August 18, 2025 • 51 mins
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In this episode of Ops Cast by MarketingOps.com (powered by The MO Pros), hosts Michael Hartmann, Mike Rizzo, and Naomi Liu delve into one of the most discussed shifts in B2B marketing and revenue operations: the evolving roles of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs).
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why the traditional MQL model may be falling short and where MQAs step in.
- How to realign marketing and sales around shared intent signals.
- Common pitfalls when transitioning from MQLs to MQAs (and how to avoid them).
- Practical advice on shifting measurement frameworks to reflect real buyer behavior.
To unpack this timely topic, they’re joined by two accomplished leaders in RevOps and marketing strategy:
- Andrea Frazier, Senior Revenue Operations Technical Consultant, is known for her expertise in building scalable systems and aligning sales, marketing, and data. What makes her presence special on this podcast is that she will be a part of the Mopsapalooza as a speaker.
- Jessica Fewless, VP of Marketing and Partnerships, has deep experience in ABM, demand gen, and full-funnel program strategy.
Together, they challenge long-standing definitions of buying intent and discuss how teams can evolve from lead-focused metrics to account-based signals that drive more aligned, strategic growth.
Tune in now, because whether you're in Marketing Ops, RevOps, or Demand Gen, this episode offers an expert-led perspective on what it means to qualify, measure, and act on intent in today’s B2B environment.
Check out our complete toolkit for helping you move from MQLs to MQAs!
Episode Brought to You By MO Pros
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals
Join us at MOps-Apalooza: https://mopsapalooza.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:01):
We will get Mike and Naomi soon.
Today we are going to tackle ahot topic, one that's been
stirring up debates in both opsand demand gen teams.
That is, the topic of marketingqualified accounts, or MQAs,
and are they the future?
And, if so, what happens toMQLs?
So joining me are two seasonedleaders and return guests Andrea
Fraser, a senior revenueoperations technical consultant
(00:23):
with deep experience indesigning scalable systems and
aligning marketing, sales anddata, as well as Jessica Fulis,
VP of Marketing and Partnerships, known for her strategic work
across ABM, demand generationand full funnel programs.
They both help clients reframewhat qualifies as buying intent
and that's kind of what wetalked about buying groups last
time they were on and how teamscan better collaborate around
(00:44):
signals, not just leads.
So Andrea, Jessica, welcomeback.
Jessica Fewless (00:48):
Thanks for having us, Michael.
Michael Hartmann (00:50):
Yeah, and we were just talking ahead.
So, andrea, I'm going to putyou on the spot You're talking
about at Mopsapalooza.
Andrea Frazier (00:58):
I am.
I am speaking at Mopsapalooza.
I'm very excited.
Speaking at Mopsalooza, I'mvery excited.
Me and my colleague, brianSchmidt, will be talking about
how Mops, or marketingautomation people any tech
people really can up-level theircommunication skills with the
C-suite using AI.
So I've been really working onthat, trying to figure out what
(01:19):
are some ways that we can bettercommunicate so that we are seen
as a strategic partner to someof those folks.
I'm excited to present and geekout with my fellow marketing
ops people, I love it, I love it.
Michael Hartmann (01:36):
Yeah, that sounds great Actually.
I may pick your brain aboutthat when we're done.
All right, because I'm not sureI'm gonna make it to Mops Blues
yet, so I'm still trying, allright.
Jessica Fewless (01:40):
You don't get a free ticket.
Michael Hartmann (01:41):
Michael, there's no free ride he has to
fly the plane.
We have talked about trying todo a some sort of live episode
or something of a podcast, whilewhile there, maybe or maybe
like a round table that getsrecorded and turned into an
episode.
But it's all just ideas.
Andrea Frazier (02:01):
So if people are listening and they think that's
a great idea, I think that youshould run the red carpet or
something like, as people comein.
Jessica Fewless (02:10):
You can be there, there we go and make that
your pop top to the crowd.
Michael Hartmann (02:13):
I can see it and I am willing to get dressed
up in whatever outfit you say todo that.
Pay for me to go there.
Andrea Frazier (02:22):
Yes, I love it.
Michael Hartmann (02:24):
Yeah, I have no shame anymore, which is like
kills my well.
I say teenage, but my oldest isno longer a teenager and will
soon be a drinking age.
So let's you know.
Jessica Fewless (02:39):
Full adult.
Michael Hartmann (02:40):
They're like doing this right now, you know,
head down, covering their eyes.
All right, let's start withthat headline.
You both said MQAs won'treplace MQLs, but they do offer
something more.
So why don't we start there,like unpack what we mean there
and how you guys think aboutthat?
Andrea Frazier (02:58):
Yeah, do you want me to start?
Jessica Fewless (03:01):
I can start with this one, but you have to
start with the next questionDeal.
Okay.
So we think everybody hastalked a lot about in 2025 is
that you know the old way ofdoing demand gen is not feasible
, it doesn't work anymore.
And, to be clear, I think we'veknown that for a while.
(03:24):
You know, and I mean you knowmarketers ever since I've been
talking about ABM, we've beentalking about how the MQL is not
the right way to measure amarketing organization, because
that's just one individual.
And we alluded to the fact thataccount-based marketing went to
the opposite of the extreme ofit's not one individual, but
it's a whole account.
So we almost overcorrected tosay, no, no, we want to talk to
(03:46):
a whole account.
And now we've come back to themiddle and said, well, yes, it's
a whole account, but there's adiscrete buying group or there
might be multiple buying groupsin one account that we want to
talk to, right?
So this really helps solve forthat.
So that you know, talking aboutthe MQA, which is a marketing
qualified account, is, you know,a level up from an MQL, because
(04:09):
it's showing that there'smultiple people engaged, because
unless you're selling a reallycheap monthly subscription,
you're going to have more thanone stakeholder that's going to
be involved in the buyingprocess.
So you want to make sure youknow, while you're not going to
have a fully realized buyingcommittee, probably through just
your marketing efforts, youdon't want to just have one
person, and that's what the MQLreally focuses on, and it
(04:32):
focuses on people getting peopleto webinars and, you know, on
top of other additionalanonymous and intent signals
from an account, togethercreates an MQA, which is now
(04:56):
something far more realized thatyou can share with your sales
team, and they're going to havefar greater results as far as
reaching out when something isan MQA and actually getting that
account to engage with them.
Michael Hartmann (05:11):
Yeah.
Andrea Frazier (05:13):
Andrea and I would.
I would add to that like I feellike there's probably sales,
especially sales ops, peoplethey're going, told you so,
right, because I feel like foryears and years and years, right
, there's sales professionalsthat they're saying that's what
we've always done, yeah,marketing would send us Joe
Schmo and I knew Joe Schmo wasjunk.
I would go and I would find allthese people and I would do it,
and so to that I say you got us, you were right, right.
(05:36):
I'm someone that likes to hearthat if I am right and like, yes
, that was valid, and now we areseeing that.
Like that collaboration isimportant, like we see that
right in our own orgs.
There's never a time that I'mlike solely like I know
everything about exactly what weneed and I'm not going to
consult with anybody else in myorganization.
That just doesn't happen, evenif I am the most technical
(05:56):
person at the organization.
So I think it's beeninteresting because I feel like
there's salespeople that aregoing like told you so, and I
think the response to that isnoted.
Let's build that together.
I think it's going to grow evenmore because it's really just
shifting more to like a littlebit more agnostic signals, right
, and every business might havea different offering of signals
(06:17):
available to them that can besurfaced in the form of an MQA.
So it's really doing what salesprobably thinks that they were
doing the entire time anyway,Even though they're saying I
told you.
Jessica Fewless (06:29):
so what's interesting is, most sales teams
are having a hard time lettinggo of the MQL.
Yes, right, so we all haveacknowledged that.
Michael Hartmann (06:36):
Are they having a hard time of letting go
of the MQL, or that's the wayto measure marketing?
Jessica Fewless (06:42):
It's a little bit of both.
So, yes, so at the at theexecutive level, we as marketers
said stop focusing on leads andfocus on MQL.
So you know boards and you knowexecutive leadership teams, all
and the CFO, right, have allkind of said well, you've done
your job if you hit your MQLnumber Right.
So that's one whole thing.
(07:02):
But the other thing is withsales teams, while, yes, they're
like, you know, that person who, who you know, registered but
didn't attend a webinar, is notreally a qualified lead for us,
we're still hearing them say butwe're not getting enough MQLs,
right?
So because what they they'resaying, I think what they're
(07:24):
saying is we want more mqls fromone of them account.
That's actually going to turninto something for us, right?
Andrea Frazier (07:31):
I think they want more explicit, like signals
, and I think, like almost ourlanguage needs to go back, like
I remember when I was first inthe space of leading
implementations and the idea ofimplicit action versus implicit
you know, implicit like thewords we were using, the jargon
of the time and I almost thinkwe need to come back to that
because I think, just to yourpoint, what they're really
wanting when they're asking forMQLs is, in a certain way, we've
(07:54):
kind of trained that mechanismto like need, like this is a
person who did the thing and soI'm going to follow up on the
thing that they did, right, andin some ways, depending on how
your organization mightoperationalize something like in
QAs, you might need to considerthat what's your sales team's
comfort level with implicitactivity that they can follow up
(08:15):
on, like can they makeconversations out of that?
Do they feel like they can dosomething with that?
Or do they have more comfort inexplicit behavior, right?
They want to see that Johnsigned up for a webinar and that
Mike went to this event andstopped at the booth, those
sorts of things.
I think they're all valid.
I think part of this isfiguring out, like, where do you
stand as far as comfort levelwith trying to work an MQA and
(08:41):
not having or how many explicitbehaviors or specific people
with actions that you need tohave to feel like you can have a
worthy follow up or animpactful follow up as a sales
person.
Michael Hartmann (08:51):
So how do you, how do you differentiate though
, between?
So I think I agree.
I think two thoughts are in myhead right now.
One is, I think sales teams dowant qualified something Right,
account or lead, Right, likewhatever it is, because they
want something they go like ohyes, this is realistically has
picked the threshold right, somepercentage likelihood to turn
(09:12):
into a real opportunity.
So, whether that's a person oran account, fine.
The other part and I think thisis maybe where this starts from
a little bit is that, like Ithink you hinted at this,
jessica starts from a little bit.
Is that, like I think youhinted at this, jessica is that
um, like the old model of this,lead to mql, to sql, like all
that?
Right, it's very linear with an.
(09:33):
So if you, if your targetchanges for revenue, right,
everything else goes up inlockstep with that, based on
your conversion rates, and itcreates this incentive to just
generate tons of lead volumeregardless of the quality.
Correct, and I've seen that Um.
But it also is like there's anunderlying assumption about like
(09:55):
this, like this is the dangerof the funnel model, right?
Is that this is very, this verylinear buying process that
happens, which is no longer like.
That is no longer the case.
Right by the time someone'slike raising their hand with you
, they've probably already donea bunch of their own research.
Yeah, yeah, right, and sothat's so.
Jessica Fewless (10:36):
There's probably signals out there that
now you're hopefully you'regoing to connect the dots with
that, that person or set ofpeople who are a part of that.
So how do you, how do youdifferentiate between, or how
much do you and maybe this isorganization specific but like,
how do you treat the differentsignals?
Like individual people signalsversus account level signals and
, you know, mash that together,yeah, so I definitely think
that's going to be some trialand error for every organization
, right, and it's going tocontinue to evolve.
This is not, I think, a majormistake that a lot of marketing
teams made way back.
When was they decided on adefinition of an MQL?
And they let that ride for five, six, seven years, right?
Andrea Frazier (10:56):
The score was the same.
