The Great MQL vs. MQA Debate: Why Are We Still Talking About This?

Ellen Smoley: Hello everyone and welcome to today's roundtable session, I'm Ellen Smalley and head of marketing here at Iron Horse. This is our third and final round table in our series of three where we're taking a closer look at key growth challenges identified in our recent survey, which will be linked here in the chat.

Our first session was focused on content marketing where we had ON24 and Netline to discuss the importance of content journeys.

And our second was with demand base in Tech Target and we discussed intent challenges.

I encourage you to go back and watch those sessions will also put them here in the chat for you.

Now it's time to get into our third and final session.

Today we're focusing on measurement and reporting and I'm so excited to introduce to y'all are three speakers.

Ellen Smoley: First we have Monica Behncke, Chief Growth Officer here at Iron Horse. Next we have Jennifer Ross CMO of Intentsify. And finally Alisa Groocock, former VP and principal analyst at Forrester. Monica take it away.

Monica Behncke: Thanks Ellen, thanks so much.

First of all, I just want to say thank you also to lisa and jen and I'm so grateful that you are willing to join on this conversation, we're so fortunate to have you, I was thinking about this this morning because you both had both practitioner and analyst and best practice experience.

Monica Behncke: So you know, the data, you know, you know, a broad swath of what clients are doing or not doing, you know what best practices look like.

Monica Behncke: But you're also really grounded in reality of what does it take to make those best practices happen, which I think is, you know, sometimes where the real crunch comes in.

Monica Behncke: So we're gonna start off, you know, as we start our first questions with a poll.

Monica Behncke: So if you want to take a look at the polling and just kind of get a sense for our audience of where everybody is and as our audience is responding to that pole and submitting the vote, I'm gonna jump into the questions and I'm gonna start with Alisa, we're gonna talk about MQ L. and S and M.

Monica Behncke: and let's talk about how we define them, what the value is, where you should use them or not use them.

Monica Behncke: And we're gonna do it in one chunk at a time.

Monica Behncke: So let's start with em que ele and oppose the question to you, Alisa, what how do you define an MQ L?

Monica Behncke: What's the value of them?

Monica Behncke: Where how should people be using them?

Alisa Groocock: So thanks Monica.

Alisa Groocock: M Qs are typically, I think for most organizations going to be an individual who is engaging with your company's products or solutions, right?

Alisa Groocock: So that might be somebody who's downloaded a white paper might be somebody who's scanned a badge and an event.

Alisa Groocock: it might be a number of those things and sometimes an MQ L will be, you know, a scored, you know, situation where somebody has taken a number of activities and the volume of those activities for that individual gets measured.

Alisa Groocock: That's how most of the clients that I've worked with.

Alisa Groocock: And there have been hundreds of them over the years that's typically how they are defining an MQL.

Alisa Groocock: And there's some real challenges with that, right?

Alisa Groocock: Because first of all you're looking at an individual as opposed to a group of buyers.

Alisa Groocock: And so when we think about the ultimate impact metrics that we all care about which is pipeline and bookings, that's what our sales teams care about and it's ultimately what our executives and the market cares about.

Alisa Groocock: There's a pretty big chasm there between one individual even if they've taken a lot of activities with you, even if they've engaged a lot getting from that too.

Alisa Groocock: We've got you know a number of buyers engaged people with the key roles.

Alisa Groocock: Economic decision makers, influencers, a champion and a deal MQL.

Alisa Groocock: Kind of ignore that buying group You know dynamic that's very very important.

Alisa Groocock: And it also ignores this notion of an I.

Alisa Groocock: Right?

Alisa Groocock: So an ideal customer profile starts with what accounts do we care about.

Alisa Groocock: But it also works its way to within those accounts.

Alisa Groocock: What are the buying centers that we care about?

Alisa Groocock: What are the teams or departments that we need to be selling into and what kinds of attributes to those teams are departments have.

Alisa Groocock: So moving beyond just the firm a graphic things around vertical industry and the, you know, company size and those sorts of things to what is the kind of department we want to be selling into And then that buying group again, who is the group of individuals that we need to be engaging so that when we pass something along two sales, it's something a lot more robust than what an MqL.

Alisa Groocock: You know, typically has.

Jennifer Ross: I believe that's jen I couldn't agree more.

Jennifer Ross: And, you know, when you say more robust, you know, I think of when it's an MQ L and it's an individual, sometimes sometimes an MQ L.

Jennifer Ross: As as you said, somebody's done something right, you've scanned a badge in an event, you've done something but you maybe never going to convert.

Jennifer Ross: And if BDRS.

Jennifer Ross: And sales reps do follow up on those leads that aren't likely to convert, that's the kind of thing that leads to a reduction in productivity.

Jennifer Ross: It leads to misalignment.

Jennifer Ross: And sometimes even and I think all of us have been in organizations where we felt this even tension between marketing and sales.

Jennifer Ross: So it's interesting, right, when you think about, okay, well, does an Mq L even have value?

Jennifer Ross: I don't think it's necessarily yes or no answer.

Jennifer Ross: But you touched on the problem, the problem is in looking at an MQL.

Jennifer Ross: Or that individual who does something in isolation without the context that you're talking about that relation of the content, that particular contact to a buying group in an opportunity.

Monica Behncke: MQLs coming up short and it's interesting the results of the poll.

Monica Behncke: Not surprising a lot of people are using em que ele.

Monica Behncke: but they are seeing the shortcomings.

Monica Behncke: it's it's funny, you know, I remember when MQL.

Monica Behncke: first came out, I think it was the late nineties, maybe 1999 1998 99 around that time.

Monica Behncke: Been around a really, really long time and has really galvanized itself into a lot of organizations.

Monica Behncke: But in the last maybe ELISA five years, six years MQA’s.

Monica Behncke: Have started to come onto the scene.

Monica Behncke: So how do you define will start again with you?

Monica Behncke: How do you define an MQ A.

Monica Behncke: And what's its value and how and when and where should we use M.

Alisa Groocock: Yeah.

Alisa Groocock: So I would I'm a big baby m.

Alisa Groocock: Person.

Alisa Groocock: So I'm a big fan of thinking about things through an account lens.

Alisa Groocock: But I still think that M.

