Chris Walker’s Post

Some big news…. We just launched DemandGPT, a niche-LLM trained specifically on experiment data, advertising playbooks, forecasting models, step-by-step implementation guides, and much more from all of the collective learnings at Refine Labs over the past 5 years. Get instant answers to your most important Demand Gen questions and priorities, supported by data and detailed documentation. -How should I plan my Marketing budget for next year?  -How do I structure my Google Ads account? -How do I forecast my Demand Gen spend and impact for next year? -What are the most important KPIs to present at my Marketing QBR? -What metrics should I use to optimize my LinkedIn ads? -How do I launch Connected TV ads? -What are the best creative formats for Reddit ads? -How do I launch a podcast in less than 30 days?  -How do I implement all of the Demand Gen data and tracking in my CRM? The questions and answers are literally infinite. And the library of data, research and information is growing every day. __ Now, you don't need to bet your career or next year’s financial performance on a random blog you found in Google or anecdotal answers you got in a Slack community. Most of the information you find on the internet today about Demand Gen is outdated, written by someone in the Philippines (or now written by AI), anecdotal at best, not backed by data, and likely irrelevant to your situation. DemandGPT gives you instant answers, frameworks, best practices, implementation roadmaps and more with: -Contributions from more than 100+ leading Demand Gen experts like Sidney Waterfall, Sam Kuehnle, Ashley Lewin, Christian Williams, Tara Panu, Chris Walker, and so many more. -Data and learnings published from work at over 200+ of the leading B2B companies.    -Learning and insights gathered from more than 450,000 collective hours of work, tests, and data analysis There’s never been a more comprehensive hub of information to plan, launch, and optimize your Demand Gen strategy. #marketing #demandgen #AI #strategy p.s. You can get 15% off all Vault plans powered by DemandGPT using the coupon code "Chris15" at checkout. Offer valid until May 15, 2024 ✌️

B2B Companies have been talking about Sales & Marketing misalignment for more than a decade. They’ve tried to solve it with: -Changing marketing goals from MQLs to SQLs (didn’t work) -Putting a Chief Revenue Officer in charge of Marketing (didn’t work) -Having a weekly pipeline meeting (didn’t work) -Buying an ABM platform (didn’t work) B2B companies always try to fix GTM at tactical execution (let’s hire a new growth marketer to do SEO for us) or tech & tools (let’s buy an ABM platform and change from MQLs to MQAs). They do this because it’s easy but it doesn’t solve the real problem. It’s superficial & visible. It’s easy to report back to the board in a powerpoint slide about a new tool or a new tactic. But the real root cause of these issues is so much more fundamental. It’s deeply rooted & invisible. The real root cause is the operating model & data model that companies consciously or subconsciously adopt that drives the mindset of executives, investors, and GTM teams, and influences every decision they make. Lead -> MQL/MQA -> SAL -> SQL -> SQO -> Closed Won And here are the core issues: 1. Operates in an assembly line of silo’d departments instead of an allbound integrated revenue team. 2. Evaluation of the ROI and Impact of investments are made in silos by each department (Marketing, Sales, SDRs) instead of within a Unified GTM model. 3. There are no commonly accepted KPIs and "attribution" strategies for Demand Creation, so the entire GTM team doesn't focus or invest here, leaving the entire GTM engine highly imbalanced & inefficient. 4. Most companies use a model that was created between 2012 and 2017, despite how much has changed in the world in the past 6 years. 5. Marketing is optimizing for MQLs/MQAs or a poor definition of “pipeline” that doesn’t align to close won revenue. The data is clear in every Salesforce instance that core Marketing KPIs don’t align to closed won revenue, sales velocity, and marketing ROI. 6. SDRs optimize for SQLs or meetings, not closed won revenue. 7. All of the technology, tools, and tactical “best practices” are built around getting leads, MQLs/MQAs, and SQLs, further entrenching companies getting stuck in the model. 8. GTM teams are stuck in the incremental. How do we improve our outbound connect rates by 1%? How do we reduce our cost per lead by $3? There are no breakthroughs in growth with incremental improvements. Optimizing a broken model is not the solution, it’s changing the model. 9. No standardized data model so every company reinvents the wheel in RevOps w/o clear, performance-based definitions. Everybody on the GTM team is looking at different metrics & decisions are based on experiences and opinion instead of science & data. __ When you are putting together your 2024 plan, use these ideas as a guide. Clearly identify the core issue(s) that are holding you back. Create a solution that actually solves the root cause, instead of treating the symptoms. #b2b #gtm #revops

