Pipeline Visionaries

This episode features an interview between Ian Faison and Udi Ledergor, CMO of Gong. A 5-time VP of Marketing, Udi has 20 years of experience heading marketing teams and is an expert in helping B2B companies grow faster by optimizing and transforming their marketing efforts.On this episode, Udi discusses the synergy between Gong’s demand gen efforts and brand plays, and lays out the content strategy that he uses to drive the inbound and outbound motions that create thousands of MQLs every month for a $2.2 Billion B2B powerhouse.Key TakeawaysWays the content marketing landscape is changing in our fast-paced, digital-first worldHow to build compelling content that reaches your audience on the channels they frequent mostThe three basic elements that every successful content machine must includeQuotes“Here's the really simplified truth: we create darn good content, and we use that content to drive both our inbound and outbound motions. Then we create thousands of MQLs every month by looking at who's consuming our content and attending our events.”“Here’s the big secret: [LinkedIn] is my cheapest demand gen channel...we can get thousands of downloads in a day and that doesn't cost me a dime. It’s completely organic. That's why I love this channel. I know that the people are there because they want to be, I'm not chasing them. I could not live without that channel.”“I think the biggest mistake that brands make is they start with what they want to say rather than what their prospects or customers want to hear. By starting from the customer side and working back, you can give them what they want in a way that also serves your brand. That's the right way to do it.”“I'd say 99% of our content takes less than five minutes to consume. We’ve found that with today's attention span, especially of busy executives, that type of content is hugely popular. If you're going to create a 40-page e-book like we did 10 years ago in content marketing, the only ones likely to read it are your competitors.”“The days where we could plan six months ahead for a content project are long gone. I think it's a joke if someone can plan a year ahead on their content calendar in this fast moving market. Either your content is stale or it's just completely detached from what's going on in the market. What plans could you have made six months ago that would be remotely relevant to your audience right now? You have to be a lot more agile than in the past to keep up. The companies that are keeping up, that are producing timely content that’s answering real time questions and solving problems quickly– they are moving quickly ahead, and the others are way behind.”“Become best friends with your CRO or VP of Sales. You have to put your ego aside and understand that you are there to make sales easier. You can't build the right demand gen machine if you don't understand exactly what your sales team needs. If you manage to make sales’ lives easier, you will have built a successful demand gen machine. It’s that simple.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

This episode features an interview with Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Coupa. Chandar has more than 25 years of experience in strategic marketing and management consulting, including his previous role as CMO at Marketo. As CMO of Coupa, he is responsible for driving all aspects of worldwide marketing including strategic segment marketing, product marketing, growth marketing and corporate marketing.On this episode, Chandar breaks the mold on demand gen, explaining why you should be thinking of it in terms of growth marketing and revenue gen, and he illustrates his flywheel approach to marketing that goes far beyond the traditional funnel model.Key TakeawaysExpand your view of demand gen–view it as growth marketing, and even as revenue gen. Those terms are important because what you call it and how you view it gets permeated throughout your organization.It’s important to view marketing as a flywheel of activities as opposed to the traditional funnel model. The flywheel approach consists of awareness, acquisition, expansion, and advocacy.A step that’s missing in growth marketing in a lot of organizations is adoption marketing. Adoption marketing is about ensuring that your customers are successful with what they’ve already bought before you go about trying to expand your presence in their business.Instead of running big virtual events and claiming victory on vanity metrics, marketers should consider the value of “circles,” which are smaller, more intimate gatherings that are easier to engage and have a much greater impact on deal-acceleration.Quotes“I don’t use the words ‘funnel’ or ‘demand gen.’ We call it revenue marketing. Because why do any marketing unless it’s for revenue?”“Your job in marketing is to find the fastest path to the most dollars for the sales organization. That’s the guiding principle at the end of the day.”“Value is one divided by vanity. You have to take the vanity metrics out of it...We are looking for value, not vanity. If my goal is deal acceleration, I should not be worried about vanity metrics, I should only be worried about value metrics.”“Advocacy marketing is not them advocating for you, it’s you advocating for them. If you’re doing it well, you’re showcasing how your customers are driving transformational change in their organizations.”“Your best salesperson is your customer. if you’ve done a good job of driving value, they’re going to do the selling for you.”“I view our website as the most strategic weapon in marketing...I view it as a vehicle for conversation, not just one-way information dissemination. It can be a vehicle to start a conversation and move it forward in the journey. It’s an important asset for us in that way, and it’s a top lead-generation tool as well.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