Alisa Groocock: Qs are limited in their own ways for some of the reasons that I described earlier.

Alisa Groocock: So an MQ A.

Alisa Groocock: Is saying, okay, we're not just gonna have one individual that we're gonna be scoring on, we're going to look for the kinds of accounts that we think that we're gonna sell best into and we're gonna have very targeted list of accounts that we're gonna go after and we're gonna get marketing and sales aligned on that list of accounts.

Alisa Groocock: Either because they're showing intent or because they have certain demographic characteristics and that's good.

Alisa Groocock: It's a good starting point.

Alisa Groocock: I would argue that's necessary but not nearly sufficient.

Alisa Groocock: And the reason for that is back to the comment earlier.

Alisa Groocock: Which is that unless you get into those accounts and say what buying centers and what buying groups are we going after?

Alisa Groocock: And you get your ICP.

Alisa Groocock: Down to a much more nuanced set of characteristics and you're able to find those accounts that fit those characteristics.

Alisa Groocock: Just saying that you have a list of accounts and then qualifying an account is you know you're gonna end up with this likely to end up with the same list of accounts that all your competitors have.

Alisa Groocock: Right?

Alisa Groocock: And so at least you're solving a part of the ICP problem.

Alisa Groocock: But you're still not solving the problem of being in the right buying centers and finding the opportunities that you're then gonna be able to attach a buying group to and pass that along to sales in a way that is you know truly qualified.

Alisa Groocock: So it's better better.

Alisa Groocock: But still I think missing some of the really key ingredients that we need in order to have opportunities that turn into pipeline and ultimately into bookings

Jennifer Ross: Alisa there's even you know it's interesting because that becomes even more true for organizations that have more than one offering because you're looking at just at an account level.

Jennifer Ross: Well realistically there could be multiple opportunities within that same account.

Jennifer Ross: So if you're focused on just qualifying account alone what are you missing?

Jennifer Ross: Right?

Jennifer Ross: So it's you know that that's a really important concept that you're touching on.

Jennifer Ross: Yeah.

Alisa Groocock: and just to bring this to life a little bit like one of my clients for example that I worked with sold asset management software.

Alisa Groocock: Right?

Alisa Groocock: And what we learned by talking to their sales reps in a in a workshop setting was that the number one things that sales reps want to know to know that an account and a buying center within that account is a good fit.

Alisa Groocock: Was the age and location of the assets that that company they had that they were selling into manufacturers that had big you know energy plants and power plants and that sort of thing.

Alisa Groocock: The age and the location of the assets at those facilities were the number one thing that they needed to know.

Alisa Groocock: And without that information they didn't have an ICP

Alisa Groocock: And that's information that doesn't exist at an account level.

Alisa Groocock: Right?

Alisa Groocock: Think about how big a manufacturer is.

Alisa Groocock: I mean, knowing that some that an organization is in the manufacturing sector does very little for for identifying an opportunity.

Alisa Groocock: Knowing that there are plants in particular locations that had aging assets and where those assets were located was the thing that made something a much more robust and viable opportunity.

Alisa Groocock: So I just wanted to bring, you know, use an example to kind of bring to life this more specific ICP.

Alisa Groocock: And that that kind of works.

Monica Behncke: I think you guys are talking about like two different things.

Monica Behncke: So lisa you're talking about, I have, let's just call it for simplicity, say one offer and that one offer can fit into multiple places within an organization which may be multiple business units or maybe multiple geography is in your example, it was multiple plant locations.

Monica Behncke: And then Jen you're almost talking about a different thing that says I have multiple offers and each offer maybe something that's distinct and it may be sold to the same buying center.

Monica Behncke: So maybe it's it's pieces of technology and you buy one, but then there's, you know, six months down, eight months down the road, you're selling another separate offer.

Monica Behncke: That's a separate skew.

Monica Behncke: So, you know, the account itself is not as important as the buying center and and who the people are and that match between the needs and the offer.

Jennifer Ross: No, no, no.

Jennifer Ross: You you articulated that beautifully.

Jennifer Ross: That's that that is the point that I was making.

Jennifer Ross: So both and both are true or both are true.

Jennifer Ross: So what, what, what both are getting at is that it it's the opportunity that you're, that you're ultimately driving towards.

Monica Behncke: Yeah, and that was gonna be the next question, so, so thank you for jumping ahead.

Monica Behncke: If it's not em que els and it's not M Q A S then, what is it?

Monica Behncke: Because, you know, as a CMO, you can't just say, well we're doing good work, trust me, you know, the your, your stakeholders, whether their sales or ceos or boards are gonna ask you for something that truly is a measurement.

Monica Behncke: So if those are flawed, what is it that we measure and how do we do that lisa do you want to start?

Alisa Groocock: Yeah, I well, so we've alluded to this a couple of times here with the marketing qualified, you know, opportunity concept.

Alisa Groocock: And so I think there's a few factors that go into having a truly robust marketing qualified opportunity and again, we've alluded to them already, but let me just sort of articulate from my perspective what some of those things are.

Alisa Groocock: I think you need to have a cat accounts that have the right firm, a graphic, you know, attributes.

Alisa Groocock: So that's a good starting point right there in industries that you so well into their, you know, the right size in terms of either the number of employees or the revenue levels, then you have a pretty good sense for those departments or teams that you're gonna sell effectively into and to jen's point, you also have a really good mapping of what the right solution is.

Alisa Groocock: So, and this is especially important for really big companies, right?

Alisa Groocock: So if you're a Fortune 20 company and you have hundreds of solutions, maybe even thousands that you're selling, you not only need to identify the team or the department you're selling into, but you better be really clear with your sales team and your product team for that matter across the revenue engine.

Alisa Groocock: What is the solution that we're positioning in here?

Alisa Groocock: We're landing with X product or why product or we're gonna sell a broader solution with a higher average deal size knowing that the sales cycle is gonna be longer, whatever those decisions are, right, There's no right or wrong.

Alisa Groocock: But just making sure that there's alignment on what that is that's really critical, you know, to an opportunity and then, having the right buying group members attached.

Alisa Groocock: Right?

Alisa Groocock: So back to that, you know, individual versus the buying group.

