How Marketers Can Escape the MQL Hamster Wheel

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Mark Evans: Hi. It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Sparkle. In many respects, marketers operate in straight jackets. It's things like MQLs, gated content, webinars designed to collect emails so BDRs can cold call prospects. Marketers use these techniques and channels because, well, everyone else uses them. It's challenging to take a different approach because they appear to be safe and less risky. But Nelson Gilliott believes the predictable revenue model is outdated and harmful. He believes marketers need to leverage a more buyer friendly model rather than wasting time with marketing that actually turns off buyers. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Nelson.

Guest: Yeah, Mark. Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.

Mark Evans: Why don't we start with an obvious question? What is the predictable revenue model, and why is it outdated and harmful?

Guest: You know, I wrote this book about two months ago called The Death of the SDR and the Birth of Biocentric Revenue, where I challenged the predictive revenue model, and I introduced the buyer centric revenue model as a as a better alternative. And I think you introduced the kind of the problems pretty well where in marketing today, a lot of people are frustrated. They're they're having less productive and fulfilling careers because they're in the straight jacket where they're forced to do things that they don't wanna do and they know they shouldn't do, and they're prevented from doing the things that they wanna do and they know that works. And I think that the source of these frustrations, the source of the problems within b to b marketing, why marketers are on this, they call it the MQL hamster wheel, why they all all their budget and resources kinda has to be facilitating a lot of bad marketing essentially. And, you know, they're stuck between good marketing and bad marketing. They're stuck between old marketing and modern marketing, and they're kind of in two worlds. And I think the the root source of that bad marketing and the old marketing is the predictive revenue model, and that's what marketers need to sort of liberate themselves from as well as sellers. They're both kind of jammed in it together. And, essentially, the predictive revenue model is the b to b marketing and sales playbook that most b two b companies run on to some extent. I say to some extent because they don't take it straight. They're not only just doing the predictive revenue model. Again, there's a mixture. Companies can't just run on that model today. But, essentially, this playbook was popularized in 2011 by Aaron Ross in his book, Predictable Revenue, but it is based on his time in the early two thousands at Salesforce. And this is sort of when the predictive revenue kinda came about in practice, was the late nineties, early two thousands. So just, like, keep that context in mind as we go through that today, marketers and sellers and companies are running this playbook from the late nineties, early two thousands to some extent. Still today, despite all the changes we know with buyer preferences and in technology and what marketing can do nowadays. And so the essentially, what what the predictive revenue model calls for is two things. One is a marketing thing, the second is a sales thing. The marketing thing is it calls for prospecting, and it calls for prospecting to be done full time by SDRs and no longer by sales. Sales used to do it. Now this and then and Ross came along and said, that doesn't make any sense. Let's have SDRs do it. So that's the marketing thing. And marketing has to support SDRs. Right? Essentially, SDRs are prospecting thing it's a marketing thing, not a sales thing. It's to generate appointments for sales. We'll talk about that. The second thing that British revenue talks about is a sales thing. So we'll leave that aside for the moment, you know, because this is a marketing audience. But just so people know, it's the sales assembly line, a seller specialization or buyer handoffs where, you know, you have predominantly the AE slash CSM split. So a seller that helps initial sell, then a seller that helps with expansion retention. In practice, that's often further subdivided where you have, like, you know, the AE and then the sales engineer and then the CSM, the account manager, etcetera, etcetera. And to some extent, that does harm marketers, you know, down funnel, I think. You know, if marketers are gonna hold themselves accountable to revenue and conversion rates and sales cycle and not only to the initial sale, but also to expansion retention that if your sales comrades aren't doing well, then, you know, that's gonna affect you. So but for the moment, I I think the crux of the problems b to b today are prospecting in our SDRs, which is why the thrust of my book and why my title of my book challenges that and why I think that that is really why marketers are are are chiefly suffering today. So I'll kinda pause there, with that kind of, swipe at predictable revenue and, you know, see if there's any reaction before kinda going on.

