Speaker 0: Hello, and good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our next session, which I’m super excited to introduce you to today. Um, I have Evo and Julian here from EVQL, and we’re excited to be chatting through moving from MQL, uh, generation to pipeline revenue, um, generation in b two b. So without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to our speakers and hope you enjoy the session. Please, um, know that this session is being recorded, and we encourage you to use the q and a to ask questions and engage through chat as well. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Ivo Campos, and I am here with my cofounder, Julian Eniko. Uh, and today, we want to talk about how to move from MQL generation to pipeline generation in the b two b area. So let me quickly share my screen, and this way, I will be able to talk about that. Cool. So here are our nice pictures. So before we start, uh, very quickly, feel free please to leave any any question, uh, in the chat, in the q and a, and we will try to reply. If we are not able to reply, we’ll make it, uh, later. So, uh, feel free to to leave your questions, and we will try to to, uh, reply as much as possible. Before we start, thanks again to all the partners and, uh, that are helping to have this amazing event. So happy to have you there. And very quickly, I would like to make a quick intro of us, Iviko. Uh, we are the marketing operations partner for b two b at Scale Apps. Uh, what we try to do is to connect the marketing actions and the marketing strategy with the business results. We mainly use the tools, uh, that you can see there, HubSpot, Salesforce, and account engagement. But it’s true that also we use a a lot of, uh, technologies and a lot of tools that we try to connect to the marketing strategy. So entering in on the topic, uh, the MQL is dead. This is not new. No. This is for sure, uh, it’s not the first time that you hear that. It’s not the first time it’s not the first session that you that you, uh, go, uh, to to discuss about this.

And we can see if we go to Internet, we will see a lot of people talking about that, talking about this topic, uh, giving advice, uh, and even we can see it in the numbers. We can see and this is, uh, an study from, uh, Madduco that shows that even though the companies, they accomplish 100% of their NQL goals, uh, only they accomplish around 30% of their pipeline goals. So this is something, um, that, uh, that it should be happening, but it’s not happening. And why, uh, we still see a lot of b to b marketers that are uh, taking their own KPIs. Uh, we see still see a lot of processes, disconnection between sales and marketing. And the reason why we think we need to to to come back here and talk about this topic is because we think that marketers need concrete steps. So we bring our experience, uh, based on the companies that would work, and we, uh, want to to to suggest three different steps to go from MQL to pipeline.

The first one is, uh, to move from lead qualification to account qualification. Move from trying to, uh, qualify and decide with what is the the highest quality of the lead to really center on what is the center of the sales team, which is the account. Then move from lead assignment to sales cycle sales cycle tracking. So, uh, on this, what we want is the marketers to stop just saying, okay. My job is just to deliver a lead to a sales to really track the whole sales cycle to understand what is happening with the leads. Do they convert? Do they don’t convert? Why they don’t convert? And try to understand what happens during all the process. And the last one is, uh, moving from MQL reporting, which is a super super easy and super fast way to do to move to report, uh, to and to move to revenue acceleration metrics. We really want to understand not just how many leads and how many MQLs we generate, but really to try to understand what are the actions and what are the campaigns that are impacting in the business. Okay?

So let’s start with the first one, account qualification. So in terms of account qualification, what, uh, we can see the for from our experience, the qualification of the account is the easiest part. In many companies that we when we start, uh, we will have already the ICP defined. We can set up the processes in account engagement in in Salesforce. For example, here in Salesforce, thanks to Einstein, we have the possibility to define the quality of the of the account based on on our proper, uh, data. But the biggest problem that we find is the data, uh, the data itself. This is a a real example of one of our clients that we see that, uh, these are accounts and we see random data there. This is uh, due to num uh, numerous people entering data, updating data, integrations, connections with other systems, etcetera etcetera. So that bring this data that at the end, having a wonderful ICP, having a wonderful, uh, system qualifying the accounts is great, but when the data is not working, that is a big problem. And regarding the issues that we can find in the data, uh, we mark these three as, uh, some of the most important. The first is the duplication. Uh, we can we see in all the Salesforce environments that we enter, the one of the biggest problems is the duplication of the accounts, then the standardization of the sources. So having different systems entering data, updating data that brings that the data is not standard and that that can give us problem on qualifying the accounts. And finally, data that we cannot ask or that we can trust. Many times marketers are, uh, trusting the data that they get from entry points, like, for example, from forms. And many times, the information that we get from these sources is not relevant or it’s not trustful. No? So in this case, we need to put actions in order to, uh, solve these these, uh, points. And I did add the spoiler how we can solve it, uh, thanks to data enrichment.