Alisa Groocock: So making sure that you're looking at all of the different individuals within that buying center that are engaging with your product with a special focus on economic decision maker, the person who has the budget to purchase your product or your solution.

Alisa Groocock: A champion, right who's the champion and a deal knowing what job title at least a champion has and being able to find that person and make sure that person is engaged, the person who's going to go through all the evaluations and get everybody on board and, and hopefully choose you over a competitor and do all those rankings and ratings.

Alisa Groocock: So those are, I think the characteristics that make for a good opportunity.

Alisa Groocock: And then the last thing is the usual budget and, and you know, length of time, you know, when a purchase is, you know, we used to call it the band criteria when I was at HP, but they call it different things now, but kind of that whole idea of, hey, I'm ready to move now.

Alisa Groocock: I have a budget.

Alisa Groocock: you know, we're going to do that within the next three months or six months or whatever the time frame is.

Alisa Groocock: I think it's, it's all of that put together that then should be put into your sales force automation system as a robust, you know, set of criteria and information that you then pass along to your BDR s or to your outside sellers to take and move forward and those are the kinds of things they're going to get excited about not somebody who scanned a badge at an event once.

Monica Behncke: Right.

Monica Behncke: so you know, this is now we get to to, you know, take this really hard turn jen that goes from the analyst, you know, best practices because I agree with you.

Monica Behncke: I think that that's, that's kind of like the ideal state and the ideal world.

Monica Behncke: and whether everybody is completely defined it or not, it's sort of kind of makes sense.

Monica Behncke: But I'm not seeing a huge fast movement there, even though, you know, there are people have been talking about this for a while, so jen, you know, it's kind of switching into a practitioner hat why is progress so slow and what's it gonna take to get there?

Monica Behncke: You know, Monica?

Jennifer Ross: It's perfect timing for me because I'm in the thick of it right now and intensified trying to do just this.

Jennifer Ross: And let's be honest, taking the approach, it's a big change for any organization.

Jennifer Ross: I know it's a big change that we're dealing with in our own organization.

Jennifer Ross: You know, if you think about that, this is something that our our former colleagues and friends from over at Forrester talk about when they talk about the revenue waterfall and making this change?

Jennifer Ross: It changes the accountability for sales pipeline and that's a big deal.

Jennifer Ross: So making that shift from having the emphasis on em que ele to marketing qualified opportunities has to start with education or call it socialization about why should our organization be making this change, Monica, you said earlier and it's funny, I went looking for the date of when did we first start using em que ele?

Jennifer Ross: It's been so entrenched for so long, it's like, well why are you now suddenly saying we need to do it differently, Is it the right time at our organization, is it the right time for our growth inflection point at the organization, How does it align with our business priorities?

Jennifer Ross: Is this a change that's critical for the organization's success?

Jennifer Ross: What's it gonna address for us?

Jennifer Ross: What's the risk if we don't do it?

Jennifer Ross: It's a mindset shift.

Jennifer Ross: everybody has to be on board and it required, I can tell you from personal experience it's requires a lot of resources because there are changes to existing systems and processes needed for this to work successfully.

Jennifer Ross: You're changing how the opportunity object in your sales force automation is defined and then there are the additional insights that ELISA talked about the ideal client profile, attributes the new scoring models.

Jennifer Ross: It's a transformation.

Jennifer Ross: So getting there requires the same kind of structured approach that you would take for any kind of big transformation.

Jennifer Ross: and it's you know, it was going to require things like the right level of executive sponsorship Now I see that as my role and intensified to to bring in the why this why now and guide the team through this change.

Jennifer Ross: But you also need strong project management resources from marketing operations, sales operations, revenue operations.

Jennifer Ross: If you if you have that kind of structure in place because this whole idea is moving more towards that concept of revenue operations and it's it's an approach that benefits greatly from having access to via intense signals and I don't bring that up just selfishly because that's what we do and intensify?

Jennifer Ross: I bring it up because it's an important part of, you know, one aspect or one input that you would look at and we did a survey intensified earlier this year And out of about 600 or so senior B2B respondents using intent data, only a third of them said that they felt they were using it in a strategic and measurable way.

Jennifer Ross: So it's it's there are a lot of things, a lot of factors that come into play and a lot of things that have to be revisited new things put in place.

Jennifer Ross: So, you know, that's that takes time.

Jennifer Ross: You mentioned a lot of stuff in there.

Jennifer Ross: It's a it's a lot to unpack.

Jennifer Ross: but if we we could probably split it into two huge categories.

Jennifer Ross: One is things that you use the word mindset, it's like changing the way you think about it, you believe that you culturally, its stakeholders management, all of those kinds of things and then there is things that are more operational.

Jennifer Ross: So it's that it's the technology, it's the way you use your data etcetera of those, which is easier, which is harder.

Jennifer Ross: And where do you start and ELISA jump in?

Jennifer Ross: If you have a view on this, you're new to

Alisa Groocock: sorry, I think that operational piece actually has two components that are pretty different from each other.

Alisa Groocock: So one is the infrastructure and the tech and the reporting, you know, processes and things like that and the other I think is incentives.

Alisa Groocock: So for example, if you want be BDRS to put, you know, opportunities into Salesforce differently and attached, that's not the only way to manage opportunities, but it's probably the easiest way and it's the one that we see clients moving towards relatively quickly because you can, you know, make that happen without too much pain, right, is kind of changing the way things are input into your, into your object in salesforce, but that's a change in behavior.

Alisa Groocock: That's a change in incentives.

Alisa Groocock: It's a change in sort of, it's the people stuff, right versus the infrastructures to people in process versus the the infrastructure stuff.

Alisa Groocock: So I just, it's almost like there's three buckets in my mind, right?

Alisa Groocock: There's the executive management sponsorship stuff, there's the infrastructure and tech investments operation truly operational stuff.

Alisa Groocock: And then there's kind of the behavior and incentives for the people on the ground and the processes that have to change with people's behaviors, right?

Jennifer Ross: And, and I'll add one other thing.

Jennifer Ross: It's not 1/4 bucket, thank goodness because it's a lot, but it's something Monica you mentioned at the start of the call, it's, we spend all this time and I spent a lot of years as you know, the advisor of, you know, what does that look like, what's best practice and it, and I I knew it would be a jolt coming back into a practitioner role because then there's the reality of it is not the only thing.

