The Year in Pipeline Generation
Recap the biggest trends in pipeline generation and B2B marketing in 2023 from leading B2B tech marketers and learn predictions for B2B pipeline generation in 2024.
[MUSIC]
Hi everyone and welcome to the year in pipeline generation.
My name is Mora Rivera, I'm the CMO here at Qualified and
I am joined by the lovely Sarah McConnell VP of Demand Gen.
And today we're going to be breaking down all of the trends that we saw in
sales
and marketing in 2023.
>> Yeah, I feel like 2023 was such a roller coaster, but
we were really fortunate that we got to host four different pipeline summits
last
year.
And without we got to interview some of the best and the brightest in BDB tech.
And of course we talked to them about everything from demand gen to content
all the way through two events.
>> Yes, we had so many great conversations this last year with so
many incredible luminaries.
But one thing remained clear, the thing that is keeping up all CMOs at night,
myself included, is pipeline generation.
That was the major theme of the year.
>> Let's talk about pipeline.
>> Pipeline is absolutely the name of the game.
>> If you don't as a marketer, help the organization to create quality pipeline
that converts to ACV, that really is my business.
So if you talk to the head of revenue at our company, their priorities are ACV,
ACV, ACV.
And as the CMO, my priorities are pipeline, pipeline, pipeline.
>> Pipeline, great topic to talk about.
>> Pipeline, everyone needs more pipeline right now.
>> How does it impact pipeline?
>> And it's so tough to generate pipeline right now.
>> And then what do you get out of it and that's the pipeline.
>> Okay, so one thing that we saw this past year is budgets or tighter,
but pipeline targets did not shrink.
They were the same, if not bigger.
And as marketers, there was one phrase that we heard over and over again.
Sarah, can you guess what it is?
>> Everyone already knows the answer.
It was do more with less, but I think one, what does that even mean?
And two, was that really the right mentality to have?
And I think I loved your conversation with John Miller,
and I really loved his take on the do more with less mentality.
>> I think as marketers, it's an interesting time because we're asked to do
more with less, right?
This is kind of, I feel like the most commonly used mantra right now.
It's all about being a-
>> Which I also think those are like the four worst words in English language
these days.
>> And also that was going to be my question.
I know we're going to skip ahead to this later, but like as marketers,
how are you thinking about generating more pipeline when sometimes resources
are strapped or cash is strapped?
How should marketers be thinking about that today?
Because there's more pressure than ever before to generate pipeline for our
sales teams.
>> Yeah, well, I don't like the phrase do more with less.
I think it's just asking people who are already working really, really hard to
somehow work even harder.
And somehow, I mean, the definition of insanity is just doing the same thing,
expecting different results.
Even worse is do more of the same thing, expect different results.
>> What does that mean?
>> Right, we can't just be working harder.
We're going to have to find ways to work smarter.
>> And in addition to John Miller, we also talked to Mike Green from Salesforce
She had a really great perspective about how you put this into practice.
>> When we say do more with less, because I do less with less is what we
typically say.
It's like really do more with less.
But I think it's ruthless prioritization.
It's focusing on the things that matter that are going to move the needle.
I'm sure you guys know of the V2 mom that really anchors us on how we
prioritize our priorities.
If it's on the V2 mom, it shouldn't be happening.
>> And along those same lines, we heard from a lot of leaders that with the
chaos of AI and in such a tough market,
they were really pushing their teams to focus on the fundamentals and get back
to the basics.
>> Yeah, Sarah.
And I think although we're all heading into 2024 with high hopes, we learned a
lot this past year of how do you do what works?
Shannon DeFi, CMO of Asana talked about, how do you get back to your message?
>> Last year was hard for all marketers.
I think I don't see it.
I don't see the sky's opening with joy for marketers anytime soon.
So in some ways, that's bad.
In some ways, I do think it is taught us, me and particular, to get back to
basics.
And it goes back to what is our message, what is our value, and how do we tell
that as clearly and hit the Lee and
emotionally as possible to our customers?
And so for us, it's like rebuilding the playbook on how you connect with these
people,
where are the events that you meet them, what is the message that you tell them
how do you show them similar customer stories, right?
And really building campaigns around that.
Like there's elements that we need to make sure we have in each campaign for it
to be successful.
It's the message, it's the customer story, it's the medium or the venue that we
're doing it,
and just being laser focused on what is resonating with our customers.