And entering on this point of data enrichment, the first suggestion that we will give is first, let’s try to always focus on the accounts. Many times when we start using that enrichment tool, we start trying to say how many contacts, how many leads I can enrich with this that enrichment tool. But this is an example of, uh, a study that we did with some clients, uh, where we try to match their accounts, their real accounts and contacts with the data enrichment databases. And what we can see is 90% of the accounts were matched, while only 28% of the leads and contacts were matched. So here, we come back to the previous point. Let’s start focusing on the accounts. The here is the real object that we need to focus, and then later, we will look the ways to enrich and get the data for the leads and the contacts.

And then talking about that enrichment, another important point that that we need to take into account is, uh, when we have that data enrichment system, we have to, uh, remember that there will be other systems or other people, other users updating data. So we will need need to make sure that we have a data hierarchy, uh, uh, put in place in order to understand what is the data that has to remain, what data cannot be overwritten, when we have a lot of sources of data, what has to remain there, and what what we need to prioritize when we, uh, have new data entering. So try to define this is, uh, an example of a flow that we have with one client where we start defining, okay. If we get this data from this source, what should we do? Should we override or should we remove and update the data? No? And then automatize. So when we have this data enrichment process, uh, in place, we can start testing. We can, uh, start checking what is the volume of data that we can get. So let’s, uh, in this case, uh, focus on trying to automate as much as possible the system. There are some, uh, data enrichment tools that we have native connectors. In other cases, no. So, for example, here using Zapier, it will be one way to enrich data from account engagement.

Then in terms of having more data, um, many times we cannot get data directly even from forms. So for example, uh, in our clients, we have a lot of clients that they are tech companies that they need information about technographic. And one tool that we are testing with them is HDInsights. This tool provides information about technographic, about the intent in terms of a specific, uh, technologies. Uh, so this is interesting data that it won’t work for all the companies, but for some companies, it will be super interesting to get, uh, super interesting to validate and especially to connect with other systems. So, for example, if I already have data in my CRM, if I already know, for example, accounts with open opportunities and I want I want to combine this information that I have in my system with, uh, information that I will get from Etsy insights, for example, I will be I will be able to use it for other actions. So for example, here, this flow that we created is to notify the sales team when via Slack, we are in real time, when, uh, there is a account with an open opportunity and there is, uh, some sign out sent by HDInsight, for example. So, uh, summarizing the process of the data enrichment, uh, what we will do is to prioritize the data, then, uh, identify all the sources how I can get more data, and finally automate. So the success is going to be to have the account enriched.

But I am a marketer, so what happens with my leads? What what is going to happen with my leads, uh, if, uh, I have all my accounts or most of my my accounts enriched, but my leads, uh, are missing information. So what I will need to do in this case is to connect, uh, the account, uh, with the leads. No. So in this case, we have all the all here, the people that use account engagement. We are lucky because we have the possibility to add this lining component to the account, uh, page layouts and show to the users what are the leads related. That can be easily activated using only the, uh, matching rules, the the standard matching rules in Salesforce. However, one problem, uh, one issue that I will find here is that even though I will be able to see these leads, I, uh, I won’t be able to create any relationship between the account and the lead with this feature. So what I am looking here when I say relationship is really to create a relationship between the account and the lead to have a lookup relationship and in this way to make it possible for the lead to take information from the account to be enriched thanks to the information of the account and to understand what is happening with other records that are related to this account. No? So in this case, I will need to create a flow in order to build, uh, this, uh, account lead relationship.

So when we talk about account and lead relationship and when we start defining the ways to, uh, to, uh, build this relationship, the first and starting point is the website. It’s the best way to find the relationship between a lead and an account. I have a professional email. I have a website in my account, so I will be able to match. But in this case, again, coming back to the data, something that we find very frequently is that, uh, the the the information on the data that we have in the website, for example, uh, is not going to be put in the same way. And we have here the example of different ways that we have found the information. So if you want, you can scan this, uh, this, uh, QR code. And in this, uh, QR code, you will find a formula that with this formula, you can create a a formula field in Salesforce, and that will standardize the website so that it will make easier for you to, uh, match the leads and the accounts.