Mark Evans: So I'm sure that a lot of marketers who are listening to this podcast are probably nodding their heads in violent agreement because the reality is we are on a hamster wheel. A lot of marketers have to produce those MQLs, and that is, for better or worse, the key metric that their performance is assessed upon. And they know there's a better way. They know that experimenting with different channels and different kinds of tools is a more creative and more interesting way to work. But at the same time, there's a lot of pressure on marketers to perform, and I put that in quotation mark. That's why generating leads and feeding them to sales and BDRs and SDRs is the common approach. How do marketers break out of that? How do they do prospecting that is more efficient, more productive, and more successful?

Guest: Long story short, I think that you should stop doing prospecting altogether and that you should just do good marketing or good amount of marketing. And and, basically, the way I see it, prospecting is the worst kind of marketing where it's essentially you're annoying buyers with telemarketing, email spam, and LinkedIn spam to to get them to speak to sales. And that's essentially what the SDRs are doing. That's, you know, that's what prospecting is. And so today, companies have a mixture between prospecting or this old kind of worst type of marketing and then modern demand gen. And so I see that SDRs and demand gen are, like, competing against each other for budget and resources and to see and who's doing, you know, the right good type of marketing, who's doing the wrong bad type of marketing or the outdated type of marketing. And, unfortunately, a lot of marketers and demand gen have to support the SDRs. While demand gen are doing all these good things like content and social media marketing and ads and events and all this good stuff, at the same time, they have to support the SDRs to do their thing. And so that's where a lot of markers are frustrated and are on this MQL hamster wheel. So what an MQL hamster wheel is, and what MQL really is, it is marketing or demand gen is forced to constantly generate a high volume of contact information of uninterested buyers so that the SDRs can go and annoy them with prospecting. And that is why marketers have to either buy this contact information through content syndication purchases or whatever, or they have to gate their content, which, you you know, we know is terrible, you know, and and produce, you know, crap content, a high quantity of it just to try to get someone's email or their telephone number, you know, ebook downloads and whatnot, or you're hosting events, you know, webinars or or panels or, you know, summits just to get someone's contact information so that then you then put them into an SDR cadence, which is awful. So it's like, you know, you'd you're trying to, like, woo buyers by putting out content only that you can then hit them over the head with an SDR sequence so they so they so they get turned off and they tune out and they don't keep coming back for more. So it's so it's really, really bad. And that is and so that's what that's what that and that is why marketers often held accountable to this MQL thing because they have to feed the SDR org. They have to feed that sort of machine as opposed to marketers being held accountable to the metrics that really matter, like revenue and qualified pipeline, a number of sales, qualified opportunities, and cost per opportunity, conversion rate, sales cycle, cost per acquisition, cost per acquisition payback period, all that type of stuff. If marketers were to be held accountable to that, it would really expose how bad prospecting is and how bad, you know, SDRs are. And so what I recommend today