The B2B Roundtable

Brian Carroll
  • 4.6 (7)
  • 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 breakdowns that cost real revenue often live underneath – in handoffs, definitions, follow-up gaps, scoring assumptions, and the friction buyers feel but reports don’t reveal. Hosted by Brian Carroll, GTM system advisor and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, the show features candid conversations with GTM operators, leaders, and thinkers about how revenue systems actually break – and what it takes to fix them. Learn more at https://www.markempa.com

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

    4d ago

    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 saying

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

    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.

    43 min

  3. 05/25/2021

    Brand Activism Isn’t a Campaign. It’s a Company Decision with Philip Kotler

    About this episode Customers care more than ever about the values of the companies they buy from. It is more than purpose. It is more than what you sell. They want to know what kind of company you are, what you care about, and whether your company exists to do more than drive profits. That is why I interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler, known as the father of modern marketing. Dr. Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and co-author of Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action. In this conversation, Dr. Kotler explains what brand activism is, why trust in institutions has fallen, how customer expectations have changed, and why companies need to think carefully about purpose, reputation, and action. We also talk about what brand activism means for B2B companies, why it cannot be treated as a marketing campaign, and how leaders can use frameworks, scorecards, and customer research to make sure their actions are authentic rather than superficial. About Dr. Philip Kotler Dr. Philip Kotler is widely known as the father of modern marketing. He is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is the author and co-author of many influential marketing books, including Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action. Chapters 00:00 What is brand activism? 02:21 Why brand activism matters now 04:05 The evolution of branding 06:53 How customer expectations changed 09:01 Brand activism in B2B 14:24 Why this is not just marketing 16:59 What marketers can do 20:47 A framework for brand activism 24:49 Authenticity, empathy, and action 28:41 Where to learn more What is brand activism? Dr. Kotler: Brand activism is a movement toward making a brand do more than just tout the virtues of a product or a service, its usual function, and to identify some value or values that the company has and cares about. For example, The Body Shop, when it started under Anita Roddick, was not only selling skincare products. The company was also fighting for animal rights, civil rights, fair trade, and environmental protection. So, her brand was active. I do not mean that all other brands are passive, because they do a lot of work. But the implication is that companies carry reputations, and they want to carry a good reputation. More and more consumers would like 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 is supposed to make money? An increasing number of companies would like an identity that goes beyond just making the product or service. That is what we are calling brand activism: the brand that connects with some cause or causes. A lack of trust in society Brian: That is a helpful distinction. You recently wrote a book on this topic. I would love to know the story behind why you wrote Brand Activism and why now. Dr. Kotler: If you look at barometers, like the Edelman Trust Barometer, the level of trust in society today has certainly been falling. As a result, many companies are not going to be trusted either, as part of government not being trusted and other institutions not being trusted. Companies ought to be the first to fight against bad companies, rather than stand near them or be part of them. At this time, companies want to be profiled in a certain way. The reputation a company has could be whatever happens in its course of behavior. Or it could be something designed better. Consciously better. What are the stages of branding? Dr. Kotler: The whole idea of a brand has gone through several stages. I think brand activism is probably the highest stage. Brian: That would be great. Evolution of brands from marketing-driven to values-driven Dr. Kotler: The first stage is when the company simply does its best to feature the good side of its product and services. The brand name was an identifier. Then brands moved into trying to define the company’s positioning, but not social positioning. Just their positioning: Walmart is lowest price, Disney is family entertainment, DuPont is highest quality, and Toyota is long-lasting, reliable performance. In that second stage, the brand became not just one mentioning a product, but positioning the product. Then the brand moved further to define a set of qualities about the company. For example, John Deere might describe itself by its quality, integrity, and innovation. This is really positioning, but it is multi-positioning. It