It's always a hundred pointsand we've reset them every once
in a while, but it's always been.
Michael Hartmann (11:02):
How many times have I told people like we're
going to build, we're going todo the lead scoring model, but
like don't overthink it, becausewe are, we can and we will
change it?
Andrea Frazier (11:10):
Totally, and they never opened it again.
Jessica Fewless (11:13):
No, and it's, it's one of those things that
you know, I think it's becauseit's, it's, it's, it's an
exercise and you have to involvesales, and so it's like, oh God
, we have to get sales involved,right?
So there's this wholeconversation, but I think, had
we had the rigor of constantlyupdating it, we would have seen
these changes in buying behavior.
This didn't happen overnight,right?
Andrea Frazier (11:33):
This is how we would have heard sales say that
they were grabbing the buyinggroup people.
Like I was saying, they weredoing some of these things in
the background.
I agree, yep.
Jessica Fewless (11:42):
And we were kind of pushing them towards
that with kind of the practiceof ABM, because what they would
say to us was okay, great, soyou're telling me that we're
going to focus on this account,but who in this account?
So they would go to your pointand find who all those
stakeholders were, because we'relike you know who they are,
like, we'll tell you whichaccounts are interested.
You go figure out who you wantto sell to, right, and so now
(12:06):
we're kind of meeting them inthe middle of OK, now we're
going to align around thedefinition of an MQA, we're
going to align around who areall the stakeholders that we
want to be engaging?
And we're going to align aroundwhen is there enough signals,
implicit and explicit, thatactually define a qualified
account, one that is ready tobuy from you, or at least have
(12:28):
the conversation right?
So that's what this MQA is now.
So it's the evolution of.
You were supposed to havealigned with your sales team on
the definition of an MQL.
Some did, some didn't.
Now you need to align on thedefinition of the MQA and once
again, you're going to set atarget, you're going to track it
over the course of a quarterand you're going to edit it
(12:51):
right.
You got to start somewhere, puta stake in the ground.
We here at Inverta we did that.
I mean, we had a threshold andit was way too low.
It allowed somebody who wasjust showing a lot of intent on
the internet to become amarketing qualified account.
Well, we kind of knewinherently that was wrong, but
we wanted to see what was thebasement right, and so then we
(13:11):
upped it.
There had to be one knownengaged contact, and then we
upped it to two known engagedcontacts, right.
And now we've hit a sweet spotwhere our sales team is like,
yeah, when I send an email, it'sgetting some sort of a response
.
They might not be ready to buy,but I'm getting a response.
So we're like, okay, we thinkwe've kind of hit the sweet spot
.
But so instead of likenecessarily evolving it every
(13:33):
month or every quarter, maybe wecan reevaluate it semi-annually
, right.
But we're going to continue toreevaluate it because buying
behavior is going to continue tochange.
More people are looking at, youknow AI, you know doing AI
searches versus going to Google,right?
How is that going to impactwhat you can see?
That's happening versus what?
Andrea Frazier (13:53):
you're only going to get more signals, right
, like I think that's what wewere talking about before we
even started the podcast.
Right, like, our attention spansare rapidly decreasing because
there's just so much that we'retrying to pack in, and I think
the same goes for signals we'regoing to get more and more.
It's all access to data, right,and I don't think that means
that you have to have all thedata either.
(14:14):
I think that's been aninteresting thing to think.
You know to kind of see aspeople are adopting this.
Like do the people that haveaccess to every single data
point see more success thanthose that don't?
Michael Hartmann (14:25):
I don't think we have an answer yet I suspect
the answer is no.
Like it's like the what do theycall it?
The paradox of choice.
Right, right, like people getkind of Right.
Andrea Frazier (14:34):
I like that about humans, like we're not
completely predictable, or oncesomebody tells us we're
predictable, we do something tomess up the matrix and so.
I think that's why we all I meannerds like me especially like
we'll always have some sort ofjob or problem to solve, because
we'll keep creating them.
But one thing I'll touch on youknow that your question made me
(14:56):
think of and you asked like thedifference in follow-up
depending on all these signals,and I guess that's been
interesting because I thinkoriginally I was really staunch
on the worst thing we can do isovercomplicate it, because if
you were to say, okay, if youget an MQL, I want you to spin
around three times, go tap yourhead four times and then send
this email, but then, if you getan MQA with two people, I want
(15:18):
you to do this completelyseparate choreographed dance.
It wouldn't have been realisticand I was really staunch on that
, and I still think that isnotionally true.
But something cool that I'veseen and maybe it has to do with
the upleveling of AI and thesurge of all of that is I think
we're actually seeing that we'reable, that sales is pulling a
(15:40):
lot more strings together andgetting excited for the
potential here and it's all.
I don't know.
It's all coming togetherquicker and that we're not
having to make it.
So it needs to be the exactprocess.
It has to go this way.
I think we're seeing a littlebit more flex on marketing and
sales in figuring out a new wayto really work these.
(16:01):
So I think that's been kind ofcool, because I would have
answered that question a lotdifferently had you asked me
maybe six months ago.
Michael Hartmann (16:07):
If I'm following you, you're like,
instead of having very Likerigid process, prescriptive sort
of follow followup requirementsand highly, highly rigid
templates for followup fordifferent kinds of things, you
have things that are like.
You have general guidelines.
Maybe call them principles,right, and maybe, yeah, the goal
(16:27):
is to reply within a certainamount of time, but otherwise
you leave a lot of flexibilityand trust.
Put a lot of trust in thepeople doing that work too.
Andrea Frazier (16:34):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm not saying just say
let them do anything, I guess,but to clarify, but it's more
just like With guardrails, rightLike I'm not either.
Well, and also you don't wantto say it has to go this way.
If we don't know right ToJeff's point, this is going to
iterate and change.
So feel it out, tell us whatyou think.
(16:55):
They shouldn't be too engagedpeople and this is what it
should feel like.
But like, does it feel likethat?
Yeah, I think the follow-upshould be different.
Jessica Fewless (17:03):
I also think it's a little bit of the teach
them how to fish principle.
Right, so you know, help themunderstand how to interpret the
intent signals, cause a lot ofmarketers go.
We bought this really cool tool.
It's going to give you all thedata in one place.
Now go nuts.
Andrea Frazier (17:19):
And this is exactly what you need to do.
Yeah.
Jessica Fewless (17:22):
Assuming that a sales rep is going to know what
to do with that, right, whereasyou need to enable the sales
team and say, ok, here is whatin this view, here's what you're
seeing.
Here's how I would interpretthese results.
Right, here's how we'reinterpreting them from a
marketing perspective and here'swhat I would recommend you do.
Next, right, and it's going torequire a heavier lift on sales
(17:47):
as part.
Right, it's not just a you know, get an MQL, put them into an
outreach sequence, right, orthat kind of thing Now.
But because they're going tohave a lot less, mqls are going
to come in a lot, much lowervolume than MQL.
Wait, mqas are going to come inas much lower volume than MQLs.
So, instead of just trying toput people into these sequences
(18:07):
and like, communicate you know,now it's hey, take the time to
investigate this account,understand what they seem to
care about, so that when yousend out an email, instead of
saying like, hey, I saw you wentto Marquette University, I've
got a thing to sell you, whichis personalization circa 2015.
Now it's hey, you know, I'mguessing you care about this,
(18:32):
this and this.
Did you know we can help youwith that?
Here's an e-book that you mightfind interesting, and let me
know if you want to talk, right?
Well, hell, I'd respond to thatemail, right?
Michael Hartmann (18:45):
I wouldn't totally flush it right at least.
I think it's interestingbecause, like to me, having had
an inbound BDR team for a while,I think I was already doing
that anyway, volume was prettylow, so I had that advantage.
But I think the other piece ofthis is I like the idea of
having general guidelines andmaybe even some templates.
(19:08):
But the thing I worry aboutwith that is it loses,
especially if you've got thesalesperson who's going to go
out and do that a bit ofresearch you talked about, which
I think is would be huge Cause,like you, like I'd like that
way more.
It shows some effort and solike some time to understand,
like I want it to be in theirown voice to some degree right
(19:32):
Within again within guardrailsand guidelines, right.
Like it's the intuition, westarted to miss, I feel like and
I'm the process queen, I mean,just roll her eyes so hard at me
.
So I am also a process person,but I also like I think process
can be overdone, right when itbecomes prescriptive.
It signals to me a lack oftrust of people right first off,
(19:55):
and then also like that we wantso much, like we're worried
about people being off script orinconsistent.
It's kind of the same reason.
I've seen where, likeknowledge-based stuff being put
out on customer support sitesyeah, that requires like 14
levels of review.
That never makes it out becauseeveryone's worried about the
wording being exactly right asopposed to going like let's keep
(20:16):
the wording that was originally.
The question was originallyasked and around 20, around 2018
.
Jessica Fewless (20:22):
I stopped giving sdr teams pre-written
emails and scripts I gave them.
Here's the bullets you shouldcover right, because once again,
otherwise it sounds likemarketing email.
So why don't I just send it outfor my marketing automation
system instead of having a humansend it right?
And so you know like now, withmy sales team, we're sitting
(20:44):
down and we're co-developing thedance around an MQA.
So when something becomes anMQA right, Once again, just as
we've always said, MQLs werenever a handoff.
Mqas definitely shouldn't beright.
And so what does that dancelook like?
Okay, they hit MQA.
What am I going to do from amarketing perspective?
What is my messaging going tobe?
(21:04):
What are my offers?
What are all those sorts ofthings?
Michael Hartmann (21:07):
What channels are you going to have that
messaging show up in?
Jessica Fewless (21:09):
Exactly.
And then what is the dance thatsales is going to do to
complement it?
Andrea Frazier (21:17):
And then what's?
The data dance to get thecontact coverage that's needed
for the stuff that still exists,which just to clarify, since
we're saying that MQLs aren'tcompletely going away, like
there's still the need tocommunicate with people.
So I think, another piece of itwhich is cool is like the
contact acquisition piece.
Right, it's one thing to likesurface an MQA, and the first
thing we think is like okay,sales conversation, let's talk
(21:38):
about it and that's totallyvalid.
But even before that, for mostorganization it's do we know
people at this account?
Because you might be able toMQA off of anonymous visits and
find out, oh, we have one ladynamed Sally who quit four or
five years ago, right so.
I don't know.
I think from the dataperspective I'm also getting
excited just because there'slike more that can be done
(22:01):
proactively.
That'll support all of thosethings that will always be
important, like keeping ourRolodex populated, essentially.
Michael Hartmann (22:09):
I'm really excited.
I think basically what Jessicawas describing too is that, like
I think there's a huge amountof possibility of using AI for
because what you described rightit sounds like a lot of extra,
like more work on either yourBDR or sales team to do this
follow-up right.
Jessica Fewless (22:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Michael Hartmann (22:26):
But if you can use AI to help with, like, give
it some of these guardrailshere's some bullet points we
like and then, but also train iton this is each individual
salesperson's voice and the waythey communicate now you can do
that rather quickly and thenyou're you're modifying it, um,
only as needed.
I wouldn't not sure I'mcomfortable yet, um, with just
(22:49):
having it automatically sendstuff, but maybe eventually,
yeah, but I think, I thinkthere's some power there.
So, like it's like I thinkthat's the other piece of this
that is interesting, but so okay, so we I meant we mentioned
hand raisers like, like whathappens with hand raisers in
this where, like, hey, contactme.
Andrea Frazier (23:05):
Sales team I feel like that's always valid,
right.
If someone important is saying,contact me, you should contact
them.
It's not a good I don't, and,jess, feel free to disagree, but
I think that's just bad form tohave no response at all, even
if it's like an automatedresponse to people that might
you might consider not valid.