is, like, a lot of companies don't realize how bad prospecting SDRs are because they don't distinguish it or separate it from the rest of their marketing efforts. So they blend when they look at, like, their marketing efforts, they just blend and mash everything together. They get blended CAC, blended conversion rates, blended this and that. They don't separate it. So then you don't realize how bad things are. And so what I recommend that people do is, yeah, you kinda have to separate prospecting from, let's say, website demo requests. The way I see it is, like, marketing should be trying to woo buyers in the door all the way to requesting a demo on the website to speak to sales, and then at that point, that's the handoff to sales. So marketing automatically qualifies them on the website. Yeah. Then sales enters the picture and not before then. Those are the hot leads. Those are the layups. Those are the efficient and effective marketing and sales efficiency, process, whereas trying to jam junk through the pipeline is not good for marketing, and it's definitely not good for sales, which is one reason why a lot of sellers today are missing their revenue and why there's marketing sales alignment because marketing is producing junk, you know, MQLs and stuffing, you know, a high quantity of low quality stuff for the pipeline, and then sales gets caught holding the bag. That's the that's the whole mystery behind the misalignment. It's all sales wants. It's just good leads. You know? So they can do their sales thing. You know, they and sales does not wanna be doing marketing. And what I recommend for people to do is, you know, look into your CRM and distinguish leads generated from prospecting from the SDRs versus website demo request, and then compare that to those metrics we talked about that mattered, like revenue and conversion rates and sales cycle and CAC. And then you can see, like, where you're getting the the results from, which side your bread is buttered on. And then you when you factor in the difference in resources that you're putting into SDRs and prospecting versus the resources you're putting into demand gen, you kind of and SDRs are very time capital and labor intensive. It's no joke. That's why sometimes people outsource that, which doesn't make it any better. I just think it makes it slightly less harmful. But it's, like, so much focus and resources diverted away from good marketing and into SDRs. And so I think when you factor that in, plus you factor in the fact that buyers get turned off and tune out to the SDR outreach, and you can capture some of that in your CRM where it's like, take me off your list, unsubscribe, negative reaction, whatnot, but a lot of it you don't see. You know, how much how much annoying outreach do you get that you don't really reply to and get get turned off to? So there's that cost, then there's the opportunity costs, right, of of not doing good modern marketing or demand gen. You know, I think for a lot of marketers who wanna break free and sort of be able to have the freedom and the resources to do good modern marketing, you're going to have to challenge the root cause, which is not the MQL, which is not the attribution craze, which is not the lead gen model, which is just a way of saying, like, that's just the lead gen model is just the process of generating MQLs. But fundamentally, upstream, the root cause of all it is the predictive revenue model, which still demands today that we have SDRs. We still do prospecting. And so if you get rid of prospecting, you get rid of SDRs, you get rid of predictive revenue model, you then free yourself to be able to do the good modern marketing, to have, like, demand gen to let it do its thing and run all those good plays.