says the company stands high on a number of traits that most people value. But this could move into a fourth stage where the brand adopts a very specific cause. A company may say it cares about the climate problem and wants to help move solutions toward keeping a safe climate in the world. Or it could be some other cause. Then brand activism is alive with that development: going from corporate social responsibility to the company saying, “Here is one of the things we are going to move forward on, to the extent that we can afford to do it. We want to make more useful products, make money doing that, but we also want to push forward some cause that would help all of us.” So that is the evolution of branding, and brand activism is one of its latest stages. How have customer expectations changed? Brian: What has really been driving brand activism, and how have customers changed their expectations? Dr. Kotler: Customers were asked how they feel about the economy and society. We would hear them talk about concerns and fears related to immigration, a decline in ethics, gun control, high federal budgets, high debt, and education failure. There are all these social issues, and they become the ground out of which brand activism becomes important. We would say that companies do not have the right to be silent about these issues. An increasing number of people would argue that companies owe it to their consumers to show that they care for more than just their product and making money. That is the groundwork that inspired brand activism. What about B2B companies? Brian: Do you see a difference between B2B companies and B2C companies with brand activism? Dr. Kotler: No, I do not see a difference. I think both types of companies will want their reputation to go beyond just making their product as well as possible. If you take equipment companies like John Deere or consumer companies like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, many B2B and B2C companies have made their brands more active. Brian: Some of the brands that come to mind are Nike, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and Starbucks. Do you have B2B examples people could look to? I was thinking perhaps Salesforce.com or Apple. Dr. Kotler: I am glad you mentioned Salesforce.com because Marc Benioff is one of the pioneers in this area. He has been distraught about homelessness and affordable housing in San Francisco. He personally encouraged other companies in San Francisco to pool their money in a fund that could be used to double the budget for fighting homelessness in San Francisco. That kind of thing comes from a B2B company. I would think that B2B companies have generally been slower as marketers. Most of what we know about modern marketing, aside from sales training and thinking, came from the consumer side. It is not just a sales thing Dr. Kotler: It was P&G and Unilever that created a difference between the concept of sales and the concept of marketing. A company might say, “I do marketing because I have a salesforce and I advertise.” That is not marketing. That is just having two resources that could be used within the marketing framework. It is not equivalent to creating a sound and effective total strategy that will keep a firm alive and well for years to come. Marketing is more than just sales. That concept of marketing came to the B2B world later than it came to the B2C world. But then B2B discovered marketing and is doing more with it now. I think they will do more with brand activism. Remember, B2B companies are very close to their customers. Consumer companies do not know as much about individual customers. B2B companies know through the salesforce every buyer and what they are like. Pretty much any business buying from another business knows a lot about the values of the seller. That is why they are buying from that seller. There is less need for B2B companies to get into brand activism because it is happening anyway. Brand activism is not just marketing Brian: Brand activism is not a marketing thing, right? It goes deeper into business strategy and purpose. Do I understand that? Dr. Kotler: Absolutely. No CMO will take the brand that he or she is responsible for protecting and enhancing and suddenly move into brand activism alone. That is a corporate-level decision. No one plays around with choosing an issue like gun control, the environment, or overcrowded prisons and just does it through the marketing department. This is part of designing and protecting the firm’s reputation and meaning. We often see the word “purpose” coming up now in the literature. What is your purpose as a company? “Well, I make cars.” That is fine. But fundamentally, what are you contributing? How are you justifying your company in terms of making life better in society? Brand activism works best when inspired by leaders Dr. Kotler: Brand activism must come down from the top. It should be discussed at several levels of the company. One benefit of being brand active is that your employees may be more turned on to the company and its contributions. They tend to be proud of their company because it cares about more than just making widgets. That is probably a motivation for the CEO and the executive suite to choose values carefully and put them into the brand fra