But yeah, I don't know, contactme, I have money to spend.
Form, right, yeah.
Jessica Fewless (23:28):
My um.
I had a client um in my timehere at Inverta who did a really
interesting thing.
Even before this, buying groupswas a thing which they did.
They had NQLs, which was justyour average signal, and then
they had an HVMQL and those werepeople who requested a demo, a
(23:51):
contact me, those sorts ofthings.
So those required aninstantaneous outreach.
But now even those come intiers, right.
So we haven't talked about itand I don't think we're going to
go down this rabbit hole today.
It's probably a topic, maybe inanother six months when you
have us back on Michael.
But it's around establishingyour ICP, right.
What if somebody reaches out tocontact me and they're not
(24:12):
actually somebody you want tosell to?
What do you do then?
A student, right?
Andrea Frazier (24:18):
And what do you do?
Autoresponder yeah.
Jessica Fewless (24:21):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of people Well,
it's students, but also it couldjust be.
It could be, you know, like wesell to B2B companies.
It could be a B2B companythat's just way too small.
They have one marketer or theyhave no marketers and they just
want, and we know that's not arecipe for success for us.
So what do you do with thatHVMQL, right?
So it's baking in your ICP, inwho you want to sell to, into
(24:45):
all of these motions, right?
And so then maybe you have, youknow, your, your junior SDR
team follows up on thosenon-qualified or non-ICP ones,
because there might be some goldin there.
There might be some, you know.
But you know that becomes awhole nother conversation now of
how you handle, you know, thosehigh value hand raisers that
(25:08):
might not be in your ICP.
Michael Hartmann (25:12):
So maybe it's a combination of like MQA, MQL
plus prioritization, right yeah.
Andrea Frazier (25:18):
I kind of think it ends up being like almost
like different flavors of thesame thing.
Right, we are saying there is asignal that needs responding to
.
And in this case we're talkingabout a hand raising signal or
signal, right.
That needs responding to.
And your question earlier, like, is that outreach different?
Potentially we're saying weneed to have guardrails, but in
general, like, I would arguethat even though someone filled
(25:41):
out a form, like you shouldstill look at it as a holistic
account.
Okay, well, what other contextdo we have here?
Right?
So I would.
I'm kind of finding myselfleaning and I kind of have, I
guess, hesitated to decide oneway or the other, because it's I
can.
I can put myself in bothcorners if I really wanted to.
But I guess to me that is anMQA, right, it should be an MQA.
(26:02):
It's like this is a really highsignal from one person.
But there's got to be someother signals there that if you
were to look under the hood thatyou would find.
You would find a coupleanonymous visits.
If you had intent data,probably you might find out
information about theirorganization that makes them a
better suited fit for yourorganization.
There's just like a lot there.
So I've been leaning moretowards treating every signal
(26:23):
that we've deemed as worthy offollow up as quote unquote an
MQA of evaluating the account,ensuring contact coverage is
there and approaching it in thatway, because I think that's the
shift.
I think we are moving towardsthinking bigger about what they
might need and what kinds ofproblems they might be trying to
solve.
Jessica Fewless (26:43):
But that's true .
Maybe it's almost an if-thenstatement, right?
If this person is in our ICPand they fill out one of these
high-value forms?
Then, they auto-MQA Right.
That's an entirely perfect.
Andrea Frazier (26:58):
I think of it as flavors, but yeah, I think of
it as like pistachios, a type ofice cream, strawberries type of
ice cream, you know, and justthey're all going to come from
ice cream Me.
I never understood it, althoughI do like baklava, which has
the pistachios too, and theDubai chocolate, well, I can't
get distracted it um, although Ido like baklava which has the
pistachios too.
(27:18):
So, and the jubai chocolate,well, so, um, it's interesting.
Michael Hartmann (27:23):
Yeah, I think there's a small thing too, like
I've experienced this, havingfilled out a contact us form
before, after doing a bunch ofdue diligence of my own, and
then not getting any responseright.
So there's a little bit and itended up the way I got.
It was by shaming the company,like on social media, right.
So I think there's also apotential reputational.
Andrea Frazier (27:42):
That's what I think, because what if you went
and worked for a huge companylater?
Right, you would alwaysremember that they didn't
respond to you.
I don't know.
Jessica Fewless (27:48):
Well, and we learned that lesson the hard way
when I was at Demandbase,because we had put a floor like,
if they didn't have 25 millionin revenue, we were just like
these accounts churn, likethey're just too small, they
don't know what to do with ourdata, you know.
But we put a hard line in thesand and, to your point, we
would just not call them back.
And then, yeah, then theystarted to roast us on LinkedIn,
(28:10):
on Twitter.
So what we did was we had ourjunior SDRs who would call them
right and basically Now, with AIWanting our solution- Right, I
would argue now with AI.
Andrea Frazier (28:23):
There's no reason there should be no
response to anything Like.
Michael Hartmann (28:26):
I don't know, Maybe I'm just, I have high
standards, but even like, ifthere's a dentist, right, that
doesn't like respond when you doa contact us form, I'm like
then don't put a form on yourwebsite so I think about this
when I had that sdr team, likeone, like very often we get,
people would ask for somethingthat we this was, we couldn't
fulfill it because, like wedidn't, we this was a had local
(28:48):
market steps.
Like we weren't in that market,we didn't have something close
to it, or it was just too smallfor us, or we didn't have the.
We are already.
Everything was already bookedup and what I always did with
the sales directors in thoseregions was say, if we can't
help them ourselves, right, doyou know who we can point them
to?
Right, which was another thing,right, so at least we're giving
(29:09):
them something to go on?
Yeah, but we always respondedagain, again, relatively low
volume, so it was not that hard.
Jessica Fewless (29:18):
Well, and that's why the ICP discussion
should be a whole companydiscussion, right?
Because, looking back on it,what else could we have done?
We would have said, sure, we'llsell you, but you're not going
to get any of the bells orwhistles, you're not going to
get a CSM, you're kind of onyour own right.
Here's all of our self-servestuff.
Right, because it just costs usa lot to service those teeny,
(29:41):
tiny little clients, and theyhad a high likelihood of
churning anyway.
So are there other things wecould have done?
So we didn't completely blockthem out, but you know.
So you know lessons learned.
Michael Hartmann (29:54):
Well, okay, so then you know, kind of pulling
on this thread a little more,the this idea of, like an
individual hand raiser and it'sthe only known person on your
database for that, like, like,how important is then, um, both
for that scenario, maybe ingeneral right To have the full
contact coverage for thoseaccounts, and how, like, how,
(30:15):
like, how do you think aboutthat and the data that goes with
it?
Jessica Fewless (30:19):
I think this is where now marketers need to be
thinking about their marketingdifferently, right?
So, understanding your buyer'sjourney you know, I think we
talked in our prep call around.
You know, understand theanatomy of a deal, right, like
what does it take, what toucheshow many individuals,
individuals in which roles needto be engaged in order for an
(30:41):
account to be a successfulopportunity that's going to go
to close one, right.
Understanding that and then, asa marketing team, understanding
, okay, how do we behavedifferently, right?
So, great to your point,somebody, you know an account,
let's say you have.
You know, four stages.
You've got aware, considerationdecision, right, and you decide
at, you know the considerationphase.
(31:02):
When somebody is in theconsideration phase, you want to
evaluate all the accounts thatare in that phase and say, huh,
of these accounts, one third ofthem have five stakeholders that
are known in our database andare engaged.
Cool, I'm going to continue toput them in whatever, always on
program or whatever, so theystay warm.
But we've got a buyingcommittee there.
(31:24):
Oh, another two thirds.
We've only got one person,right, we know we need at least
five for this, you know deal, tohave a snowball's chance of
actually turning to close one.
So now, what do we do differentto those accounts in the stage
of the buyer's journey?
And this is where this is whereyou turn on content syndication
(31:45):
.
You know, it's like, it's sofunny, it's like content
syndication was demonized andthen it came back and then it
got demonized again and now it'slike now.
But now I feel like we've gotthe good use case for it, right.
When you know how much what abuying committee is that you
need to sell to and you knowthat you have accounts that are
trending the right direction butdon't have the full coverage,
(32:05):
that's where you use contentsyndication, right.
So then you start to fill outthat.
You know you get those names inthe door.
You start warming them up withyour always on campaigns, those
sorts of things.
Once again, they're not leads.
You don't hand them over tosales.
This is marketing side of theequation Making sure all these
people know your name so thatwhen they finally get to MQA
(32:27):
stage, now you've got five ormore people engaged, and so when
your sales team reaches out toall of them and connects the
dots between all of them, right,they go oh yeah, I know them.
Yeah, yeah, let's talk to them,right?
That's, that's the beauty ofhow this should play out within
a marketing organization.
So I love it.
Michael Hartmann (32:51):
Yeah, I love that.
I love remember we talked aboutthat anatomy of a win.
I like, I love that.
So because I've again actuallythe same place where I had the
str team, like we we startedtracking deals that came to
fruition that had gone throughmy team, partially because I I
noticed like body language whenI would be reporting on you know
(33:13):
, attribution type reporting.
I'm saying like I like to sales, they just like nobody paid
attention.
We started telling the storiesabout I didn't use the anatomy
of a win, but like that's whatwe did, right, like what are all
the things that happen acrossall our teams?
I didn't.
It was not a thing about saying, here's, look at all this great
stuff marketing did.
Like, here's, look at all thisgreat stuff marketing did.
(33:38):
Like here's how this wouldhappen.
Like what can we take from thatand learn from to apply to how
we, we both go, we go to markettogether and I think that was
huge right.
So, like how it was a prettymanual process to you guys, like
how do you approach thatanatomy of a win analysis when
you do it?
Jessica Fewless (33:51):
data.
I mean, I mean, andrea hascreated dashboards and
spreadsheets, and I mean it is amanual process, right?
And once again, you're notgoing to do it every quarter,
but you probably need to do itonce a year because your
market's going to change.
New competitors are going tocome in, you're going to start
to see different things, butthat anatomy of a deal just
gives everybody their marchingorders.
(34:12):
Hey, when should we host afield marketing event?
Oh, it's not really a demandgen program, it's more of a
pipeline acceleration program,right?
Oh, yeah, webinars are here,but here's where we have you.
Invite people to our customeradvisory board, right,
understanding when all of thosechannels should be turned on to
(34:32):
acquire and retain the rightcustomer.
It does take some work, it's alot of you know.
But an attribute, a pure,straight up attribution doesn't
doesn't get you there.
It doesn't get you there.
Attribution modeling doesn'tQuite.
Honestly, I know, I know, Iknow like this is a vicious,
vicious debate and has been foryears, but I'm, I'm, just I'm,
(34:58):
I'm a non-believer inattribution.
I think you just need calculus.
Andrea Frazier (35:02):
People are going to come for jess I know, and
it's fine.
Jessica Fewless (35:05):
I mean, calculus lobbyists the data
scientists or like yeah, becauseI'm going to yeah, attribution
hater, but I think it's reallyjust looking at, you know,
because now the bigger thecompany, the more closed one
deals you're going to have,obviously.
But there's definitely trendsyou can see in what goes to
(35:25):
opportunity, goes closed lossversus closed one one, you know.
And you know each individualchannel holder should have a
vested interest in knowing thatbecause that's how you can argue
for your budget next year,right?
I mean, you know, when I hadfield marketing, you know, no, I
didn't drive pipeline but Isaid, hey, accounts that attend
(35:47):
a field marketing eventpost-opportunity are 2.5 times
more likely to go to close one.
Michael Hartmann (35:55):
Right.
Jessica Fewless (35:56):
So now I can ask for my budget.