And at the Spring Pipeline Summit, we heard from Sarah Franklin, the now CEO at
Lattice,
and she put it in a way that I really liked.
I think the future is exciting.
I think that it's a fun time to be in this hard time because it's a time when
you need to invent,
you need to differentiate, you need to go back to basics, you need to be
creative in order to win.
And that's why I think it's a hard time, but a great time.
Okay, it's a fun time to be in hard times, that is an optimistic approach,
which I love about Sarah Franklin, I think some of us are ready for a little
bit of easier times.
But in addition to the major theme that we saw of going back to basics, which I
think is so true,
another thing that was a big focus for marketing leaders this year was really
becoming a data-driven
marketer. As marketing leaders, we all had to learn the numbers, we all had to
learn how to tell
a story about our investments to prove the ROI.
And we had Emma Chaolin on, who's the CMO of Workday, and she shared her
perspective.
Marketers need to be more data-driven than probably ever in the history of our
profession.
And you said something that really struck me as we were getting ready for this
conversation.
You said marketers need to go from mad men to math men, or from mad women to
math women.
How do you think about that blend between the art and the science of marketing?
Yeah, I mean, it's a great analogy, and I take it very seriously into heart.
So, you know, using the creative side of my brain when I'm thinking about
refreshing the brand or creating a corporate narrative and using that
scientific part of my
brain and really understanding the data and the math behind the ROI and the
impact of our work,
because that's more critical than ever. And really being able to use those
insights and the data to inform the decisions that we make, what's working and
what's not.
You know, I put a dollar in here, I get $15 out. That's more critical than ever
, especially as
budgets tend to be shrinking. But the expectation of the impact of the
businesses
is still growing, and it's not generally, budgets aren't generally in line with
the revenue growth
goals. So for me, that blend of art and sciences is really critical.
We obviously saw one of the hottest topics this year was AI, and AI has changed
the games
in a lot of ways. But I think one of the big ones that we saw was with real-
time analytics
and really giving us access to products that maybe we'd only dreamed of before
this revolution.
It's interesting, Sarah, because if you rewind a year ago, chat GPT had just
come out,
and there was this frenzy. And then we saw all of these product launches from
all these companies.
And then throughout the year, we started to see this technology become real.
And I'm really excited
for 2024 to get our hands on all of this AI-driven technology. It now feels
like we can see it,
we can feel it, we can use it in our everyday lives. Totally. And I do think 20
23 was definitely
the hype cycle of AI. And I think we're starting to see that come down maybe a
little bit.
But one of the questions that was posed a lot, I think in 2023, and maybe it's
still on all of
our minds in 2024, is AI going to take our jobs? And Udi Ledergore, who's the
chief evangelist at
GONG, I think had a really good take on it. And he's not worried. GONG has been
in AI for over
seven years now, a week before our parents started texting us about this new AI
stuff.
And it's super cool that everyone's talking about it right now, which is why we
're also bringing
it to the forefront. I think AI is going to change how marketing and sales and
many other
professions and teams work moving forward. There are going to be some low level
tasks that can be
fully automated right now. We're seeing that with sales teams, like getting a n
udge that someone is
back from out of office, we're sending a templated email that you promised to
send. There's no need
to hire a very expensive sales person to do that. Automation can do that with
AI right now.
But I think for many of these professions, AI is not going to take our jobs
away. AI is going to
help us be better and go deeper and spend more time doing the things we are
uniquely qualified to do
as human beings. And so if you embrace AI in that way, you don't shy away from
it, say, "Oh,
this is going to take my job away." No, AI is your friend. It's not your enemy.
Okay, so AI is our friend, not our enemy. But the one question is, where do you
begin? How do you
think about starting to integrate AI into your tech stack? There can be a lot
of hesitancy from
sellers and from marketers because it can be risky and it can be expensive.
Totally. And that is
especially important when you think about all of marketers' budgets almost
stayed flat in 2024.
Matt Millen, who is the co-founder and president at Regi AI, had some really
good insights when you
are thinking about buying AI-powered tools and adding them to your tech stack.
