April 17, 2025 • 15 mins
In this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio from the Forrester B2B Summit 2025 marketplace floor, Matt spoke with John Arnold, Principal Analyst, Forrester.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:16):
All right.
Welcome again, live on the marketplacefloor of Forrester, B2B Summit.
My name is Matt Heinz.
We're excited to have you back foranother episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
We are excited to be here andinterviewing a wide variety of people.
We've had CMOs, we've had ROI awardwinners, and very excited to have with
us now principal analysts at Forrester.
John Arnold join us to talk about whathe's gonna be presenting in the No
(00:37):
pressure of a Closing keynote Yeah.
Of this conference.
So thanks for being here.
John Arnold (00:40):
Yeah.
Thanks Matt.
Nice to be here.
Matt Heinz (00:42):
Yeah.
So, your topic is gonna be aroundintegrating like just a small
easy tactical topic, right?
Just integrating sales, marketingproduct into sort of a single
cohesive growth strategy.
John Arnold (00:54):
Yeah.
Strategy is an interesting topic.
I found in my research that B2B growthchains are starving for strategy actually.
So everybody needs to improvetheir operational processes.
We all know that.
And, and a lot of B2Borganizations are working on that.
But what they don't know is that theyneed to improve their growth strategy.
Matt Heinz (01:10):
And even those that have done that to date
often are doing that in silos.
You got a marketing strategy, you a salesstrategy, there's a product strategy.
They might share them with each other.
Yeah.
But sharing is not integrating.
John Arnold (01:22):
Yeah.
Or there's no strategy or there's nostrategy's, that's another option, right?
Or there's a strategy at the topand not one at the frontline level.
So that's another thingthat there's a big gap.
So the company has a growth strategy,but it hasn't translated down.
And there's this sort of mentality of,you know, the strategy falls on the
frontline and then the frontline executes.
And that's a very old schoolway to think about it.
So the frontline actually hasmore access to data and tools and
(01:44):
technologies and close proximityto the customer than ever before.
And there's not this like separationof thinkers and doers anymore.
So the thinkers and the doers are onthe front line and they have sometimes
a strategy that's counter to yourstrategy because the strategy's not
working, and so they're going to,you know, have to hit their goals.
Matt Heinz (02:01):
I. Well, and for better or worse, if we pulled 10 people who
are walking by us here on the showfloor and ask them to define strategy,
we'd probably get 10 differentdefinitions of what strategy is.
So when, when you're thinking aboutthis and advising for your clients,
like how, what do you tell people?
Strategy is?
John Arnold (02:15):
So, strategy has, I can tell you about it in terms of its function.
Yeah.
So a strategy helps you to achieve goals,or it creates advantages when there are
limited resources that exist to do so.
Mm-hmm.
So if you have plenty of resources, right,you don't really need a strategy, you can
just spend the money and get the result.
But when you're limited and you know.
Hello marketers.
Are you spread too thin right now?
Of course you are.
(02:35):
But you need a strategy tocreate growth opportunities
when your resources are limited.
So that's what a strategy does.
Mm-hmm.
What a strategy is.
You know, there's notreally one definition.
Strategy can be strategy asposition, strategy as a process,
strategy as a decision or adirection, you know, so there's
lots of different definitions of it.
But it's basically, you know, onepopular definition that, George
(02:55):
Colony, our CEO likes to use is.
Strategy is what you're going todo and what you're not going to do.
So like how are you going toachieve your goal with the limited
resources that you have and whatare you not gonna do and why?
Matt Heinz (03:05):
That is one of the hardest things I think, for people to do.
I mean, I agree with your CEO strategyis choosing, and so by choosing you,
you inherently are saying, I'm goingto do some things and not do others.
And I think unless you have confidencein your strategy, that can feel limiting.
John Arnold (03:20):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (03:21):
How do you so to, in a lot of cases, that's a culture change.
That's just not astrategy on paper change.
You have to change how peoplethink and operate in the business.
How do you do that?
John Arnold (03:30):
Yeah.
And that's one of the topicsfor the keynote today mm-hmm.
Is, you know, how are you going to rollout your strategy and what are the
different components of a strategy?
And the way we're talkingabout it is adaptive strategy.
Mm-hmm.
Because we're entering this newera of adaptive growth mm-hmm.