Mark Evans: There's a lot to unpack from that answer. Let me get some quick, answers to a few basic questions, things that you brought up. What's good marketing and what's bad marketing?

Guest: The standard for good marketing is basically you look at revenue and qualified pipeline and those converge and those metrics that matter, like, conversion rates and sales cycle CAC and CAC payback. That's how you determine marketing efficiency, as well as sales efficiency. So that's you know, they they should have very similar metrics, marketing and sales. They kinda keep them both at the hip and aligned. Basically, what what good marketing will look like instead because, again, prospecting, all that is is telemarketing, email, spam, and LinkedIn spam, and sometimes direct mail or gift cards in exchange for demo or bribery. Right. I think. But what good marketing looks like nowadays primarily given the change in buyer preferences and technology is essentially the big play today is really good contact content marketing with really good distribution. And so, you know, whether that content is, you know, audio written or visual or some mashup of the two, it's entertaining, it's educational, it's you know, you're you're basically getting your message out there in front of your audience and then distributing that wherever your audience is and all you know, whether that's LinkedIn organic, whether that's to your email list of opt ins on, you know, in YouTube, or you're putting paid ads behind it to distribute that content, whatever, you're getting it out there. You know, all these social platforms that didn't exist ten or fifteen years, we have to we have to keep in mind that a lot of the plays we're able to today didn't exist a while ago when crypto revenue was around. And so that's that's a big change. And so what marketers can do today where it's like, for example, you have a podcast, and then you invite your audience on, you invite influencers on. So you're doing co marketing influencer marketing. You then distribute that content on social media, on LinkedIn, and then, you know, you tag people, and then you get the network effect and all that type of stuff. And you and you have got this the podcast is a great content pillar. And then your guest podcasting, so you're on other people's podcast with audience that they that they have doing events, and you're doing summits and roundtables and panels and fireside chats and whatnot. You're bringing in speakers and influencers or, you know, you again, you're co creating this type of content. You know, maybe you have live audience and q and a, so you're getting your getting the folks that you want involved. Maybe you're kinda creating a little community where people keep coming back for your more and content, your expertise, you know, your thought leadership, you know, just and they like you. They like you're you're maybe you're also, some of your content is humorous or whatever, and it, you know, it helps them to level up in their profession. That's how they become aware of you. That's how they then consider you. They'll check you out. They'll look at your company. They'll they'll come to your website. They'll have a play around. You know, recently, I had no idea what metadata.io was, but they had a a summit, like, you know, called demand recently. Didn't know what they did, and then I attended the summit, really enjoyed it. They had a bunch of good talks. And then I checked out their website, and I was like, oh, okay. Gotcha. Now I know what you do. And if I ever have that need, I'll come to you. And I'm not gonna check out your competitors. I I'd really like you guys, and I keep seeing your content. Mhmm. You know, I keep I get your ads on on Facebook or on LinkedIn, and I've attended your event. And I like your stuff on LinkedIn organic. And so that's just like that's how basically b two b buyers will will talk to. And maybe I'll talk to a few people about metadata that I own in my network. You know, it's stuff like that is what marketing can do. And, the website is a twenty four seven seller that marketing owns. So it's like buyers wanna do their own research. They wanna basically carry themselves pretty far along their buying journey. And maybe at the end, that's when they wanna speak to sales if they need to. Sometimes they just hit the buy button or whatever. But if they need sales help, then they ask for sales' help. And then that's where marketing comes in on the website, and then it can say, hey. You wanna speak to sales? Yep. I'll just answer these few qualifying questions. Great. On the website, here you go. Here's the seller's calendar. And then all that information that the buyer needs is on the website. So you put the demo recording, you put the pricing or at least ballpark pricing, you you put the FAQ. Like, all that type of stuff, you just put out there in the website because sometimes the buyer isn't ready to kinda go through the whole song and dance with sales, but they just want that information. So as long as you make that accessible on the website and help educate the buyer, almost like in b to c where marketing is responsible for the entire buyer's journey is how marketers need to kind of sort of work today where it's like, yes, we have sales, and we support sales, but we also need to, like, give the buyers much information as that they need. So once if and when they do need sales, they're they're, like, pretty far along, and it's it's a slam dunk.