This episode features an interview with Melton Littlepage, Senior VP of Marketing at Tenable. Melton has more than 15 years of marketing experience, including as VP of Global Marketing for SAP Concur, and CMO of Schoology. At Tenable, Melton is responsible for driving demand gen for cybersecurity solutions that are used by more than 30,000 organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 500.On this episode, Melton breaks down his solution-based marketing approach, how to truly understand the problems your customers face, and how to make your brand synonymous with the solutions they need.Key TakeawaysMarketing has two missions: tell your story to the market, and then when the market is searching for an answer to a problem, be there with the answer.The job of a marketer is to help the buyer understand how to manage their problems. It’s to help them see that there is a solution that can take a lot of pain and effort out of their life, allow them to do a better job, and help their company be more successful.Management of your website is crucial. It's where you express yourself as a brand, develop your category, create community, inform and educate the market on the products you offer, and it’s how you assemble those products into solutions that are important for solving real-world problems.Having conversational marketing on your website is an essential tool. It’s an attractive alternative to gated content forms and it goes beyond being a lead-capture tool. It allows you to have meaningful conversations with your customers and guide them through their buying journey.Quotes“Being a VP of marketing is like being the VP of helping the customer solve a problem. We have a lot of internal processes and KPIs and metrics and all that's really important, but our job is really to understand our buyer and understand what they're up against.”“[Our customer] is not looking to buy a product, they're looking to solve a problem. We need to jump in there and help them solve the problem. That's how they're going to end up buying the product. It doesn't come the other way around.”“We've built a demand gen organization that is dedicated to reaching our target persona and changing their mind. That’s it in a nutshell.”“We start with the buyer and the problems they have in their day to day world. We try to help them understand that there is a better way to do what we do. We hold their hand through the process of learning how it could apply in their organization and what the potential benefit is. And then, in an ideal world, we start a conversation with them. If we can do that, we've succeeded in our role as marketing. If we can't do that, then all the KPIs, processes, tech– it just doesn't matter.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

This episode features an interview with Dave King, CMO of Asana. Specializing in B2B enterprise marketing and growth, Dave joined Asana in 2017 to oversee global marketing efforts after having previously led marketing teams at Percolate, Highfive and Salesforce.On this episode, Dave breaks down Asana’s unique, hybrid demand gen strategy that starts with a core belief in an exceptional product experience. Dave discusses how to add value, engender trust, and deliver such a remarkable experience that your customers become your greatest advocates.Key TakeawaysWord of mouth marketing is the future and is still largely untapped. More people hear about Asana from word of mouth than from any other advertising or marketing tactics. Think about how to create an experience that’s so remarkable that people want to share about it.Ultimately a brand is about building trust. Whether you’re B2C or B2B, what matters is that you’re engendering trust within the specific audience that you’re targeting.Demand gen has to be tailored to your audience and the needs of the business. You can’t take a demand gen model that works for company X and apply it to company Y. The first and most important thing you need to do is figure out what you need demand gen to do for your organizationBoth the demand gen team and sales teams at Asana are really focused on how to help customers get even more value out of the product.Asana customers can use the product for free and see the value from day one, which aligns everybody’s incentives in a powerful way, and is a huge driver of word of mouth.Everyone at Asana uses the product, which is a huge advantage to knowing how to explain to customers how it can add value.Big ad platforms still work fine but have likely reached their peak influence. There are exciting new types of smaller channels and communities that are more targeted and intimate (like podcasts).Gated assets are still sometimes a necessary evil, but there’s likely a technology breakthrough coming where you won’t have to make the false choice between customer experience and data capture. Quotes“More people hear about us from word of mouth than they do from any of our advertising or marketing tactics. Our community team does several hundred events per year, on five continents, all about driving word of mouth.”“We like to say great marketing is about education and delivering an experience. So how do we help people be better at their jobs, and how do you make it an experience that people want to talk about?”“Helping people be better at their jobs rather than selling features is a shift that’s happening across our craft...We view ourselves as community organizers more than as professors.”“Some of the best marketing is not creating things from scratch, but seeing the bright spots–what is working organically, what’s happening naturally, and how do we create programs to amplify or facilitate that. Our most creative ideas come from what we’re seeing in the community, versus us thinking them up in the lab”“I think that the scarce commodity in society right now is trust. We make emotional decisions, and we make them based on trust. That’s ultimately what a brand is: How do I deliver trust?”“Our philosophy is that we believe so much in the product experience that we want to get people into that experience as quickly as possible.”“Speed to market is the new currency of success. You have to be agile and adaptive...Who has time for a one- or two-year software deployment cycle these days? Especially as demand gen marketers, we’ve got to get up and running quickly, and where you can put tools together to be really adaptive and move fast gives you a big advantage.