead systems worked perfectly, would they really explain what drives a buying decision? My guest today is Scott Gillum. He’s the founder and CEO of Carbon Design and the author of The Hidden Buyer Journey. Scott spent seven years studying more than 10,000 buyers across 15 industries. And here’s what he found: we’ve gotten very good at tracking what buyers do, but we still don’t understand enough about the person making the decision. Because the real buyer journey often happens somewhere our dashboards can’t see. Scott, welcome to The B2B Roundtable. Scott Gillum: Thank you, Brian. It’s good to be on. It’s good to talk to you again. It’s been a few years, so I’m excited for our conversation. Brian Carroll: You’ve described four selling relationships in the book, and you said the human-to-human one is disappearing. What are we losing right now? Scott Gillum: I think it’s a value equation. In the book, we talked about the number-one driver of purchase decisions being trust and reliability. So if the tools advance to be more trusted than the human, and you already see some of that in the research where buyers want a rep-free experience. They’re well through the buying process before they talk to a rep, if machines can do a better job of giving information and conveying that to be credible, and the audiences trust those sources, they’re going to do it. This is an opportunity. The book is really about how we elevate this human-to-human selling experience so we can preserve the most important thing, which is the human connection, when it comes to making a purchase decision in B2B. We have to take a hard look at how we’re training our reps, the information we’re enabling them with, and whether we really understand the buyers at the other end of the deal. Brian Carroll: I wanted to talk about a deal where the CRM told one story, but the people inside the decision were telling another. Scott Gillum: It’s in the enterprise space. It’s a SaaS company. The sales team was hearing one thing from the buyers they were having conversations with, and they thought the need was around real-time project profitability. Their system is an ERP system. It was focused on project work. Fortunately, they had put all the buyers they were dealing with into their database, which isn’t common. Two weeks before the final presentation against the incumbent competitor, the CEO began showing signs of activity. His intent signals were throwing off cash flow. He searched for cash flow 35 times over the last two weeks. So we brought that information to the account team before the final presentation. They had already crafted the presentation around project profitability. I’m like, “Why are you on project profitability? He’s on cash flow. What is going on here?” This was a fast-growing company. They were burning through a lot of cash. We had to make the connection between the real-time profitability view and cash flow, and how their system was able to do that. A lot of times, buyers aren’t telling you what the real need is because they don’t really understand it. They’re just told to go look for things. Then, when you get down to the key decision maker, he has a very specific thing he’s looking for: how can you get greater visibility into cash flow? That was picked up through intent signals because they had put that contact in the database.