Jennifer Ross: So you know, as a state we're going through that intensified, but it's not the only strategic initiative or priority we have underway and intensify now.

Jennifer Ross: So there's also a balancing of, you know, getting the buy in an agreement and alignment, but, but you know, that's why I said the strong project management is what's the timeline when, when is the right time to do this because it, it does require that kind of dedicated focus and dedicated resources to make this work successfully.

Jennifer Ross: Even once you get over the hurdle of everyone thinks it's a great idea.

Monica Behncke: What do you, what do you think maybe what are you planning in terms of your timeline or do you have advice in terms of when people should start thinking about it, start taking action, flip the switch because I don't, it's not like day one, you flip the switch, there's a bunch of things happen, you flip the switch and then there's a bunch of things that happen and I'll after you, you answer and I'll give you advice that I heard from somebody else from a client that actually did this.

Jennifer Ross: Okay, great.

Jennifer Ross: And because I would love to here, the advice from them because they're, so we are at the early stages of this and I think no one likes the answer.

Jennifer Ross: It depends, but it does depend, it's so for us and intensify, we just went through migration from hubspot to Salesforce and like any migration, you do like that.

Jennifer Ross: It surfaced and revealed some issues that we had to address about our own waterfall or lead the whole lead management process.

Jennifer Ross: And so now we're, it's, it's a moment in time where we're saying okay, but if we're gonna do this to optimize these things that we think there's a better way to do, should we just do that or should we really be starting to think about, you know, where we think we should be in that ideal state.

Jennifer Ross: interesting because I, so I did just have a call the other day on this with the, the expert.

Jennifer Ross: I talked to one of our former colleagues over at forest or like I also have the reality of a board and the rest of my executive team who still very much think en que el so they know like I start talking about other things and it's almost whoa jen, okay.

Jennifer Ross: That makes sense what you're saying, but it's too much for us to absorb.

Jennifer Ross: So you have to factor that into.

Jennifer Ross: And I think that that timeline and what's the right moment and what's the right pace really does depend on a lot of those factors, what might be right in one organization might not be right in another based on other things that are happening in the environment at that time.

Jennifer Ross: So, so for me it's looking at how can we keep the measurement that we have in place show the executive team and the board and the investors the things that they still want to see and start to educate them along the way as we make those changes in our systems, you can still give them answers to those questions because you're not throwing away the idea of a marketing qualified lead.

Jennifer Ross: You still need to bring in contacts who have done something.

Jennifer Ross: What you're changing is the emphasis on what the most important things are that that you should really be measuring and looking at as an organization.

Monica Behncke: Yeah, it's the company that's in my mind.

Monica Behncke: there were a couple of similarities.

Monica Behncke: One was, there was a trigger event.

Monica Behncke: So that's, you know, something that kind of said, hey, because something else is changing.

Monica Behncke: Let's just take a look at this now.

Monica Behncke: You, you may force your own trigger events to just say, you know, our results are not what we would like them to be or we've got some extra resource right now and we can put it at that.

Monica Behncke: So you could cree get your trigger vendor maybe external.

Monica Behncke: And I think the other thing that I was wondering if you were gonna say is the same thing that they found is they said it wasn't a replacement, it was a net add to and they actually had to, you know, kind of keep all of the measurements that they had been doing for another six months till the year rolled over with this new one and they used that time period for the so socialization for getting everybody comfortable with it.

Monica Behncke: So it wasn't a moment in time where it's like changing shifts at the GM plant.

Monica Behncke: It's like everybody goes, everybody comes.

Monica Behncke: It was it was a fairly extensive overlap.

Monica Behncke: It was like a six month overlap and it sounds like you're heading in that same direction.

Monica Behncke: So I think that that's a good planning thought for people.

Monica Behncke: The other thing I wanted to pick up on which I think is really important is we talked and ELISA you started at the beginning talking about the shortcomings of em que ele and I think that you know after what you said is is we still need that measurement.

Monica Behncke: It's just we shouldn't have expectations of that measurement like we used to in the past and and the language, you know marketing qualified lead is it means something to people that probably shouldn't mean.

Monica Behncke: But what it is you're measuring in that metric should still exist.

Monica Behncke: So I don't know if that's a changing the language or changing the definition of what that means or adding something to I think for each company, how you unpack the socialization of it is gonna be really important but it sounds like you know, by the time you think about this start to take the activity, add the resources in place run in parallel for for a while, you're gonna end up, you know probably with with an entire fiscal cycle.

Monica Behncke: and I don't see that because it's necessarily gonna take that long, you know, intensely to do all the work.

Monica Behncke: It's just the time for people to absorb and the regular planning and fiscal cycles of setting plans and track into the plans that you set and all of those kinds of things.

Alisa Groocock: I think one thing that kind of goes along with that and I think I'm stating the obvious, but the idea of a pilot, right, so that you can, you know, somebody in the chat is sort of saying this side by side, you know, and then aligning with the existing state and the desired state, which has kind of been the theme of the last few minutes.

Alisa Groocock: You know, is it possible to start to roll things out and put a microscope on that and have champions and you know, folks, especially in sales, right?

Alisa Groocock: Because that's where so many clients that I've worked with in the past run into trouble is when they pass along things that they call em que ele or whatever they call, right, that aren't fully qualified, they're not the kinds of opportunities that sales, feels like they want to be on the receiving end of.

Alisa Groocock: And then those just sit in a black box in the marketing automation system and there's a lot of finger pointing about you're not giving me quality, you know, leads and well you're not following up and you're not, that's where you get into all that kind of stuff.

Alisa Groocock: So, you know, the idea that you might want to keep your existing system in place, but then put a pilot in place, cherry pick some of your more innovative rep, you know, reps or sales teams, sales, you know, managers and say, hey, let's start to transition, you know, work with your ops team or whoever you need to get involved in that right to start making some of the changes and then showing the kinds of results that that you can get and building people who are visible sponsors and champions for the change.

Alisa Groocock: I don't know, that's just an idea that might be helpful to some people in the audience.

Monica Behncke: You know, it's interesting when, when, as we've had this discussion, it seems if I had to make a hierarchy of this, it would be kind of the mindset or cultural change, the process change and the technology like neither of you are bringing up that, oh, the big problem is we don't have the tech to do this.