Should we publish our pricing on our website? B2B companies come up with a million excuses and objections about why not to do it: “We need our rep to talk to the customer to ‘provide value’ first before we tell them the price.” “If we publish pricing on our website, our competitors will find out and undercut us.” (lol as if your competitors can’t figure out your pricing on their own) “Our pricing is way too complicated. If we publish it, our customers will get confused and won’t talk to our Sales team.” And a million different iterations of these objections and excuses that are all about the company and nothing about the customer. Every excuse has everything to do with what you want and zero to do with what the customer wants. __ The most black & white way to address this at your company - which is exactly what I did in 2017 - was I ran a survey to all the decision makers at our Tier 1 & Tier 2 accounts. One of the questions was: When buying XYZ technology, what steps in your buying process would you like to accomplish *before* you talk to a Sales representative? More than 600 total accounts responded. 93% of the respondents said they want to know the price before they talk with a Sales rep. There it is. Simple. 600 decision makers at target accounts telling you exactly how they want to buy. Are you going to listen to your customers or are you going to be selfish and only think about what you want? It’s black and white. If you ask your target customers the exact same question, you would get the exact same answer. If you’re customer-centric, it’s obvious you would publish pricing on your website. #marketing #b2b #sales #gtm p.s. Bulk procurement companies like Vendr continue to gain market traction because B2B companies are so selfish in their direct Sales motion. Buyers would rather just go to a company like this than go through the dog & pony show of BANT qualification with a 22-year old, then see a canned demo 2 weeks later, then need to haggle with a rep for 15% off list price. By the time they’re done, it’s been 10 weeks to buy a $40k/year SaaS tool. Instead, they’ll go to Vendr and get the best price w/o any of the nonsense. And the B2B company will take a 30-45% cut on margin between discounting & referral fees, all because they refuse to be customer-centric in their Sales process. The traditional “best practices” for B2B go-to-market motions are completely misaligned with what a modern B2B buyer wants today.

In 2019, I was one of the first people to post video content on LinkedIn consistently, and 5 years later, it paid off BIG. Here’s why I did it (and it’s not the reason you might think): Many people think I had some grand plan about video content. That it would be the future of LinkedIn and I saw something that other people didn’t see. But that’s not the case. In reality, it was so much more simple than that. I started posting mostly video content in August 2019 because tons of people plagiarized all my written content. I’d post content and wake up the next day to a half dozen people copying verbatim my exact post. Someone in the UK would just straight copy and paste it. Someone in Germany would translate it to German and write the same thing. Lots of people called it out but LinkedIn did nothing about it. So I thought to myself, they can’t copy a video. My face. My voice. My depth of understanding. So that's what I did. Video content created a whole new level of trust and credibility for me on LinkedIn because you can see and feel my understanding of the topics, my ability to explain them down to the exact metrics and root cause, and my conviction in the ideas based on tons of large-scale data. ___ Lots of people still copy my content today. But now it’s happening differently for me and many other companies and thought leaders. Now people are copying my messaging. They trademark my language. They steal my ideas. But put most people to the test - put them in front of a crowd for a live Q&A. They’ll get detailed questions and break like cheap glass. Because it’s easy to copy words that someone else said. It’s not easy to fake truly understanding the market, the metrics, the concepts. Be warned: this already happens a lot in product marketing / messaging and will continue to accelerate. Everyone copies each other. It’s never been easier to change the copy on your homepage. One day they’re an ABM tool. The next day they sell intent data. The next day they are Sales Automation AI. They can keep jumping from messaging trend to messaging trend, copying whatever seems to be sticking as the flavor of the week. Because of this, there will be (it’s already happening) a huge shift in how product marketing works. In the future, the only things that matter are: 1. What your actual customers say about you to your prospective customers  2. What your content consumers and community members say about you to your target market People will look at your website. But most people aren’t going to believe what you’re saying there. People will talk to your Sales rep (since they have to in most cases), but most aren’t going to believe them either. Or your fancy messaging deck. They will get the real information from your customers, content consumers, and community members. Because that’s one of the only trustworthy, believable sources of information left in B2B SaaS/Tech industry. #marketing #productmarketing #b2b