Where buyers are changing,technologies are changing.
B2B is changing and allthose changes means that your
strategy needs to be adaptive.
(03:51):
It needs to be able to beflexible and change too.
And you're totallyright about the culture.
In fact, what my research found wasthat your culture and your approach to
strategy governance have to work together.
So, you know, cultures can be topdown or bottom up, and strategies
have to be governed with behaviorslike micromanagement where the
managers are involved in all thedetails or self-governance where
(04:11):
people have a lot of latitude.
And those dynamics can really make orbreak your strategy, especially again,
at that frontline level where yourfrontline marketing team, your frontline
sales team, they're responsible for thenumber and they have to hit that number.
And if they're not hitting theirnumber and the strategy's not working,
they're gonna kind of act independentlyand create their own strategy.
Everyone has a strategy, whether they knowit or not, or whether it's good or not.
(04:33):
The idea is to get a hold of thatand start to make it work together.
Matt Heinz (04:37):
Years ago I worked at a large software company based in Redmond.
I won't name who they are.
Yeah.
And we would spend months building astrategy, presenting it, putting it in
binders, and then we would present itand everyone would say, yep, that's it.
And we'd put it in a drawer.
Yeah.
And we wouldn't revisit it.
And that's wrong for two reasons.
A, you know, we would, we didn'tmake adjustments, and b, if it's in
a drawer, you're not really watchingto make sure that your actions are
(04:58):
following the strategy, let alonemaking adjustments along the way.
Do you still see that in the market today?
Yeah.
John Arnold (05:02):
I mean, Charles Kepner and Benjamin Trago were management
consultants in the sixties.
They advocated for flexible planning.
Mm-hmm.
Because they noted that executiveswould often present their strategic
plans, you know, in three ring bindersas evidence of said flexibility.
And I find it ironic that eventheir own book, the Rational
Manager, was later revised andretitled the new rational manager.
So like even their flexibleplans were like changing.
(05:23):
And the idea is not to make your plansmore flexible, but the idea is to
make your people more flexible, right?
So what you wanna do is give them whatwe would call adaptive direction.
So not detailed step-by-step plansbecause when everything is changing
and your plans are changing too,like that's just mayhem, right?
Yeah.
So what you want is some cleardirection where things don't change
(05:44):
as much and it's very uncomfortablefor some marketing managers to give
direction without a lot of detail, right?
Matt Heinz (05:51):
Talking on this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio with
John Arnold, principal Analyst Forrester.
John, you spend a lot of time talkingto B2B CMOs as well, and your topic
this week is around how marketing,sales, and product leaders together
are activating this strategy.
What advice do you give a CMO.
To either lead that discussion orto sort of collaborate with their
(06:11):
peers in a level manner, sort of apeer-to-peer manner to make that happen.
John Arnold (06:15):
Yeah.
A lot of what we talk aboutis something that we call
internally at Forester Habitats.
So if you're a CMO, you kindof have a habitat, right?
Mm-hmm.
Your, habitat is either very sales drivenor product driven or engineering driven.
Yeah.
Or there's a lot of politics, ornot very many politics or marketing
is seen as a cost center orthey're seen as a growth driver.
Or maybe you were brought intothe organization to change
something or maybe you weren't.
(06:36):
So you kind of have to assess thingsaccording to your habitat at first,
because the last thing you wanna doas a marketer, as A CMO is come into
an organization and just assume thatyou can change everything and Right.
You know, come in guns blazing,so to speak, and you know,
fire off a bunch of changes andthat's a good way to get fired.
So.
You have to assess and then figureout the purpose of marketing.
(06:56):
So everybody talks about the fourPs. You know, B2B marketers never
owned any of the four Ps, right?
Maybe promotion.
Mm-hmm.
And B2B is just very different.
So I give marketers a new P. It's purpose.
Mm. And marketing's purpose.
Has a lot of different permutations andone of them is supporting sales, right?
Or supporting the organization.
And that's kind of a trigger wordfor B2B CMOs like it is, you just say
(07:19):
you're supporting the organization.
Well wait a second, actually,that can be one of the purposes
of marketing, but it shouldn't bethe purpose of marketing, right?
There's three other ones,by the way, in that purpose
Matt Heinz (07:28):
model.