If they just, you know, gaugedmy team on pipeline, they'd
probably completely do away withfield marketing right.
So it's understanding.
That is so, so, so importantand yes, it's some work, but
it's totally worth it.
Michael Hartmann (36:14):
Yeah, any additional thoughts, andrea,
that you hear.
Andrea Frazier (36:17):
I mean, I would say like AI is obviously a piece
of this puzzle.
I, you know I don't load datainto every AI tool, obviously
for security reasons, but Ithink you know the more use
cases we're hearing around.
You know, I know we don'tbelieve in attribution, but you
know a lot of it's the patternrecognition.
Michael Hartmann (36:36):
I don't, for the record, I don't totally
disagree.
Andrea Frazier (36:39):
I'm halfway because I technically I got a
like I did my thesis with thatin mind, attribution modeling in
mind, so I can't ever hate itcompletely.
Michael Hartmann (36:48):
But where I?
Andrea Frazier (36:49):
say AI will be my biggest thing, that's true.
Yeah, I think it's my biggestthing, that's true.
Yeah, because it's all about,like credit.
I think the word credit hasjust yes, you know, ruined it,
but what I think trending andlike recognizing patterns is
just the huge thing with AI,that's, at the end of the day,
the most basic way to describewhat AI has provided.
(37:09):
It's just faster patternrecognition, right?
So I do think there is going tobe a world where it's going to
be even tinier data points.
Right, we're talking about wehave new signals, we have first
party data, we have second partydata and we think we're cool
Guys.
We're going to be talking aboutlike infinieth party data right
, I think by the end of this soI think Inferred things with all
that yeahinferred things.
(37:30):
You know vibe reading from AIsummaries.
Who knows what these signalswill be?
That will maybe become part ofthis equation that is MQA, but I
think at some point AI is goingto take over and it's going to
be so many signals we couldn'tmention them on a 45 minute
podcast.
I think the most importantthing is for you know to be
(37:52):
nimble and curious and bewilling to think of it
differently.
I think in general, that'salways been the answer, but now
I'm saying it just a little bitmore obviously because, like I
said, it's been cool to seeeveryone get excited for a
process.
I never felt people get excitedwhen I would do an MQL project.
Right.
We're going to establish an MQLcleansing project, right.
Michael Hartmann (38:12):
We're going to establish an MQL Data cleansing
project, right?
Andrea Frazier (38:14):
Yes, Like this is when you are changing that
status to working and you mustdo it in 12 hours Like it feels
different than that did.
I still think I love process.
My husband would agree I loveprocess, but I do think it's
been cool to see like the humanside come out.
Michael Hartmann (38:28):
People are getting excited again about like
, trusting their intuition,feeling out the deal, following
these guidelines, but you know,it's interesting to me because
in this conversation, rightclearly, technology is an
underpinning on all this, butit's like it feels like it's not
really the most important pieceof this puzzle.
Jessica Fewless (38:47):
It's not the hardest part for sure, right,
because everybody goes there.
They're like, oh my God, youknow, it's like stitching
together the technology andsurfacing MQAs and creating the
formulas and Salesforce orwhatever other tool you have,
like the.
Yes, that's work, but it's thealignment, the agreement, the
change management withinmarketing and how they're going
(39:07):
to behave, the change managementof sales, right, making sure
like they don't pounce on anywebinar attendee but rather they
wait until it's an MQA.
Let marketing do their job, doall that background work before
sales goes after them.
They're just going to, you know, have a much higher hit rate
and you know everybody's goingto be a whole lot more efficient
(39:27):
at the end of the day, becausewhat we're starting to see is
the traditional funnel velocityor deal velocity is and I can
never remember it's gettingfaster Because so much more of
that buyer's journey ishappening before they ever talk
to your sales team.
So by the time they talk tosales, you're just in the
(39:48):
head-to-head battle against twoor three other competitors and
it goes real fast.
Andrea Frazier (39:53):
And one of those competitors didn't respond to a
contact us when they worked ata small company.
Michael Hartmann (39:58):
Five years ago , and so you're already one of
two.
Yeah, I don't know, so it'sinteresting.
You said something earliertoday or early in the
conversation, jessica, aboutmarketers will need to help
sales teams understand how tointerpret all these signals
right.
It feels like that.
The implication there to me islike there's a lot like
(40:19):
marketing should be thinkingmore about sales enablement than
they probably have.
They always should have.
Jessica Fewless (40:26):
But yes, now it's very much more important.
Yeah, yeah, and it's.
You know, like I said, I thinkit's a lot more sitting down and
really talking through thingswith your sales team, you know,
deciding what messages areworking, what aren't.
Yeah, hey, here's the signals,especially that alignment around
an MQA is so critical and socrucial, even more so than the
(40:51):
alignment around the definitionof an MQL.
That definition is going to beso crucial so that everybody
knows what they're supposed tobe doing and when throughout
that buyer's journey.
And then making sure that salesknow okay, we're tagging you in
, we're still on the field, butwe're tagging you in to play
(41:13):
your role.
At this stage and here's whatthat looks like and just as it
always has been, you want tomake sure that they're
interpreting the signals theright way, so that they know
that their message maps to yourmessage on the marketing side.
Right, so it's not beingprescriptive, but it's like hey,
here's how we read thesesignals.
Here's the segment that we putthis set of.
Hey, here's how we read thethese signals.
Here's the segment that we putthese, this set of, counts in,
(41:35):
because here's what we saw.
And now here's some bullets andoverall messaging.
Michael Hartmann (41:40):
Now you go, you go attack them through your
channels.
Yeah, so the other, like movingfrom whatever somebody has
today even ABM, it sounds liketo moving to one that's maybe
ABM with MQAs or whatevertraditional now with MQAs.
That's a pretty big change.
Yeah, so maybe how did youapproach that change process?
(42:05):
And then, with clients, what do?
Andrea Frazier (42:13):
you find that helps increase the chances of
success for that transition.
So and Jess, I'd be curious tohear you know your thoughts on
this so with I'll speak more toa client that we worked on with
this we and I feel very I don'tknow how to say this I feel
really confident that we shouldnever rip out MQLs altogether,
and I definitely feel that wayas we've been working with
clients, I think one we'd neverget any client to start a
(42:35):
project with us and we saidwe're going to start by turning
off your MQL mechanism.
Nobody would ever sign thatcontract.
So that's still there.
So I would encourage everyone,like, don't let that stop you.
You don't have to turn anythingoff.
You are literally just turningsomething else on and at first
you can just start by listeningto it.
You don't have to show anybodyelse who is it pulling up, who
(42:56):
is it not pulling up that youthink that should have pulled up
right, like and doing thatevaluation.
And I think with us, jess, ifI'm remembering right, we kind
of did that where we just likekept looking at it and we're
like, hmm, that number seemshigh, or I'm surprised this
account should be there.
So, or I'm surprised thisaccount should be there.
So it was more like trying tofeel out what was too strict of
(43:17):
a mechanism for identifying MQAsand what was too loose and
finding that sweet spot.
And I think we kind of did thateven before we brought in sales
, just from like a more of adata is this working correctly
and seem notionally correct?
Then, with sales, kind of thesame iterative right, because
they have different perspective,different data that they are
providing with their intuitionand their read on how things are
(43:39):
going in those conversations.
So I think from there it isalmost a second iteration phase
with sales, because they'reactually getting that feedback
in the moment to tell moresuccinctly if it was good like
yes, positive MQA, or maybe notquite like yes, positive MQA, or
maybe not quite what we wouldexpect from an MQA.
So I would say just iteratingis really the key piece here and
(43:59):
not thinking you have to do itall at once.
I would just do that and thenstart to realize, okay, well,
now that we have this signal, itkind of means that we don't
have this one anymore, becauseit's essentially now just an
aggregated form that swallowedup webinar attendees, for
example, like maybe those thingsaren't separate.
So I think it, just as long aspeople aren't feeling like they
(44:21):
have to decide everything outthe gate and they're just doing
it step by step, I think there'sno reason you shouldn't be
trying to listen to more signals.
Jessica Fewless (44:29):
Well, and I think data to prove your case is
always going to be the rightanswer.
Right it's whether it's a lookback or it's a.
You know, six month data gather, the ring period, what you know
, however the case may be,however quickly you want to move
those sorts of things, but youknow, with one client we
literally did this in stealthmode.
(44:49):
So marketing was doing this butdidn't tell sales because
basically sales was like I needto see the data before I'm going
to listen to you.
Marketing people tell me Ican't call an account until they
get to MQA, like I'm not buyingit, right and so great.
So we did our thing in stealthmode for six months and at the
end of that six months we wereable to show hey, of accounts
(45:11):
that you called that were at MQA, you were seven times more
likely to get a meeting than ifyou called them at any other
stage, you know, higher up inthe buyer's journey.
And then they went oh, now thisdid cost some SDRs their jobs
because they were like oh, sowe've got our SDRs just doing
(45:32):
all this dialing and, like youknow, trying to play the numbers
game, like we actually justwait until it gets to MQA right,
like, oh, we can have a muchhigher hit rate and we don't
need as many people dialing fordollars, I mean.
So I mean nobody wants to hearthat somebody is going to lose
their job over this, but I meanit got.
It was that severe of a shift.
(45:54):
Once they saw the numbers thatthey were, they were all in with
this approach.
Andrea Frazier (45:57):
So yeah, it's powerful.
Michael Hartmann (46:05):
It could be, yeah, it could be Go ahead.
Andrea Frazier (46:09):
No, I was just going to say, like, the contact
acquisition, I think, plays intothat too, right?
So, yeah, maybe you don't needas many SDRs hitting the phones.
Go ahead earlier, pre-mqa stageor an account hitting in
(46:30):
pre-MQA stage.
So you know, maybe that'sclassic political AI answer.
It doesn't necessarily meanthat we're getting rid of jobs.
We're just opening up theirtime to do something else.
And I think in this case, I'mreally pushing for the contact
acquisition because I don'tthink contacts are going away.
I don't think any salespersonwill ever want to just go off of
(46:50):
vibes and anonymous websitetraffic, right?
Um?
So yeah, I think that's where Iwould say is maybe there's an
opportunity to focus on the datawith that freed up time, not
spending time on the phone yeah,I think they could spend more
time doing the analysis andresearch and really crafting
good messaging out right.
(47:11):
And updating Salesforce also.
Michael Hartmann (47:17):
That's one way to turn off sales.
I know that.
Andrea Frazier (47:21):
I had to say one triggering thing.
Michael Hartmann (47:23):
Yes, yes, I think we've said more than one
Gosh.
There's so much more I think wecould we could cover, but I
think we're going to have tocall it a day.
This has been just like lasttime a great conversation.
I've learned something and hadfun all at the same time, so
that's a win in my book.
So, jessica, andrea, thank youso much.
If folks want to connect withyou or learn more about what
you're doing, what's the bestway for them to do that?
Jessica Fewless (47:46):
Well, I have the distinction of being the
only Jessica Fulis on LinkedIn,so I'm easy to find.
But also, you know, at the sametime, make sure you follow
Invertacom, because we have lotsof great or Inverta on LinkedIn
.
We've got lots of great contentwe put out daily.
We're not a salesy type, we'rejust here to help marketers
(48:08):
think differently.
Andrea Frazier (48:11):
Yes, and same LinkedIn.
I'm trying to be better atLinkedIn every day.
But then also anyone who'scoming to mops mops.
The police hit up my session.
It's going to be a good time.
Michael Hartmann (48:22):
Yeah Well, I'm not sure what's going on with
LinkedIn these days, Like thewhole algorithm is all like I
see more stuff I can't, I know,yeah, the.