    27 min

  4. 11/09/2019

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

    About this episode Why does so much marketing stink? Michael Brenner has a direct answer: “Most of the marketing that we do that stinks and doesn’t work is because some executive with a big ego asked us to do it.” That line gets to the heart of this conversation. Bad marketing usually starts inside the company. It starts when teams make decisions around internal pressure, executive preference, sales requests, product priorities, or ego instead of asking what actually helps the customer. In this episode of the B2B Roundtable Podcast, I talk with Michael Brenner, Former CEO of Marketing Insider Group and author of Mean People Suck, about why empathy matters in marketing, leadership, and business. Michael argues that empathy is not soft. It is one of the most practical ways to improve marketing, build stronger cultures, help employees feel more engaged, and create better customer experiences. We get into why marketers feel frustrated, why many companies still create marketing customers do not care about, how to put the customer back at the center of the business, and why the simple question “What’s in it for the customer?” can change the work. If your team is tired of creating marketing that checks internal boxes but fails to help buyers, this conversation is worth your time. About Michael Brenner Michael Brenner is the Former CEO of Marketing Insider Group. After a 25-year career inside corporate marketing departments, Michael built his work around content marketing, employee activation, thought leadership, and helping companies create marketing that serves customers. He is the author of Mean People Suck and The Content Formula. Connect with Michael: Mean People Suck @BrennerMichael on X/Twitter Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Michael Brenner 01:20 Why Michael wrote Mean People Suck 03:35 Why so many marketers feel miserable 05:15 Why empathy matters in marketing 09:20 Why customers do not care about brands 13:30 Why the buying journey does not start with your product 16:00 Putting the customer at the center 23:00 Asking “what’s in it for the customer?” A few things worth taking away Most bad marketing is created to satisfy internal requests, not customer needs. Marketers struggle to care for customers when they do not feel cared for inside their own companies. Empathy is tied to employee engagement, customer loyalty, retention, and business performance. Customers do not care about your brand as much as your company thinks they do. The buying journey usually starts with the customer’s question, not your product name. Marketing should help customers solve problems, not just promote the company. A better org chart would put the customer at the center, with every department asking how to serve them. The best marketing and selling feels like helping because it is helping. The question “What’s in it for the customer?” can stop a lot of wasted marketing activity. The three pushback questions are simple: Who is this for? Why is it important? How are we going to measure the impact? A few lines that stuck with me “Most of the marketing that we do that stinks, that doesn’t work, is because some executive with a big ego asked us to do it.” — Michael Brenner “The math isn’t enough to get people over the challenges that we’re facing and how to do marketing that doesn’t suck.” — Michael Brenner “The companies that have effective marketing are those that are empathetic.” — Michael Brenner “We just aren’t that important. We’re not as interesting or important as we think we are.” — Michael Brenner “The buying journey doesn’t start with a search for our product.” — Michael Brenner “We wouldn’t do half of what we do if we asked what’s in it for the customer.” — Michael Brenner Resources mentioned Mean People Suck by Michael Brenner The Content Formula by Michael Brenner Marketing Insider Group 2019 Marketer Happiness Report from MarketingProfs The Service Profit Chain from Harvard Business Review Mean People Suck Companion Guide PDF You may also like Bring more innovation to your demand generation now 4 Steps to Do Lead Nurturing That Helps More Customers Buy 8 Questions to Steer Your Marketing Priorities Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. Full transcript Brian Carroll: Michael, welcome to our show. I’m so excited to have you here with us today. Can you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself? Michael Brenner: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Brian. It’s great to talk to you today. As you know, I’m Michael Brenner. I’m the CEO of Marketing Insider Group. After a 25-year career inside corporate marketing departments, I went out on my own and started squarely in the B2B marketing and content marketing space, now branched out into content development, employee activation, and thought leadership programs. I’m fortunate enough to get to run around the world sometimes and give speeches. It’s been a blast, and I feel really fortunate to be able to do what I do. Brian Carroll: So cool. For our listeners, you may not know this, Michael, but you’re one of the very first people I interviewed when I first launched this podcast. That was like three years ago. Michael Brenner: Yeah, exactly. Brian Carroll: It was funny because we were talking about this topic of empathy, and I just would love for our audience, can you tell us this story? You just wrote a new book, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. For those who are watching the video, can you hold it up? What’s the book title? Mean People Suck. Tell me why you wrote the book. Why now? Michael Brenner: Again, I have to 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 bit longer, but essentially 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. One of the things I found was that they were miserable. It’s almost like that scene from, I think it’s Poltergeist, where the obsessed woman has “help” written on her. Was it Poltergeist? No, I forget which horror movie it was. Maybe it was The Shining. I can’t remember. 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. When you get down to it, what I’ve found is that it’s largely 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 actually wrote a book called The Content Formula, all about content marketing ROI. And when I went back to folks I sent the book to, what I found was 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. The reason I wrote the book is that most of the marketing that we do that stinks, that doesn’t work, is because some executive with a big ego asked us to do it. Brian Carroll: Right. Michael Brenner: Executives love seeing logos on stadiums, and they love seeing Super Bowl ads, and all the things that we make fun of marketing about largely come from a request from sales or marketing or product people. 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. Brian Carroll: Well, and I think you’re also just talking about the state of affairs for marketers. It’s hard for marketers to actually care about the customer when they themselves aren’t necessarily cared for. They don’t feel safe. They’re anxious, or they’re frustrated, or they’re challenged. You also talked about empathy. It seemed like this book was written for two people: for those who are experiencing this, but also for leaders. Why does empathy matter especially to marketers, and does it lead to better results? Michael Brenner: 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. It’s a book that isn’t talked about much, but the premise is simple. Three or four Harvard Business Review professors got together and said, wait a second, we’ve seen this correlation between engaged employees, happy employees, happy customers, and higher stock prices, happier stock investors. Brian Carroll: Right. Michael Brenner: 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 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 happy customers. It’s totally intuitive and yet it’s counterintuitive. That’s one of the reasons we reconnected was my LinkedIn post, “Empathy is the counterintuitive secret to success.” The thing is, I thin