So Well, and I think, a lot of times youjust bring up the four Ps, you know a
lot of marketers today feel like theyown promotion and very little else.
Right.
That just, yeah.
And
John Arnold (07:36):
the data backs that up too.
Actually, we asked specifically ifB2B CMOs if they or sales have more
or less influence on those four Ps.
Mm-hmm.
And what we found is that mostB2B CMOs believe that sales has
more influence on price promotion.
You know, or not promotion, promotion'sthe only one that, that marketers say
they, have more influence than sales overpromotions, but the rest of them sales
(08:00):
has more influence than marketing does.
Matt Heinz (08:01):
So there's a difference between influence and ownership,
like who should own those Ps?
John Arnold (08:06):
Yeah.
Well, the product team product as adiscipline is sort of a, you know,
a relatively new concept, right?
Yeah.
So product management, productmarketing taking some of those
Ps, but I would argue that.
B2B never had the four Ps, like B2Bmarketing was never about product
or placement or price, really.
Yeah.
It was sort of sales support.
Yeah.
That's kind of where it came in.
Matt Heinz (08:25):
Yeah.
We've been talking for over eightminutes and haven't mentioned AI
at all, which may be a record.
It might be a record.
In modern conversations you mean AIDA.
Ada like the awareness,interest, desire, action,
John Arnold (08:38):
or the old marketing funnel
Matt Heinz (08:38):
from 1898 maybe, or someone told me AI stands for average information.
Right?
Which is also like, you can godown a rabbit hole on that as well.
I don't wanna talk about ai, butI wanna talk about data, right?
Because I think that data and how youmanage and leverage and activate data
is becoming more and more importantfor how these teams work together.
I think especially as you think aboutthe integration across those, like
go-to-market teams, including product.
The data should not only helpdefine and prioritize what your
(09:01):
strategy's gonna be, but you shouldbe acting on that data as well.
What kind of advice are you givinggo-to-market leaders on the data side?
John Arnold (09:10):
Yeah.
So customer is the place to pointthat data because you know,
marketers have a lot of internal data.
A lot of that data is not trusted.
It's, there's not a belief that datais accurate and it may be inaccurate.
But it's really about thecustomer that's the best data.
(09:30):
And last time I checked this fact, soI may have a more updated figure, but
71% of C-level executives put asidetheir opinions when they're faced with
customer data that contradicts them.
Wow.
So, you know, if you wanna makedecisions in the organization, bring
customer data to the equation, and ifthe customer says it, then it's true.
Matt Heinz (09:47):
When you talk to leaders about working together, and I'm thinking not
just about leading marketing teams, butsort of that team of team concepts, right?
Like, you know, thinking of yourleadership team, like your head of
marketing, head of sales, head of productas your team one, how, what advice do
you give people on just the relationshipbuilding, the rapport building, the trust
building that often becomes foundationalto having those hard conversations
(10:12):
about choosing the right strategy.
John Arnold (10:14):
Yeah, I think B2B organizations are a wide variety of
different levels of sophisticationand complication and complexity and
matrices and all of those things,so it's hard to know exactly if
there's one piece of advice for everyorganization because, you know, some
CMOs sit over a whole bunch of differentmarketing motions and sales motions and.
They've got an e-commerce motion,they've got a SMB motion, they've
(10:36):
got an enterprise motion, theyhave this business, that business,
this country, that country.
Mm-hmm.
Um, you know, some of these organizationsthat I work with are as big as a country.
So, you know, it's like, what are yougonna do to bring it all together?
Well, you gotta operate in differentpockets of the organization.
So some CMOs have really greatrelationships with some parts of their
sales organization and not with others.
And they're working on some of thosewhere they don't have those relationships.
(10:58):
Or they have to just prioritize, you know,and go after the places where they feel
marketing can have the biggest impact.
Otherwise they spread themselves way toothin and they can't get everything done.
Back to strategy is what you'regonna do and what you're not gonna
Matt Heinz (11:09):
do.
So you joined Forresterright before the pandemic?
I think it was like early 2020.
Yeah.
Um, and so you've been here, youknow, for instance, before and after.
It seems like we're backto going in person, right?
I mean, they got a lot of peoplehere at the summit this week.
I think a lot of people that maybeare working more remotely than
ever, but how do you describethe benefit of being here?