Jessica Fewless (48:28):
Yeah, the perfect time to have posted
something is three weeks ago.
Andrea Frazier (48:31):
Right, I feel like that anyway, so that
actually makes sense.
I'm always three weeks late.
Michael Hartmann (48:38):
Yeah, well, again, thank you both of you.
It was so much fun.
We'll, I'm sure, have lots offun.
Jessica, you mentioned beforethis, you might have some
resources that we can share withpeople in our show notes, so
we'll try to do that as well.
Perfect, yeah, and then thankyou to our, our supporters, our
listeners, hopefully soonviewers, and we appreciate all
(49:02):
your support.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
you can always reach out toNaomi or me, and we'd be glad to
talk to you about it until nexttime.
Bye everybody, bye, bye, bye.
We will get Mike and Naomi soon.
Today we are going to tackle ahot topic, one that's been
stirring up debates in both opsand demand gen teams.
That is, the topic of marketingqualified accounts, or MQAs,
and are they the future?
And, if so, what happens toMQLs?
So joining me are two seasonedleaders and return guests Andrea
Fraser, a senior revenueoperations technical consultant
(00:23):
with deep experience indesigning scalable systems and
aligning marketing, sales anddata, as well as Jessica Fulis,
VP of Marketing and Partnerships, known for her strategic work
across ABM, demand generationand full funnel programs.
They both help clients reframewhat qualifies as buying intent
and that's kind of what wetalked about buying groups last
time they were on and how teamscan better collaborate around
(00:44):
signals, not just leads.
So Andrea, Jessica, welcomeback.
Jessica Fewless (00:48):
Thanks for having us, Michael.
Michael Hartmann (00:50):
Yeah, and we were just talking ahead.
So, andrea, I'm going to putyou on the spot You're talking
about at Mopsapalooza.
Andrea Frazier (00:58):
I am.
I am speaking at Mopsapalooza.
I'm very excited.
Speaking at Mopsalooza, I'mvery excited.
Me and my colleague, brianSchmidt, will be talking about
how Mops, or marketingautomation people any tech
people really can up-level theircommunication skills with the
C-suite using AI.
So I've been really working onthat, trying to figure out what
(01:19):
are some ways that we can bettercommunicate so that we are seen
as a strategic partner to someof those folks.
I'm excited to present and geekout with my fellow marketing
ops people, I love it, I love it.
Michael Hartmann (01:36):
Yeah, that sounds great Actually.
I may pick your brain aboutthat when we're done.
All right, because I'm not sureI'm gonna make it to Mops Blues
yet, so I'm still trying, allright.
Jessica Fewless (01:40):
You don't get a free ticket.
Michael Hartmann (01:41):
Michael, there's no free ride he has to
fly the plane.
We have talked about trying todo a some sort of live episode
or something of a podcast, whilewhile there, maybe or maybe
like a round table that getsrecorded and turned into an
episode.
But it's all just ideas.
Andrea Frazier (02:01):
So if people are listening and they think that's
a great idea, I think that youshould run the red carpet or
something like, as people comein.
Jessica Fewless (02:10):
You can be there, there we go and make that
your pop top to the crowd.
Michael Hartmann (02:13):
I can see it and I am willing to get dressed
up in whatever outfit you say todo that.
Pay for me to go there.
Andrea Frazier (02:22):
Yes, I love it.
Michael Hartmann (02:24):
Yeah, I have no shame anymore, which is like
kills my well.
I say teenage, but my oldest isno longer a teenager and will
soon be a drinking age.
So let's you know.
Jessica Fewless (02:39):
Full adult.
Michael Hartmann (02:40):
They're like doing this right now, you know,
head down, covering their eyes.
All right, let's start withthat headline.
You both said MQAs won'treplace MQLs, but they do offer
something more.
So why don't we start there,like unpack what we mean there
and how you guys think aboutthat?
Andrea Frazier (02:58):
Yeah, do you want me to start?
Jessica Fewless (03:01):
I can start with this one, but you have to
start with the next questionDeal.
Okay.
So we think everybody hastalked a lot about in 2025 is
that you know the old way ofdoing demand gen is not feasible
, it doesn't work anymore.
And, to be clear, I think we'veknown that for a while.
(03:24):
You know, and I mean you knowmarketers ever since I've been
talking about ABM, we've beentalking about how the MQL is not
the right way to measure amarketing organization, because
that's just one individual.
And we alluded to the fact thataccount-based marketing went to
the opposite of the extreme ofit's not one individual, but
it's a whole account.
So we almost overcorrected tosay, no, no, we want to talk to
(03:46):
a whole account.
And now we've come back to themiddle and said, well, yes, it's
a whole account, but there's adiscrete buying group or there
might be multiple buying groupsin one account that we want to
talk to, right?
So this really helps solve forthat.
So that you know, talking aboutthe MQA, which is a marketing
qualified account, is, you know,a level up from an MQL, because
(04:09):
it's showing that there'smultiple people engaged, because
unless you're selling a reallycheap monthly subscription,
you're going to have more thanone stakeholder that's going to
be involved in the buyingprocess.
So you want to make sure youknow, while you're not going to
have a fully realized buyingcommittee, probably through just
your marketing efforts, youdon't want to just have one
person, and that's what the MQLreally focuses on, and it
(04:32):
focuses on people getting peopleto webinars and, you know, on
top of other additionalanonymous and intent signals
from an account, togethercreates an MQA, which is now
(04:56):
something far more realized thatyou can share with your sales
team, and they're going to havefar greater results as far as
reaching out when something isan MQA and actually getting that
account to engage with them.
Michael Hartmann (05:11):
Yeah.
Andrea Frazier (05:13):
Andrea and I would.
I would add to that like I feellike there's probably sales,
especially sales ops, peoplethey're going, told you so,
right, because I feel like foryears and years and years, right
, there's sales professionalsthat they're saying that's what
we've always done, yeah,marketing would send us Joe
Schmo and I knew Joe Schmo wasjunk.
I would go and I would find allthese people and I would do it,
and so to that I say you got us, you were right, right.
(05:36):
I'm someone that likes to hearthat if I am right and like, yes
, that was valid, and now we areseeing that.
Like that collaboration isimportant, like we see that
right in our own orgs.
There's never a time that I'mlike solely like I know
everything about exactly what weneed and I'm not going to
consult with anybody else in myorganization.
That just doesn't happen, evenif I am the most technical
(05:56):
person at the organization.
So I think it's beeninteresting because I feel like
there's salespeople that aregoing like told you so, and I
think the response to that isnoted.
Let's build that together.
I think it's going to grow evenmore because it's really just
shifting more to like a littlebit more agnostic signals, right
, and every business might havea different offering of signals
(06:17):
available to them that can besurfaced in the form of an MQA.
So it's really doing what salesprobably thinks that they were
doing the entire time anyway,Even though they're saying I
told you.
Jessica Fewless (06:29):
so what's interesting is, most sales teams
are having a hard time lettinggo of the MQL.
Yes, right, so we all haveacknowledged that.
Michael Hartmann (06:36):
Are they having a hard time of letting go
of the MQL, or that's the wayto measure marketing?
Jessica Fewless (06:42):
It's a little bit of both.
So, yes, so at the at theexecutive level, we as marketers
said stop focusing on leads andfocus on MQL.
So you know boards and you knowexecutive leadership teams, all
and the CFO, right, have allkind of said well, you've done
your job if you hit your MQLnumber Right.
So that's one whole thing.
(07:02):
But the other thing is withsales teams, while, yes, they're
like, you know, that person who, who you know, registered but
didn't attend a webinar, is notreally a qualified lead for us,
we're still hearing them say butwe're not getting enough MQLs,
right?
So because what they they'resaying, I think what they're
(07:24):
saying is we want more mqls fromone of them account.
That's actually going to turninto something for us, right?
Andrea Frazier (07:31):
I think they want more explicit, like signals
, and I think, like almost ourlanguage needs to go back, like
I remember when I was first inthe space of leading
implementations and the idea ofimplicit action versus implicit
you know, implicit like thewords we were using, the jargon
of the time and I almost thinkwe need to come back to that
because I think, just to yourpoint, what they're really
wanting when they're asking forMQLs is, in a certain way, we've
(07:54):
kind of trained that mechanismto like need, like this is a
person who did the thing and soI'm going to follow up on the
thing that they did, right, andin some ways, depending on how
your organization mightoperationalize something like in
QAs, you might need to considerthat what's your sales team's
comfort level with implicitactivity that they can follow up
(08:15):
on, like can they makeconversations out of that?
Do they feel like they can dosomething with that?
Or do they have more comfort inexplicit behavior, right?
They want to see that Johnsigned up for a webinar and that
Mike went to this event andstopped at the booth, those
sorts of things.
I think they're all valid.
I think part of this isfiguring out, like, where do you
stand as far as comfort levelwith trying to work an MQA and
(08:41):
not having or how many explicitbehaviors or specific people
with actions that you need tohave to feel like you can have a
worthy follow up or animpactful follow up as a sales
person.
Michael Hartmann (08:51):
So how do you, how do you differentiate though
, between?
So I think I agree.
I think two thoughts are in myhead right now.
One is, I think sales teams dowant qualified something Right,
account or lead, Right, likewhatever it is, because they
want something they go like ohyes, this is realistically has
picked the threshold right, somepercentage likelihood to turn
(09:12):
into a real opportunity.
So, whether that's a person oran account, fine.
The other part and I think thisis maybe where this starts from
a little bit is that, like Ithink you hinted at this,
jessica starts from a little bit.
Is that, like I think youhinted at this, jessica is that
um, like the old model of this,lead to mql, to sql, like all
that?
Right, it's very linear with an.
(09:33):
So if you, if your targetchanges for revenue, right,
everything else goes up inlockstep with that, based on
your conversion rates, and itcreates this incentive to just
generate tons of lead volumeregardless of the quality.
Correct, and I've seen that Um.
But it also is like there's anunderlying assumption about like
(09:55):
this, like this is the dangerof the funnel model, right?
Is that this is very, this verylinear buying process that
happens, which is no longer like.
That is no longer the case.
Right by the time someone'slike raising their hand with you
, they've probably already donea bunch of their own research.
Yeah, yeah, right, and sothat's so.
Jessica Fewless (10:36):
There's probably signals out there that
now you're hopefully you'regoing to connect the dots with
that, that person or set ofpeople who are a part of that.
So how do you, how do youdifferentiate between, or how
much do you and maybe this isorganization specific but like,
how do you treat the differentsignals?
Like individual people signalsversus account level signals and
, you know, mash that together,yeah, so I definitely think
that's going to be some trialand error for every organization
, right, and it's going tocontinue to evolve.
This is not, I think, a majormistake that a lot of marketing
teams made way back.
When was they decided on adefinition of an MQL?
And they let that ride for five, six, seven years, right?
Andrea Frazier (10:56):
The score was the same.
It's always a hundred pointsand we've reset them every once
in a while, but it's always been.
Michael Hartmann (11:02):
How many times have I told people like we're
going to build, we're going todo the lead scoring model, but
like don't overthink it, becausewe are, we can and we will
change it?
Andrea Frazier (11:10):
Totally, and they never opened it again.
Jessica Fewless (11:13):
No, and it's, it's one of those things that
you know, I think it's becauseit's, it's, it's, it's an
exercise and you have to involvesales, and so it's like, oh God
, we have to get sales involved,right?
So there's this wholeconversation, but I think, had
we had the rigor of constantlyupdating it, we would have seen
these changes in buying behavior.
This didn't happen overnight,right?
Andrea Frazier (11:33):
This is how we would have heard sales say that
they were grabbing the buyinggroup people.
