The Future of Pipeline Generation is Here
Hear from Qualified CEO Kraig Swensrud on what the future of pipeline generation looks like and what B2B marketing teams are up against.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Pipeline Summit.
We've got an incredible program here today.
We've got a jam-packed three-hour show
with some of the best marketers in the entire industry.
But before we get started,
I just wanna say to everybody out there,
thank you for joining us today.
We know everybody is super busy
and we appreciate you taking your time
to join us today at the Pipeline Summit.
Now today we're gonna be talking about
the future of Pipeline Generation.
And that future is right here, right now.
It's here today, it's here at the Summit
and it's here with all these incredible speakers
from companies like Salesforce,
Attentive, ThoughtSpot, Slack, metadata,
Sales Loft, Groove, Alice, Adecco, Bombora,
and so many more.
And it's everybody here in this virtual room.
It's every single one of you.
So welcome everybody.
My name is Craig Swenstreet.
I'm the founder and CEO of Qualified.
We're the creator of the Pipeline Cloud,
which is really a modern pipeline generation platform.
And I'm also the former CMO Salesforce.
And the reason that I'm super passionate about this topic
is that when I was the CMO Salesforce,
I had a massive pipeline number on my shoulders, right?
Totally massive.
And it's always been as a CMO,
my greatest challenge, not only at Salesforce,
but in CMO roles after that.
And that challenge, that kind of feeling that weight
of pipeline generation on you,
that's really what led me to start Qualified.
And I think as marketers, there's no doubt
this was a really challenging year.
Like look at these headlines.
The world has changed on a dime.
And it's been really over a decade
since we've been in this turbulent of an environment.
But what does this really mean for us
as it relates to pipeline generation?
Well, what it means is that look at what's happening
to sales cycles.
This year, sales cycles not only got longer,
but way more stakeholders were involved.
Approval chains completely escalated.
We now have CFOs and CEOs approving deals.
Otherwise, we would have just gotten across the finish line.
And so what does that really mean?
It means as marketers, we need more pipeline coverage.
We all used to talk about this number, 3X.
3X pipeline coverage.
It's like it was burned into our brain.
That used to be the industry norm.
For every dollar of revenue you book,
you need three times the amount of pipeline.
And that's the formula.
And we all follow that formula.
But that's not the case anymore.
Because it's harder to get deals across the finish line,
now we need to provide even greater pipeline coverage
for our sales teams.
And so 5X, 5X coverage is the new 3X of today.
How do we generate 5X pipeline coverage?
Well, have our budgets gone up to help support
this increased coverage?
Definitely not.
60% of B2B marketers report that their budgets are flat
or shrinking going into next year.
And in most cases, finances deepen our spend
with a magnifying glass.
They're questioning every dollar,
they're demanding stronger ROI for every single dollar invested.
And so as marketing professionals,
we can't just spend our way to pipeline generation.
We can't just spend our way to pipeline generation.
We've got higher targets, and we've got tighter budgets.
And that's the reality.
And that's why pipeline growth.
And what we talk about is efficient pipeline generation.
Pipeline growth and efficient pipeline generation
are the number one priority for CMOs today.
So I was talking to Scott Holden right before this program,
who's the CMO at ThoughtSpot.
And we were talking about the importance
of pipeline generation.
He said this.
He said, Craig, only when you're hitting your pipeline
generation targets, can you do all the other fun stuff
in marketing?
We know what all the other fun stuff is.
But pipeline generation is number one.
And if you're not hitting your pipeline targets,
everything else takes a back seat.
That's so true.
So the question for us marketers is, how do we change?
How do we crush our pipeline goals?
Because we can't just settle for the status quo, right?
We can't just keep doing what we've been doing
for the last five years.
We have to change or we're going to get left behind.
And we're all thirsting for knowledge from our peers.
We all want to know, hey, what are you doing?
What are you seeing?
How are you setting it up?
We want to change and we want to hear strategies,
strategies, tech stacks, teams, KPIs, tactics for conversion.
How can we change these things to meet and exceed our targets?
What can we learn from one another?
And this is a hot topic right now.
How do we change and prepare for the future of pipeline
generation?
As 2022 comes to a close, 2023 planning is already underway.
That's what we're all doing in our companies.
And probably that's why you're here today.
We want you to walk away with a solid grasp
on what the best marketers in the industry are doing.
We want you to leave inspired to help your team and your company
succeed in 2023.
So here's our agenda.
We've got five back-to-back sessions
that range from panel discussions, lightning talks
with industry leaders, presentations on tech stacks,
pipeline councils, and then we're going to wrap everything up
with a killer product demonstration.
We're going to hear success stories.
It's going to be incredible.
First up, we've got a panel with three tremendous CMOs,
Sarah Franklin from Salesforce is here,
Sarah Varney from A Tentivis here,
and Scott Holden from ThoughtSpot is right here.
They're going to be talking about how they pivoted their
strategies in 2022 and how they're leading their teams
through change and how they're approaching pipe gen for 2023.
This is going to be an exceptional panel.
And then next up, we've got something
that we call the pipeline power hour.
It's Ian Phaison, who's the great host of demand gen
visionaries.
Ian Phaison is going to be doing lightning rounds
with subject matter experts.
So different programs as it relates to pipeline generation.
So Ian is going to do back-to-back segments.
And we're going to hear everything from events
to digital ads to inbound conversion
to outbound engagement to content marketing and more,
the pipeline power hour.
And then we're going to talk to Kristen Hersant, who's
the VP of marketing at Groove.
Kristen is going to tell us how she thinks about building
the perfect tech stack.
She's going to break down how she prioritizes tech investments
and how she fits together her giant puzzle of CRM, data
enrichment, marketing automation, ABM, pipe gen platforms,
and more.
This is going to be a killer session.
And then we're going to go deep on sales and marketing
alignment and the perfect pipeline council
with Matt Buren from La Bora.
So we're going to be talking about the KPIs that matter
and how do you report out on those KPIs every single week?
Do you orchestrate a well-run weekly meeting at your company?
Do you have a pipeline council?
Are your revenue leaders doing that weekly?
We're going to hear from the pros.
And then last but not least, we're
going to talk to a great CMO, Melissa Robinson Phillips,
who runs marketing at Adeco, about how
they maximize conversion on their website
with real-time conversations.
That has produced $58 million in pipeline generation
for Adeco, which is pretty spectacular.
And then Katie and Joe from Qualified
are going to be going deep into a live product demo with Melissa.
That's going to be fantastic.
So let's dive right in with our first session,
the modern CMO survival guide with three tremendous CMOs.
Again, we've got Sarah Franklin from Salesforce,
Sarah Varney from Attentive, and Scott Holden from ThoughtSpot.
So welcome, everybody.
Welcome to the pipeline summit.
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Let's get started.