ABM isn’t broken. Expectations are. with Lauren Daly and Andrew Shepherd, Palo Alto Networks

Speaker A: B2B has the potential to be electrifying, but the industry is paralyzed by a culture of conservatism, uh, scared stiff in a straitjacket of rational ideas. It's time for change. It's time to make B2B marketing visceral. Join us as we uncover and explore the Truth with leading B2B marketers. This is B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth. Hello and welcome to B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth. I'm Benedikt and today I am joined by not one, but two people from Palo Alto Networks. Um, so on my left I am joined by Lauren Daly, who is Director of Global Marketing Operations. Um, and then next to her is Andrew Shepherd, Senior Director of Emir North Marketing. A very, very warm welcome to you both. How are you doing?

Speaker B: Thank you. Great, thanks for having us.

Speaker C: Yeah, very well, thank you. How are you? I'm very well too.

Speaker A: Well, it wasn't necessarily the most sort of enthusiastic sort of response to that, but I think we'll work with it. I'm sure we'll build the energy as we get through the uh, the convict the conversation. Um, and I have no doubt that that will be the case given we are going to be talking about abm, which is much talked about, um, and you know, very often offered as the sort of the, the panacea of um, B2B marketing. But anecdotally, and you know, it may disagree with me, ABM doesn't quite, uh, work out the way it always is planned. It doesn't necessarily always deliver the results. And the sort of, the thesis that I want to sort of put to you guys is it's not necessarily down to a lack of planning and strategy. It's not necessarily down to sort of the technology not being as sophisticated as it could be. But it actually is a more human sort of fault line that it appears and that's that there isn't that proper joined up thinking, joined up way of working between sales and marketing. Unless you have that with abm, it is always going to crumble. So that's, that's my view on the marketplace, but obviously I'm doing it slightly from the outside, so maybe. Andrew, we'll start with you. Is that description something that you would recognize from your experience or do you think is a bit more nuanced than that?

Speaker C: My answer was going to be yes, but no. Um, so, so I think hedge, hedge your bets. It is a bit. Well, I think it's, it's everything that you've mentioned. So I do agree that there's Um, a very clear, huge human fault line. Um, I think there's a lot of misconceptions around what ABM is, what ABM isn't. Although to your point, some of that feeds into planning. Like are we clear in terms of the planning and the process? What good looks like, what are the outcomes going to be? I also think some of the almost like human challenges we put it, as you put it as well, are linked to the tech stack as well in terms of how easy is this process going to be, how are we actually going to be able to deliver it? And I think that's where we've created some challenges for ourselves in the marketing industry in terms of what we broadly um, broadcast, what we can deliver versus the reality is there's still a lot of manual work has to happen and spreadsheets and slack messages and anecdotal catch ups. It's not a, it's not a Rolls Royce, of course.

Speaker A: Okay, well I'm, let's. And you use uh, that sort of, you talked about fault lines and I think that we're talking about sort of where there are multiple different points of failure and I, I'd like to return to that and we will expand it beyond just looking at the sort of human dimension, but maybe just to set the scene, you talked around misconceptions and actually reality not quite stacking up to the sort of the lived experience. When you look at abm, what do you think are the big misconceptions that exist amongst B2B marketers?

Speaker C: I'm not sure that the misconceptions necessarily exist among B2B marketers, but I think there is a misconception like when you start engaging with the sales team and you know, sales organization and using the phrase abm, I think it very quickly creates the great. So this is going to be silver bullet. It's going to be one to one. For the accounts that I care about most, like what they hear versus what we mean is two very different things. I um, think there's also a misconception of great. We can use this as a door opener to a dark account. I've been trying to get into this account for five years.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker C: Now let's do ABM on it and it's going to blow the doors wide open. I think that's a misconception because ABM is often most effective when there's already a bit of wind in the sails. Um, and I think perhaps my personal bugbear where there's a uh, big misconception is just the Very term abm, where the M M stands for marketing. I think just that creates the perception that this is something that marketing is going to do on its own and we will deliver an outcome to sales. And actually it's only effective if the teams work really closely together. And I think even the naming of the phrase creates a misconception before you've even started.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think, Lauren, if you had any sort of additional sort of perspectives on what we've just discussed there.