    Why B2B Buyers Really Buy: The Hidden Buyer Journey with Scott Gillum

  5. Jun 23

    B2B Brands Are Too Measurable to Be Memorable, with Lindsay Cournoyer

    About this episode Here’s something most B2B marketers know but do not always say out loud. We have gotten very good at measuring things. Attribution. Pipeline metrics. Sourced revenue. Influenced revenue. Cost per lead. And yet, a lot of B2B brands are still forgettable. Not because the marketers are bad. Because the system keeps pulling them toward what can be tracked, reported, and defended in the next pipeline review or board meeting. That is the tension at the center of this conversation with Lindsay Cournoyer, Fractional CMO and Brand Marketing Consultant at LC Consulting, and former CMO at Blue J. Lindsay has led marketing at companies including Axonify, Coconut Software, and Blue J. At Blue J, an AI-powered tax research company, she helped 5x revenue and raise $122 million in Series D funding. But that is not the main reason I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to talk with Lindsay because while that growth was happening, she made a brand bet that many B2B marketers would struggle to defend on a dashboard. She invested in out-of-home advertising. Billboards. Elevator ads. Radio. Physical media in a B2B SaaS company. That is not the usual B2B playbook. But Lindsay believed the company needed something that the usual performance channels were not delivering: awareness, trust, and memory in buyers’ minds before they were ready to enter a sales process. Her line from LinkedIn captures the problem clearly: “B2B brands are so obsessed with being measurable that they forget to be memorable.” That is where this conversation starts. We talk about why performance marketing can capture demand but cannot create all of it, how Lindsay made the case for out-of-home inside a B2B SaaS company, what she measured before and after the campaign, and why brand work can feel risky when marketing already has to justify itself more than other functions. If you have ever felt pressure to optimize for a metric instead of an outcome, this episode is for you. About Lindsay Cournoyer Lindsay Cournoyer is a Fractional CMO and Brand Marketing Consultant at LC Consulting. She has led marketing at B2B companies including Axonify, Coconut Software, and Blue J, where she most recently served as CMO. At Blue J, she helped the company grow revenue 5x and raise $122 million in Series D funding. Lindsay works with B2B SaaS founders and leadership teams on brand strategy, messaging, and go-to-market. Connect with Lindsay Connect with Lindsay Cournoyer on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Introduction: B2B Brands Are Too Measurable to Be Memorable 01:53 Why Brand Has to Create Demand Before Performance Captures It 03:29 The CEO Saw the Brand Problem 04:24 The Marketing Tax and Why Brand Needs CEO Support 07:35 Making the Case for Brand Inside the Business 10:11 How Lindsay Measured Awareness and Consideration 13:50 Staying Steady When the Bet Feels Risky 16:55 What to Do When Your Company Doesn’t Value Brand 22:26 How to Make the Case for Brand Investment A few things worth taking away Performance marketing has a role, but it mostly captures existing demand. Brand helps create the demand performance later captures. B2B buyers need to remember you before they are ready to buy. If you are not already planted in their mind, you may never make the shortlist. Out-of-home can be targeted in B2B when you know where your buyers work, commute, gather, and pay attention. The marketing tax is real. Many marketing leaders spend too much time justifying their function rather than doing the work that creates long-term value. A CEO who understands brand changes the entire marketing environment. Without that support, big brand bets are much harder to make. Brand can be measured, but not always through the same dashboard logic as demand generation. Lindsay used pre- and post-campaign surveys to measure awareness, perceptions, consideration, and likelihood of purchase. A brand campaign can move more than awareness. In Lindsay’s case, they saw an increase in awareness and purchase consideration. Sometimes the best thing a marketer can do is accept the reality of where they are, protect their sense of worth, and look for a better environment where marketing is understood. If a CEO does not understand brand, use examples from their own life. Show them how brands earn memory before the buying moment. Sometimes you have to earn the right to make a brand investment by first showing how marketing contributes to pipeline and revenue. A few lines that stuck with me “B2B brands are so obsessed with being measurable that they forget to be memorable.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “Marketing’s true job is to carve out that place in your buyers’ brains.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “We have to build brand awareness and trust and credibility before you really step on the gas of performance marketing.