    19 min

  5. 06/20/2019

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

    About this episode Has our devotion to work and hustle become the UnAmerican Dream? Some of the hardest-working people I know are in sales, marketing, consulting, and entrepreneurship. We often hear stories about how hustle, grit, and sacrifice led to success. But there is another side to that story. The constant pursuit of professional success can leave damaged relationships, poor health, anxiety, loneliness, and personal wreckage behind it. I know because I lived some of that story myself. Shortly after building and selling a successful company, my 17-year marriage ended. My pursuit of business success had left my health and relationships in serious need of attention. I had to redefine the kind of life I wanted to live. I had to make different choices. I had to set better boundaries. That is why this conversation with my friend Carlos Hidalgo matters so much to me. Carlos is author of The UnAmerican Dream. In this episode, we talk about entrepreneurship, sales and marketing burnout, family, work devotion, hustle culture, and why Carlos believes work-life boundaries are more useful than work-life balance. This conversation is for sellers, marketers, entrepreneurs, consultants, and leaders who feel pressure to always be on. The question is not whether work matters. The question is whether work has taken a place it was never meant to hold. About Carlos Hidalgo Carlos Hidalgo has worked in B2B marketing, sales, demand generation, and customer experience for more than 25 years. In 2005, he co-founded ANNUITAS, a demand generation agency. He later stepped away from the company and started a new business focused on customer experience, VisumCX. Carlos is the author of Driving Demand and The UnAmerican Dream, a more personal book about redefining success, restoring relationships, and establishing healthier boundaries around work. Connect with Carlos: @cahidalgo on X/Twitter Carlos Hidalgo on LinkedIn Carlos Hildalgo Co The UnAmerican Dream book website Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Carlos Hidalgo 01:08 Why Carlos wrote The UnAmerican Dream 02:56 Why he walked away from the company he co-founded 05:00 What gets in the way of life, liberty, and happiness 07:59 Why Carlos rejects work-life balance 11:01 How to set work-life boundaries 16:47 Why hustle culture is destructive 22:15 Designing your job around the life you want A few things worth taking away Walking away from an unhealthy version of success usually is not a single moment. For Carlos, it was a 10-month process. Work-life balance may be the wrong goal. Balance is fragile. Boundaries are more durable because they protect what you value. Boundaries should not be built alone. Carlos built his with his wife and invited trusted people to help him see what he could not see. If you say you value family, health, faith, friendship, rest, or fitness, your calendar should show it. Hustle culture turns constant availability into identity. That damages people and relationships. Sales and marketing leaders are often overwhelmed because the system rewards being always on. Leaders create pressure even when they do not intend to. A late-night email from a boss can silently tell the team they are expected to respond. People need permission to turn off if you want them to bring their best work. You can design your career, job, or business around the kind of life you want. But first you have to define that life. A few lines that stuck with me “We have made work our God.” — Carlos Hidalgo “I don’t believe in work-life balance.” — Carlos Hidalgo “For me, the idea of boundaries is they are more permanent.” — Carlos Hidalgo “Define what you value, and then say, ‘What are the things that I’m letting get in the way of those things?’” — Carlos Hidalgo “There is a story on the other side of every hustle story.” — Carlos Hidalgo “Life is short. I want to make sure I’m here for it.” — Elle Woulfe, quoted by Carlos Hidalgo Resources mentioned The UnAmerican Dream book website The UnAmerican Dream by Carlos Hidalgo Carlos Hidalgo’s LinkedIn post on leaving ANNUITAS VisumCX Claire Potter on LinkedIn Elle Woulfe on LinkedIn PathFactory Alexis Ohanian on hustle porn You may also like New research: Empathy and solving buying problems Growing B2B Sales with Trust and Empathy Why customer advocacy should be at the heart of your marketing Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. Full transcript Brian Carroll: Hey Carlos. Really glad to have you here on the show. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Carlos Hidalgo: 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 you 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. 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. Brian Carroll: I wanted to ask you about that. Can you tell the story about why you wrote this book, The UnAmerican Dream, and why now? Carlos Hidalgo: 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 leaving. 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 really surprised. Wow, this is not just me going through this. So that’s the why. But the why now is the idea of that book came to me over those two years. It was over two years ago. But I needed to work on me first. I had to get some things straight in me. In the introduction, I believe I say 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 true. 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 Carroll: As I was listening to you, and 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 Hidalgo: 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, 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? It was 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 big 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 Carroll: 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. 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 Hidalgo: 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. Seventy percent of the population says, “I don’t have work-life balance.” I was in 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