(11:32):
How do you describe the benefit ofgetting out of wherever you are day
to day and actually prioritizinggetting for a few days to B2B summit?
John Arnold (11:40):
Yeah, I think that's exactly it, right?
You gotta get out of your business andthink about it differently and talk
to other people who are experiencingthe same challenges that you are and.
You know, have a lot of differentperspectives because information
and facts and those kind of thingsare easy to come by these days.
Right?
Yeah.
You can ask your AI agent whicheverone you want to answer a question.
(12:04):
Yeah.
So knowledge is easy, but it's really hardto get experience and wisdom, you know?
So go around and talk to some peoplewho have been where you've been or
are struggling with the same things.
And then you've got Forrester onyour side and by your side we're
creating research around this.
So you can look at these frameworks andmodels and examples and case studies
and you know, it all comes to life.
And you say, you know, there's acompany that's done this before.
(12:26):
I don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Or there's a company that'sstruggling with this.
I am struggling with this too,but I don't feel like I'm behind.
Matt Heinz (12:33):
Yeah, I mean, let's face it like a lot of keynotes and
presentations, like you can technicallywatch those on YouTube, but getting here
with your peers and meeting other peoplethat are facing this problem, and whether
you see them in the sessions or whetheryou see them in the lunch line or walking
around the marketplace, as we see a bunchof people streaming in from sessions
right now, I mean, that is priceless.
And you just can't replicate that.
(12:53):
I just fundamentally don't thinkyou can replicate that in a virtual
format, like in a virtual format.
We do an episode like this and we hangup and we move on to another thing.
Hang up here.
And you still have small talk, you stillbuild relationships with each other.
And I still think that's critical.
John Arnold (13:06):
And I think this is maybe my fifth summit.
With Forrester, and one of my favoritethings is to see people year after year.
Yeah.
And you know, the people thatneed it the least are usually the
ones that are in the sessions.
It's like, well, why are you here?
You're a really smart marketerand you're really good.
Why are you in this session?
You know why?
Because I'm sharpening the sword andI'm making it better, and I'm meeting
my colleagues and it's my favoritething is of course, when I hear people
(13:27):
getting promoted or they have moreresponsibility and all of a sudden
their budgets are bigger, they'rethriving, their career is growing.
And year after year they're gettingbetter and that's why they keep
Matt Heinz (13:36):
coming back.
I. Well, and the game's always changing.
Right?
Totally.
If you, if you came to this thing12 years ago and thought the
waterfall was awesome, it was, it is.
But like there's a lotof new stuff since then.
This conference is not going anywhere.
Let's assume we're heretwo years from now.
What do you think we're focused on?
What do you think some of thethemes of the conversation of the
research will look like in two years?
Well, the big new
John Arnold (13:55):
announcement this year is buying networks.
Mm-hmm.
And buying networks is a new concept.
You know, there's some companiesthat are dabbling with it.
They're not really, um.
They don't have full strategiesaround buying networks yet.
Yeah.
And it's gonna be a huge challengefor B2B to solve some of the
problems that go along with that.
Like marketing doesn't have a businesscase for spending money on an audience
that doesn't become a contact for sales.
So what are we gonna do with allthese buying network members who
(14:16):
we need to influence and how ismarketing get justified that spend?
So there's some problems to solve, butI think we'll still be talking about
buying networks in a couple of years.
But we'll have a lot moresolutions around that.
And the people who arehere at this conference.
Are gonna be the first movers onthat, and they're gonna have an
advantage and they're gonna have somemore mature practices around that.
Matt Heinz (14:32):
Yeah, no doubt.
I loved what you guys talked about thismorning, not just on buying committees
internally, but the ecosystem Yeah.
People inside and outside of theorganization that are increasingly gonna
be critical to getting those deals.
And the noise is only gonna increase.
Right.
The noise out there of people talkingto your customers, the noise inside
and outside the organization, creatingsome consensus and some consistency.
(14:53):
Of that story across different peoplein that entire buyer ecosystem is
gonna be more and more important,
John Arnold (14:59):
and marketing's gonna be even more important
than ever in B2B organizations.
Matt Heinz (15:02):
Awesome.
John Arnold, principalanalyst at Forrester, thank
you so much for being here.
Thanks for sharing.
Good luck this week.