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “There are companies out there who actually get it. They are very hard to find, but they are out there.” — Lindsay Cournoyer “Sales have to be there. And then you may get the shot.” — Lindsay Cournoyer Resources mentioned The B2B Roundtable episode with Jon Miller on what comes after the MQL Growth Isn’t a Headcount Problem. It’s a Precision Problem, with DeAnna Ransom Listen and subscribe Subscribe to The B2B Roundtable wherever you listen to podcasts. Transcript Brian Carroll: Here’s something most B2B marketers know but don’t say out loud. We’ve gotten very good at measuring things: attribution, pipeline metrics, sourced revenue, influenced revenue, cost per lead. And yet, a lot of B2B brands are forgettable. And it’s not because the B2B marketers are bad. It’s because the system keeps pulling them from what they know is the right thing to do, and they’re forced to do things that are tracked, measured, and can be reported at the next board meeting. It’s harder to attribute when you focus on brand. It’s harder to justify in a pipeline review, so it often gets pushed aside. Welcome to The B2B Roundtable. I’m Brian Carroll. And in this podcast, we talk about the things that dashboards miss. My guest today is Lindsay Cournoyer. She’s been a marketing leader at companies including Axonify, Coconut Software, and most recently served as the CMO at Blue J, which is an AI-powered tax research company where she helped 5x revenue and raise $122 million in Series D funding. That’s impressive, but that’s not the main reason I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to talk to Lindsay because while this growth was happening, she made a significant investment in out-of-home advertising. And this included billboards, physical media in a B2B SaaS company. It was the kind of bet that’s hard to defend with a dashboard. And she did it anyway. So today we’re going to talk about why. And if you’ve ever felt pressure to optimize for a metric instead of an outcome, this conversation is for you. And Lindsay has a line that names the problem really well. She wrote this in a recent LinkedIn post: B2B brands are so obsessed with being measurable that they forget to be memorable. And that’s where we’re starting today. So Lindsay, what were you seeing that made that feel true? Lindsay Cournoyer: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I will say the obsession is real among executives and board members. I think back to what Jon Miller talks about all the time, that people want marketing to be a gumball machine and act like a gumball machine. You put a dollar in and you get three out. And it’s supposed to be this really predictable thing that you can just game the system and get to the revenue that you want. But that’s just simply untrue. Performance marketing has its place. Its role is to capture the demand that’s been created for your brand. But if you just lean into performance marketing and focus on that, you’re missing the whole front part. Really, what I believe is marketing’s true job is to carve out that place in your buyers’ brains and be the solution that comes to mind first when a buyer thinks of your category. And if you don’t focus on building your brand and trust and reputation before you get into performance marketing, you’re really missing the whole point of what I think marketing is here to do. Brian Carroll: You made this significant out-of-home investment, which is unusual in B2B. That’s not something people typically do. And it was a big bet. What was the problem you were trying to solve that the usual marketing metrics and channels weren’t solving? Lindsay Cournoyer: Yeah, it’s another great story. Really, the reason I took the role is because the problem to solve was named by the CEO in my interview process. And it was, not enough people know about us and the awesomeness that is our software. It’s like, we have this great product, but the CEO knew that if everyone in the market didn’t know about it, the company was not going to get where they wanted to go. So he inherently understood the need for brand. I was winning already out of the gate. And like I said, that’s really why I took the job in the first place, because of that understanding of the need to build brand awareness and trust and credibility before you really step on the gas of performance marketing. Brian Carroll: It sounds like your CEO was enlightened thinking about this idea of brand, because that is not the experience that a lot of B2B marketers have. Lindsay Cournoyer: Yes. I think we undergo a lot of scrutiny in marketing that other departments just don’t feel. We’re continuously having to justify ourselves and our decisions and our plans and our budget and our headcount. And there’s just this kind of skepticism around marketing that exists. It’s pretty pervasive. It’s not in every company, but I’d say it might be in most. It’s really tough to operate in that kind of environment and carry that kind of tax. I have experienced it, an