    24 min

  6. 06/05/2019

    How to Get Sales and Marketing Operating as One Team with Heidi Melin

    About this episode Sales and marketing alignment is not really about sales and marketing. It is about the customer. Today’s buyers are in control. They do not experience your company as a marketing funnel, a sales process, a handoff, or a department chart. They experience one buying journey. That means we can no longer afford an artificial divide between marketing and sales. That is why I interviewed Heidi Melin, then CMO at Workfront, about how to get sales and marketing operating as one revenue team. Heidi has spent her career leading marketing in fast-growing software companies. In this conversation, she shares why alignment starts with a shared view of the customer, how teams can stop arguing over numbers, and why marketing’s job does not end when a lead is handed to sales. We talk about building one revenue process, using customer interviews to understand how buyers actually buy, creating shared goals and metrics, bringing finance into the revenue conversation, and balancing data-driven marketing with customer empathy. About Heidi Melin Heidi Melin is a career CMO with deep experience in fast-growing software businesses. She has led marketing teams through growth, digital transformation, sales alignment, demand generation, and customer-focused revenue strategy. At the time of this interview, Heidi was CMO at Workfront. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Heidi Melin 00:34 How sales and marketing operate as one team 02:30 Why revenue is one business process 03:32 Focusing on the customer buying process 08:15 Mapping the customer buying process 12:56 Why marketing cannot stop at the handoff 16:15 Running weekly revenue team meetings 25:50 Bringing empathy back into marketing A few things worth taking away Sales and marketing alignment starts with the customer, not the org chart. Marketing and sales are not two separate business processes. They are part of one revenue process. The handoff matters, but it is not the most important thing. The buying process is. Teams waste too much time arguing about whether the number is right instead of diagnosing what needs to improve. Shared metrics matter because they give sales, marketing, finance, and operations one view of the truth. Customer interviews are one of the best ways to understand how buyers actually move through the buying process. Marketing’s job does not end when a lead becomes an opportunity. A weekly revenue team meeting can help turn sales problems, marketing problems, and finance problems into shared revenue problems. Technology should support the business process, not drive it. Even in B2B, you are not selling to companies. You are selling to people. A few lines that stuck with me “It’s one business process, not two separate business processes.” — Heidi Melin “We’re just trying to facilitate a buying process.” — Heidi Melin “You have to go all the way back to the customer.” — Heidi Melin “There is nothing that is more valuable than interviewing customers that have just been through that process.” — Heidi Melin “It’s not a marketing problem. It’s not a sales problem. It’s not a finance problem. It’s a revenue team problem.” — Heidi Melin “You’re not selling to companies. You’re selling to people.” — Heidi Melin Resources mentioned Heidi Melin on X/Twitter Workfront You may also like 4 ways to adopt human-centered marketing and get better results The Biggest Contributor to B2B Revenue 31 ways to improve marketing-sales alignment quickly 3 Good Questions to Align B2B Marketing, Sales, and Strategy How Sales Hustle and Automation Can Hurt Customer Experience Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. Full transcript Brian: Well, Heidi, welcome and thanks for joining us today. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background? Heidi: Absolutely. I’m a career CMO. I’ve been in marketing for my entire career, having started really on the advertising side, but mostly focused on fast-growing software businesses. I recently joined Workfront, and I am the CMO at Workfront. Brian: Well, I’m excited to talk with you about our topic today, which is sales and marketing operating as one team. How can sales and marketing operate as one team even though both groups may report to different people? Heidi: Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work really well with some sales teams, and I’ve also learned my fair share from working with sales teams and marketing teams that don’t align very well. All of those lessons learned include things like ensuring that the goals are aligned and ensuring that the marketing team has the same goals as the sales team. Certainly, the marketing team tends to have a broader view of the marketplace and a longer-term view. But the immediate-term goals have to be aligned. 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 in order to improve. Ensuring that you’re working on a common set of numbers is hard. It sounds really easy, but it’s hard. That is one of the things that I think is key to success: ensuring that measurement and all of the programmatic and process-oriented partnership between sales and marketing is aligned because it’s one business process. Brian: Yeah. Go ahead and finish your thought. I was going to dive in and ask about processes, but go ahead and finish your thought. Heidi: The way that I think about it is marketing and sales historically have been thought of as two separate business processes where there’s a critical handoff. We talk about it as a critical handoff. But really, the way that I think about it is it’s one business process, and inside a company it’s focused on the revenue of your business. That starts from the time 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 closed 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. 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. Brian: So the focus is the customer. Heidi: Yeah. When you flip that and you look at the focus on the customer, all of a sudden marketing and sales, from an outreach and engagement perspective, have one unified goal, which is to move a buyer through a buying process. When you have that change of mindset, that becomes really important. I’ve worked in businesses where we focused really cleanly on that critical handoff, and that handoff was treated as the most important piece. Frankly, it’s a critical piece, but it’s not the most important piece. Brian: I appreciate that distinction. Back when I had written my book on lead generation, I talked about it being like track. I used to compete in the 4×100 race and how you don’t want to drop the baton, so I used that as an analogy. But to your point, marketing now is going beyond handing off the lead. It goes all the way to how we continue with and retain our customers too. Heidi: Yep. It should support that, and we have the tools to support that entire life cycle. When I first joined Workfront, one of the things 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 enabled by technology, and it’s critical in ensuring that sales and marketing are aligned. Brian: As we talk about this whole idea of alignment, and you brought up measurements, it sounds easier said than done to get marketing and sales to agree on common goals and measurements. What have you found that works to get to that place where you’re looking at the same numbers? Heidi: I think it has to start big picture and really understanding targets and targets by sales teams and working backward from there. If we understand that as our goal, our goal from a marketing perspective is certainly to raise awareness for the business and drive demand for the business. But our ultimate goal is to drive revenue for the business. If we can all understand our revenue goals and then the steps we need to take in order to get there, we can back out of that and ask: What kind of demand generation volumes do we need to have in order to meet those revenue goals? Then we agree with the sales team not only on what qualification criteria we’re going to use and how we’re going to evaluate whether or not a lead is truly a good lead or a bad lead, but also ensure that from a volume perspective, the marketing team is lined up to support the revenue goals of the company. Backing it out that way is really critical. 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 the sales team. There may be reasons to shift or change qualification criteria based on the maturity of a field sales organization or a time during the market, like market seasonality. There are lots of reasons to make those changes, and you c