And then, uh, let’s try to go deeper. What I mean with that is we have this, uh, relationship with the website is the easier way. We can start combining with other elements, uh, between, uh, the account and delete. Think about other ways how I can compare and how I can get this much. In flows, it will be more difficult to use fuzzy matching. But, uh, in this case, what I can do is think about other properties that I can use, like, for example, the company name, uh, like, for example, the phone number, the ZIP code, etcetera, different elements that would tell me that this lead is really related to the to the account. I can create different priorities, so I can start really quickly, uh, defining the the matching, uh, based on the website and then later to continue with the other, uh, elements. So coming back to the data enrichment process here, basically, uh, I will prioritize the data, what data, uh, I need. I will get more data, and then I will automate. And as we were, uh, looking before, it is possible to enrich your accounts and deletes. So what we will have as an outcome of this, uh, so, basically, this is how we start when we start a project of qualification, this is how we start presenting the concept to our clients. So thanks to all the entry points sent to the enrichment, what we will be able is to uh, to, uh, category size and give a priority of the accounts. Here, even we can define the accounts which are non target because it is interesting also to define what accounts are not relevant for us, not relevant for our, uh, sales team. And then the lead and the contact, what it will give us is more information about the level of decision that these, uh, records will have in the, uh, in the, uh, in the process of of of buying or or the sales cycle. No? And then with all the combination of elements, it’s how we are going to make it possible to define a grade and to understand what is the quality of the record.

Speaker 2: Great. So do you want me to share my screen, Ivan, maybe? Yes. Cool. Here we go. Awesome. So now that we know what are the account that we want to chase and, uh, we’re able to have this this vision of the lead and account we that we are getting in front of us, Important thing is to switch as well the the mindset and saying, okay. I’m not anymore only assigning leads and sending leads to my sales team. I need to work with them, and we need to work as a team on understanding what’s happening and how to push the the the conversion and the funnel, uh, toward the the opportunity and the revenue. Right? This is, I would say, like the second bucket of what we try to, uh, implement when we are working on this type of, uh, concepts. So first thing first, uh, we need to break the silo. Right? So as I said, it’s not only a matter of generating leads anymore. It’s a matter of what do we do as a team with those leads. So now that we know how to recognize our leads, our accounts, we’ve got them classified per tier. We understand their interest, uh, low interest, high interest, uh, and everything. So we are able to build our buckets, let’s say. This is an example, but it can really depend on your company and each company is different. But let’s say and take the example of your list of top accounts. When you’ve got your list of top accounts, then the idea is to really list all the actions that, uh, we’re gonna do as a team to go for them, uh, and who is the owner of that, who what the sales team will do, what the marketing will do. So maybe sales team will go and chase and for sourcing more contacts there. Um, the the marketing team will maybe organize some very specific niche events, do some retargeting on page, uh, building some collaterals for that. But at the end, we need to have an agreement on what are the actions we’re gonna do for that and what are the SLA for each buckets. We’re not speaking about general SLA that when I’ve got the MQL, we need to call them, uh, within the next five hours. No. Actually, it can be counterproductive because if you’ve got an MQL entering in tier three, you may not want your sales team to call them in the next five hours because you want them to focus on what matters. So here, it’s important to define a different SLA, uh, with your sales team depending on the bucket, uh, and, um, so number of touch points, the time to reach them, and who is going to do what. Okay?

Once you’ve got all this aligned, then it’s the moment to measure and monitor these SLAs. Right? So for marketing, we know how to do that. We’ve got our tools, product and everything. But if you want to understand, uh, uh, when the sales team is contacting with our prospect and how much they are contacting with them based on what we define, then, uh, what we normally do, um, we try to capture, uh, depending what tool they’re using, SalesLoft, Outreach, Gong, whatever. We try to capture all the activity they are doing on their prospecting tools, uh, inside Salesforce, obviously, in the activities. Right? And then we use a roll up tool. Uh, we normally use declarative lookup roll up summary, which is, uh, free. It’s an extension in Salesforce that enables basically to roll up anything on any objects. So here, what we normally do at lead and contact level is roll up the activity the sales team is having with each lead and contact. And we also normally do two type of roll up, the total number of touch screen they’re having with the lead and the total number of high intent, uh, touch points like calls and meeting, which will give us as well the quality quality of the of the contact. Right? So when we’ve got that, then we we really, um, build the graphs and build the dashboards based on the buckets we define. And the SLA we define fuzzy bucket to see if we are, uh, on track with our SLA or if there is anything off that we need to fix and, uh, review with the team. Okay?