Mark Evans: So the other question I wanted to ask you is the impact on marketing and marketers when companies do things like gated content or webinars and people do provide their email addresses. In some cases, almost immediately, the person who downloaded the asset or attended the webinar will get an email or a call from an SDR essentially saying, hey. I noticed that you did this, and as a result, I wanted to see if you wanted to book a demo. The way that I look at it, that's just an expression of interest. Like, attending a webinar is okay. You're curious. Or attending an event like metadata, it's not an intent to purchase. And what is how does it make marketers feel, and and how does it make consumers feel? Because increasingly, I think a lot of consumers are annoyed by those cold call outreach.

Guest: Yeah. So where we are today is that we have kinda like a mashup, right, of both good marketing and bad marketing. And so where the SDRs or or the prospecting often comes in today is that marketing will do all this stuff to butter up and warm up prospects and and put out this good content. And then then you kinda stick the x, let the dogs loose or something like that, and you kind of stick the SDRs on them to annoy these buyers. And I think that's so awful. It's like, you know, you go to a bar. Right? And there's all these guys, and you're trying to woo the girl in the bar. And so you put on the charm, you let her know what you're about. And at the end, you know, when she starts to like you, then you're a jerk to her at the end. And it's like, you wonder why you never hear back or, you know, you weren't successful. And I think it's it's like that that's a really that's really terrible. And so what's happening today is that market will do all this stuff and then so called lead intent or lead scoring or ABM is just a fancy way of saying, hey. Which of the uninterested buyers are we gonna prioritize based on their content consumption? Like, who's coming to our website? Who's, you know, checking out our reviews? Who's coming to our events? Who's downloaded our content? And then based off that, who are we going to annoy? Rather than saying, okay. You know, we're kinda seeing who's doing what. That's kinda giving us feedback on our marketing. We can understand, like, which of our content is hot and what what buyers are digging good. Letting these buyers continue to come back from a content, continue to provide value. They'll eventually come and hit that. You know, if they wanna speak to sales, they will request to speak to sales, and they'll maybe they'll share with other people. You're not turning them off, and you're not trying to force them prematurely. And the thing is, like, prematurely into a buying cycle when they're not interested in buying. Because not only will you turn them off, and they'll tune out and they'll stop consuming your content, and they'll say, ah, this is just a thinly veiled sales pitch. It's also even if you've managed to finagle them into a meeting, you're wasting sales' time because this person isn't a buying cycle. They're just like you just pressured them. You know, they'll just kick the tires a little bit, or they didn't know how to say no to the SDR. And so you you basically then give sales junk and that you know, it's like, you know, this person isn't actually interested in buying at all. They just want a demo, which they probably could've just gone the or they should've just gone the website if they just wanted a demo. Yeah. I would say this kind of practice where it's so counterproductive, and it's it's a shame because, you know, you're doing all this hard good work marketers only for the SDRs to come in and kinda ruin it at the end. And not to mention, it's like, again, it's like SDRs are really expensive to support them and to hire them and to train them, to coach tools, and it's just and they turn over a lot, and there's a cost to that. And, like, it's a so one one of the things I recommend to kind of where people can kinda go from here, ultimately, I think that SDR should be repurposed into other marketing activities that are more productive and fulfilling. And so I would transition your SDRs to kinda be, like, entry level general marketing generalists that help with, like, content marketing and social media and demand gen or product marketing, you know, or ops and stuff like that. Like, just have them do other marketing tasks. And that's kind of essentially how I recommend that people transition because I don't recommend that you let them go overnight. You know, that is is a waste. You know? You've got talent. You've got really good talent. You just need to unlock that talent and get more productive use out of them. And so just have them do better better marketing, and there's a process that I kinda outline to people to kind of go from a to b and to help with that transition.

Mark Evans: To run with your bar analogy, it's like meeting someone at a bar. You say hello. They say hello back, and then you say, hey. Do wanna get married? That's kind of the way it is these days. That kind of the way it feels. Let's shift gears and talk about the buyer centric revenue model. I'm really curious about why is it better? How is it different? And as important, how do companies and marketers transition from the traditional predictable revenue model to a buyer centric revenue model? And the one thing I will add before you answer is that there's a lot of chatter on LinkedIn and other places about being customer centric, knowing your customers inside out. A lot of it is talk more than walk. You know, a lot of marketers say, hey. It's important to know your customers, then they never talk to them or even listen to sales calls. So I will add that. But just to circle back, so what is the buyer centric model, and how do you get started with it? How do you how do you make it happen?