Like I was saying, they weredoing some of these things in
the background.
I agree, yep.
Jessica Fewless (11:42):
And we were kind of pushing them towards
that with kind of the practiceof ABM, because what they would
say to us was okay, great, soyou're telling me that we're
going to focus on this account,but who in this account?
So they would go to your pointand find who all those
stakeholders were, because we'relike you know who they are,
like, we'll tell you whichaccounts are interested.
You go figure out who you wantto sell to, right, and so now
(12:06):
we're kind of meeting them inthe middle of OK, now we're
going to align around thedefinition of an MQA, we're
going to align around who areall the stakeholders that we
want to be engaging?
And we're going to align aroundwhen is there enough signals,
implicit and explicit, thatactually define a qualified
account, one that is ready tobuy from you, or at least have
(12:28):
the conversation right?
So that's what this MQA is now.
So it's the evolution of.
You were supposed to havealigned with your sales team on
the definition of an MQL.
Some did, some didn't.
Now you need to align on thedefinition of the MQA and once
again, you're going to set atarget, you're going to track it
over the course of a quarterand you're going to edit it
(12:51):
right.
You got to start somewhere, puta stake in the ground.
We here at Inverta we did that.
I mean, we had a threshold andit was way too low.
It allowed somebody who wasjust showing a lot of intent on
the internet to become amarketing qualified account.
Well, we kind of knewinherently that was wrong, but
we wanted to see what was thebasement right, and so then we
(13:11):
upped it.
There had to be one knownengaged contact, and then we
upped it to two known engagedcontacts, right.
And now we've hit a sweet spotwhere our sales team is like,
yeah, when I send an email, it'sgetting some sort of a response
.
They might not be ready to buy,but I'm getting a response.
So we're like, okay, we thinkwe've kind of hit the sweet spot
.
But so instead of likenecessarily evolving it every
(13:33):
month or every quarter, maybe wecan reevaluate it semi-annually
, right.
But we're going to continue toreevaluate it because buying
behavior is going to continue tochange.
More people are looking at, youknow AI, you know doing AI
searches versus going to Google,right?
How is that going to impactwhat you can see?
That's happening versus what?
Andrea Frazier (13:53):
you're only going to get more signals, right
, like I think that's what wewere talking about before we
even started the podcast.
Right, like, our attention spansare rapidly decreasing because
there's just so much that we'retrying to pack in, and I think
the same goes for signals we'regoing to get more and more.
It's all access to data, right,and I don't think that means
that you have to have all thedata either.
(14:14):
I think that's been aninteresting thing to think.
You know to kind of see aspeople are adopting this.
Like do the people that haveaccess to every single data
point see more success thanthose that don't?
Michael Hartmann (14:25):
I don't think we have an answer yet I suspect
the answer is no.
Like it's like the what do theycall it?
The paradox of choice.
Right, right, like people getkind of Right.
Andrea Frazier (14:34):
I like that about humans, like we're not
completely predictable, or oncesomebody tells us we're
predictable, we do something tomess up the matrix and so.
I think that's why we all I meannerds like me especially like
we'll always have some sort ofjob or problem to solve, because
we'll keep creating them.
But one thing I'll touch on youknow that your question made me
(14:56):
think of and you asked like thedifference in follow-up
depending on all these signals,and I guess that's been
interesting because I thinkoriginally I was really staunch
on the worst thing we can do isovercomplicate it, because if
you were to say, okay, if youget an MQL, I want you to spin
around three times, go tap yourhead four times and then send
this email, but then, if you getan MQA with two people, I want
(15:18):
you to do this completelyseparate choreographed dance.
It wouldn't have been realisticand I was really staunch on that
, and I still think that isnotionally true.
But something cool that I'veseen and maybe it has to do with
the upleveling of AI and thesurge of all of that is I think
we're actually seeing that we'reable, that sales is pulling a
(15:40):
lot more strings together andgetting excited for the
potential here and it's all.
I don't know.
It's all coming togetherquicker and that we're not
having to make it.
So it needs to be the exactprocess.
It has to go this way.
I think we're seeing a littlebit more flex on marketing and
sales in figuring out a new wayto really work these.
(16:01):
So I think that's been kind ofcool, because I would have
answered that question a lotdifferently had you asked me
maybe six months ago.
Michael Hartmann (16:07):
If I'm following you, you're like,
instead of having very Likerigid process, prescriptive sort
of follow followup requirementsand highly, highly rigid
templates for followup fordifferent kinds of things, you
have things that are like.
You have general guidelines.
Maybe call them principles,right, and maybe, yeah, the goal
(16:27):
is to reply within a certainamount of time, but otherwise
you leave a lot of flexibilityand trust.
Put a lot of trust in thepeople doing that work too.
Andrea Frazier (16:34):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm not saying just say
let them do anything, I guess,but to clarify, but it's more
just like With guardrails, rightLike I'm not either.
Well, and also you don't wantto say it has to go this way.
If we don't know right ToJeff's point, this is going to
iterate and change.
So feel it out, tell us whatyou think.
(16:55):
They shouldn't be too engagedpeople and this is what it
should feel like.
But like, does it feel likethat?
Yeah, I think the follow-upshould be different.
Jessica Fewless (17:03):
I also think it's a little bit of the teach
them how to fish principle.
Right, so you know, help themunderstand how to interpret the
intent signals, cause a lot ofmarketers go.
We bought this really cool tool.
It's going to give you all thedata in one place.
Now go nuts.
Andrea Frazier (17:19):
And this is exactly what you need to do.
Yeah.
Jessica Fewless (17:22):
Assuming that a sales rep is going to know what
to do with that, right, whereasyou need to enable the sales
team and say, ok, here is whatin this view, here's what you're
seeing.
Here's how I would interpretthese results.
Right, here's how we'reinterpreting them from a
marketing perspective and here'swhat I would recommend you do.
Next, right, and it's going torequire a heavier lift on sales
(17:47):
as part.
Right, it's not just a you know, get an MQL, put them into an
outreach sequence, right, orthat kind of thing Now.
But because they're going tohave a lot less, mqls are going
to come in a lot, much lowervolume than MQL.
Wait, mqas are going to come inas much lower volume than MQLs.
So, instead of just trying toput people into these sequences
(18:07):
and like, communicate you know,now it's hey, take the time to
investigate this account,understand what they seem to
care about, so that when yousend out an email, instead of
saying like, hey, I saw you wentto Marquette University, I've
got a thing to sell you, whichis personalization circa 2015.
Now it's hey, you know, I'mguessing you care about this,
(18:32):
this and this.
Did you know we can help youwith that?
Here's an e-book that you mightfind interesting, and let me
know if you want to talk, right?
Well, hell, I'd respond to thatemail, right?
Michael Hartmann (18:45):
I wouldn't totally flush it right at least.
I think it's interestingbecause, like to me, having had
an inbound BDR team for a while,I think I was already doing
that anyway, volume was prettylow, so I had that advantage.
But I think the other piece ofthis is I like the idea of
having general guidelines andmaybe even some templates.
(19:08):
But the thing I worry aboutwith that is it loses,
especially if you've got thesalesperson who's going to go
out and do that a bit ofresearch you talked about, which
I think is would be huge Cause,like you, like I'd like that
way more.
It shows some effort and solike some time to understand,
like I want it to be in theirown voice to some degree right
(19:32):
Within again within guardrailsand guidelines, right.
Like it's the intuition, westarted to miss, I feel like and
I'm the process queen, I mean,just roll her eyes so hard at me
.
So I am also a process person,but I also like I think process
can be overdone, right when itbecomes prescriptive.
It signals to me a lack oftrust of people right first off,
(19:55):
and then also like that we wantso much, like we're worried
about people being off script orinconsistent.
It's kind of the same reason.
I've seen where, likeknowledge-based stuff being put
out on customer support sitesyeah, that requires like 14
levels of review.
That never makes it out becauseeveryone's worried about the
wording being exactly right asopposed to going like let's keep
(20:16):
the wording that was originally.
The question was originallyasked and around 20, around 2018
.
Jessica Fewless (20:22):
I stopped giving sdr teams pre-written
emails and scripts I gave them.
Here's the bullets you shouldcover right, because once again,
otherwise it sounds likemarketing email.
So why don't I just send it outfor my marketing automation
system instead of having a humansend it right?
And so you know like now, withmy sales team, we're sitting
(20:44):
down and we're co-developing thedance around an MQA.
So when something becomes anMQA right, Once again, just as
we've always said, MQLs werenever a handoff.
Mqas definitely shouldn't beright.
And so what does that dancelook like?
Okay, they hit MQA.
What am I going to do from amarketing perspective?
What is my messaging going tobe?
(21:04):
What are my offers?
What are all those sorts ofthings?
Michael Hartmann (21:07):
What channels are you going to have that
messaging show up in?
Jessica Fewless (21:09):
Exactly.
And then what is the dance thatsales is going to do to
complement it?
Andrea Frazier (21:17):
And then what's?
The data dance to get thecontact coverage that's needed
for the stuff that still exists,which just to clarify, since
we're saying that MQLs aren'tcompletely going away, like
there's still the need tocommunicate with people.
So I think, another piece of itwhich is cool is like the
contact acquisition piece.
Right, it's one thing to likesurface an MQA, and the first
thing we think is like okay,sales conversation, let's talk
(21:38):
about it and that's totallyvalid.
But even before that, for mostorganization it's do we know
people at this account?
Because you might be able toMQA off of anonymous visits and
find out, oh, we have one ladynamed Sally who quit four or
five years ago, right so.
I don't know.
I think from the dataperspective I'm also getting
excited just because there'slike more that can be done
(22:01):
proactively.
That'll support all of thosethings that will always be
important, like keeping ourRolodex populated, essentially.
Michael Hartmann (22:09):
I'm really excited.
I think basically what Jessicawas describing too is that, like
I think there's a huge amountof possibility of using AI for
because what you described rightit sounds like a lot of extra,
like more work on either yourBDR or sales team to do this
follow-up right.
Jessica Fewless (22:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Michael Hartmann (22:26):
But if you can use AI to help with, like, give
it some of these guardrailshere's some bullet points we
like and then, but also train iton this is each individual
salesperson's voice and the waythey communicate now you can do
that rather quickly and thenyou're you're modifying it, um,
only as needed.
I wouldn't not sure I'mcomfortable yet, um, with just
(22:49):
having it automatically sendstuff, but maybe eventually,
yeah, but I think, I thinkthere's some power there.
So, like it's like I thinkthat's the other piece of this
that is interesting, but so okay, so we I meant we mentioned
hand raisers like, like whathappens with hand raisers in
this where, like, hey, contactme.
Andrea Frazier (23:05):
Sales team I feel like that's always valid,
right.
If someone important is saying,contact me, you should contact
them.
It's not a good I don't, and,jess, feel free to disagree, but
I think that's just bad form tohave no response at all, even
if it's like an automatedresponse to people that might
you might consider not valid.
But yeah, I don't know, contactme, I have money to spend.
Form, right, yeah.
Jessica Fewless (23:28):
My um.
I had a client um in my timehere at Inverta who did a really
interesting thing.
Even before this, buying groupswas a thing which they did.
They had NQLs, which was justyour average signal, and then
they had an HVMQL and those werepeople who requested a demo, a
(23:51):
contact me, those sorts ofthings.
So those required aninstantaneous outreach.
But now even those come intiers, right.
So we haven't talked about itand I don't think we're going to
go down this rabbit hole today.
It's probably a topic, maybe inanother six months when you
have us back on Michael.
But it's around establishingyour ICP, right.
What if somebody reaches out tocontact me and they're not
(24:12):
actually somebody you want tosell to?