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Julie Liegl is used to being a part of big things. As EVP of Global Marketing at Salesforce, she helped create and oversee the world-class corporate event that is known as Dreamforce, and she’s currently overseeing a complete transformation in the way that businesses communicate as CMO of Slack.On this episode, Julie unveils some of the plays that have made her so successful across her career. She talks about corporate events and how they can maintain relevance as digital events in the time of COVID, how to create a demand gen team from scratch, and much more.Key TakeawaysDemand Gen needs to be integrated. Every aspect of it needs to be thought of as a part of one single function, rather than separate one-off activities.In order for an event to be successful, you need to help prepare your attendees to make the most of it before they ever arrive.Brand marketing can work hand-in-hand with demand gen. The top of the funnel is still a part of the funnel.Quotes"You have to think of demand gen as a program rather than a set of tactics and how they're going to go along the way. We used to call it lead gen and that very much reflected what it was, which was marketing, throwing leads over the wall, and demand gen is really about being smarter about the entire thing.""I see events as an amplifying effect to demand gen and as a point in the demand gen journey.""Brand is funny because there definitely are ways to measure it. We do a lot of brand studies. We do research on consideration awareness sentiment, and we try to measure it quarterly.""I still think that flashy things can work, but they need to work in a way that makes sense with your product beyond just a clever marketing tagline."SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Tom Butta, Former CMO of SignalFx (acquired by Spunk for $1.05B), discusses the demand-gen mindset that leads to high-dollar acquisitions. On this episode of Demand Gen Visionaries, Tom explains the importance of focusing on marketing fundamentals to see big results, how putting your customers above all will lead to retention and more pipeline, and keeping a company-wide eye to make sure your demand gen leads to more sales. Key TakeawaysThere are three essential elements of demand gen: pipeline creation, revenue metrics, and, often overlooked, customer retention.Customers should be treated as family. They should never find out about a big announcement when the rest of the world does. They should be notified about it before.The most fundamental requirement of demand gen is perspective. Know where marketing is having an impact and make sure customers can find your website.When you spend money on marketing tactics, you need to make sure you’re seeing a return on your investment.Own your content creation. You need to have content that the company can stand behind without question. Quality always starts from within and it needs to be amplified.It’s important to have data to back up your actions. Let your metrics guide your company's strategy, not emotion.Quotes“Demand gen is a function within a function. It's part of a team, but it does not live on its own. It’s reliant upon really good content. It's reliant upon the ability to act appropriately and quickly on opportunities that it creates.”“The validation that you get from customers is just immeasurable.”“Understand that your home is the place that most people will go to and you need that to be your website. You need to be able to ensure that when they get there, they have the best possible experience, but you also need to be sure that they actually can find you.”“You go after the new logos exclusively, and you forget that you can actually have great influence over, building relationships with your existing customers. Those customers are our franchise. They give reason for us to exist.”“My belief (for content) is, it always has to start from within. In terms of turning something over, we did a couple of case studies with external consultants and writers, but for the most part we wrote everything ourselves.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Latane Conant is the CMO of 6Sense and author of No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls:  The next generation of account-based sales and marketing. discusses the importance of personalized marketing. On this episode of Demand Gen Visionaries, Latane explains how she generates demand by illuminating “the dark funnel”, why cold outreach is undergoing a fundamental change, and much more.Key TakeawaysThe best demand gen will make people feel something. You need to create a genuine connection with your customer to accelerate their desired results.Contacting a potential customer should be personalized and scaled. Cold emails aren’t going to work anymore. You need to stand out.Shine a light on prospective clients that might be hiding in “the dark funnel”. Dive deeper into client relations to turn prospects into valued customers.Shift your mindset from demand gen to demand capture. Make the experience unique so you organically retain customers.Over time, you earn the right to take risks. Sometimes you have to trust your gut and dismiss outside influences.Quotes“I think the best demand gen makes people feel something. It creates a connection.”“I'm just going to blow this thing up and prove that if we put prospects and their experiences first, we can generate a lot of pipeline and succeed, and do it in this new and different way.”“We decided early on not to have sales ops and marketing ops, but to have revenue ops. As a revenue team, let's always be finding our ‘red’ and always be bringing issues and conversion points forward that aren't performing because that gives us a chance to go and fix them.”“I just always encourage people. If your gut is telling you that it's the right thing to do, it probably is, and sometimes you gotta take those risks.”“I would challenge the new world order to be thinking, not about demand generation, but demand capture. Because if you uncovered ‘the dark funnel’, then you actually see the demand right in front of you.