Having been with Refine Labs, MJ Peters knew how to sniff out the opportunity to work with a company that gets marketing. 

Now four months into her new gig as the VP of Marketing for CoLab Software, MJ talks about building a demand gen first marketing model where marketing is measuring only Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and Sales Accepted Opportunities (SAOs) as opposed to anything further up the funnel (like MQLs, content downloads, etc.) that’s normally tracked in the lead gen model. 

That’s still hard to do—the industry has problem awareness (engineer tools live on a desktop making it hard to collaborate efficiently) but making the case to do anything about it is still a tough sell. 

And it takes time. Demand gen happens more slowly than lead gen because you’re measuring lagging metrics instead of leading indicators. 

Leadership has the stomach for it though. They’ve invested heavily in customer research, and MJ sees the opportunity to create a category for “Design Engagement Systems” where people would eventually search more on that term, leading right to them. 

Given that most companies aren’t working with a blank slate, MJ also has advice for those that want to make the shift but can’t turn lead gen off overnight. 

And as long as they’re open minded, the right marketing leader can have a big impact. 

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