What do you do then?
A student, right?
Andrea Frazier (24:18):
And what do you do?
Autoresponder yeah.
Jessica Fewless (24:21):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of people Well,
it's students, but also it couldjust be.
It could be, you know, like wesell to B2B companies.
It could be a B2B companythat's just way too small.
They have one marketer or theyhave no marketers and they just
want, and we know that's not arecipe for success for us.
So what do you do with thatHVMQL, right?
So it's baking in your ICP, inwho you want to sell to, into
(24:45):
all of these motions, right?
And so then maybe you have, youknow, your, your junior SDR
team follows up on thosenon-qualified or non-ICP ones,
because there might be some goldin there.
There might be some, you know.
But you know that becomes awhole nother conversation now of
how you handle, you know, thosehigh value hand raisers that
(25:08):
might not be in your ICP.
Michael Hartmann (25:12):
So maybe it's a combination of like MQA, MQL
plus prioritization, right yeah.
Andrea Frazier (25:18):
I kind of think it ends up being like almost
like different flavors of thesame thing.
Right, we are saying there is asignal that needs responding to
.
And in this case we're talkingabout a hand raising signal or
signal, right.
That needs responding to.
And your question earlier, like, is that outreach different?
Potentially we're saying weneed to have guardrails, but in
general, like, I would arguethat even though someone filled
(25:41):
out a form, like you shouldstill look at it as a holistic
account.
Okay, well, what other contextdo we have here?
Right?
So I would.
I'm kind of finding myselfleaning and I kind of have, I
guess, hesitated to decide oneway or the other, because it's I
can.
I can put myself in bothcorners if I really wanted to.
But I guess to me that is anMQA, right, it should be an MQA.
(26:02):
It's like this is a really highsignal from one person.
But there's got to be someother signals there that if you
were to look under the hood thatyou would find.
You would find a coupleanonymous visits.
If you had intent data,probably you might find out
information about theirorganization that makes them a
better suited fit for yourorganization.
There's just like a lot there.
So I've been leaning moretowards treating every signal
(26:23):
that we've deemed as worthy offollow up as quote unquote an
MQA of evaluating the account,ensuring contact coverage is
there and approaching it in thatway, because I think that's the
shift.
I think we are moving towardsthinking bigger about what they
might need and what kinds ofproblems they might be trying to
solve.
Jessica Fewless (26:43):
But that's true .
Maybe it's almost an if-thenstatement, right?
If this person is in our ICPand they fill out one of these
high-value forms?
Then, they auto-MQA Right.
That's an entirely perfect.
Andrea Frazier (26:58):
I think of it as flavors, but yeah, I think of
it as like pistachios, a type ofice cream, strawberries type of
ice cream, you know, and justthey're all going to come from
ice cream Me.
I never understood it, althoughI do like baklava, which has
the pistachios too, and theDubai chocolate, well, I can't
get distracted it um, although Ido like baklava which has the
pistachios too.
(27:18):
So, and the jubai chocolate,well, so, um, it's interesting.
Michael Hartmann (27:23):
Yeah, I think there's a small thing too, like
I've experienced this, havingfilled out a contact us form
before, after doing a bunch ofdue diligence of my own, and
then not getting any responseright.
So there's a little bit and itended up the way I got.
It was by shaming the company,like on social media, right.
So I think there's also apotential reputational.
Andrea Frazier (27:42):
That's what I think, because what if you went
and worked for a huge companylater?
Right, you would alwaysremember that they didn't
respond to you.
I don't know.
Jessica Fewless (27:48):
Well, and we learned that lesson the hard way
when I was at Demandbase,because we had put a floor like,
if they didn't have 25 millionin revenue, we were just like
these accounts churn, likethey're just too small, they
don't know what to do with ourdata, you know.
But we put a hard line in thesand and, to your point, we
would just not call them back.
And then, yeah, then theystarted to roast us on LinkedIn,
(28:10):
on Twitter.
So what we did was we had ourjunior SDRs who would call them
right and basically Now, with AIWanting our solution- Right, I
would argue now with AI.
Andrea Frazier (28:23):
There's no reason there should be no
response to anything Like.
Michael Hartmann (28:26):
I don't know, Maybe I'm just, I have high
standards, but even like, ifthere's a dentist, right, that
doesn't like respond when you doa contact us form, I'm like
then don't put a form on yourwebsite so I think about this
when I had that sdr team, likeone, like very often we get,
people would ask for somethingthat we this was, we couldn't
fulfill it because, like wedidn't, we this was a had local
(28:48):
market steps.
Like we weren't in that market,we didn't have something close
to it, or it was just too smallfor us, or we didn't have the.
We are already.
Everything was already bookedup and what I always did with
the sales directors in thoseregions was say, if we can't
help them ourselves, right, doyou know who we can point them
to?
Right, which was another thing,right, so at least we're giving
(29:09):
them something to go on?
Yeah, but we always respondedagain, again, relatively low
volume, so it was not that hard.
Jessica Fewless (29:18):
Well, and that's why the ICP discussion
should be a whole companydiscussion, right?
Because, looking back on it,what else could we have done?
We would have said, sure, we'llsell you, but you're not going
to get any of the bells orwhistles, you're not going to
get a CSM, you're kind of onyour own right.
Here's all of our self-servestuff.
Right, because it just costs usa lot to service those teeny,
(29:41):
tiny little clients, and theyhad a high likelihood of
churning anyway.
So are there other things wecould have done?
So we didn't completely blockthem out, but you know.
So you know lessons learned.
Michael Hartmann (29:54):
Well, okay, so then you know, kind of pulling
on this thread a little more,the this idea of, like an
individual hand raiser and it'sthe only known person on your
database for that, like, like,how important is then, um, both
for that scenario, maybe ingeneral right To have the full
contact coverage for thoseaccounts, and how, like, how,
(30:15):
like, how do you think aboutthat and the data that goes with
it?
Jessica Fewless (30:19):
I think this is where now marketers need to be
thinking about their marketingdifferently, right?
So, understanding your buyer'sjourney you know, I think we
talked in our prep call around.
You know, understand theanatomy of a deal, right, like
what does it take, what toucheshow many individuals,
individuals in which roles needto be engaged in order for an
(30:41):
account to be a successfulopportunity that's going to go
to close one, right.
Understanding that and then, asa marketing team, understanding
, okay, how do we behavedifferently, right?
So, great to your point,somebody, you know an account,
let's say you have.
You know, four stages.
You've got aware, considerationdecision, right, and you decide
at, you know the considerationphase.
(31:02):
When somebody is in theconsideration phase, you want to
evaluate all the accounts thatare in that phase and say, huh,
of these accounts, one third ofthem have five stakeholders that
are known in our database andare engaged.
Cool, I'm going to continue toput them in whatever, always on
program or whatever, so theystay warm.
But we've got a buyingcommittee there.
(31:24):
Oh, another two thirds.
We've only got one person,right, we know we need at least
five for this, you know deal, tohave a snowball's chance of
actually turning to close one.
So now, what do we do differentto those accounts in the stage
of the buyer's journey?
And this is where this is whereyou turn on content syndication
(31:45):
.
You know, it's like, it's sofunny, it's like content
syndication was demonized andthen it came back and then it
got demonized again and now it'slike now.
But now I feel like we've gotthe good use case for it, right.
When you know how much what abuying committee is that you
need to sell to and you knowthat you have accounts that are
trending the right direction butdon't have the full coverage,
(32:05):
that's where you use contentsyndication, right.
So then you start to fill outthat.
You know you get those names inthe door.
You start warming them up withyour always on campaigns, those
sorts of things.
Once again, they're not leads.
You don't hand them over tosales.
This is marketing side of theequation Making sure all these
people know your name so thatwhen they finally get to MQA
(32:27):
stage, now you've got five ormore people engaged, and so when
your sales team reaches out toall of them and connects the
dots between all of them, right,they go oh yeah, I know them.
Yeah, yeah, let's talk to them,right?
That's, that's the beauty ofhow this should play out within
a marketing organization.
So I love it.
Michael Hartmann (32:51):
Yeah, I love that.
I love remember we talked aboutthat anatomy of a win.
I like, I love that.
So because I've again actuallythe same place where I had the
str team, like we we startedtracking deals that came to
fruition that had gone throughmy team, partially because I I
noticed like body language whenI would be reporting on you know
(33:13):
, attribution type reporting.
I'm saying like I like to sales, they just like nobody paid
attention.
We started telling the storiesabout I didn't use the anatomy
of a win, but like that's whatwe did, right, like what are all
the things that happen acrossall our teams?
I didn't.
It was not a thing about saying, here's, look at all this great
stuff marketing did.
Like, here's, look at all thisgreat stuff marketing did.
(33:38):
Like here's how this wouldhappen.
Like what can we take from thatand learn from to apply to how
we, we both go, we go to markettogether and I think that was
huge right.
So, like how it was a prettymanual process to you guys, like
how do you approach thatanatomy of a win analysis when
you do it?
Jessica Fewless (33:51):
data.
I mean, I mean, andrea hascreated dashboards and
spreadsheets, and I mean it is amanual process, right?
And once again, you're notgoing to do it every quarter,
but you probably need to do itonce a year because your
market's going to change.
New competitors are going tocome in, you're going to start
to see different things, butthat anatomy of a deal just
gives everybody their marchingorders.
(34:12):
Hey, when should we host afield marketing event?
Oh, it's not really a demandgen program, it's more of a
pipeline acceleration program,right?
Oh, yeah, webinars are here,but here's where we have you.
Invite people to our customeradvisory board, right,
understanding when all of thosechannels should be turned on to
(34:32):
acquire and retain the rightcustomer.
It does take some work, it's alot of you know.
But an attribute, a pure,straight up attribution doesn't
doesn't get you there.
It doesn't get you there.
Attribution modeling doesn'tQuite.
Honestly, I know, I know, Iknow like this is a vicious,
vicious debate and has been foryears, but I'm, I'm, just I'm,
(34:58):
I'm a non-believer inattribution.
I think you just need calculus.
Andrea Frazier (35:02):
People are going to come for jess I know, and
it's fine.
Jessica Fewless (35:05):
I mean, calculus lobbyists the data
scientists or like yeah, becauseI'm going to yeah, attribution
hater, but I think it's reallyjust looking at, you know,
because now the bigger thecompany, the more closed one
deals you're going to have,obviously.
But there's definitely trendsyou can see in what goes to
(35:25):
opportunity, goes closed lossversus closed one one, you know.
And you know each individualchannel holder should have a
vested interest in knowing thatbecause that's how you can argue
for your budget next year,right?
I mean, you know, when I hadfield marketing, you know, no, I
didn't drive pipeline but Isaid, hey, accounts that attend
(35:47):
a field marketing eventpost-opportunity are 2.5 times
more likely to go to close one.
Michael Hartmann (35:55):
Right.
Jessica Fewless (35:56):
So now I can ask for my budget.
If they just, you know, gaugedmy team on pipeline, they'd
probably completely do away withfield marketing right.
So it's understanding.
That is so, so, so importantand yes, it's some work, but
it's totally worth it.
Michael Hartmann (36:14):
Yeah, any additional thoughts, andrea,
that you hear.
Andrea Frazier (36:17):
I mean, I would say like AI is obviously a piece
of this puzzle.
I, you know I don't load datainto every AI tool, obviously
for security reasons, but Ithink you know the more use
cases we're hearing around.
You know, I know we don'tbelieve in attribution, but you
know a lot of it's the patternrecognition.
Michael Hartmann (36:36):
I don't, for the record, I don't totally
disagree.