Next one. Uh, to be aligned, we need to get feedbacks as well. Not, uh, not all we do is good, so we need to understand why salespeople are putting our leads or prospect in disqualified or in nurture if at the first place we said this is a qualified leads. Right? So, uh, this is a real graph from a real company, and we often see that, uh, when we enter a new project where we have nurturing, uh, status or disqualifying status, but we don’t have the reason associated to it. Or if we do have them, they’re not used, or they’re not really actionable. So what you need to do as well with your sales team is what are the possible, uh, reason why we are putting a lead in disqualified and in nurturing and making sure we’ve got the right process automation, validation rules to, uh, ensure we’ve got the, um, the reason populated at the moment we disqualify your leads. Super important if we want to improve our segmentation for the campaigns or if you want to build the right programs to nurture them. Right?

Speaking about feedbacks, uh, the other one I would recommend is also to go, uh, on shadowing. We cannot work in silo. Right? This is, like, the the main, uh, idea of this section. So if you want to work as a team, we cannot, uh, go on every calls neither. So there is tools nowadays. I put two here as an example, Gong Mojo, and there is lots more, uh, which are supported with artificial intelligence, and that enable us to understand what’s happening during the calls, uh, with our sales team. We can identify what have been the objections, uh, that the prospect gave. We can know, uh, if they mentioned a specific product feature, if they mentioned a competitor. We can report on the on the feelings, positive, negative feeling they’re having. Then you can filter that based on the campaign, uh, this prospect come from. So you can analyze, trying to understand, and then deep dive if you want on the on the on the, uh, recording. Right? So I think it’s super important at this point to get this type of insights, try to make sense out of it, to adjust the messaging, adjust the strategy, the handover of the leads, uh, with the sales team, and, uh, making sure we’re working hand in hand as well, uh, um, on this. Right?

And I would say the last advice and the thing that we normally keep track of to be, uh, conscious as well of time. And and as I was saying at the beginning, not every lead is worth being called instantly by a sales rep. So we also need to be conscious of, uh, the time they’ve got and the capacity they have to treat the leads and making sure they’re focusing on the highest quality leads. Right? So for that, um, I mean, you can build quite when you’ve got all the touch points, uh, tracked, you can see how many touch point they’re having with each bucket. You can see what are the quality of the touch point if you bucket it by call meetings versus, uh, cadence email. Uh, and so you can understand how much dedication they are giving to each type of buckets, seeing if they match your SLA, if there is any drop, uh, say because, uh, this is an example from a client that’s saying, hey. We are increasing the number of MQL by, uh, nearly 50%, and our ops remain the same. So we are converting way worse. Why? And one of the reason was, okay, you’re sending much more MQL, but as there is no distinction, your sales team is overwhelmed, and they are spending less time, less touch point, more automation and currencies to treat the deals, and this is not converting. So we need to to take care of this as well because this is a human, uh, uh, behavior behind. Right? Cool. So here’s the wrap up on this on this section. If you want to move from lead assignment to the real tracking of the sales cycle, we need to work as a team, and and this is very important. So for that, aligning on expectation, SLA, making sure we track, uh, all those actions to be able to monitor and see what’s coming off, uh, getting feedback from the sales team, shadowing the sales team to understand what are, uh, the messaging and the objection that we’re getting afterwards, and making, uh, sure we are conscious of the self capacity to deal with all the lead that we’re sending to them.