    B2B Brands Are Too Measurable to Be Memorable, with Lindsay Cournoyer

  6. Jun 16

    Growth Isn’t a Headcount Problem. You’re Scaling Imprecision, with DeAnna Ransom

    DeAnna Ransom explains why more reps, more tools, and more activity aren’t fixing pipeline, and why modern GTM teams need more precision, stronger retention, and deeper customer understanding. About this episode Most B2B growth teams are doing more than ever. More reps. More tools. More signals. More outbound. More dashboards. And yet, for many teams, the pipeline still doesn’t follow. That’s the tension at the center of this conversation with DeAnna Ransom, Chief Growth Officer at Betterbot. DeAnna is rebuilding a GTM motion in real time from the inside. She’s not talking about this from the sidelines. She’s in the seat, doing the work, and seeing firsthand where the old growth math is breaking. Her argument is clear: growth in 2026 is not a headcount problem. It’s a precision problem. When teams add people to a motion that isn’t precise, they don’t fix the problem. They scale imprecision. We get into why AI didn’t break outbound but held it up to a mirror, why teams often have data about people without actually knowing them, why visibility has to come before scale, and why retention is no longer just a customer success issue. It’s a growth strategy. We also talk about the CMO tax, what it takes for marketing leaders to be seen as business leaders, and why the modern growth leader has to build a system precise enough to scale and human enough to trust. If your team is doing more but getting less back, this conversation is worth sitting with. About DeAnna Ransom DeAnna Ransom is the Chief Growth Officer at Betterbot, an AI platform serving the multifamily industry. She has more than 20 years of growth and leadership experience across B2B and nonprofit sectors. Her background spans sales, marketing, and customer experience, which gives her a different view of the revenue motion. Instead of treating marketing, sales, and customer experience as separate functions, DeAnna looks at them as one growth system designed around the customer. Chapters 00:00 Introduction: Growth Is a Precision Problem 01:13 More Activity Isn’t Creating More Pipeline 03:21 Data Isn’t the Same as Knowing the Buyer 04:48 Building a GTM Motion from the Ground Up 07:13 Using Retention to Sharpen Your ICP 09:26 Overcoming the CMO Tax 16:03 Why Retention Is Durable Growth 20:01 How to Start: Audit the Customers You Already Have 23:14 The Modern Growth Leader’s Role A few things worth taking away Growth teams don’t have an activity shortage. They have a precision problem. Adding people to a motion that isn’t working can make the problem worse because it scales imprecision. AI is not the core problem. It exposes whether your outbound motion is relevant or just louder. Having data about a buyer is not the same as knowing the buyer. Before you scale, you need visibility: attribution, forecasting, lead to cash, handoffs, leaks, stalls, and where relationships are weak. Retention is not just a customer success metric. It’s one of the most capital-efficient growth levers a company has. The best customers should teach you who to pursue next. A quiet customer is not always a happy customer. Marketing leaders need to come in as business leaders, not just campaign leaders. The modern growth leader has to be both systems architect and translator. A few lines that stuck with me “When you add people to a motion that isn’t precise, it isn’t working. You’re scaling imprecision.” — DeAnna Ransom “AI didn’t break outbound. It held it up to a mirror.” — DeAnna Ransom “You can’t scale what you can’t see.” — DeAnna Ransom “A quiet customer does not automatically equate a happy customer.” — DeAnna Ransom “Your customers are your business.” — DeAnna Ransom “The modern growth leader’s job is to build a system that is precise enough to scale, yet human enough to trust.” — DeAnna Ransom Resources mentioned Betterbot DeAnna Ransom on LinkedIn Transcript Brian Carroll: Hello everyone, welcome to The B2B Roundtable. I’m Brian Carroll. Excited to be with all of you today. What I keep hearing from leaders right now is this: they hired the SDR team, added the signals, added the technology, and their budget went up, but the pipeline doesn’t follow. And so they hired more and they switched tools and they started a new initiative and the results still didn’t move. I’ve come to believe that this problem isn’t capacity, it’s precision. And most teams have more activity than ever, but they have less signal from real buyers. My guest today said AI didn’t break outbound, it held it up to a mirror. And DeAnna Ransom is the Chief Growth Officer at Betterbot. She’s rebuilding the GTM motion in real time from the inside. Now, if you’re a CMO, growth leader, or GTM operator who’s felt the squeeze between AI noise and being able to connect with your buyers, this