I think as we are evaluating new pieces of technology, AI-assisted technology,
that's what we should be
looking at. At the end of the day, is it easy for the team to use? Does it
cause us more work,
rework, change management, any of that? And I think the way that we've risen
above it is just a very
focus on who our customer is. We're not trying to sell everything, never
anybody. And we're just
seeing very focused on solving two good problems. One, we can go over template
emails,
and then two, personalization every step. In line with Matt's note, I think as
we're thinking
about bringing AI-powered products to market, which I think probably a lot of
marketers on
this are doing right now, you obviously have to bring clear and concise and
valuable messaging.
But when we talk to Ashley Kramer, who's the chief marketing and security
officer at GitLab,
she had an interesting take, which was you can't just be the first to market,
which it can be really
hard, and you feel like you have to be the first to market in this AI hype, but
it's actually
about being the best to market with an AI product. I worry when new hype comes
out, it's AI right now,
it's going to be tool here, tool here, tool here, tool here. I want consistency
, and I told the team
there, and I'll encourage you all for this too. Give me one place to go,
whether I'm a CMO,
whether I'm a day-to-day user of the product or platform that you're selling,
put the analytics
in there, do everything in one place and drive people to that. Don't be just
another tool,
because there's going to be 50 million of them. By the time we get out of this
whole hype cycle,
be the one that everybody comes to, everybody can get the information they need
from.
I think what Ashley said is fantastic, and you're right, Sarah. There's been
this frenzy in the
sense of urgency to launch products, but how do you make sure you have quality
products?
As a CMO, there's so much technology out there, and I don't want to have to go
to 10 different
platforms to reveal these AI insights. How do you develop products where it's
one trusted place
for people to go for AI-driven insights and analytics? When we talk to Kastore,
who's the
founder at Bullcast, he had a really good take on how much time you should
actually be investing
into looking at AI-powered products. I wish a world, more aware, we have a co-p
ilot for
everyone of us, where I can just ask questions and it magically throws me
answers. For example,
if a campaign gets over, I can just ask questions. How many of my target
accounts came to the event,
and it just answers me a question and stuff, going to a marketing ops post and
getting a report,
or something like that. Really exciting and interesting advancements happening
in the whole space,
but I also want to make sure that folks don't get pressurized to update
technologies.
It's not a lifesaver or a game-saver. It obviously helps in a lot of ways, but
I think we started to do our own individual jobs as well, apart from the whole
transformation that's
happening. I think Kastore is spot on. I think as marketers, there's a lot of
pressure of,
should I be using AI for that? One thing I'm super excited to see in 2024 is
really how AI is shaping
content marketing. We've been talking about this division of groups that we're
going to see.
I think there are some marketers out there who will use AI to just generate a
ton of content,
but it will be lacking substance and is quantity better than quality. Then we
're going to see
another batch of marketers who are really developing a point of view and using
AI to help them with
velocity and to help them with generating content in a faster, smarter way. Udi
from Gong shared his
perspective here. If you think about marketing teams, they're starting to look
at AI and I think
the search engines are going to completely change how they treat organic
content because there's no
more barriers to creating an incident amount of content. Just prompt the chat G
PT and you've got
content like till the cows come home. But good content is still going to
require a human being
who has a point of view that might be controversial, which is not because it
averages out everything
that it was trained on. So it's never going to have a controversial, polarizing
counter to a point
of view. That's number one. Two, it's not going to have the unique style or
voice that a human
marketer can have. So you need to inject those things. Then you can definitely
use chat GPT or
other AI products that are helping marketers to fill in the blanks. Once you
have a point of view
and a tone of voice, chat GPT can help you do that. So the human writers are
actually moving more
into an editor position, but we're nowhere near not needing those people. And
what have my
predictions I think for 2024 is we're going to start to see marketing teams who
are really
mastering their brand and their point of view. I think we're in this time where
B2B content is
actually getting pretty exciting again. And we're moving past the days of kind
of those like cookie
cutter ebooks and white papers. But as marketers, I think one of our biggest
problems is going to
be distribution and Kyle Lacey, the CMO jellyfish had a good take on this email
newsletter podcast.
Like how do we create great content? Because I think distribution is important,
but in the world
we live in today, if the content is different and really valuable, it will grow
. And I think you can
see that from a lot of the substack newsletters. And if the quality of contents
there, it will grow,
right? So the marketing landscape is definitely changing a lot. And one thing
that's top of mind
is definitely distribution. How do you stand out in a crowd? Yep. And I think
speaking of things
that are top of mind, one of the other things we heard over and over again from
marketing leaders
and we spoke to them about last year was events, events are back. And I think
they're back big time.