John Arnold (15:08):
Thanks Matt.
Good to see you in person.
Matt Heinz (15:09):
You too.
All right.
Welcome again, live on the marketplacefloor of Forrester, B2B Summit.
My name is Matt Heinz.
We're excited to have you back foranother episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
We are excited to be here andinterviewing a wide variety of people.
We've had CMOs, we've had ROI awardwinners, and very excited to have with
us now principal analysts at Forrester.
John Arnold join us to talk about whathe's gonna be presenting in the No
(00:37):
pressure of a Closing keynote Yeah.
Of this conference.
So thanks for being here.
John Arnold (00:40):
Yeah.
Thanks Matt.
Nice to be here.
Matt Heinz (00:42):
Yeah.
So, your topic is gonna be aroundintegrating like just a small
easy tactical topic, right?
Just integrating sales, marketingproduct into sort of a single
cohesive growth strategy.
John Arnold (00:54):
Yeah.
Strategy is an interesting topic.
I found in my research that B2B growthchains are starving for strategy actually.
So everybody needs to improvetheir operational processes.
We all know that.
And, and a lot of B2Borganizations are working on that.
But what they don't know is that theyneed to improve their growth strategy.
Matt Heinz (01:10):
And even those that have done that to date
often are doing that in silos.
You got a marketing strategy, you a salesstrategy, there's a product strategy.
They might share them with each other.
Yeah.
But sharing is not integrating.
John Arnold (01:22):
Yeah.
Or there's no strategy or there's nostrategy's, that's another option, right?
Or there's a strategy at the topand not one at the frontline level.
So that's another thingthat there's a big gap.
So the company has a growth strategy,but it hasn't translated down.
And there's this sort of mentality of,you know, the strategy falls on the
frontline and then the frontline executes.
And that's a very old schoolway to think about it.
So the frontline actually hasmore access to data and tools and
(01:44):
technologies and close proximityto the customer than ever before.
And there's not this like separationof thinkers and doers anymore.
So the thinkers and the doers are onthe front line and they have sometimes
a strategy that's counter to yourstrategy because the strategy's not
working, and so they're going to,you know, have to hit their goals.
Matt Heinz (02:01):
I. Well, and for better or worse, if we pulled 10 people who
are walking by us here on the showfloor and ask them to define strategy,
we'd probably get 10 differentdefinitions of what strategy is.
So when, when you're thinking aboutthis and advising for your clients,
like how, what do you tell people?
Strategy is?
John Arnold (02:15):
So, strategy has, I can tell you about it in terms of its function.
Yeah.
So a strategy helps you to achieve goals,or it creates advantages when there are
limited resources that exist to do so.
Mm-hmm.
So if you have plenty of resources, right,you don't really need a strategy, you can
just spend the money and get the result.
But when you're limited and you know.
Hello marketers.
Are you spread too thin right now?
Of course you are.
(02:35):
But you need a strategy tocreate growth opportunities
when your resources are limited.
So that's what a strategy does.
Mm-hmm.
What a strategy is.
You know, there's notreally one definition.
Strategy can be strategy asposition, strategy as a process,
strategy as a decision or adirection, you know, so there's
lots of different definitions of it.
But it's basically, you know, onepopular definition that, George
(02:55):
Colony, our CEO likes to use is.
Strategy is what you're going todo and what you're not going to do.
So like how are you going toachieve your goal with the limited
resources that you have and whatare you not gonna do and why?
Matt Heinz (03:05):
That is one of the hardest things I think, for people to do.
I mean, I agree with your CEO strategyis choosing, and so by choosing you,
you inherently are saying, I'm goingto do some things and not do others.
And I think unless you have confidencein your strategy, that can feel limiting.
John Arnold (03:20):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (03:21):
How do you so to, in a lot of cases, that's a culture change.
That's just not astrategy on paper change.
You have to change how peoplethink and operate in the business.
How do you do that?
John Arnold (03:30):
Yeah.
And that's one of the topicsfor the keynote today mm-hmm.
Is, you know, how are you going to rollout your strategy and what are the
different components of a strategy?
And the way we're talkingabout it is adaptive strategy.
Mm-hmm.
Because we're entering this newera of adaptive growth mm-hmm.
Where buyers are changing,technologies are changing.
B2B is changing and allthose changes means that your
strategy needs to be adaptive.