Guest: So the buyer centric revenue model basically sunsets prospecting in favor of demand gen or just proper good modern marketing. And so you sunset SDRs and you sunset prospecting. And then it also sunsets the buyer handoffs or seller specialization or sales assembly line, all those subdivision of sales where you have stunted sellers, and then this awful, you know, ring around the rosy for buyers and bloated sales orgs in favor of a one to one buyer seller relationship where a seller is a full and complete seller and and has full ownership over the buyer relationship and can loop in internal folks as and when needed, whether it's, like, technical folks to help with expertise or someone from implementation to customize the product. But fundamentally, there's one seller for one one relationship, and that's what sales is all about, building relationships. So you'll have a more efficacious seller, you'll have a happier buyer, and you'll a leaner sales org. There's two other things I talk about in my book that's related to buyer centric revenue that affects sales more. But, again, I think if marketing sales are gonna be at the hip and both be successful, if your sales team is suffering, you're gonna suffer. And I think that sales is suffering from two other woes, which are quotas and commissions, which force them to basically is a, you know, pressures them and to do basically pressure the buyer, which is a lose lose. And so just be aware of that marketers that, like, oftentimes, even if marketing has the freedom to do good marketing, if your sales leader is using quotas and commissions or or sales assembly line, like, that's going to, you know, try to pressure marketers to put junk through the funnel. You know, that that's something that marketers really need to understand and be aware of. It's not just that marketing is in its own world and has its own problems. It's that sales problems will bleed into marketing's problems. And so the yeah. So you will encounter resistance, let's say, from mark from sales sometimes because the sales leader is just like, I just need an I I need to keep my sellers busy with junk, so give me junk. And that's and you don't want that. I called it the buyer centric revenue model because the predict revenue model is so anti buyer. It's, like, so misaligned with how buyers wanna be marketed to and sold to, and that if sale marketing sales wanna be successful, we have to conform to to the buyer. Since that's not the case, we've set up marketing sales for failure and not success, which is why marketing sell sales are suffering today. There's high turnover, low tenure, low productivity, low performance, low job satisfaction across the board. There's a lot of frustration. No freedom to do to the stuff that we wanna do and can do and should do. You know, in in terms of helping people transition, I recommend there's a there's, a three or four step process. So, obviously, like, know, grab hopefully, grab my books so you have a more context around it and the theory and whatnot, and I also kinda lay this stuff all out. So with the theory, then the first step is to gather the data at your own company. So look into your CRM, do that kind of test where you separate the leads from SDRs and prospecting from demand gen leads or website demo request, look to revenue and those conversion and conversion rates and sales, like all those metrics that matter. First calculate that, then calculate the resources that go into SDRs versus the resources that go into, demand gen. Consider the the what the the harm that it does to buyers and to your brand, doing that prospecting of annoying buyers like that, then use that data, and take this theory and propose, an experiment to the board or to the CEO and to say, hey. Here's the harm of what's going on, and here's the solution. Like, here's what I wanna do instead. So it's really important when you point out the bad, you also show, hey. Here's what I wanna do instead. So every CEO is like, great. I get, you know, I get how bad it is, but what's the solution? So don't be a complainer and just say, hey. We think that's just really bad or the prospecting is really bad, but we got nothing to to do better than that. Then they're gonna be like, you gotta come back with something. Show them the good mark the good mark market and what you wanna do instead, but you need the freedom and the resources to do it. And that that will produce better outcomes of what the business really wants, which is revenue and qualified pipeline and all that type stuff and better win wage and better sales cycles, etcetera. Propose a pilot. Gather your allies to propose this pilot from marketing, from sales, from finance, from operations. So make sure you you kinda have a tight case and propose that to the CEO, propose that to the board, propose that to the CMO or to, you know, whoever, you know, you're reporting into. Propose a two step experiment. And the first step is to automate demo request qualification and demo scheduling right on the website. So rather than having an SDR manually qualified buyers, you know, and then do this whole ring around