They're back and everyone right now is doing their events plan for the year.
But I think
something that's so important is you're not just checking events off a list.
You're not just saying
we're going to show up there onto the next, you really have to challenge
yourself to think,
who's audience for this event? What's the goal of this event? What are we
trying to generate or
influence? So we talked with Matt Heinz from Heinz Marketing, as well as E.J.
Welling from Sixth Sense,
and they shared their perspective on what is the purpose of an event? How does
this brand make me
feel? What is my association with this brand mean? How does that reflect on me?
And I think about
like the experience at Forster in the club six, you add, and just like being in
that room, right?
And being with the with the food and the drinks and but while the other people
in the conversation
going on, being associated with that, there was a feeling and a self identity
that I assume was
very intentional as part of your event spread. All hundred percent. We want
people to feel welcome.
And we want you to feel that you're with like-minded people as well. You're all
in there for the same
goal. We're all going to the same conference. We all paid for the same badge,
right? We're all
staying in the same hotel groups. But we want to walk away and we at Sixth
Sense want to create
this memorable moment where you can sit down, you can put your seat up, you can
have that cup of coffee,
and you can take a breath. And I think that's important too. Not only do we
want to make sure
that people are connecting and having conversations, but that you get to feel
your best to you when
you're on site. So we'll do things with having unique swag. That's not
necessarily brand
of Sixth Sense, but it's teal. And so you have a little teal pop of teal. And
it's my teal today.
Or we do a glam squad or we do things like that. We want you to feel the best
to you. Walk in and
have it. And I think one of the points that they hit there about in-person
events is it's not just
about a cool venue or like this really amazing experience, which obviously is
very important
for an in-person event. But the real magic I think of in-person events is
leaving your customers
and your prospects with this really lasting feeling that they're going to
continue to associate with
your brand well after that in-person event is done. And one thing that came out
throughout a lot of
these conversations is it's not just about big events this year. There's a lot
of enthusiasm
around these smaller, more bespoke, intimate events. And how can you approach
those events to really
help not only generate pipeline, but accelerate pipeline forward? And as
marketers, we haven't
been able to host these experiences for a while. And now our wheels are all
turning. What can we do
that's special in kind of a smaller format this coming year? So Kyle Lacey
shared his perspective.
The curated events I am in. Like the small 20-person dinners where it's like 70
% cost
to 30% prospects even though I'm going back to the 70-30. And I should say 80-
20. Where it's just
good conversations and people, you know, we're coming back into this world
where people are hungry for
that interaction. And we can do the virtual events and we will because they're
scalable and they
are important to the model. But you know, we had a virtual event this year in
May and we had
dinners in different cities after the virtual event and they were very
successful because we had 90%
attendance rates and people loved talking to each other. Kyle had such a good
point there. And I think
these smaller, more intimate events are so valuable. I know when I go to these,
I find the
conversations are so much more impactful and I leave with such better content.
But whether you
are going to a large conference or a small 30-minute webinar like this one, I
think something that gets
forgotten about a lot is your post-event strategy. And we talked to Karen
Flores who's the SVP
of events at Okta and she gave us some great insights on how you should be
thinking about your
post-event follow-up strategy. We have our huge customer event coming up on
October 3rd in San
Francisco and we're working on our digital nurture campaigns and we call them
our digital
backpacks. You know, for those who join us online, it's important that we know
what you're doing,
what perhaps you miss so that we serve you up something and not waste your time
. Personalization
as always and will always be the most important thing that we do, especially
now.
Yeah, tell me more about digital backpacks. Can you unpack this?
I can unpack that. So this year if you attend Octane online, we will serve you
up a digital
backpack with information deeper into the sessions that you took and then will
map offers and
different content that is relevant to what you were interested in based on how
much time you
spend with us and what you're watching and participating in. We'll also serve
you up access
to some of our experts. So if perhaps you're interested in our workforce, we'll
match you up
with some of our experts who can help you. That's really cool. So does that,
those are for the
virtual attendees, right? So you sign up for to go to Octane, you go to the
event, maybe you catch
a few sessions, you miss a few, all that stuff. And then at the end, there's
the ability to know
what you missed, what you didn't, and then you're continuing that digital
journey. Plus new content
will serve up new things for you, customized just based on what you watched and
what you responded
to. And then of course, if we're lucky enough, if you gave us feedback of like,
"Hey, this is really
important. I want to learn more about this." Well, Taylor, a unique experience
just for you.