conversation’s for you. So, DeAnna, you said that growth in 2026 isn’t a headcount problem. It’s a precision problem. What are you seeing that makes you say that? DeAnna Ransom: Yeah, thank you, Brian. First of all, thank you for having me today. Here’s what I’ve been seeing over the course of time. So there’s pre-pandemic, pandemic, and where we are today. Over the course of time, what typically happened has been more reps, more spend, more activity. But that math in 2026 is completely broken. Capital has gotten super expensive. Reaching people has gotten tremendously difficult. And when you add people to a motion that isn’t precise, it isn’t working, you’re scaling imprecision. And so as you start hiring more and more people, people are a very expensive resource to bring in. And when you do that and you have not gotten precise, you have not done the fundamentals underneath it so that you can accurately target, understand, and connect, not just engage, connect. The moment you see it and you’re adding these bodies, you’re going to stop because there’s no precision in it. So I’m watching folks acquire more tools and do more outbound than ever before. They’re hiring more and more folks. And you’re doing more, but what you’re actually getting back in the door is significantly less. I’m watching cold reply rates drop. They’ve dropped by almost half, I would say, in recent years. I think it’s gone from something like 6.8% in 2023 to something today around 3.4%. So you have AI flooding inboxes, and you have outreach that is getting completely ignored. And it’s not ignored because the volume isn’t there or maybe the timing isn’t right. It’s because it’s not relevant. It is truly, truly noise. And because of that, of course, if you are being ignored and you’re not relevant, you’re not going to get the result. And that’s what I’m seeing. I am seeing the scale of noise versus the precision that creates relationship and relevance. Brian Carroll: As I’m listening to you, I was just thinking about something you said: that teams have data about people without actually knowing them. So I wanted to hear from you, what’s the difference? DeAnna Ransom: So the difference is when folks have a tendency to build an ICP. They start with an industry, they start with a title, and they go, great, this is what this person does, and they talk at that person. Not with. They’re not starting a dialogue. They’re not understanding the human being. People used to buy lists. Now you can do data append. People are using Clay. They’re enriching the data. You’re doing all the things to know about the person, but not knowing the person. And I think that has become a major disconnect, especially in the rise of the pandemic when everyone went remote, one-to-one and real-life events went down. So I really am seeing now that relationship building, really wanting to know the person, their pain, what they need, and understanding them on a human level before you even try to sell them, has just gone down. We’ve got to fix that. There is the business piece, which is how we can use tools to connect, but it will never replace the human connection, which is the trust factor. Brian Carroll: As you’re building this GTM motion in real time, and you’re building really from the studs up, what did you look at first? DeAnna Ransom: Yeah, and I will be honest, before I think at all about a campaign or a hire, I look at what we can see. So the first thing that I wanted to fix was because you can’t fix what you can’t measure. You can’t scale what you can’t see. So what I did in very deliberate order was trying to get us to visibility first and a single source of truth. Attribution, forecasting, lead to cash. If leadership and the dashboard disagree, what are we doing? I also wanted to dig in and do some ICP precision. Again, I’m not talking about what’s their title, what company do they work for from an industry, but who are our best-fit, highest-retaining customers? Really from data and evidence and not from anecdote and aspiration. This is real work that, as an operator, you have to do before you start trying to send anything out the door. And then the other thing is to look at where the motion itself leaks. Where does it stall? Where do the handoffs break off? Where are we single-threaded? Which means that it’s a weak relationship to begin with. And for me, retention became where I focused a little more than acquisition. It was really plugging that back door. Before we’re trying to go in and bring in more, because if you bring in more on the top of the funnel or in the front door, but you haven’t fixed and really understood and built a moat and a grounding and a relationship with your existing customers, all that’s going to happen is you’re going to churn out the backside. And to me, that’s how you scale precision. That’s how you find who you really serve. And then you bring in AI as a layer, and then potentially on