Monica Behncke: It it feel feels like, you know, the technology has come a long way, certainly since when we started with M M MQLA. A long time ago.

Monica Behncke: Would you guys agree with that, that that existing technology for the most part will get you most of the way there.

Monica Behncke: Maybe it's not perfect, but it's probably not the biggest hurdle at this point, I think, I think, I think that's fair to say, you know, I'm sure we have focused on the call who have different systems that will say not ours.

Monica Behncke: I think I think that that I think that's fair.

Monica Behncke: I think, you know, we were again, what we're in the midst of it and having to do alignment and mapping of okay, in the system, it's this object and in the system it's that but it's it's not, you know, that's not the insurmountable part.

Monica Behncke: It's it's really getting everybody's agreement on on making those changes and then kind of revisiting the service level agreements you have on those things, you know, when does it just as at least said it's, you know, what what is the right score, what is, you know, what, when will sales be comfortable?

Monica Behncke: It's it's the same conversation we always had about a marketing qualified lead were just now recognizing what we, you know, we knew intuitively back then, it's not that one person in one contact making the buying decision, but the philosophy of what we're doing isn't that isn't really that earth shatteringly different.

Monica Behncke: I want to switch gears a little bit, we've been talking kind of in a more more context around MQLA and MQ’s.

Monica Behncke: Which is kind of a demand management or an a b m management or a pipeline management kind of conversation.

Monica Behncke: but just for a moment, I wanna explore opening the aperture and saying there's measurements that are outside of that you know and and let's just talk about a little bit about what companies need to do to think about a more holistic view of measurement and you know even philosophically is measurement something that's strategic or measurement that's operational, is it both?

Monica Behncke: Is it?

Monica Behncke: How many do you need kind of that whole bucket of things?

Monica Behncke: So do you wanna kind of start us off on this kind of little segment and see

Jennifer Ross: Sure because this is a, you know this is a, I have a visceral reaction like strategic operational for me it's both.

Jennifer Ross: you can think of it or at least the way I think about it is it's the why we are measuring and what we are measuring should be strategic and that's part of what I see as my role or the role of the CMO is to be ensuring that your measurement efforts reflect the needs of the business.

Jennifer Ross: Like what questions about marketing impact and value are we gonna be asked by the business?

Jennifer Ross: and that clear goals and objectives are set for anybody in the team that's going to be leading those measurement efforts, what needs to be measured for us to demonstrate value and impact and I think the operational component as the how how do we set up our, you know, just talked about technology is how do we set up our systems or technologies to collect the data and insights that are needed and how do we literally build and then distribute those reports to the different audiences that we served and you know in terms of like okay, how how many measurements do we need?

Jennifer Ross: depends on the organization's plans and objectives and measurement requirements will evolve as the company evolves and grows and you know, that connects back to earlier part of the conversation to with start with, what's your goal and objective with measurement?

Jennifer Ross: What are we being asked to achieve?

Jennifer Ross: What will I need to know to measure my progress against that goal?

Jennifer Ross: it's then also the reality of what we can actually measure today and what we'll have to address to measure different things down the road because measurement is a journey.

Monica Behncke: It is.

Monica Behncke: what's what's your view?

Monica Behncke: I mean you've you've done a ton in the measurement, in the demand in a B.

Monica Behncke: How do you see that?

Monica Behncke: Two questions really.

Monica Behncke: Where is where is that in terms of priority?

Monica Behncke: And how do you see that kind of blend into the holistic measurement?

Alisa Groocock: So, I I would say, I think if you take a step back, I think holistic measurements probably need to have a very for lack of a better word, top of funnel brand awareness, you know, kind of a metric.

Alisa Groocock: You don't typically get into that with demand and a B.

Alisa Groocock: But that's really important like if you, you know, don't have, and that's the share of voice is kind of the gold standard there.

Alisa Groocock: Right.

Alisa Groocock: So, you know, are you a category leader?

Alisa Groocock: Are you struggling to, you know, be on the short list for RFP is all that kind of stuff?

Alisa Groocock: I think that's a really important metric that, has to be on any cmOS dashboard and doesn't typically sit in the demand gen or a B.

Alisa Groocock: I think most of the others do so things like, you know, do we have marketing qualified opportunities, which again is probably the gold standard that, you know, we want to move to, but not everybody is there right now.

Alisa Groocock: you know, of course pipeline and bookings, I think for more sophisticated clients, things like, you know, are you raising your average deal size?

Alisa Groocock: Are you, you know, shortening your deal cycle, right.

Alisa Groocock: Are you decreasing the the, you know, days it takes to to close a deal like those kinds of things.

Alisa Groocock: I'm a really big fan of crawl, walk run approach is, and I've done a whole lot of dashboard work and actually have created sort of, you know, if you're gonna crawl, these are the kinds of things you need to be able to do that.

Alisa Groocock: Here's what walking kind of looks like.

Alisa Groocock: And then here's what sort of running looks like and most clients honestly, if they're honest themselves are probably in that crawl or maybe crawl on the way to walk.

Alisa Groocock: So you know crawling is you know do you have an account scoring process in place?

Alisa Groocock: Is between marketing and sales?

Alisa Groocock: Do you have a few metrics?

Alisa Groocock: I think the less mature you are the fewer metrics you probably should have because you know if you're if you have just seen so many clients that overdo this they just over engineer it.

Alisa Groocock: They want to throw everything in the kitchen sink onto their dad dashboard.

Alisa Groocock: And the problem is a it's just a boat load of work to run the reports and track those things and then you've got the different audiences.

Alisa Groocock: You have to run an executive dashboard version of it.

Alisa Groocock: And then you've got the operational versions that allow you to troubleshoot the day to day stuff and all of a sudden you've kind of got a monster on your hands.

Alisa Groocock: And every one of those metrics creates a factorial number of things that you need to think about because when the metric is off then you have to dig into it of course and understand well what are the four or five different factors that could be causing us to have dropped in our you know engagement or in the number of contacts were bringing into our database or haven't forbid pipeline your bookings like what's causing that to drop.

Alisa Groocock: So every one of those metrics it's not just the reporting, it's all of the troubleshooting that you then have to do on that metric to get it back up again.