Speaker B: Yeah. So to add to what, uh, Andrew said, agree with everything he said. I do think that, you know, within our marketing team, I'm seeing that, um, you know, a lot of marketers still think about, you know, one message for one account. And that is, I think, a misconception. Because you think about large enterprise organizations say, um, in the tech industry, well, they're going to typically have multiple buying centers that you're going to need to target with different messaging. And so, you know, I think that's the shift that ABM needs to make is thinking, you know, beyond just the account, but more about the buying centers or the buying groups within those accounts and how do you cater to those? I can add in an analogy too, if that helps. Um, you know, when you think about like fishing with a lake, right, you're not going to just go to the lake to go fishing. Typically you're going to have your specific fishing spots within the lake. And so, you know, that's what I like to think about when I think about abm. It's a, it's almost like too broad because you're saying, hey, yeah, I'm just going to go to the lake and I'm going to be able to catch some fish. And no, that's, that's really not what happens. You have to go find the specific pockets within that lake, so the specific buying groups within that lake. And that's really going to, um, make your efforts a lot more effective.

Speaker A: And I think that, um, the, the idea of thinking in terms of different buying groups, um, and then eventually, obviously tailoring both messaging and approach to, to reach them is. It's absolutely the right. But it's all well and good saying what's from the outside. When we need to determine the different buying groups, the actual sort of reality of determining what the different buying groups are, what those characteristics are almost brings back, uh, to, you know, what you were talking about, Andrew, in terms of that sales having an expectation that marketing do this and just hand it over. From my perspective, you know, being able to build that sort of understanding Necessitates a very joined up, collaborative approach between sales and marketing to do that. Um, you know, when you've been sort of looking at trying to develop that profiling of buying groups, is, is that something you've actively tried to do in Palo Alto in terms of bringing sales and marketing together?

Speaker C: I think yeah. So Lauren, you sort of agreed and contra. Not contradict, but enhanced. You know, you're right. I think within a marketing org there are different levels of understanding about abm. And um, maybe that is one of the alignment challenges. It's often seen as a field marketing thing, but actually it needs to be an uh, entire marketing engine thing. But I do think, you know, when it comes to, it comes back to the sort of planning angle. I think when you're embarking on an ABM program with sales, there needs to be a clear explanation almost of what, what ABM is and actually what it is inside this company bit. Because actually I think that's one of the other challenges of it in one company. It looks very different to another company in terms of are you doing one to one, are you doing one to many, are you doing one to few? Um, are you doing a blend of all three? Are you doing it based on verticalization? So I think there really needs to be that upfront conversations with sales leaders, with the actual reps who will be impacted by the program to help them understand in terms of the program we are running and we are looking to deliver. Uh, here is the approach we propose taking, here's why, here's the potential outcomes and impact we can deliver it, deliver for you and really have those conversations up front. So there's almost a kind of handshake with sails of like, are we going to embark on this venture or not? And I think so. The whole engaging buyer groups uncovering different pockets of opportunity needs to be part of, of that conversation. Um, because I, you know, I was, I like the phrase that I heard from, uh, you know, someone I used to work with at Forrester on it. Like ABM is a privilege, not a right. And actually some reps might not want that level of, you know, I think to some reps it can come across as additional scrutiny or you can't tell me anything I don't know about my account. You know, I'm, I'm the master of all things here or whatever. And, and in a way that's okay if that's how they, they want to run their business. It's not necessarily right. But um, you know, I think there needs to be a sort of openness and willing to willingness to collaborate on both sides. But you need to have that conversation up front rather than just jump into it because I think that's when you end up with mismanaged expectations unfolding really quickly.

Speaker A: Well, I thought was that uh, and. And it's really interesting just to hit hear the sort of the, the broader narrative almost that you've told us that. But something that really stood out to me is. Is implicit in what you're saying is that it would be a marketing led activity. Yeah, it's really important to make sure that we are engaging sales and getting their buy in. But it should be something which is identified, designed and led by marketing. Is that how you see it or do you. Do you feel it is a little bit more nuanced than that?

Speaker C: I guess there's a slight differentiation between how it is and how I think maybe it should be. Um, I think largely it is. It is something that's driven by marketing and almost goes through the process I talked about because ultimately budget, funding, all the rest of it sits in marketing.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker C: What I have seen certainly in our organization over the you know, as we've matured is there is. There's very clear alignment set almost at a strategic level of what are the key accounts. I think one of the key pillars of any successful ABM program is real alignment on what accounts are in the program and why are they in the program and which accounts are not and why are they not and that there's a really visibility agreement on the methodology. What are we going after and what are we not. Um, that's actually half the battle and I think where as we've matured as an organization a lot of that, you know we've got much better central alignment sort of in the business. So actually ABM almost becomes the strategy that we are applying to that pre agreed account set. Um, I think it's. You know I ran an ABM program years ago when we were much less mature and then it's marketing trying to push the. Here's the accounts we think we should do it to and, and that's a much messier place to start. So I uh, I do think the almost the emphasis, the yeah you know the early momentum to get it moving almost needs to come from marketing often because of how a KPI'd where things are funded from m all the rest of it but sales feeling that they own the outcomes for the same set of accounts is really key and really helps smooth the path.