    Growth Isn’t a Headcount Problem. You’re Scaling Imprecision, with DeAnna Ransom

  7. Jun 3

    The Gumball Machine Is Broken: Jon Miller on What Comes After the MQL

    About this episode Most B2B marketing still runs on a single number: the marketing qualified lead. Jon Miller is one of the few people who can tell you where that number came from, because he helped build the system that produced it — first at Marketo, where he helped create the marketing automation category, then at Engagio, then at Demandbase. What makes this conversation different is that Jon went back and diagnosed his own creation. He’s not quietly onto the next thing. He’s saying, out loud, what the MQL got wrong about how people actually buy — and he’s careful to credit what it got right before he takes it apart. The short version: roughly 95% of buyers have built their shortlist before they ever talk to a seller. The MQL was designed to catch the last 5% who raise their hand. So the real question isn’t how to optimize lead capture. It’s what you do with everyone who isn’t ready yet — the 95% the old model was built to ignore. We get into why buying behaves more like weather than a vending machine, the three-tier model Jon uses instead of MQLs, why he thinks legacy automation tools can’t keep up, and how the best CMOs are quietly rewiring what they report to the board. If you’ve ever felt like you were pedaling into a headwind running the playbook that used to work, this one’s for you. About Jon Miller Jon Miller founded Marketo in 2006 and helped define the marketing automation category. He went on to found Engagio, which was acquired by Demandbase in 2020, served as CMO at Demandbase, and is now building Phave, an AI-native marketing automation platform. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Jon Miller and his journey 01:24 Diagnosing the MQL model 03:27 The gumball machine / nonlinear buying idea 07:23 What the MQL got right 10:14 The three-tiered model of engagement 14:22 The role of CMOs in modern marketing 18:17 AI’s impact on marketing automation 19:55 The Spotify playlist analogy 22:53 The Peppers and Rogers/one-to-one thread 24:43 Common mistakes moving off the MQL 25:25 The three CMO dashboards 27:25 Advice for CMOs making the shift A few things worth taking away The MQL started as a good idea — a contract between marketing and sales — and got gamed over time as teams chased volume. Buying isn’t linear. With six to sixteen people on a buying committee researching in places you can’t even track, “run a campaign, get a lead” no longer describes reality. Hand raisers are the gold standard, but waiting for them means you only ever talk to the 5% who already built their shortlist without you. Jon’s three tiers — hand raisers, MQX, and MEX — give you a way to work the 95% instead of ignoring them. When you move off MQL volume as your headline metric, expect the numbers to drop before quality and conversion rise. Set that expectation early, or you’ll hit a buzzsaw. The strongest CMOs report pipeline across all sources to the board and stop fighting over who sourced what. A few lines that stuck with me “Put your quarter in, get your gumball out. Put your campaign in, get your MQL out. I just don’t think that’s the way buying works.” — Jon Miller “If you only wait for somebody to raise their hand, you’re talking to the 5% in market. And they’ve already built their shortlist without you.” — Jon Miller “You can’t get there with a rules-based system. You just end up with spaghetti.” — Jon Miller Resources mentioned The B2B CMO Project — research on the strategic CMO and the three-dashboard model Mike Bosworth, Solution Selling Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, The One to One Future Kathleen Schaub, Marketing in the Great Big Messy Real World Transcript Brian Carroll (00:05) Welcome to The B2B Roundtable, where we go inside the ideas, people, and decisions shaping modern revenue teams and how they actually work. I’m Brian Carroll, and today my guest is Jon Miller. I first met Jon way back in 2006, when he founded Marketo and helped build the marketing automation category as we know it today. In 2015 he founded Engagio, which was acquired by Demandbase in 2020. Now he’s building Phave, an AI-native marketing automation platform. Here’s what makes this conversation different from other podcasts you’ve listened to: Jon didn’t just build the next thing and quietly move on, the way a lot of founders do. He’s gone back and started diagnosing the problems with something he previously created. He’s talking about what’s wrong, and why it’s failing buyers today. And here’s why it matters right now. Before they ever talk to a seller, 95% of buyers have already designed their shortlist. The MQL is built to capture the last 5% who self-identify. What about the 95% who haven’t yet? So, Jon — when did you first start thinking the MQL model was broken, not just