Andrea Frazier (36:39):
I'm halfway because I technically I got a
like I did my thesis with thatin mind, attribution modeling in
mind, so I can't ever hate itcompletely.
Michael Hartmann (36:48):
But where I?
Andrea Frazier (36:49):
say AI will be my biggest thing, that's true.
Yeah, I think it's my biggestthing, that's true.
Yeah, because it's all about,like credit.
I think the word credit hasjust yes, you know, ruined it,
but what I think trending andlike recognizing patterns is
just the huge thing with AI,that's, at the end of the day,
the most basic way to describewhat AI has provided.
(37:09):
It's just faster patternrecognition, right?
So I do think there is going tobe a world where it's going to
be even tinier data points.
Right, we're talking about wehave new signals, we have first
party data, we have second partydata and we think we're cool
Guys.
We're going to be talking aboutlike infinieth party data right
, I think by the end of this soI think Inferred things with all
that yeahinferred things.
(37:30):
You know vibe reading from AIsummaries.
Who knows what these signalswill be?
That will maybe become part ofthis equation that is MQA, but I
think at some point AI is goingto take over and it's going to
be so many signals we couldn'tmention them on a 45 minute
podcast.
I think the most importantthing is for you know to be
(37:52):
nimble and curious and bewilling to think of it
differently.
I think in general, that'salways been the answer, but now
I'm saying it just a little bitmore obviously because, like I
said, it's been cool to seeeveryone get excited for a
process.
I never felt people get excitedwhen I would do an MQL project.
Right.
We're going to establish an MQLcleansing project, right.
Michael Hartmann (38:12):
We're going to establish an MQL Data cleansing
project, right?
Andrea Frazier (38:14):
Yes, Like this is when you are changing that
status to working and you mustdo it in 12 hours Like it feels
different than that did.
I still think I love process.
My husband would agree I loveprocess, but I do think it's
been cool to see like the humanside come out.
Michael Hartmann (38:28):
People are getting excited again about like
, trusting their intuition,feeling out the deal, following
these guidelines, but you know,it's interesting to me because
in this conversation, rightclearly, technology is an
underpinning on all this, butit's like it feels like it's not
really the most important pieceof this puzzle.
Jessica Fewless (38:47):
It's not the hardest part for sure, right,
because everybody goes there.
They're like, oh my God, youknow, it's like stitching
together the technology andsurfacing MQAs and creating the
formulas and Salesforce orwhatever other tool you have,
like the.
Yes, that's work, but it's thealignment, the agreement, the
change management withinmarketing and how they're going
(39:07):
to behave, the change managementof sales, right, making sure
like they don't pounce on anywebinar attendee but rather they
wait until it's an MQA.
Let marketing do their job, doall that background work before
sales goes after them.
They're just going to, you know, have a much higher hit rate
and you know everybody's goingto be a whole lot more efficient
(39:27):
at the end of the day, becausewhat we're starting to see is
the traditional funnel velocityor deal velocity is and I can
never remember it's gettingfaster Because so much more of
that buyer's journey ishappening before they ever talk
to your sales team.
So by the time they talk tosales, you're just in the
(39:48):
head-to-head battle against twoor three other competitors and
it goes real fast.
Andrea Frazier (39:53):
And one of those competitors didn't respond to a
contact us when they worked ata small company.
Michael Hartmann (39:58):
Five years ago , and so you're already one of
two.
Yeah, I don't know, so it'sinteresting.
You said something earliertoday or early in the
conversation, jessica, aboutmarketers will need to help
sales teams understand how tointerpret all these signals
right.
It feels like that.
The implication there to me islike there's a lot like
(40:19):
marketing should be thinkingmore about sales enablement than
they probably have.
They always should have.
Jessica Fewless (40:26):
But yes, now it's very much more important.
Yeah, yeah, and it's.
You know, like I said, I thinkit's a lot more sitting down and
really talking through thingswith your sales team, you know,
deciding what messages areworking, what aren't.
Yeah, hey, here's the signals,especially that alignment around
an MQA is so critical and socrucial, even more so than the
(40:51):
alignment around the definitionof an MQL.
That definition is going to beso crucial so that everybody
knows what they're supposed tobe doing and when throughout
that buyer's journey.
And then making sure that salesknow okay, we're tagging you in
, we're still on the field, butwe're tagging you in to play
(41:13):
your role.
At this stage and here's whatthat looks like and just as it
always has been, you want tomake sure that they're
interpreting the signals theright way, so that they know
that their message maps to yourmessage on the marketing side.
Right, so it's not beingprescriptive, but it's like hey,
here's how we read thesesignals.
Here's the segment that we putthis set of.
Hey, here's how we read thethese signals.
Here's the segment that we putthese, this set of, counts in,
(41:35):
because here's what we saw.
And now here's some bullets andoverall messaging.
Michael Hartmann (41:40):
Now you go, you go attack them through your
channels.
Yeah, so the other, like movingfrom whatever somebody has
today even ABM, it sounds liketo moving to one that's maybe
ABM with MQAs or whatevertraditional now with MQAs.
That's a pretty big change.
Yeah, so maybe how did youapproach that change process?
(42:05):
And then, with clients, what do?
Andrea Frazier (42:13):
you find that helps increase the chances of
success for that transition.
So and Jess, I'd be curious tohear you know your thoughts on
this so with I'll speak more toa client that we worked on with
this we and I feel very I don'tknow how to say this I feel
really confident that we shouldnever rip out MQLs altogether,
and I definitely feel that wayas we've been working with
clients, I think one we'd neverget any client to start a
(42:35):
project with us and we saidwe're going to start by turning
off your MQL mechanism.
Nobody would ever sign thatcontract.
So that's still there.
So I would encourage everyone,like, don't let that stop you.
You don't have to turn anythingoff.
You are literally just turningsomething else on and at first
you can just start by listeningto it.
You don't have to show anybodyelse who is it pulling up, who
(42:56):
is it not pulling up that youthink that should have pulled up
right, like and doing thatevaluation.
And I think with us, jess, ifI'm remembering right, we kind
of did that where we just likekept looking at it and we're
like, hmm, that number seemshigh, or I'm surprised this
account should be there.
So, or I'm surprised thisaccount should be there.
So it was more like trying tofeel out what was too strict of
(43:17):
a mechanism for identifying MQAsand what was too loose and
finding that sweet spot.
And I think we kind of did thateven before we brought in sales
, just from like a more of adata is this working correctly
and seem notionally correct?
Then, with sales, kind of thesame iterative right, because
they have different perspective,different data that they are
providing with their intuitionand their read on how things are
(43:39):
going in those conversations.
So I think from there it isalmost a second iteration phase
with sales, because they'reactually getting that feedback
in the moment to tell moresuccinctly if it was good like
yes, positive MQA, or maybe notquite like yes, positive MQA, or
maybe not quite what we wouldexpect from an MQA.
So I would say just iteratingis really the key piece here and
(43:59):
not thinking you have to do itall at once.
I would just do that and thenstart to realize, okay, well,
now that we have this signal, itkind of means that we don't
have this one anymore, becauseit's essentially now just an
aggregated form that swallowedup webinar attendees, for
example, like maybe those thingsaren't separate.
So I think it, just as long aspeople aren't feeling like they
(44:21):
have to decide everything outthe gate and they're just doing
it step by step, I think there'sno reason you shouldn't be
trying to listen to more signals.
Jessica Fewless (44:29):
Well, and I think data to prove your case is
always going to be the rightanswer.
Right it's whether it's a lookback or it's a.
You know, six month data gather, the ring period, what you know
, however the case may be,however quickly you want to move
those sorts of things, but youknow, with one client we
literally did this in stealthmode.
(44:49):
So marketing was doing this butdidn't tell sales because
basically sales was like I needto see the data before I'm going
to listen to you.
Marketing people tell me Ican't call an account until they
get to MQA, like I'm not buyingit, right and so great.
So we did our thing in stealthmode for six months and at the
end of that six months we wereable to show hey, of accounts
(45:11):
that you called that were at MQA, you were seven times more
likely to get a meeting than ifyou called them at any other
stage, you know, higher up inthe buyer's journey.
And then they went oh, now thisdid cost some SDRs their jobs
because they were like oh, sowe've got our SDRs just doing
(45:32):
all this dialing and, like youknow, trying to play the numbers
game, like we actually justwait until it gets to MQA right,
like, oh, we can have a muchhigher hit rate and we don't
need as many people dialing fordollars, I mean.
So I mean nobody wants to hearthat somebody is going to lose
their job over this, but I meanit got.
It was that severe of a shift.
(45:54):
Once they saw the numbers thatthey were, they were all in with
this approach.
Andrea Frazier (45:57):
So yeah, it's powerful.
Michael Hartmann (46:05):
It could be, yeah, it could be Go ahead.
Andrea Frazier (46:09):
No, I was just going to say, like, the contact
acquisition, I think, plays intothat too, right?
So, yeah, maybe you don't needas many SDRs hitting the phones.
Go ahead earlier, pre-mqa stageor an account hitting in
(46:30):
pre-MQA stage.
So you know, maybe that'sclassic political AI answer.
It doesn't necessarily meanthat we're getting rid of jobs.
We're just opening up theirtime to do something else.
And I think in this case, I'mreally pushing for the contact
acquisition because I don'tthink contacts are going away.
I don't think any salespersonwill ever want to just go off of
(46:50):
vibes and anonymous websitetraffic, right?
Um?
So yeah, I think that's where Iwould say is maybe there's an
opportunity to focus on the datawith that freed up time, not
spending time on the phone yeah,I think they could spend more
time doing the analysis andresearch and really crafting
good messaging out right.
(47:11):
And updating Salesforce also.
Michael Hartmann (47:17):
That's one way to turn off sales.
I know that.
Andrea Frazier (47:21):
I had to say one triggering thing.
Michael Hartmann (47:23):
Yes, yes, I think we've said more than one
Gosh.
There's so much more I think wecould we could cover, but I
think we're going to have tocall it a day.
This has been just like lasttime a great conversation.
I've learned something and hadfun all at the same time, so
that's a win in my book.
So, jessica, andrea, thank youso much.
If folks want to connect withyou or learn more about what
you're doing, what's the bestway for them to do that?
Jessica Fewless (47:46):
Well, I have the distinction of being the
only Jessica Fulis on LinkedIn,so I'm easy to find.
But also, you know, at the sametime, make sure you follow
Invertacom, because we have lotsof great or Inverta on LinkedIn
.
We've got lots of great contentwe put out daily.
We're not a salesy type, we'rejust here to help marketers
(48:08):
think differently.
Andrea Frazier (48:11):
Yes, and same LinkedIn.
I'm trying to be better atLinkedIn every day.
But then also anyone who'scoming to mops mops.
The police hit up my session.
It's going to be a good time.
Michael Hartmann (48:22):
Yeah Well, I'm not sure what's going on with
LinkedIn these days, Like thewhole algorithm is all like I
see more stuff I can't, I know,yeah, the.
Jessica Fewless (48:28):
Yeah, the perfect time to have posted
something is three weeks ago.
Andrea Frazier (48:31):
Right, I feel like that anyway, so that
actually makes sense.
I'm always three weeks late.
Michael Hartmann (48:38):
Yeah, well, again, thank you both of you.
It was so much fun.
We'll, I'm sure, have lots offun.
Jessica, you mentioned beforethis, you might have some
resources that we can share withpeople in our show notes, so
we'll try to do that as well.
Perfect, yeah, and then thankyou to our, our supporters, our
listeners, hopefully soonviewers, and we appreciate all
(49:02):
your support.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
you can always reach out toNaomi or me, and we'd be glad to
talk to you about it until nexttime.
Bye everybody, bye, bye, bye.
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