It’s been 90 days since I’ve had a drink of alcohol, and I feel superhuman. I’ve tracked my performance and habits for more than 5 years using WHOOP and in my data it’s super clear: Alcohol is one of the worst things you can do to limit your performance - both physically and mentally. There’s a shift happening in Austin, TX and I’m sure it’s happening in other parts of the World as well, where lots of people are choosing to abstain from alcohol. There’s starting to be less of a negative stigma around not drinking alcohol, thankfully. It's crazy that for so long it's been socially weird to *not* drink alcohol, despite the clear, obvious data about the negative effects. In the business World and in lots of B2B companies I’ve worked at before, “Culture” revolves around alcohol. Let’s get everyone drunk at Sales Kickoff so people can bond. Let’s have a networking event at a bar. Let’s do a happy hour for business development. Let’s all go out to the club in Vegas and then be hungover in the tradeshow booth all day tomorrow. Hopefully more companies and the business World at large start to shift away from this outdated social norm. __ I'm not sure this is a forever thing for me, but it's definitely working for me right now. When I make changes in my life and start to feel a lot of positive momentum, I always keep it going. Lots of people say the positive effects continue to grow the longer you abstain from alcohol. I'll continue to report back on my own personal experience. Anyone else trying this? Seeing this shift? What's been your experience? It feels like this is a topic we need more on LinkedIn and in business generally. #b2b #alcohol #whoop #performance p.s. soda water with lime tastes just as good as a tequila soda lime 🙂

B2B Marketers on LinkedIn love to talk about “building brand” but the reality is that on average less than 10% of Marketing investments go there. And then another 2-5% is spent on “Customer Marketing”. And then another 2-3% is spent on Marketing to active in pipeline deals. And finally, 80-90% of the Entire Marketing program budget is spent specifically to trigger signals. Trigger Signals = Invest money to create a signal for Sales to follow up or otherwise take action on -Google Ads / Bing Ads -Content Syndication (Spread out across 5+ vendors) -Virtual events / webinars  -Trade Show booths / Field events  -LinkedIn lead gen programs  -Buy an ad to get an account on our website so we can call it an MQA -The list goes on an on And the reality is very few companies track, measure, and analyze the *outcomes* of these signals. There are signals where tons of Marketing dollars get spent and tons of SDR human capital is invested that literally generate $0 in pipeline, but they never see it because they don't track the data. When you track and analyze signals, you get IMMEDIATE, CLEAR, FAST insights about how to optimize your Sales & Marketing investments. Both at a global level - i.e. these are things we do that never work across all segments and regions - cut them. And at a segment level - i.e. these are the things that really work for our Enterprise segment in EMEA. The growth at all costs era is OVER. Signals, specifically, tracking, measuring, and analyzing the OUTCOMES of all of these signals, is the clearest path to building and scaling an efficient, sustainable GTM engine and achieving Rule of 40. #gtm #marketing #sales #b2b p.s. I’ll be sharing more details on how CAC payback period impacts EBITDA & growth performance. Companies that spend 50% of revenue on Sales & Marketing and don’t have a strong ROI will almost never be able to achieve these core financial performance metrics that today's investor requires. p.p.s. Signals are entirely new dimension of data that sit alongside and associate with Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities.