the rosy. And, again, these are people who are knocking on the door. So you got people who are knocking on the saying, hey. I wanna speak to sales. And then you don't answer that for a while, and you give them an awful experience, and then you wonder why they never make it into the house and and stay as a customer. And and there's a lot of stats out there. It's like 70% of those buyers, if they have an SDR manually qualified, never actually make it to sales. So it's like, this is the high intent, like, bottom like, juicy stuff. This is a great win, guys. So, like, automate that on the website. You can easy on the website. So propose that as the first experiment, and then, meanwhile, repurpose those SDRs, who are who are doing that to whatever extent they were to other productive marketing activities, they'll be thrilled because that will that's the more like, SDRs do not wanna be SDRs. They hate it. They can't wait to escape. They would be so thrilled to do that. In addition, give them quota relief. In other words, pay them the full amount that they're supposed to get paid, their OTE, and give them quota relief and, you know, just say, hey. This is an experiment. We're gonna run this. And then run this for maybe a few like, one, two, three sales cycles so that you can then see the results and track it over time. Do that. So whether that's three, six, nine months, whatever, And then boom. Okay. Great. You'll see. We're gonna automate that. That's the low hanging fruit. We and now we've repurposed SDRs to do good marketing. So now they're helping out with good marketing. They're doing more content. They're doing more demand gen. They're doing more social, product marketing, whatever, helping out with events, helping out with ads, you know, the paid ads on, you know, all the different channels that you can do to get your message out there, whatever. The second part of that experiment is to gradually reduce their prospecting outreach. So gradually reduce their telemarketing, their email spam, and the LinkedIn spam by 25% increments. So if you're supposed to make, you know, a 100 calls a day, which is kinda typical, you you know, have them make 75 calls a day. And then meanwhile, gradually repurpose them to other marketing activities and then give them quota relief. Again, they'll be thrilled, and then you're helping to do more good marketing and reducing the harm of the bad marketing. And then do this for a few sales cycles, and then continue to do that until you no longer basically, you until you fully sunset prospecting in favor of good proper modern marketing. And you'll see. You know, the the revenue will go up. Your conversion rates will will improve. Your sales cycles will improve. You know, all those metrics, your cost per acquisition will improve. And then, you you know, that's there you go. The proof is in the pudding, and then you kinda have proven, you know, that that's the that's that that ought to be done. And meanwhile, you rescue your SDRs. You help them really help them find more productive fulfilling careers, which, again, they're trying to do as soon as possible. You're just accelerating that. And now you've liberated yourself to be have the freedom and the resources to do the good marketing to get off the MQL hamstring, to only produce website demo request that you automatically qualify, to be able to do the content plays that you wanna do in the podcast and the thought leadership and LinkedIn organic and the paid ads and all the different channels and the events and all this type of stuff. And you can do more creative marketing. So a lot of marketers can't be creative. You can't do the arts and craft stuff or do the humor stuff. You can't do all the stuff that really sets you apart because you don't have time for any of that because you're just supposed to kind of be on this MQL hamster wheel. So, like, how the hell can you be creative and stand out when you're just having to produce, like, enough contact information for the SDRs to annoy? I think that that's the sort of ideal that you should be striving for, and that's sort of why it's worth fighting for and why it's worth challenging the particular revenue model and presenting a different model and trying to test that out and experiment at your own company with it. Now if your CEO is not about it, if you get if they're just not down for it, then that should tell you something. Like, you can continue to struggle at a company and then face an uphill battle and constantly fight to do good marketing or find folks who are game and who are willing. Find companies who who are down for you to have the freedom to do good marketing, and those will be companies that win. Those are gonna be the companies that have a massive competitive advantages. They're able to attract better marketing and sales talent and attract buyers. If you try to do this stuff and, the end of the day, you you you hit a brick wall, then, yeah, then that should be a signal that maybe that company is not for you. I know that was a lot, so I kind of, paused there. I kinda went on a rant as I often do. So I'll throw it back to you, Mark.