underperforming? How did you get there? Jon Miller (01:24) It started, more than anything else, during my time at Demandbase. After we merged Engagio and Demandbase together in 2020, the first thing I did was help the product team unify the two platforms. But then in 2021, I took over as CMO. And I had my playbook. This is how I do it: I create definitive guides, big, rich, meaty pieces of content. You run lots of other thought leadership, like webinars, and you generate leads from all of it. Most of those leads won’t be ready to buy right now, and that’s okay — that’s why you nurture them and score them. You know a little something about that. Then eventually, when they’re ready, you pass them to sales. That was the playbook, and it’s the playbook I ran at Marketo. To a degree, it’s the playbook I ran at Engagio too, although there we also layered on an account-based motion that we’ll get to. So here I am at Demandbase, running that playbook, and the exact same tactics that worked for me at Marketo just weren’t working. At Marketo, it felt like I’d had a tailwind pushing me forward, making everything work better. At Demandbase, it felt like bicycling into a headwind. That’s what got me thinking: okay, what’s going on here? Over time, I diagnosed multiple problems — like most complex things in the world, there were many reasons it wasn’t working. Jon Miller (02:56) But more than anything else, it came down to three things. One, buyer saturation. Two, the fact that the traditional model missed important things like brand. And three, the fact that the MQL is really focused on people, not accounts. We can dive into any or all three of those. Brian Carroll (03:15) I want to understand what you noticed was broken first. As you’ve reflected on it and done the research — what are we getting wrong about how buyers buy today? Jon Miller (03:27) Let’s start with the core philosophy behind the MQL: that you can run a campaign and get a meaningful response that’s valuable on the other side. That’s how we thought of it at Marketo. If I needed more MQLs, the natural response was, well, let’s run more campaigns. It trained us to think of buying like a gumball machine. Put your quarter in, get your gumball out. Put your campaign in, get your MQL out. And I just don’t think that’s the way buying works. Arguably, in the early days of Marketo — simpler buying committees, heavy demand, lots of latent need for our product — okay, maybe you could argue there were elements where it worked then. But fast forward to today, and buying is much more complex. There are six to sixteen members of the buying committee, not one person. And as you said in the intro, that whole committee is going through a complex set of research — happening not just on our website, but increasingly off it, in closed communities and in conversations with AI agents, all invisible to traditional tracking. When you have that kind of complexity, the model of marketing as a simple linear gumball machine starts to break down. Kathleen Schaub coined a really good term for this, which connected to my math and physics background. She called it “marketing in the great big messy world,” and she pointed out that marketing is actually a complex, nonlinear process — not a simple linear gumball machine. Jon Miller (05:19) I studied complex nonlinear processes in college, and it turns out that’s the origin of what’s now called chaos theory. The weather is a complex nonlinear process. The stock market is a complex nonlinear process. And these processes are known, among other things, for their unpredictability — their sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a hurricane in Japan. Most people have heard that one. If you embrace the fundamental idea that buying is just as complex as the weather, then it’s an impossible task to say, “I’ll run this one campaign, and that will lead to buying.” Brian Carroll (05:46) That’s right. Jon Miller (06:03) Or, “Where did this deal come from?” “Well, they stopped by the booth at the trade show.” No — it’s a much more complex system than any of those simple explanations can really capture. Brian Carroll (06:16) The gumball machine analogy hits on something people are really struggling with. Attribution. The MQL has been elevated all the way to the board — board members and CEOs care about it because it’s a visible KPI. And there are a lot of misses in how we think about it, because we don’t actually know how many MQLs become real customers. Partly because of what you just described about how buyers buy. You wrote something on LinkedIn about a three-tier model — this marketing-engaged layer, where people are consuming content but not showing buying signals yet. Most demand gen teams would say those aren’t worth chasing, because there’s no buying intent yet. Can you make the case for why that’s wrong? Why is that exactly where the fight is being lost? Jon Miller (07:23) It’s worth starting by sayin