Most “inbound” leads are not actually inbound. They just get tagged that way because they come from Marketing. It’s actually just because you have some data and have been able to architect that data to triggers Sales to reach out to someone that didn’t ask to talk to you. An MQL score is not an “inbound” lead. Neither is an e-book download. Neither is a webinar attendee. Neither is a PQL. And these types of “leads” make up 90% or more of the total “inbound” volume. ___ This distinction of “Inbound” and “Outbound” leads is super outdated for this exact reason. Instead, segment how Sales/SDRs follow up by: (1) Declared Intent - A qualified buyer declares intent to buy by asking to speak with your Sales team about buying (Demo Request, Contact Form, Talk to Sales, Get Pricing, etc.). This segment of buyers should entirely bypass the SDR role and go directly to an experienced rep that can truly help the customer and close the deal. Figure out what you need to do operationally to create an efficient buying experience for your customer and make it happen for your customer. Plus, stop sending your best prospects (declared intent) to your least experienced people (SDRs). (2) Not Declared Intent - A qualified buyer doesn’t specifically ask to talk to your Sales team about buying, but we have *signals* that drives Sales to reach out to try to get a meeting. This is a massive segment of buyers who have shown some *signals* of intent that should be queued and prioritized for outreach. Look at ALL the available signals across the entire GTM and optimize the timing, targeting, channel, message, and offers to this large pool of potentially in-market buyers. Build a Pipeline Architecture to track every single signal that drives Sales/SDRs to outreach and the disposition of that outreach all the way through the Sales process to Closed Won/Lost. ___ Most “inbound” leads are not actually inbound. They just get tagged that way because they come from Marketing. It’s time to break down the outdated department-level silo’s that prevent us from seeing the bigger picture and optimizing a holistic GTM strategy. The future is an account-based, signal-driven, integrated GTM Team. And that requires an entirely different set of KPIs, terminology, and analytics to plan, report, analyze, diagnose, and optimize the investments and strategy across all the GTM departments. #GTM #sales #sdrs #marketing #b2b

Signal-based selling is the future of B2B go-to-market. The first wave was the movement to account-based (Right Fit). And the next wave that’s coming on strong right now is signal-based (Right Time). Signals are signs of intent that our buyers (people and/or accounts) send us that indicate some type of interest. Every time your SDR or Sales team takes an action to engage with a prospective customer, there is a “signal” that drives that action. Example signals might be: Website - Demo Request MQL Score Intent Data - First Party - Pricing Page Visit ZoomInfo - Cold Lead Webinar Attendee Intent Data - Third Party - G2 Intent Data - Third Party - Usergems  Website - Content Download - XYZ E-Book LinkedIn - Content Download - Lead Gen Form And for a mature, developed B2B company, over a year, they would collect literally millions of data points around this. Signal -> Sales Action -> Disposition (Recycled, Meeting Booked, Qualified Pipe, Closed Won) And when you analyze those 1 million data points, you see clear patterns around what intent signals lead to high sales productivity, closed won revenue & sales velocity. Conversely, you quickly see all the signals that Sales & SDRs take action on that are completely unproductive - total waste. This data & insight are critically important to all GTM leaders. Because Sales resources are the most expensive resources in the entire company. And triggering them to take action on low quality signals means: -We are wasting significant Marketing program and headcount investments to create buyer signals that don’t drive revenue. -We have (sometimes extreme) excess of Sales & SDR headcount to take actions that are clearly unproductive and don’t lead to results. -We likely have serious revenue leak in our early stage sales process because we blend tons of low quality leads with a small amount of high quality ones. The problem? Most B2B companies, even highly successful ones, don’t track this data! Here’s how to fix it in less than 30 days: 1. Every time your Sales team takes an action, automatically log the data of WHY they did it (what was the signal that triggered our Sales team to take an action). 2. Track the OUTCOME of every time your Sales team takes action. And then track it all the way to Recycled / Close. 3. Aggregate and analyze the data and find the patterns. Once you’ve collected a meaningful amount of data, you will see clear patterns on what buyer intent signals lead to high sales productivity and which signals are entirely a waste of time for Sales to engage. 4. Optimize your entire GTM investments and strategy related to Intent Capture based on this data. _____ In this new era of EFFICIENT GROWTH, we need to use DATA to optimize processes, identify and cut waste, and adjust investments. Department-level analytics don't tell the full story. We need to look at the data as a HOLISTIC GTM - not analytics & data silo'd by departments. #gtm #marketing #sales #b2b #sdr

