Alignment and Enablement: CMOs Discuss New Research Highlighting Keys to B2B Marketing Success

What focus areas distinguish successful CMOs from those grinding without results? What investments, technology priorities, internal relationships and more have a direct correlation with marketing leadership success?

Jamie Barnett 's 2022 State of the B2B CMO report and analysis highlighted last Friday's CMO Coffee Talk . Together with Kerry Cunningham , they led a discussion of the findings with a couple hundred CMOs.

Chat highlights from both sessions are below, and feature a heavy dose of experience and insights around the sales and marketing relationship, key role of alignment and enablement in making BDRs successful, and much more.

If you are a B2B CMO or head of marketing and want to join a community of ~1400 of your peers, let me know.

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Here is Jamie's excellent research write-up on Medium for reading/sharing afterward: https://jamiecatherinebarnett.medium.com/the-state-of-the-b2b-cmo-42f6b548b8c7

High Growth rate correlates to BDRs in marketing has been my experience, we are growing 50% and have BDRs in mkt. My sales leadership wants it in marketing not sales

When BDRs report into marketing it reduces friction on lead gen/TOFU

I've seen that in competitive markets and where average deal size is lower (i.e. more volume and velocity), the BDR function tends to be in Sales because that connection is incredibly important. For companies where it's more relationship buying, higher ASP,?need for education, use of ABX - BDR in Marketing works really well

I think key to argument is that BDR role is shifting from appointment setting to supporting buyer enablement and nurturing demand

I find that if there are good relationships and SLAs in place between marketing, SD and sales, it shouldn’t matter where it sits.

BDRS are both, they drive ABM in their segments but also process inbounds, paid differently on converting ABM vs inbound accounts

Outside experts like The Bridge Group can help provide a sounding board and help navigate change

When BDR was under sales in my company, reps treated them as “glorified assistants”.?I fought to get the team under my group and that mindset shifted.

Understanding the intent of the conversations with customers would be important.?I don’t talk to them about us, I talk them about them and their traction with our product.?The insights certainly help guide our product roadmap, customer experience playbook and messaging refinement.

I’m shocked how many folks still manage by leads — it’s an operational tool vs. a results metric …

At least 50% of marketers I talk to measure by leads

It's a big culture shift to get Sales away from leads focus.

I walked into a situation where the team was overachieving on 20 - 30K+ MQL goals - when we looked at conversion - close to 0%

My marketing team’s #1 KPI is the number of demos completed

While this group has evolved to being measured by pipeline, many CEOs/Board Members still look at leads as a primary way to measure Marketing.?So measurement by leads still lives on.

At nearly $1B in revenue, we are only just now shifting from MQLs and QSOs to pipeline (thank goodness!) The company had been pushed by the prior CEO to drive volume. Now we have a new CEO and a new sales leader who are both all about pipeline. I’m so happy because this is how I’m used to measuring marketing effectiveness.

Pipeline (and # of proposals, etc.) requires a focus on higher quality leads

Its about full funnel management. CMO needs to be measured on pipeline coverage, especially if BDR’s sit in marketing, and the CRO on pipeline conversion…..

In addition to my own hands on experience with my product, I also require my team to use it (at least monthly) and then we gather and provide feedback to the product team as if they are hearing from an external user.

One thing that is informative to me is sitting with BDRs periodically and helping to make calls. Eye opening.

Every update I give for our BOD contains not just data but a 'why', B2B marketing trends, etc.

A lot of companies are surviving on venture money, not revenue -- with an expectation for better product/market fit to come in a few years

If sales isn’t meeting goals, I don’t really think marketing is making goals since we should be aiming for the same revenue.?But sales often has an over assigned target and marketing is often measured against the company revenue goal rather than the over assigned sales goal.?Not always but I often see that.

I own BDRs now, but they’ll likely go over to sales relatively soon. I think the key to maintaining success is to not let the reporting structure break the flow of information between marketing and the BDRs.

It would be interesting to know the average time in role for a BDR/SDR as it relates to "Does having BDR make a difference." Shorter in role might skew the answer toward not making a difference, while longer in role might skew it toward definitely making a difference because longer time in role = better experience and often therefore greater success.

We put a lot of time into ensuring marketing-led BDRs have relationships w/ sales - bi-weekly strategy sessions with individual sellers. They get visibility and mentorship that way.

Career progression of BDR is highly dependent up on the sales structure and motion.?With growth and mid-market sales, this is possible.?It is a much greater leap if the sales team is enterprise-focused and BDRs just set appointments.

My talent pool and ability to attract A-player new graduates out of universities with selling programs improved dramatically when I moved my BDR team from marketing to sales.

When I become CMO, BDRs aren’t part of Marketing, but in every role, the BDR team is ultimately moved to marketing.?We still promoted about 80% of the BDRs into sales and they hit ramp up as AEs more quickly than external hires into the AE role.?It leveled off over time (so they didn’t continue to out perform) but ramp time was lower and then performance was even across internal and external.?However, I still think it can succeed in either organization.

The CRO and I put together a documented career path on how BDRs move to sales/marketing or even renewals. They sit in marketing today.

We are currently discussing a relocation of BDRs/SDRs out of sales (which was a disaster) to either RevOps or Marketing. But I firmly believe that the function can perform well in any department, *as long as there is strong sales marketing alignment* and rules of engagement.

There's a blurring of roles and skills for customer-facing people - from "before the sale to after the sale" - lot's of opportunity to redefine roles and goals

At a past company, when we moved inbound SDRs into my (Marketing) org, we saw conversion rates to SQL go up dramatically within a month! About 6 months late the CRO asked to move outbound into Marketing too, and it also improved. The main reasons it did so much better related to alignment and enablement.

Our BDRs are in sales and then are subject to the whim of the various product and sales leaders. Working on an effort now to make them more aligned to marketing and an extension of the marketing campaigns

Creating a dedicated inbound SDR that is comp’d on response time to demo requests was a game-changer. No territories. All high-intent leads go to two people with a 10-minute SLA.

Ping-ponging hot leads through lead routing rules isn’t customer-centric and creates too much risk

My SDRs handle both inbound + outbound - we pay out on both (2x the $ amount for meetings set for inbounds). We moved from a 33% conversion on inbounds to pipeline before SDRs to 65% after. Their spirits are kept high by booking inbounds while they grind on the outbound motion.

I’m a VP Marketing and report into CRO. SDRs have historically been under VP Sales but I have always been accountable for the monthly demo/SQO goals. But the SDRs were officially moved under me as of Feb 1. So they are still technically under ‘CRO’ but I am now responsible for activity, process and hiring - that’s the big difference

Our entire C- suite has customer conversation goals by quarter.?And product build/usage sessions. Game changing.