So I love that concept of the digital backpack. Love Karen Flores. So, Sarah,
we talked about a
lot today. We talked about how as marketers this past year, we all had to learn
how to do less,
but do it better. We talked about the importance of a data-driven marketer
going back to basics,
how content and events, kind of these core strategies are going to remain
paramount this coming year,
all with a little help from our friend, which is AI. So the question is, what
else is in store
for 2024? What's on top of your mind? What are your predictions as we look out
for this next year?
Yeah, predictions are always tricky, especially with the economic times that we
're in now,
make predictions even harder. So my first one is, I think it's hard to know if
budgets will or
won't open back up. We're kind of hearing hints that maybe the economy is
getting a little bit
better, but maybe it doesn't always feel that way internally. But if budgets do
start to open
back up a little bit, my prediction is it'll be in very small amounts for
really focused
experimentation. And the one thing I want to call out with that prediction is,
I think, as marketers,
we no longer have to just report on this to our CMO that we are really beholden
to our CFO as well
to prove out the value of that budget. So if you're listening to this, your
budget does start to
open back up a little bit in 2024, which fingers crossed it does for all of us,
make sure you know
the metrics that are successful for that little bit of budget and make sure you
're over communicating
that to your CFO. Make sure they know that it's successful. If you want to
continue to see that
budget, keep coming through in 2024. So that's my first one. My second one is,
of course, about AI.
I think 2023 was when we really started to all just trying to figure out what
is AI. Like,
we're all like, what is it? Can we use chat to be T? We're all trying to figure
out prompts. I
realize I'm a terrible chat GBT prompter. It's okay. You're good at it. I just
saying thank God.
And I think my or my prediction for 2024 is when we think about AI, it's going
to be through the
lens of products. I think we're going to start to see AI weaved throughout our
entire tech stack.
Think if you already have something in your tech stack, they're going to start
to be building AI
features into it, or you might be with that small bit of budget, you might be
starting to think about
buying something that's AI powered. But I think gone are the days that we think
we can just use
free AI products and it's going to magically make our jobs infinitely easier. I
think we're going
to start to come back down to earth a little bit and realize if we as marketers
are going to use
AI, it's probably going to be through a product that is already in our tech
stack or that we're
thinking about purchasing. I think that's spot on Sarah. And when I think about
AI and going into
2024, I'm really excited to see how does it help the demand gen marketer this
past year. It helps
content marketers a lot with writing with video editing, all of that great
stuff. But I think as
we head into 2024, we're going to realize there's a faster, smarter way to
automate a lot of our
demand gen processes. How are we looking at data? How are we automating kind of
the traditional way
that we used to look at demand gen and moving people through the funnel? And
that's where it's
really going to shine. I also think tech consolidation is going to continue to
be a huge focus for us
this next year. I think in 2023, we learned there's some tech that you need and
some that's above
line and some that's below the line. And that's going to continue to be kind of
the requirement
as we go into this next year. How do you do more things with fewer tools and
platforms?
Any other predictions as we wrap up? I think my last prediction to know and
surprise is about
pipeline generation. And I think regardless of if any of the predictions would
be to said,
come to fruition or they don't, the one thing that I guarantee is going to
happen in 2024 is your
pipeline number is going to keep going up. I'm a demand gen. I know this
firsthand.
The expectation is you're still going to continue to grow pipeline, whether it
's the quality of it
or the quantity of it. You still need to have good pipeline and you've got to
help grow it if
you're going to move the needle on your business as a marketer. So no matter
what, focus on pipeline
generation next year, because it's going to be, I think, top of mind, it wasn't
2023. That's not
going to change in 2024. That's awesome. And where do we go to talk about all
things pipeline?
It's pipeline summit. So we're excited to invite you to our spring 24 pipeline
summit. It's going
to be happening on April 11th. So save your spot. This is a great chance for
everybody to get together
and gut check how are the strategies going that we put in place the beginning
of the year? How
should we shift them? How should we iterate on them? We are going to have an
all star lineup of speakers.
We're going to be doing playbooks, how to sessions, etc. So it's going to be
phenomenal. Please save
your spot and join us. And thank you for this Chatch Day, Sarah. It was fun.
This was awesome. See you soon.