Using Signals vs. Measuring Signals Basically every B2B company out there is *using signals*: -PQL scoring from MadKudu -Blackbox MQA scoring from an ABM platform -First-party website deanonymization from R!B2B or Clearbit -MQL scoring -Job change signals from Usergems or LinkedIn Sales Nav -Cold target account list pulls from Zoominfo -Third-party signals from Bombora or TrustRadius -Content downloads from third-party syndication vendors -First-party Handraiser signals The list goes on and on. And the realization that everyone needs? A far majority of the B2B GTM investments are made to create and action against signals (Marketing programs, tech & tools, SDR & Sales headcount). B2B companies spend a majority of their Marketing investments (60-80% of total Marketing program budget) to Create signals. And they spend a ton of money on technology platforms and data providers to feed them signals. And they spend a massive amount on human capital to follow up and take action against these signals. So what’s the issue? Basically 0% of B2B companies properly track the OUTCOMES and EFFECTIVENESS of all these signals. It's a total blackhole. Then when it’s all said and done, they have absolutely no idea what specific signals matter & what providers deliver them. This has led to massive GTM Bloat. B2B companies spend so much money on human capital & technology & advertising & data that literally drives no results. The data is sitting in plain sight but nobody looks at it this way to see these CLEAR, OBVIOUS insights about what to do next. Every technology and data platform is focused on providing you with signals - who wouldn’t? Selling you data is about the highest gross margin thing anyone could sell you. At Passetto, we’re focused on *measuring signals* so: 1. Every signal is tracked the same way across the GTM. No more “inbound” vs. “outbound” where data is tracked 100% different between departments. 2. You know clearly based on large scale data, which signal providers actually deliver value and which signals are total noise & unproductive. 3. You have the data to cut millions of dollars per year in Marketing investments spent to create signals that don’t produce results. 4. You know clearly which specific signals are the most effective for sales velocity, sales productivity & quota attainment across the entire GTM. 5. You have clear visibility into what signals are most effective by account segment, geography & virtually any other dimension. The signals that matter for Enterprise accounts in North America are undoubtedly different from the signals that matter for SMB accounts in APAC. __ Sales productivity and Sales velocity can vary 100X or more depending on the **signal**. The future of B2B GTM is account-based. signal-driven. And deeply integrated ✌️

Measuring the ROI of an individual piece of content (like this LinkedIn video, for instance) is not only a huge waste of time, it’s flat out not accurate. Here’s what to do instead: 1. When it comes to “ROI”, focus on measuring the ROI of the *channel* instead of each individual piece of content. You don’t attribute the “ROI” of your results at the gym all to that 1 set of biceps curls you did 3 months ago. It makes no sense. But that’s effectively what B2B marketers try to do with content. Instead, recognize that the impact is based on the *accumulation* of consistent high quality activities executed over a sustained period of time. It’s easy to see that it’s more appropriate to attribute the “ROI” of your bicep results to all of the sets of bicep curls you’ve done in life, instead of a single set. You can do the same when measuring the success of content - measure the “ROI” based on the channel/activity. For create demand channels, use self-reported attribution. For capture demand channels, use software-based attribution. Using this method, we’ve attributed $7.3MM ARR to our podcast and $5.1MM ARR to LinkedIn. It sounds simple, because it is. 2. THEN, when it comes to optimizing your content strategy, focus on measuring the *quality* of the activity (e.g. comments, engagement from target customers, DMs received, etc.). In the gym, you can measure what type of bicep curl you did, how much weight you used, and how many reps. This isn’t about attribute “ROI” but instead about measuring the *quality* of the activity. You can do the same with content: You can read all of the comments & who wrote them (qualitative), you can listen to what people say in the DMs or on Sales calls (qualitative), you can measure engagement like “views” or “likes”. These signals help you optimize the activity - what topics resonate with my audience? what is the best time to post? how frequently should I post? Does video or text work better? - You get answers to important questions, but it has nothing to do with proving or measuring “ROI”. ___ The whole mindset of measuring the “ROI” of a single piece of content persists from old thinking from the days of blogs and gated e-books in the early 2010s. That’s almost a decade ago. When people went into the office, used a desktop computer and consumed content offline in PDF format. Things change. In today’s World, it’s time to focus on the bigger picture. STOP trying to prove the “ROI” of each individual piece of content. Instead, understand that the results are built through the accumulation of tons of content & touch points over a sustained period of time. START measuring the “ROI” of each channel overall instead of by each individual blog or video. #demand #marketing #b2b #sales #content