    24 min

  7. 03/26/2019

    Bring more innovation to your demand generation now with Jeanne Hopkins

    About this episode Do you routinely look for ways to bring more innovation into demand generation? Or do you feel like your marketing approach is falling behind? A lot of marketers talk about innovation. Fewer connect it back to revenue, sales follow-up, customer experience, and the actual work of getting things done. That is why I interviewed Jeanne Hopkins, then CMO at Lola.com, about how marketers can bring more innovation to demand generation without losing sight of the whole business. Jeanne has led marketing in B2B technology companies, including HubSpot, Ipswitch, and Lola.com. In this conversation, she shares why creative ideas are not enough unless they get executed, why marketers need to think beyond leads, and why the best demand generation teams stay connected to sales, customers, employees, and the broader community. We also talk about the danger of “arts and crafts marketing,” the importance of generating revenue, why marketers should walk a mile in the sales team’s shoes, and how empathy helps marketers understand customers, finance teams, office managers, and business travelers. About Jeanne Hopkins Jeanne Hopkins is a marketing leader with deep experience in B2B technology, demand generation, revenue marketing, and customer experience. At the time of this interview, Jeanne was CMO at Lola.com, a corporate travel management solution for finance teams, office managers, and business travelers. Connect with Jeanne: Jeanne Hopkins on X/Twitter Jeanne Hopkins on LinkedIn Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Jeanne Hopkins 00:31 Jeanne’s path from accounting to marketing 03:19 Driving innovation in demand generation 06:27 Avoiding arts and crafts marketing 09:41 The four circles of marketing 12:04 The immediacy trend in marketing 14:20 How marketing can help sales 23:31 Advice for future CMOs A few things worth taking away Innovation in demand generation is not just about new ideas. It is about turning ideas into execution. Creative marketing that does not connect to revenue can become “arts and crafts marketing.” Marketing’s job is not just to generate leads. It is to help generate revenue and support the whole business. Marketers need strong relationships with sales leaders if they want demand generation to turn into real pipeline. Customer marketing matters because getting customers is not enough. You also need to keep them. Jeanne’s four circles are employees, customers, prospects, and community. People expect answers right away. Speed and responsiveness are now part of the customer experience. Marketers should secret-shop their own website, forms, chat, phone numbers, and follow-up process. Marketing teams should call and review their own leads so they understand what sales experiences. Empathy helps marketers understand sales teams, finance buyers, office managers, business travelers, and customers. Future CMOs need to communicate clearly, speak confidently, and present well to leadership and the board. A few lines that stuck with me “I don’t want to be a totally early adopter, but I want to be on the forefront before competition catches up with us.” — Jeanne Hopkins “Being creative is great, but innovation isn’t going to matter unless you can get it done.” — Brian Carroll “My job is to generate revenue.” — Jeanne Hopkins “It’s not marketing. It’s not sales. It’s us together.” — Jeanne Hopkins “If you don’t start with employees and customers, the rest of it is all for naught.” — Jeanne Hopkins “Have you ever filled out one of those forms on your company?” — Jeanne Hopkins “Walk a mile in their shoes and you’ll build some empathy for how hard it is.” — Jeanne Hopkins Resources mentioned Jeanne Hopkins on X/Twitter Jeanne Hopkins on LinkedIn Lola.com Drift Expensify SAP Concur Toastmasters You may also like What is empathy-based marketing? Why Marketers Fail at Customer Empathy and How to Fix it Getting sales enablement right to increase results Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. Full transcript Brian: Well, Jeanne, welcome to our show. I’m really excited to have you here. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Jeanne: Well, thanks, Brian. My undergraduate degree is in accounting. Believe it or not, I started in an accounting office where I was told on my annual review that I probably didn’t have a future in accounting because I was too loud for the office. Everything balanced, and everything was good, but I was too noisy for a nice, cut-and-dry accounting office. So that’s when I moved into toys. I worked for Milton Bradley Company in their in-house advertising agency. Then I moved to LEGO, and then I moved into other consulting companies. Then I got into software, which was 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, and maybe somebody would send it back, but it would be three hours later or three hours before. That’s because networks were not on the same timing device. So the whole concept of timing and having to be secure became critically important to all networks. From there, I was selling into IT, B2B technology companies, that sort of thing. So that’s my gig. Brian: Very cool. You’re with Lola right now. Tell our listeners a little bit: what does Lola do? Jeanne: Lola.com is a corporate travel management solution that allows finance people, office managers, and business travelers themselves to see their full travel 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 a half an hour or an hour. I bet you avoid it, right? It’s one of those things. Brian: It’s something you wait until the last minute to do. 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’re integrated with Expensify, Concur, and a whole bunch of different finance applications, as well as travel. So you can book your travel with us. We have a complete support network that helps you get checked in and makes sure that when disruptions happen, like we were just talking about the polar vortex in Minnesota, people who aren’t traveling in and out because it’s too darn cold can be rerouted or brought back sooner or later. Those are some of the hiccups that business travelers endure, and we’re trying to mitigate that for them. Brian: Very cool. I wanted to highlight you because you’ve brought so much since you and I met. We could date ourselves a bit here, but way back, as we’re speaking, I think at a MarketingSherpa Conference. Jeanne: 2006, yeah. Brian: Yeah. I was really impressed by you and how you were bringing innovation, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking. You’ve continued to do that throughout your career. How did you start thinking differently about driving innovation and out-of-the-box thinking with how you do demand generation? Jeanne: Well, I can’t claim the credit myself. I would say there were a couple of different influences. Both my parents are, I call them, artists of a kind. My dad paints, he plays music, he writes. My mom sings and plays music and paints. When I was in high school, I majored in art. We had to submit a portfolio and do all that, and I enjoy thinking from an artistic view of the world. That’s the left-handed component of me. But 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. What that’s allowed me to do is I read constantly. I read all the time. I’m always trying to look for something that’s a little bit different, a little bit ahead of the curve. I don’t want to be a totally early adopter, but I want to be at the forefront before the competition catches up with us. I’m lucky to have a creative outlook. 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. Like, is this a story? Just us having a conversation right here, Brian, is a story, right? Brian: Yes. Jeanne: We each have a story. We have a backstory that goes back some 13 years now. Brian: Right. Jeanne: We know each other. We worked together. You have a family. You know my family. 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 really creative. That’s all execution. Brian: Right. Jeanne: Don’t you think that’s where people kind of drop the ball? Brian: I do. I think it’s like bringing the two pieces together. What I’ve respected about you is that you were always willing to try something new, and you would see it through. You wouldn’t let it drop. I think it’s both sides. Jeanne: Are you saying I’m a nag? Brian: Well, I think a little bit. But you want things done well, and you personally own it. That’s something for our listeners that I saw. Being creative is great, but you also had this very practical side you brought to it. Creativity isn’t going to matter much, or innovation isn’t going to matter, unless you can get it done. Jeanne: A place I worked 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 that go the rebranding route, t