(03:51):
It needs to be able to beflexible and change too.
And you're totallyright about the culture.
In fact, what my research found wasthat your culture and your approach to
strategy governance have to work together.
So, you know, cultures can be topdown or bottom up, and strategies
have to be governed with behaviorslike micromanagement where the
managers are involved in all thedetails or self-governance where
(04:11):
people have a lot of latitude.
And those dynamics can really make orbreak your strategy, especially again,
at that frontline level where yourfrontline marketing team, your frontline
sales team, they're responsible for thenumber and they have to hit that number.
And if they're not hitting theirnumber and the strategy's not working,
they're gonna kind of act independentlyand create their own strategy.
Everyone has a strategy, whether they knowit or not, or whether it's good or not.
(04:33):
The idea is to get a hold of thatand start to make it work together.
Matt Heinz (04:37):
Years ago I worked at a large software company based in Redmond.
I won't name who they are.
Yeah.
And we would spend months building astrategy, presenting it, putting it in
binders, and then we would present itand everyone would say, yep, that's it.
And we'd put it in a drawer.
Yeah.
And we wouldn't revisit it.
And that's wrong for two reasons.
A, you know, we would, we didn'tmake adjustments, and b, if it's in
a drawer, you're not really watchingto make sure that your actions are
(04:58):
following the strategy, let alonemaking adjustments along the way.
Do you still see that in the market today?
Yeah.
John Arnold (05:02):
I mean, Charles Kepner and Benjamin Trago were management
consultants in the sixties.
They advocated for flexible planning.
Mm-hmm.
Because they noted that executiveswould often present their strategic
plans, you know, in three ring bindersas evidence of said flexibility.
And I find it ironic that eventheir own book, the Rational
Manager, was later revised andretitled the new rational manager.
So like even their flexibleplans were like changing.
(05:23):
And the idea is not to make your plansmore flexible, but the idea is to
make your people more flexible, right?
So what you wanna do is give them whatwe would call adaptive direction.
So not detailed step-by-step plansbecause when everything is changing
and your plans are changing too,like that's just mayhem, right?
Yeah.
So what you want is some cleardirection where things don't change
(05:44):
as much and it's very uncomfortablefor some marketing managers to give
direction without a lot of detail, right?
Matt Heinz (05:51):
Talking on this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio with
John Arnold, principal Analyst Forrester.
John, you spend a lot of time talkingto B2B CMOs as well, and your topic
this week is around how marketing,sales, and product leaders together
are activating this strategy.
What advice do you give a CMO.
To either lead that discussion orto sort of collaborate with their
(06:11):
peers in a level manner, sort of apeer-to-peer manner to make that happen.
John Arnold (06:15):
Yeah.
A lot of what we talk aboutis something that we call
internally at Forester Habitats.
So if you're a CMO, you kindof have a habitat, right?
Mm-hmm.
Your, habitat is either very sales drivenor product driven or engineering driven.
Yeah.
Or there's a lot of politics, ornot very many politics or marketing
is seen as a cost center orthey're seen as a growth driver.
Or maybe you were brought intothe organization to change
something or maybe you weren't.
(06:36):
So you kind of have to assess thingsaccording to your habitat at first,
because the last thing you wanna doas a marketer, as A CMO is come into
an organization and just assume thatyou can change everything and Right.
You know, come in guns blazing,so to speak, and you know,
fire off a bunch of changes andthat's a good way to get fired.
So.
You have to assess and then figureout the purpose of marketing.
(06:56):
So everybody talks about the fourPs. You know, B2B marketers never
owned any of the four Ps, right?
Maybe promotion.
Mm-hmm.
And B2B is just very different.
So I give marketers a new P. It's purpose.
Mm. And marketing's purpose.
Has a lot of different permutations andone of them is supporting sales, right?
Or supporting the organization.
And that's kind of a trigger wordfor B2B CMOs like it is, you just say
(07:19):
you're supporting the organization.
Well wait a second, actually,that can be one of the purposes
of marketing, but it shouldn't bethe purpose of marketing, right?
There's three other ones,by the way, in that purpose
Matt Heinz (07:28):
model.
So Well, and I think, a lot of times youjust bring up the four Ps, you know a
lot of marketers today feel like theyown promotion and very little else.