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Tracy Eiler, CMO of InsideView Technologies, explains how she has aligned marketing and sales to accelerate pipeline, and shares how optimizing your CRM can drive growth. She also talks about the importance of human interaction with customers to turn buyers into company advocates, and the importance of generating quality vs. quantity leads. Tracy was also a key speaker at the Growth Marketing Conference.Key TakeawaysAlways strive to improve your CRM. Don’t overlook the issues. Cleaning up dirty data can have a significant impact on the company's productivity.Cold calling doesn’t exist anymore. If marketers are doing their job, they’re getting in front of the audience and reaching out to them in a much more productive way.Marketers need to focus on the top of the funnel, but they need to remember to think about their role post-sale to turn customers into advocates.Focus on updating old content into new systems. Just because the platform of the data is outdated doesn’t mean the information within it isn’t relevant.Emphasize diversity in the workplace, and give opportunities to people with unconventional backgrounds to help your company expand.Quotes“I don't use the term ABM anymore. I really think that it’s account-based engagement or account-based pursuit because we’re so integrated between sales, marketing, and customer experience. We go account-based not only for new logo pursuit but also for customer expansion.”“I really think demand marketers should think about, org structure-wise, having sales development report into marketing.”“CRM data quality is something that the ops folks typically own, but it’s at the root of impact to sales and marketing effectiveness.”“Cold calling. I just don't think that exists anymore, right? If marketers are doing their job, we’re warming up an audience and reaching out to them and getting in front of them in a variety of ways.”“Really make sure that sales understands and has buy-in into your strategy. It’s really important—we have to educate them. Wean them off of lead quantity and wean them onto opportunity quality.”“We want more folks who are not white, and we also want diversity of thought, right? Take first-generation college graduates as an example. We don't want everybody to look and sound and come with the same background.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Mike Marcellin, CMO of Juniper Networks, explains the benefits of having automated, AI-driven systems that allow marketers to focus on understanding the market and creating organic connections with potential customers.Key TakeawaysCompetition in the marketplace is inevitable. Working smarter than competitors with larger budgets can put you in the same league.The more data, the better the AI. Marketers need to make sure that accurate data informs AI-driven decision-marking.Make the opportunity of demand gen count. When an interested customer comes to you with questions, show them how you can help.Emphasize the importance of digital assets as you think about automating the customer journey.Quotes“If we do our job right, we'll eventually get to a conversation about technology, but the first goal is: Why should I be talking to you? What's in it for me? How's it going to help my business?”“AI is worthless without data. The more data, the better the AI can be, and the more value you can deliver.”“Centralize what you can, and distribute what you must. It’s pretty profound because obviously, we know the benefits of centralization that you can get from efficiency, But you also realize that, at times, you do have to distribute things if there's a strong, compelling reason to do so.”“Many of our competitors are much larger and will outspend us from a marketing perspective. And for that matter, from a sales perspective. They'll have more feet on the street. So we have to be super smart and super-targeted, effectively outsmart them, because we can't outspend them.”“This has become much more of a science over the years, and with the amount of data that we now have at our fingertips, that can be hugely valuable to making demand gen successful. But it's only valuable if you have people that can make sense of that data.”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Ryan Bonnici discusses why the campaign-based approach to marketing needs to be jettisoned for a new school mindset that constantly tests and adapts, his philosophy for creating useful content that drives value and leads to conversion, how he's driven growth at G2, and much more.Key TakeawaysThe campaign-based approach to marketing needs to be jettisoned for a new school mindset that constantly tests and adaptsDemand gen leaders need to be leveraging intent data in order to increase the efficiency of their demand gen spendCreating interactive content that dramatically increases lead conversionMaking more intentional and digestible content by researching complex topics and simplifying for an easier, more simple user experience results in higher trafficQuotes“I think of demand gen differently than most B2B SaaS marketers. How do I generate as much marketing source pipeline for the business as possible? How do I increase our brand awareness and trust? So that pipeline, whether that was through marketing or through sales, flows through the pipe more efficiently.”“We can't just rely on organic word-of-mouth. We need to really try and improve our technical SEO and prove the breadth and depth of the content on our site.”“Most marketing teams over-index on influence and should over-index more on sourcing revenue for their sales team. You can over-index and they think there's like this holy grail of attribution that I have yet to see any company really have when it comes to influence.”“I just fully believe at my core that inbound marketing and attracting someone to you and giving them value is just a better way of doing business. It's a much longer-term way of doing business. It creates a moat around you that paid can never do.”“I just ultimately look for the team to think about not just creating content for content's sake, but if we're going to write something, how can we write it in a way that's better than everyone else. Can we do more research so that we can simplify this complex topic to make it easier to understand? Can we identify better metaphors? Can we write a catchier headline that increases click-throughs? How do we really do it a little bit better than everyone at each of those different stages of the content creation process?”SponsorDemand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.