    25 min

  8. 01/29/2019

    Conversational Marketing in B2B with Dave Gerhardt

    About this episode Most B2B buyers do not want to wait. They come to your website with questions, context, and intent. But too many B2B companies still force them through forms, delayed follow-up, and disconnected sales processes. That is the problem conversational marketing was built to address. In this episode of the B2B Roundtable Podcast, I talk with Dave Gerhardt, then VP of Marketing at Drift and now founder of Exit Five, about how B2B companies can use real-time conversations to connect with buyers while they are ready to engage. At the time of this conversation, Dave and Drift were helping define the conversational marketing category. They were also challenging one of the most familiar habits in B2B demand generation: putting forms in front of content and calling every form fill a lead. The short version: buyers do not always want another piece of gated content. They often want an answer. They want help. They want a path forward without having to wait for someone to follow up later. We get into why content has become a commodity, how the #noforms movement started, why chatbots should handle digital paperwork instead of replacing humans, how plain text emails build trust, and why the BDR problem is often a process problem, not a people problem. If your website still treats every buyer the same way, this conversation will help you rethink what it means to help buyers in the moment. About Dave Gerhardt Dave Gerhardt, also known as DG, was VP of Marketing at Drift when this interview was recorded. He helped build Drift’s brand and helped popularize the conversational marketing category. Dave is now the founder of Exit Five, a community and media company for B2B marketers. He is also known for his work on founder brand, B2B marketing, content, community, and practical marketing leadership. Connect with Dave: @davegerhardt on X/Twitter Dave Gerhardt on LinkedIn Exit Five What we cover 00:00 Introduction to Dave Gerhardt and Drift 01:08 What conversational marketing means 02:59 Rethinking content and lead generation 05:31 How the no forms movement started 08:47 Capturing leads without relying on forms 09:50 Real-time conversations on your website 14:24 How empathy powers conversational marketing 18:18 Reverse engineering how you like to buy A few things worth taking away Traditional B2B marketing systems were built for later: fill out a form now, wait for follow-up later. Modern buyers expect immediacy. They are used to getting answers, rides, products, and help in real time. Content is no longer enough to differentiate. Everyone has blogs, podcasts, videos, and PDFs. Gating a low-intent content asset does not automatically make someone a qualified lead. The #noforms movement was not about removing every form overnight. It was about challenging marketers to create a better path for buyers. Conversational marketing can create a fast lane for high-intent buyers who want answers now. Bots should not replace humans. They should handle the digital paperwork that forms used to handle. Timing matters. Asking for a demo on the first blog visit feels different than asking after someone has returned several times. Empathy starts by remembering that people do not browse B2B websites for fun. They are usually there for a reason. Plain text emails can work because they feel closer to how real people communicate. If BDRs are rewarded for activity volume alone, they will often create low-quality activity. That is a process problem. The best way to start is with one contained experiment, such as a request-demo page, contact-us page, pricing page, or high-intent website path. A few lines that stuck with me “Drift connects you now with the people who are ready to buy now.” — Dave Gerhardt “Most of the traditional marketing and sales systems were built for later.” — Dave Gerhardt “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.’” — Dave Gerhardt “How do you ask a question to a form? You can’t.” — Dave Gerhardt “We don’t use bots to replace a human. We use bots to handle the digital paperwork.” — Dave Gerhardt “Nobody is just browsing a B2B website for fun.” — Dave Gerhardt “Think about how you buy, and start thinking about how you can reverse engineer your buying process to match what you would like.” — Dave Gerhardt “The reason they do bad things is because they’re not incentivized to do the good things.” — Dave Gerhardt Resources mentioned Drift Conversational Marketing by David Cancel and Dave Gerhardt Exit Five Quote Investigator on the “sharpen the axe” quote Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. Full transcript Brian Carroll: Well, cool. Dave, I’m glad to have you with us today. Tell us a little bit about your background and what you all do at Drift. Dave Gerhardt: 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 Drift