Alright. So now that we’ve got all the, uh, qualification of our accounts, We know, and we’ve got a very solid processes with our sales team to, uh, tackle them. Uh, we need to see how this is impacting the business. And and this is where we’re gonna need to move from the mindset of I’m generating that much MQL this month, and this is my goal. And I will reward my team on the number of MQL that we are doing, and we’re increasing MQL. We are so strong. Yes. Good job. No. We need to move from that to, uh, how marketing is impacting the the bottom line and how marketing is impacting the revenue. Okay. And how to do that? Uh, what are the the steps where the the things we are doing to try to shift this mindset? Right? First, uh, we need to align and cherry pick the KPIs that we’re gonna we’re going to look at. We cannot have we cannot have things like that. Okay? If people don’t understand what you’re talking about, they will not follow, and you will have no one on board. So first things first, I think it’s super important to align all the stakeholders, like sales director, revenue director, uh, CEO, marketing director, um, the definition of the KPIs. What are the KPIs we’re gonna track? What is the definition behind it, and how we’re gonna track it? Just to make sure that everybody is on the same page and we’ll be happy to, uh, listen and read the same story. Otherwise, you’re not it is not going to work. Uh, everyone will go back to their own dashboard with their own story, and we are good. We’re back to the starting point. Right? So very important to spend time on that and trying to keep it short and simple. So, uh, again, I think it’s not new, but having a list of 50 KPIs, uh, make it much more difficult to align people. So it’s it’s better to have 10 KPIs like the bold one, uh, to make sure everybody understand them, know how to interpret them, and we can speak all the same language. Then if we see something is off or if we see that we’ve got to drop on something, we can deep dive and and go see, uh, other analysis on something else. But this is, for me, the basis. So here’s the here’s the thing, for instance. MQL, PQL, uh, or or qualified contact, it’s still important to keep track of it, to understand the top of the funnel. We don’t say it’s not important, but we need to shift the importance we give to them. And what’s important in the b two b landscape, uh, where we are all working is what are the accounts that I’m, uh, succeeding in activating. Right? What’s how many accounts did I activate, uh, from a marketing campaign? What is the pipeline I generated on the pipeline, uh, I won? Right? So for that, I mean, this is example. Right? Depending on on each and every company. But, uh, and and a very clear example on that is we had the client that, um, they are working on very, um, uh, enterprise clients, and, um, they are doing a lot of marketing events and webinars and things. And there is a lot of employee of the same company registering to the webinars, going to the events. At the end, they might generate, let’s say, for an event, the minimum number, 100 MQLs from this event. But from those 100 really, there is only 60 companies because, uh, there is three people from this company, four from the other, five from the other. So if you’re expecting your 100 MQL to be able to generate one one hundred opportunities and 100, uh, of, yeah, opportunity of pipeline is completely wrong. What you need to look at is, okay, from those actions, how many accounts actually I, uh, I I get, uh, in front of the salespeople. And, yes, I might have more people, uh, inside of an account, which is more opportunity to to push for the negotiation. There’s definitely, uh, your opportunity and your revenue will not, uh, be aligned with those number and the conversion neither. Okay? So keep it, uh, aligned with what you can expect to happen.

So what about email, open, click, clicks for rates, ebook downloads, page view? All of this, what do we do with that? Still interesting. I mean, uh, we still need to keep track of those of those metrics. I think it’s interesting for the tactical teams to be able to drive their strategy, understand where they can improve their creatives, uh, their content, uh, understand, yeah, what can be improved to generate more leads. Okay. That’s fine. But what we need to we don’t need to show that to the exec board or to take a decision on what marketing is, uh, driving. Right? We need to understand maybe what’s come from inbound, maybe from a bold tactic like paid. Okay. Cool. Do I need to understand the the CTR or the CPC things at the big level, uh, stage? No. So we need to make sure as well what KPI we’re showing to which stakeholder and what we need to look at at which moment.

And this one is one of my favorite KPI, uh, that I hate, lead source. Lead source. We see it everywhere, uh, and this is my very own personal opinion, but we don’t care. Why don’t we care about lead source? Because lead source will tell you how the lead enter your database. Cool. Right? Might be interesting for other analysis. But what you really care is what is the action, what is the channel, what is the campaign that actually make your lead sit in front of the sales reps. And little often might not be the case. Even more in the case where you’re dealing with enterprise mid market company with long sales cycle. You might have a lead created last year uh, that finally, uh, will be ready to sit with a sales rep this year. So do we really care if they downloaded an ebook last year and and assign that as a lead source for opportunity and the rest. My answer, no. So for me, it’s not relevant. It’s often outdated, but it’s simple, and it’s out of the shelves on all the tools and all the reports, so people tend to use it. Okay. So how do we move from this? And how do we try to understand what’s bringing us the pipeline?