Mark Evans: The other question that I wanted to ask you is alignment between between marketing and sales. In many cases, they operate in silos. They don't talk to each other. They don't collaborate. They don't share ideas. They don't they don't share information. A lot of information actually sits in the CRM, which sales may access and marketing may feed information into, or may or may there may be an auto feed of information. How do you get marketing and sales to operate as collaborative, cohesive units? How do you make sure that they move forward in lockstep so that it's a virtuous circle between marketing and sales? They're sharing them information. There's a sense that they're they're teammates as opposed to opposing forces, and that's the reality for many organizations. How does that happen? How do marketing and sales align so that one plus one equals three?

Guest: Yeah. So, basically, once a year, you just go bowling together and it solves everything. That's it. No. No. Yeah. So the answer to that really is, again, in the model. And the predictive revenue model misaligns marketing with sales because, again, it for it it it it KPIs, I would say, quote, unquote, key performance indicator for marketing is is producing junk contact information with SDRs to go and annoy, and then sales is revenue and everything else. And so there's that natural misalignment. In the buyer centric revenue model, marketing and sales both have the same goals and KPIs, which is revenue and qualified pipeline, you know, sales opportunities, cost opportunities, sales cycle, conversion rates, CAC CAC, payback. So then you both join at the same hip. You're both aligned in the same metrics and the same goals. That's that's that's the key right there. And then it's marketing having the freedom and the resources, to do good marketing and drive website demo requests to sales because sales does not wanna do bad manual marketing. They do not wanna do prospecting. They don't wanna go out and chase buyers. They wanna help buyers who want their help to to evaluate, purchase, implement, be success, buy more, and renew. So keep in mind, folks, that, like, prospecting is something that sales used to do way back in the day where marketing was unable to connect with buyers, and so they had the sales people basically be, like, field marketers and go knock on doors. And then eventually, that door knocking became telemarketing. Now telemarketing was door knocking two point o. And then that's kind of where sales would do this kind of bad manual marketing stuff. Today, that is no longer the case. And so you can liberate sales also from having to do this prospecting bad manual marketing drudgery, which is what by the way, I know I've been knocking Predictable Revenue Model, but just to give Predictable Revenue Model credit where credit is due, they liberated sales from having to do that in addition to the sales job. And so they created the SDRs, which is essentially the marketing function, you know, to do that full time. Even though aspiring sellers, anyone who wants to get into sales kinda got stuck into that. So so anyone who wants to do sales today has to kinda go through this year of of of hell and misery, which is still kinda screws over sales and one of the reasons why sales is still denigrated and sales is very undesirable, I think, today in b to b. Sorry. I kinda lost my train of thought there because I kinda went on a tangent. Maybe you can reorient me.

Mark Evans: Just in terms of making sure that marketing and sales are aligned.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So, you know, I think that you give marketing the freedom to get those demo requests, and you give these layups, these good leads to sales of people who are actively in buying mode, more likely to buy and buy fast. That's all that sales wants. And then that's kinda where you get the trust, you know, from your from your sales team to be like, yeah, marketing is producing good stuff, and marketing is great. Marketing is crushing it. Fundamentally, the the then everything else that kinda happens with marketing sales is kind of like icing on the cake where it's like, okay. You you meet with your sales team regularly and you get feedback on the leads. And you're hopefully doing some attribution already to kinda know, like, what marketing is should be doing more of. So it's like you're asking buyers, for example, on your website, how they heard about you, and you're also you maybe listen to sales calls or stuff like that, or you're doing qualitative interviews with your buyers, with your customers, you know, your best customers or customers that just bought or people that are already speaking to sales and people, you know, maybe people that never heard of you to kinda see, like, hey. What's working? What's not? How do we touch up our messaging or positioning or whatever? And then, you know, you're kind of getting feedback from sales as to, like, you know, what are the buyers' questions? What are their reservations? What are their hesitations? Like, what's kind of sales is, you know, often talking to buyers. And so then you that can inform your marketing efforts. That's the icing on the cake. That's the gravy. Like, you can't fundamentally again, it's the KPIs, it's the metrics, and it's the producing good leads for sales. Then it's like, yeah, getting feedback from sales and kinda regularly being in in chats with them and and things like that. And that's how you'll get marketing and sales alignment, which is so lacking today because that foundation isn't in place because of the predictive revenue model.

Mark Evans: Well, thanks for all your great insight. This was a really enjoyable and educational, conversation. One final question. Where can people learn about more about you, what you do, and you and as important, your book?

Guest: You can find me on LinkedIn, Nelson Gilliad, and, you know, putting out content on on on this stuff, kinda trying to break it down into some more digestible pieces. And there's still rants. They're just rants on, you know, LinkedIn in written form. And then you can find the book on Amazon. Again, it's the death of the SDR and the birth of Biocentric revenue, so you can see long form and more context and stuff like that. You can reach out to me if you just kinda wanna chat about it, if you're sort of chewing on this and you kinda wanna understand, like, more about the the model and or how to do it at your own company and stuff like that. I've also kinda soft launched a consultancy to help people who kinda want help implementing that model. So I found BioCentric revenue. You know, if you actually need, like, proper help kinda doing it, I can help with that. But, yeah, LinkedIn and, you know, that's where we can definitely connect and, you know, would be happy to, to chat with anyone.

Mark Evans: Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review. Five stars, of course. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more how I help b to b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, send an email to Mark@MarketingSpark.co or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you next time.