    The Gumball Machine Is Broken: Jon Miller on What Comes After the MQL

  8. 10/13/2025

    Why 75% of Buyers Don’t Want Reps and How Framemaking Helps Them Decide with Brent Adamson

    About this episode Most B2B buyers say they would rather buy without talking to a sales rep. That sounds like a sales problem. Brent Adamson says it is deeper than that. Buyers are not just avoiding sellers. They are struggling to make confident decisions. Brent is one of the clearest voices in modern B2B sales. He is co-author of The Challenger Sale, the book that changed how many sales and marketing teams think about commercial conversations. In this episode, we talk about his new book, The Framemaking Sale, and why the next era of sales depends less on persuasion and more on helping buyers make sense of complexity. The short version: buyers do not need more information. They already have too much. They need help knowing what matters, what to ignore, who to involve, what questions to ask, and how to move forward with confidence. We get into why 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, why customer confidence matters more than supplier confidence, how framemaking differs from Challenger, why thought leadership can make buying harder, and what AI changes about the role of the human seller. If your sales or marketing team is still trying to prove value by adding more content, more insight, or more follow-up, this conversation will make you rethink the job. About Brent Adamson Brent Adamson is a researcher, speaker, and author best known for co-authoring The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. He spent years leading research at CEB, later Gartner, on B2B buying, sales effectiveness, and commercial transformation. His latest book, The Framemaking Sale, focuses on how sales professionals can help buyers make confident decisions in a world of complexity, information overload, misalignment, and uncertainty. Connect with Brent on LinkedIn Get the book: The Framemaking Sale Chapters 00:00 Why buyers prefer rep-free buying 04:12 Becoming the seller buyers want 09:40 What buyers need from salespeople 11:35 Why decision confidence matters 16:05 What framemaking means 21:26 Framemaking and The Challenger Sale 25:39 Buyers need sensemaking 28:18 Helping teams become framemakers 35:01 Marketing’s role in framemaking 39:34 AI and the future of human selling A few things worth taking away B2B buyers are not always trying to avoid humans. They are trying to avoid sales interactions that make buying harder. The 75% rep-free statistic measures buyer preference, not buyer reality. Many buyers still have to talk to sellers, but that does not mean they want to. Decision confidence is one of the strongest drivers of high-quality, low-regret deals. The confidence that matters most is not the buyer’s confidence in your company. It is the buyer’s confidence in themselves and their own decision. Most sales and marketing teams are still trying to build supplier confidence. Framemaking shifts the goal toward customer self-confidence. Buyers are overwhelmed by complexity, information overload, internal misalignment, and uncertainty about outcomes. The Challenger Sale helped sellers reframe the customer’s thinking. The Framemaking Sale helps customers make sense of competing ideas so they can decide. Thought leadership created a new problem. Everyone sounds smart, so buyers are left with more content, more claims, and less clarity. Marketing can support framemaking by interviewing customers about the buying journey, not just the product outcome. The best question from Brent: “If you had to do it all over again, what might you do differently just to make your lives a little bit easier?” AI may answer questions, summarize options, and produce tables. But buyers may still want to talk to someone they trust before making a hard decision. A few lines that stuck with me “The data does not say 75% of B2B buyers would prefer a human-free experience.” — Brent Adamson “What would it take to be the one seller, the one sales team, that your customers actually do want to talk to?” — Brent Adamson “It’s not customers’ confidence in us that matters. It’s customers’ confidence in themselves.” — Brent Adamson “While we’re all in sales and marketing solving for getting customers to know something, the single biggest secret passage to growth is getting customers to feel something.” — Brent Adamson “What if your value as a seller isn’t your expertise, but your access to the experience of other companies like them?” — Brent Adamson Resources mentioned The Framemaking Sale by Brent Adamson The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson The Challenger Customer by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner, and Nick Toman Gartner research on rep-free buying experiences Robert Cialdini, Influence, and the idea of social proof CEB / Gartner research on decision confidence Ecosystems and value management maturity models Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. 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 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? 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 information. 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 10 times 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 means introducing ideas or perspectives they may not have considered. Bounding means 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 by 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.

    Why 75% of Buyers Don’t Want Reps and How Framemaking Helps Them Decide with Brent Adamson
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The B2B Roundtable is a podcast about what dashboards miss in B2B revenue systems. Most GTM teams manage what their dashboards can measure. But the numbers don’t always explain why growth is slowing, buyers disengage, or revenue isn’t keeping pace. Hosted by Brian Carroll, GTM advisor and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, the show features candid conversations with B2B leaders, operators, and thinkers about what’s really happening beneath the numbers, what they’ve learned, and what they changed. Learn more at https://www.markempa.com

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  • Creator
    Brian Carroll
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    27
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    Explicit
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    © Copyright 2026 markempa
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    The B2B Roundtable