connects you now with the people who are ready to buy now, which is a big change from how traditional marketing typically works, where most of the traditional marketing and sales systems were 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 there has 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 a Lyft on my phone, the driver would be there in about one to two minutes, and that is 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 Carroll: Right. Dave Gerhardt: 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. What is conversational marketing? Brian Carroll: That sets us up. You have this new book coming out. I have highlights all over this book, and I wanted to talk about it. What motivated you to write the book? Why now? Dave Gerhardt: The reason we wrote the book is because we heard so much about the power of conversational marketing, and 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 in this industry. It’s not because we have some secret. Our secret has been that we’ve used our own product and really made conversations the center of our business. As we created this category of conversational marketing and started to educate more people about it, we were like, “You know what? It’s time to write the book.” We had enough stuff to say and enough case studies, examples, methodologies, playbooks, and blueprints. We said, “Let’s make 2019 the year that we write the book and do the best job we can trying to help educate the future of marketing and sales on this next wave.” Why content and lead generation need to change Brian Carroll: As I read through it, you started with this premise that marketers need to rethink the way they’re doing content and lead generation. Why is that? Dave Gerhardt: Because content is a commodity. Everybody has a podcast. Everybody has a blog. Everybody is in video. Everybody is on social media. Five or ten years ago, you could say, “You know what makes us unique? We are a B2B company, and we have a blog.” And people were like, “Blogging? No way!” Today, all that stuff is a commodity. Nobody is going to be on their commute home tonight thinking, “You know what I wish I had more of? I wish I had more content from a B2B brand. I need another B2B podcast.” There has 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.” We are all starting to ignore that. I try to avoid filling out forms if I can. I hate talking on the phone. I never answer numbers that don’t normally call me. I never reply to cold emails. Something had to give. That is the shift we have seen in the market. David Cancel, who I wrote this book with, calls it the shift from supply to demand. Customers have all the power today. Ten years ago, they didn’t have any of the power. If you sold iced coffee, you could be the only person who sold iced coffee. You could say, “Brian, you have to go through my process. You want one of my iced coffees? Come back at 5 o’clock tonight, call me on this number, and I’ll talk to you.” Now customers have all the power. By the time I’m ready to buy an iced coffee, I have already evaluated four or five other companies, and I’m there in your store for a reason. It’s about adapting to the way people behave and want to interact online. Information is free now. It’s not something that can be a differentiator for you anymore. How the #noforms movement started Brian Carroll: I first heard about this a year ago, this whole idea of the #noforms movement. For our readers who are not familiar, what do you mean by no forms? How did this happen? Dave Gerhardt: You need no forms because marketers got into this world of abusing forms. And I’m not preaching to anybody. I did this too. One of the first things I did at Drift was write an article about the growth marketing influencers you should follow on Twitter. I made a Twitter list, put it in a Google Sheet, and put a form behind it. I said, “Hey, you want to get my list of 50 people to follow on Twitter? Put your email in here.” That person is not a lead. There is no intent there. I’m just gating something that is a commodity.

    28 min
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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 breakdowns that cost real revenue often live underneath – in handoffs, definitions, follow-up gaps, scoring assumptions, and the friction buyers feel but reports don’t reveal. Hosted by Brian Carroll, GTM system advisor and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, the show features candid conversations with GTM operators, leaders, and thinkers about how revenue systems actually break – and what it takes to fix them. Learn more at https://www.markempa.com

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  • Creator
    Brian Carroll
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Copyright 2026 markempa
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    The B2B Roundtable