Right.
That just, yeah.
And
John Arnold (07:36):
the data backs that up too.
Actually, we asked specifically ifB2B CMOs if they or sales have more
or less influence on those four Ps.
Mm-hmm.
And what we found is that mostB2B CMOs believe that sales has
more influence on price promotion.
You know, or not promotion, promotion'sthe only one that, that marketers say
they, have more influence than sales overpromotions, but the rest of them sales
(08:00):
has more influence than marketing does.
Matt Heinz (08:01):
So there's a difference between influence and ownership,
like who should own those Ps?
John Arnold (08:06):
Yeah.
Well, the product team product as adiscipline is sort of a, you know,
a relatively new concept, right?
Yeah.
So product management, productmarketing taking some of those
Ps, but I would argue that.
B2B never had the four Ps, like B2Bmarketing was never about product
or placement or price, really.
Yeah.
It was sort of sales support.
Yeah.
That's kind of where it came in.
Matt Heinz (08:25):
Yeah.
We've been talking for over eightminutes and haven't mentioned AI
at all, which may be a record.
It might be a record.
In modern conversations you mean AIDA.
Ada like the awareness,interest, desire, action,
John Arnold (08:38):
or the old marketing funnel
Matt Heinz (08:38):
from 1898 maybe, or someone told me AI stands for average information.
Right?
Which is also like, you can godown a rabbit hole on that as well.
I don't wanna talk about ai, butI wanna talk about data, right?
Because I think that data and how youmanage and leverage and activate data
is becoming more and more importantfor how these teams work together.
I think especially as you think aboutthe integration across those, like
go-to-market teams, including product.
The data should not only helpdefine and prioritize what your
(09:01):
strategy's gonna be, but you shouldbe acting on that data as well.
What kind of advice are you givinggo-to-market leaders on the data side?
John Arnold (09:10):
Yeah.
So customer is the place to pointthat data because you know,
marketers have a lot of internal data.
A lot of that data is not trusted.
It's, there's not a belief that datais accurate and it may be inaccurate.
But it's really about thecustomer that's the best data.
(09:30):
And last time I checked this fact, soI may have a more updated figure, but
71% of C-level executives put asidetheir opinions when they're faced with
customer data that contradicts them.
Wow.
So, you know, if you wanna makedecisions in the organization, bring
customer data to the equation, and ifthe customer says it, then it's true.
Matt Heinz (09:47):
When you talk to leaders about working together, and I'm thinking not
just about leading marketing teams, butsort of that team of team concepts, right?
Like, you know, thinking of yourleadership team, like your head of
marketing, head of sales, head of productas your team one, how, what advice do
you give people on just the relationshipbuilding, the rapport building, the trust
building that often becomes foundationalto having those hard conversations
(10:12):
about choosing the right strategy.
John Arnold (10:14):
Yeah, I think B2B organizations are a wide variety of
different levels of sophisticationand complication and complexity and
matrices and all of those things,so it's hard to know exactly if
there's one piece of advice for everyorganization because, you know, some
CMOs sit over a whole bunch of differentmarketing motions and sales motions and.
They've got an e-commerce motion,they've got a SMB motion, they've
(10:36):
got an enterprise motion, theyhave this business, that business,
this country, that country.
Mm-hmm.
Um, you know, some of these organizationsthat I work with are as big as a country.
So, you know, it's like, what are yougonna do to bring it all together?
Well, you gotta operate in differentpockets of the organization.
So some CMOs have really greatrelationships with some parts of their
sales organization and not with others.
And they're working on some of thosewhere they don't have those relationships.
(10:58):
Or they have to just prioritize, you know,and go after the places where they feel
marketing can have the biggest impact.
Otherwise they spread themselves way toothin and they can't get everything done.
Back to strategy is what you'regonna do and what you're not gonna
Matt Heinz (11:09):
do.
So you joined Forresterright before the pandemic?
I think it was like early 2020.
Yeah.
Um, and so you've been here, youknow, for instance, before and after.
It seems like we're backto going in person, right?
I mean, they got a lot of peoplehere at the summit this week.
I think a lot of people that maybeare working more remotely than
ever, but how do you describethe benefit of being here?
(11:32):
How do you describe the benefit ofgetting out of wherever you are day
to day and actually prioritizinggetting for a few days to B2B summit?