The first thing, uh, I will start or we we try to start to do is to focus on MQL, PQL, uh, whatever you want to call it. Basically, the moment the leads is assigned to your sales rep, uh, what is the action that took place at that moment. So it’s as simple as stamping the last interaction they had, and you you may want to bucket it. Maybe then you want to bucket an inbound, outbound partner, whatever it is. But it’s as simple as trying to stamp that at the moment the lead is assigned to the sales reps what happened just before. This will give you, like, the very last touch at that moment. Important to stamp it because first touch, last touch, first touch, we know, uh, it remains always the same. Last touch that we can have on some tools, then it moves. So it’s gonna it’s gonna move at some point. So this is already interesting, but what we like the most is trying to leverage campaign for that as well. We know that in Salesforce, we don’t have, uh, or or the campaign mobile the campaign model is very linked to opportunities, which is right and it’s cool. But we can also leverage it for, uh, MQL tracking and understanding how we are, um, impacting the lead source. Right? How? Well, we’ve got the dates, right, when the data has been assigned. So and we’ve got the date when the campaign members, uh, responded to our campaigns. So let’s say that, uh, we take a time range of thirty days. We could say, hey, if my MQL, uh, happened today, I will look back thirty days, uh, in the past and see with which campaign my leads, uh, interacted and responded. I will be able to flag my campaign members with MKL inference. We normally do that with a normal formula checkbox, Boolean. And so you will be able to see what are the campaign that actually influenced this MQL. Or the other way around, you will be able to see at campaign level how many MQL have been impacted by this campaign. And then the story start to be, uh, interesting. Okay? And then you can link into the North Star, which will be all the campaign influencing where you want to understand what are the different initiatives that, uh, actually influenced your, uh, pipeline, your opportunities. And for that campaign influence model that you you all know, um, I mean, the the one that are out of the box in Salesforce, the the I I really like the even one, but we’ve got the first, the last, the even. I normally use the even. Uh, I think if we’ve got implanted well, it’s already a good start, a very good start. Uh, and here, the important thing is not looking at what are the opportunity marketing, uh, as generated from this MQL with this lead source inbound. But it’s raised that let’s look at all the opportunities, whatever and whoever, uh, generated it, and try to understand what are the campaigns that influence all those opportunity. This will give you a better vision how marketing impacted the revenue at the end because in marketing can impact an opportunity that have been generated by the sales team or the partner team. Definitely. Okay? So then what you want to understand is how marketing helps, and maybe you can stamp even this, uh, influence, uh, or or or not some, but reported by stages. Right? You can say, hey. How marketing is impacting stage one opportunity versus later stages, uh, I don’t know, like negotiation, contract, and everything. So just to understand what are the campaign, the the materials, the events that are helping negotiation to move forward. Okay? And, uh, this really issue this is not easy to to switch this mindset inside the companies because everything is made to look at lead source, to look at MQL generation, lead generation, and and opportunities with the conversion automatic to to opportunities. But I think once you educate your stakeholder to say, hey. Let’s look at the bigger picture and and and, uh, more teamwork and not the silo work between two teams, then, uh, the picture start to switch and becomes much more interesting. Okay?

So trying to wrap it up. And, uh, again, these are tips that we are seeing here today of, uh, real life, uh, example of things, ideas of project, ideas of solutions that we are implementing and that we are working on with several clients. So hopefully, it helps. But, really, the for us, the key is to to be able to move from MQL and or or lead generation to pipeline generation is, first, switching the the focus on lead qualification to account qualification and focusing on, uh, what are the accounts I want to to reach. Then switching, uh, the focus from lead assignments and working in silo in marketing, generating leads to really working as a team with the sales, uh, team as a revenue team. Right? And moving from lead generation to really tracking the sales, uh, cycle and, uh, moving from MK reporting to revenue acceleration metrics or, yeah, revenue influence metrics. Okay? So hope it’s been interesting that, uh, there is, uh, some tips that you might be able to to use and and implement. Happy to answer some question. I think we’ve got few minutes left. And otherwise, uh, happy to to catch