Alisa Groocock: So if you've got 30 of those who could, who could ever manage that, like try five, you know, and like do that really well and then you know, then walk and and run when you're ready.

Alisa Groocock: I don't know.

Alisa Groocock: That's that's my point of view from the client.

Monica Behncke: So I think, I think it's a great point of view and you kind of one of the challenges then or one of the ocean's a challenge is one of the mistakes that you see marketing leaders make is to me metrics too many, too many metrics that are not being used for anything other than filling up a piece of paper?

Monica Behncke: what are the other?

Monica Behncke: I don't know generally.

Monica Behncke: So if you have other kind of potholes that you see mistakes that you see marketing leaders make, you know, when measuring that that you kind of want to bring up to say, hey, pothole don't don't fall into that one.

Jennifer Ross: Yeah.

Jennifer Ross: Monica.

Jennifer Ross: You you touched on, I think one of the biggest for me because one of the questions that I would get asked all the time when I was in an analyst advisory role was do you have a list of marketing metrics that you can send me.

Jennifer Ross: and that's the first mistake leaders make is choosing metrics like they're choosing items on the menu without applying any business context.

Jennifer Ross: And that often leads to the other problem that we would see when we would look at people's dashboards.

Jennifer Ross: it's the look at all the stuff we're doing syndrome.

Jennifer Ross: The approach leads marketers to, as ELISA said like you're over rotating on all these measuring all these different activity metrics to show all the great stuff that you're doing.

Jennifer Ross: So I go back to what I was saying earlier, start with a goal and the objective, what you're being asked to achieve.

Jennifer Ross: What do I need to know to measure progress against that goal and think about the audiences that you're delivering that information to that are interested in reporting your on your performance against that goal.

Jennifer Ross: What information is gonna actually be meaningful to them.

Jennifer Ross: because the other thing I think the other mistake I have seen people make is when you get to buried in the weeds and what metrics you need to track, you can lose sight of the purpose of why you're measuring, which is to gain an understanding to help make you, you know, give you the opportunity to make more informed decisions about things to optimize the marketing efforts that are underway.

Jennifer Ross: You forget the purpose and get so hung up on just the measurement itself and you don't want to lose sight of that.

Jennifer Ross: Don't forget the point is to enable better decision making.

Alisa Groocock: Hey Monica, I would sort of add, having said that people should probably reduce the number of metrics they have, I also think you don't want to go too crazy with that.

Alisa Groocock: And the reason I say that is, I think it's important to have metrics that are kind of across the buyer's journey.

Alisa Groocock: So something that shows that, you know, the brand awareness, that thought leadership, that you're getting that, you know, raising your share of voice, right?

Alisa Groocock: Something that shows, let's call it middle of fun, all kinds of things, marketing qualified opportunities, meetings that have been captured if you have a big BDR organization, those kinds of things and then tying that into, you know, things like pipeline and bookings.

Alisa Groocock: And the reason I say that is, I've seen so many clients that do a lot of the activity metrics at the front end, Right.

Alisa Groocock: Very operational activity metrics.

Alisa Groocock: And then they point to pipeline and bookings and say, hey, we're, we're doing really well and they lose a ton of credibility with sales when they do that because it's like too much of a chasm there, right.

Alisa Groocock: And you're not going to fix that with reporting that usually is a sign that there's some sort of alignment that's a little bit broken.

Alisa Groocock: But I think the reporting where you're doing very top, you know, activity level, top of funnel reporting and then pointing to, you know, pipeline is just, it creates a lot of credibility problems.

Alisa Groocock: So I think you need to have the sandwich in the middle there somewhere where you're able to tell a more compelling and cohesive story.

Alisa Groocock: That doesn't mean 30 metrics, but I think you need to have enough that you, you can sort of tell a story across a cycle.

Alisa Groocock: Do you know what I mean?

MONICA Yeah, I think, I think it's great advice to say if, if you think about the buyer's journey, which may be shorter, maybe longer, you know, depending on, on your solution and and your target audience.

Alisa Groocock: But I think that's really good advice to think about it that way.

Alisa Groocock: I'll throw in my couple of like pet peeves from when I was a practitioner.

Alisa Groocock: one is putting numbers on without a goal.

Alisa Groocock: So it's like we got 12.

Alisa Groocock: It's 12 good or bad or I have no idea,, not wherever possible.

Alisa Groocock: Doing trending and tracking.

Alisa Groocock: So it's like we got 12.

Alisa Groocock: Well is it twice as much half as much.

Alisa Groocock: It's like where is it compared to both the goal and compared to where you were before?

Alisa Groocock: I think those are two really important things that, that sometimes people miss and then the last thing to combat, that, that proliferation of metrics.

Alisa Groocock: sometimes people have to need them for operationally.

Alisa Groocock: But for every time you talk to show an audience, I always like to ask people, what decision have you made based on that or what decision will you make based on that.

Alisa Groocock: And if the answer is none for month after month, it's almost like, you know, clearing out your closet.

Alisa Groocock: I haven't worn it in a year.

Alisa Groocock: It's time to get rid that kind of applying the same sort of philosophy to the metrics.

Alisa Groocock: I remember getting, you know, literally a novella on, on web metrics.

Alisa Groocock: And I'm like, are we making decisions on this?

Alisa Groocock: Well, no, well, why are we producing this huge thing, you know, every month, if if we need a piece of information, let's dynamically go and get it and just save all of that time.

Alisa Groocock: So those are my, my little tips from, from my, my practitioner days.

Jennifer Ross: It's making me it doesn't bring you joy.

Monica Behncke: It doesn't, it doesn't bring you a joyful decision.

Monica Behncke: It don't do it.

Monica Behncke: I wanted to take a little side trip, let's take just a really short side trip into revenue operations.

Monica Behncke: A lot of companies, you know, we're we're talking about marketing operations and marketing measurement, but a lot of companies are thinking about revenue operations.

Alisa Groocock: What changes does anything change when you're, when you're thinking about revenue operations versus marketing operations at least you when I sure, I don't I don't know that the metrics change particularly.

Alisa Groocock: I think the metrics are roughly the same.

Alisa Groocock: They're the ones that we've been talking about throughout this call.