John Arnold (11:40):
Yeah, I think that's exactly it, right?
You gotta get out of your business andthink about it differently and talk
to other people who are experiencingthe same challenges that you are and.
You know, have a lot of differentperspectives because information
and facts and those kind of thingsare easy to come by these days.
Right?
Yeah.
You can ask your AI agent whicheverone you want to answer a question.
(12:04):
Yeah.
So knowledge is easy, but it's really hardto get experience and wisdom, you know?
So go around and talk to some peoplewho have been where you've been or
are struggling with the same things.
And then you've got Forrester onyour side and by your side we're
creating research around this.
So you can look at these frameworks andmodels and examples and case studies
and you know, it all comes to life.
And you say, you know, there's acompany that's done this before.
(12:26):
I don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Or there's a company that'sstruggling with this.
I am struggling with this too,but I don't feel like I'm behind.
Matt Heinz (12:33):
Yeah, I mean, let's face it like a lot of keynotes and
presentations, like you can technicallywatch those on YouTube, but getting here
with your peers and meeting other peoplethat are facing this problem, and whether
you see them in the sessions or whetheryou see them in the lunch line or walking
around the marketplace, as we see a bunchof people streaming in from sessions
right now, I mean, that is priceless.
And you just can't replicate that.
(12:53):
I just fundamentally don't thinkyou can replicate that in a virtual
format, like in a virtual format.
We do an episode like this and we hangup and we move on to another thing.
Hang up here.
And you still have small talk, you stillbuild relationships with each other.
And I still think that's critical.
John Arnold (13:06):
And I think this is maybe my fifth summit.
With Forrester, and one of my favoritethings is to see people year after year.
Yeah.
And you know, the people thatneed it the least are usually the
ones that are in the sessions.
It's like, well, why are you here?
You're a really smart marketerand you're really good.
Why are you in this session?
You know why?
Because I'm sharpening the sword andI'm making it better, and I'm meeting
my colleagues and it's my favoritething is of course, when I hear people
(13:27):
getting promoted or they have moreresponsibility and all of a sudden
their budgets are bigger, they'rethriving, their career is growing.
And year after year they're gettingbetter and that's why they keep
Matt Heinz (13:36):
coming back.
I. Well, and the game's always changing.
Right?
Totally.
If you, if you came to this thing12 years ago and thought the
waterfall was awesome, it was, it is.
But like there's a lotof new stuff since then.
This conference is not going anywhere.
Let's assume we're heretwo years from now.
What do you think we're focused on?
What do you think some of thethemes of the conversation of the
research will look like in two years?
Well, the big new
John Arnold (13:55):
announcement this year is buying networks.
Mm-hmm.
And buying networks is a new concept.
You know, there's some companiesthat are dabbling with it.
They're not really, um.
They don't have full strategiesaround buying networks yet.
Yeah.
And it's gonna be a huge challengefor B2B to solve some of the
problems that go along with that.
Like marketing doesn't have a businesscase for spending money on an audience
that doesn't become a contact for sales.
So what are we gonna do with allthese buying network members who
(14:16):
we need to influence and how ismarketing get justified that spend?
So there's some problems to solve, butI think we'll still be talking about
buying networks in a couple of years.
But we'll have a lot moresolutions around that.
And the people who arehere at this conference.
Are gonna be the first movers onthat, and they're gonna have an
advantage and they're gonna have somemore mature practices around that.
Matt Heinz (14:32):
Yeah, no doubt.
I loved what you guys talked about thismorning, not just on buying committees
internally, but the ecosystem Yeah.
People inside and outside of theorganization that are increasingly gonna
be critical to getting those deals.
And the noise is only gonna increase.
Right.
The noise out there of people talkingto your customers, the noise inside
and outside the organization, creatingsome consensus and some consistency.
(14:53):
Of that story across different peoplein that entire buyer ecosystem is
gonna be more and more important,
John Arnold (14:59):
and marketing's gonna be even more important
than ever in B2B organizations.
Matt Heinz (15:02):
Awesome.
John Arnold, principalanalyst at Forrester, thank
you so much for being here.
Thanks for sharing.
Good luck this week.
John Arnold (15:08):
Thanks Matt.
Good to see you in person.
Matt Heinz (15:09):
You too.
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