Alisa Groocock: It's sort of, you know, it's it's brand awareness and it's, you know, your marketing qualified opportunities and it's your pipeline and your bookings and those sorts of things, what I think does change is some of the process pieces, right?

Alisa Groocock: So when you start to put those functions together, and I think there's we were talking about this when we were prepping for this call, you know, you start to put those,, organizations together and you just need to meet really clear on who's driving what and what, it's not just about the change, right?

Alisa Groocock: It's about, you know, what is, what is it that's different about how the organization needs to function and the decisions that we're going to make as opposed to, you know, we just put these now put these two functions, you know, reporting up into one leader,, you know, that's gonna create a lot of problems for you.

Alisa Groocock: So I don't think it changes the actual metrics, but I do think it can change.

Alisa Groocock: And the promise of it, of course, is that everybody gets aligned around what the whole organization needs needs to measure, Right?

Alisa Groocock: So, you get out of that finger pointing stuff.

Alisa Groocock: I think that's the reason that a lot of organizations are trying to move towards robots, is to say, you know, we'll have a more cohesive, more comprehensive way of looking at the accounts we're going after, how we engage them the handoffs from marketing to sales.

Alisa Groocock: And so I think, I think that's the promise of it.

Alisa Groocock: You know, I've heard mixed, mixed things from people, I'm curious what the two of you and, and you know, even if the audience weighs in, you know, what are, what are people experiencing around this?

Jennifer Ross: What I think we're finding is there's a lot of focus on the work change and some of the promise of what robots could do is getting a little bit lost, you know, lost in the sauce.

Jennifer Ross: So you said something when we were prepping for this session that I loved, which was you made a reference to it being like a merger and acquisition merger gone wrong.

Jennifer Ross: and that resonated with me because organizations moved to this red box model with the best intentions, just like, you know, mergers and acquisitions happen with a vision for the power of combining these entities and in this case marketing and operations teams.

Jennifer Ross: But like anything else, the devil's in the details and the integration of the two.

Jennifer Ross: Like it is with an acquisition.

Jennifer Ross: and I recently had a conversation with a couple of other CMOS that I had the pleasure of having some time with on a, on an event we went to recently.

Jennifer Ross: And just coincidentally this topic came up, all three of us happened to be chatting about the fact that we're in our revenue operations model, ours that intensified as newer and they were sharing some of the, you know, their thoughts about what had happened in their organizations and both said very similar things to your point.

Jennifer Ross: It's who would argue with the concept right.

Jennifer Ross: It's, you know, this all sounds really good, but what happened in both of their cases were that sure, revenue operations was working closely with sales and marketing, but they were still doing it in silos.

Jennifer Ross: Like okay, I'm capturing requirements from marketing and I'm doing this, I'm capturing requirements from sales and I'm doing this.

Jennifer Ross: And what never ended up happening was that idea of connecting and unifying sales and marketing.

Jennifer Ross: So it's a great model in theory, but I think organizations underestimate what it takes to implement.

Jennifer Ross: I would call it just like we were talking about the, you know, the change, the MQ L to looking at opportunities.

Jennifer Ross: It's another type of transformation.

Monica Behncke: Yeah, I think I I agree with you and my my personal view on this is too often people think of it as an order change and I don't, I think the or portion of it should be the last decision, Not the first decision.

Monica Behncke: The first decision is what is it that separate that needs to be aligned?

Monica Behncke: Like how do you, is it, is it we're working off different data.

Monica Behncke: Are we addressing different metrics?

Monica Behncke: Is it really weird trying to solve the you have crappy leads problem?

Monica Behncke: And an order change is not the place to start.

Monica Behncke: You may end up there, but but the place to start is defining what is it you're trying to get out of this and and truly, you know assessing is it a process problem?

Monica Behncke: Is it a data problem isn't an infrastructure problem, Like what is that addressing that first and then letting that inform if there's no change.

Monica Behncke: we're coming to the end of the time.

Monica Behncke: We have one more poll.

Monica Behncke: I'm going to ask staff to put the pole up as and we'll we'll let you do this this pole and and I'll give Jennifer and ELISA a quick minute to say what do you think companies should be working on?

Monica Behncke: in in 2023, what should be the priority?

Monica Behncke: And then we'll go to Q&A.

Jennifer Ross: I'll take a stab first at that.

Jennifer Ross: I mean, I'll state the obvious like one of the biggest things I think on the agenda for marketing measurement will be the shift that we've been talking about today.

Jennifer Ross: and as we talked about earlier, that doesn't mean what you have in place today goes away.

Jennifer Ross: It's the evolution, it's the building on that we talked about earlier.

Jennifer Ross: And another thing that I would say it will be on the agenda is a continued focus on measuring customer value because organizations will continue to look to growing through their existing customers in this challenging economic climate that we're in.

Jennifer Ross: and we haven't talked a lot about those customer metrics today.

Jennifer Ross: We've talked about some of the core ones earlier, but it's just as important to think about balancing those with customer metrics like retention rates, lifetime value calculations Upsell cross sell while it share and also what's important to the customer.

Jennifer Ross: So tracking and measuring things like customer sent scores, utilization rates of your products and services.

Jennifer Ross: So those are, those are some, I think things that are I can say are top of mind for me And another area of focus for us personally and intensify is and I think others share this is measuring the impact of the lift of our marketing efforts that are fueled by intent data because we're saying in 10 data is now table stakes right?

Jennifer Ross: And people are investing it but like I said earlier with the survey that we did we're finding a lot of people don't necessarily know how to take that intent intelligence and activated or think about how we infuse it in ways that we can actually see the difference that it's having and that's key for us because we want to be drinking our own champagne of course.

Jennifer Ross: So those are just some things that are top of mind for me it

Monica Behncke: sounds like we need another round table on on the the customer measurements as opposed to the you know, kind of the pipeline and funnel measurements.

Monica Behncke: Ellen, do you have some questions for us?

Ellen Smoley: I do.

Ellen Smoley: So we'll spend the next couple of minutes answering some questions.

Ellen Smoley: Thank you all for the conversation today first and foremost.

Ellen Smoley: Nicole had a question that she submitted via the chat.

Ellen Smoley: so she was saying em que ele that's easy to do in your system.

Ellen Smoley: are there any suggestions on systems that help with aligning the robust MQA concept.

Jennifer Ross: Yeah, I because because my brain is going in a couple of different directions on that one.

Jennifer Ross: The first I think just because I live and breathe it every day now at intensify is I don't, I'm first thinking before even the systems when you're looking at something at an account level is where you know, intent, the intent data aspect of it can become, you know, is really important because you can see activity that might be happening at an account level.

Jennifer Ross: So you don't have the contact level but you have an account level in a particular geo that there might be some activity going on and you start to marry that with other intelligence that you have.

Jennifer Ross: so I'm not sure the specific, you know, the specific question is getting at, you know, then there are technologies like ours that will enable you to act on that intelligence by doing things like display advertising and content syndication and you know, things like that, but I'm not sure if that's getting at the the answer to the question.

Jennifer Ross: I'm not sure.

Alisa Groocock: I'm not sure it's a systems fixed.

Alisa Groocock: I hate to say, I mean I wish that were that it was a technology investment that would help with this but I don't think that it is.

Alisa Groocock: I think it's more of a process set of fixes than a systems or technology fixed.

Alisa Groocock: So I think it's things like having BDR’s.

Alisa Groocock: That then, you know, that take intent data, it's, you know, putting intent data together.

Alisa Groocock: Like back to your point, jen about the fact that people don't think they're using it strategically.

Alisa Groocock: So how do we package up that data and get that to the folks who need to act on it in a way that's digestible for them.

Alisa Groocock: but, you know, I don't think there's a system that you can buy that's gonna do that.

Alisa Groocock: I think that's, you know, you might find some ways to automate the creation of reports, but I don't think that's a systems fixed.

Alisa Groocock: I think that's a that's a process fixed and the same thing with the BDRS, you know, putting opportunities into your sales force automation system with multiple buying group members attached.

Alisa Groocock: I don't know that there's any shortcuts systems wise, for that either.

Alisa Groocock: I mean, maybe there are some things that operationally can be done to make sure that all of the customers that are in a particular department gets somehow, you know, attached to each other behind the scenes, but that's probably about the best you can do.

Alisa Groocock: I think it's it's more, I think it's more process fixes than systems, but that's

Monica Behncke: so it sounds like from a technology perspective, chances are that most companies out there already have the technology that they need at least at the core basis.

Monica Behncke: It's it's maybe some skills of how to use it that that if you don't have, you know, either an agency or your vendor can can help you get there to use the technology correctly and then to your point ELISA it's it's then that the people have to have it, the processes have to be mapped but it it's probably not go out and buy something.

Monica Behncke: That's right, perfect.

Monica Behncke: Thank you.

Ellen Smoley: So you all started to talk about the second question that we have here and that's what are some of the first steps I can take in my company to shift away from em que ele.

Ellen Smoley: So ELISA you started to go there jen Monica, do you have any additional feedback that you can help to answer that question?

Jennifer Ross: It has to start, I think I said it earlier in the session, it's worth repeating.

Jennifer Ross: It has to start with educating like why?

Jennifer Ross: It's what, what you know every big change that you make in any organization starts with a trigger like what's the trigger in our organization right now to start talking about this, what's the why in the why should we make this change?

Jennifer Ross: Because again it's not a like at least it used a good phrase earlier, like you can't just flip a switch and make it happen so there has to be education and socialization of them, just like you would do for any other big change management project or any other transformation going on in the organization and you know depending on the person who has the idea that I want to drive this change, you'll need executive sponsorship to do that.

Alisa Groocock: I think a good step can also be like putting an assessment in place and there's some you know organizations and agencies that can do this or you can kind of come up with your own internally but saying, okay, there are five or six different categories that need to be addressed if we're gonna make this kind of transformation.

Alisa Groocock: It's some of some of the systems things, it's maybe some incentives with your sellers.

Alisa Groocock: It's some of the process issues right?

Alisa Groocock: There's probably four or five things that are really critical as you get this kind of thing underway.

Alisa Groocock: If you're going to run a pilot, let's say what are the things that we need to to really begin, what are the conversations we need to have and and then just assess yourself, be be honest, like get a get a group of people together a tiger team together and assess yourself honestly on how you're doing in each of those key areas.

Alisa Groocock: I think that's a really important starting point.

Alisa Groocock: So then you kind of know what you're solving for and where your low hanging fruit is and where you're bigger nuts are that you have to crack

Monica Behncke: one of my favorite sayings you guys know because I say it all the time is you're not gonna buy a better mousetrap if you don't believe you have a mouse problem.

Monica Behncke: and if if em que os is a better mouse trap, people have to understand what the shortcomings that you have right now is now the problem with that is for marketing organizations especially cmos.

Monica Behncke: It's really hard to march up to your your ceo or your board and go, hey, you know what we've been doing for the last five years, it's wrong.

Monica Behncke: it's not a one conversation.

Monica Behncke: So I think that you know what jen was saying earlier about this is an evolution.

Monica Behncke: We're gonna keep this measurement because it adds value here, we need to, but we're missing this other value and that's the better mousetrap is is filling in the gap as opposed to saying we've been doing it in a horrible way because that's just a really hard thing in some organizations you can do that.

Monica Behncke: But in some organizations that's a very difficult converse to have.

Monica Behncke: So I think that that the way you posture that conversation is important, but I think all three of us have said the same thing is you have to start with the convincing part.

Monica Behncke: and and then I think you're right Ali says is once you've convinced people kind of philosophical have a plan and it may start with an audit that says, you know, here are the things that we have to do, thankfully.

Monica Behncke: It's probably not got a technology, you know, budget associated with it.

Monica Behncke: Right?

Ellen Smoley: Well, I love the Mousetrap analogy anytime that you used.

Ellen Smoley: so thank you Alisa, jennifer and Monica.

Ellen Smoley: Thank you so very much for your insights today.

Ellen Smoley: Thank you all to joining us.

Ellen Smoley: And for our last round table in our series, we'll see you in the new year.

Ellen Smoley: and we hope that you all have a great holiday.

Ellen Smoley: So thanks everybody for attending today.

Ellen Smoley: And we'll see you at the new year.

Ellen Smoley: Thank you.