Speaker A: What I'd be fascinated if we could Expand it is to maybe almost just take me through sort of like the process of the initial point where there is a strategic direction for the business in terms of ABM is the right approach, how that translates into marketing and then bringing sales in in terms of the implementation. What, what does, I suppose, what does the ideal process look like? Um, and where do you see the breakdowns occurring typically? And I can be open to, open to either of you, depending on, you know, who, who might have some anecdotal

Speaker B: experience from an OPS perspective, not running any ABM programs. Um, you know, my feeling is marketing should be coming with um, more of the quantitative data to say, okay, here's accounts to Andrew's point that uh, are showing, you know, high intent, they're in market for this set of solutions. And then you have sales that's coming in with more of a qualitative approach saying okay, yep, I agree with this set of accounts, let's remove these ones. You know, here are my, re. My, here's my rationale why I don't want to, you know, take this approach with this set of accounts. And then, you know, overarching is the strategic direction of the company because we may be pushing a specific solution, um, or we may be, you know, going after a specific market or a specific segment and doubling down there. So I think all of those need to come together to arrive at I guess the, the aligned list of accounts. I think that's the first, most important piece in this process is coming up with your list of accounts that you've all agreed on and the messaging that you want to go after them with and then you can start executing.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think maybe the messaging needs to come afterward. I mean this is where I think there's often a challenge around the sort of perception of abm, um, you know, marketing. Well, I think it should be looked at as well. What are the customer needs? If anything, it's very much about how do we adapt and tailor our message to that customer. I think too often businesses see it as a, we've got this thing we want to sell and this is the list of customers we want to sell it to. Let's bash them around the head with ABM until we kind of force it in there. And I think that's where sometimes there can be a, uh, bit of a disconnect. I mean, I think where I've seen it work effectively is yeah, there is that buy in on the list and it needs to be sort of heavily data driven. And generally speaking, I've seen it work well when sales ops sit centrally in that process and marketing can feed into it with a lot of propensity data, TAM data, um, intent data, engagement data, all of the rest of it. But it needs to start off with the kind of almost the numbers that sales know, respect and understand in terms of. Is this the biggest account? Has it got the highest tam? How much, how much lifetime value? Do already have that in that account? How much wallet share do we have? How much do we realistically think we can get? Um, you come up with the first pass of the list as it were. Um, then I think there's typically a bit of horse trading goes on. Um, you know, I think we've probably got to a point where about 10% of the list will change after that first pass. Um, which I think is okay because sometimes sales do have that contextual. Yeah, can totally understand why you came up with that in account. Um, we lost a five year deal there last month and we're locked out for the next three years. So realistically spending a load of money trying to reverse that decision probably isn't the right thing for now. You know there's always that, that, that sort of um, contextual input that can really help. I think that where marketing can then start adding value is once you've got that sort of defined initial list is looking at the kind of which are the accounts where we really want to go big in terms of one to one which are the accounts where maybe we sort of do a lighter version of one to one. Um, maybe it's uh, because ABM's expensive often. Right. So you can't just apply the same approach to all accounts. Um, and then which of the accounts where maybe we can cluster it by either a certain vertical or a certain use case or you know, whatever it may be in your organization. And then it's about adapting the messaging and the orchestration accordingly for each of those groups.

Speaker A: And we've talked there um, implicitly actually in both your answers a lot around the data, which is important. I think it was interesting that you were saying that marketing had that response responsibility to almost bring that quantitative understanding and sales that more qualitative understanding. How do you make sure that the, those different sources of data are working together? And also I think that they're creating positive feedback loops in terms of how to both design the initial program but optimize it as you are going through the execution.

Speaker B: I think that's a big challenge today that a lot of companies face is how do you get that like unified data unification so that you have that customer profile that has the marketing signal, but also has, you know, you talked about the feedback loop from sales has more of that qualitative information. I think, Andrew, you and I were chatting about an example that you had where there was a customer escalation that marketing didn't know about. And so how do you feed that type of qualitative information in? Um, you know, there, there should be ways of doing that. You know, if there's a customer support ticket that had been logged, how does that feed into this? Again, unified customer profile. So I think that, you know, to run ABM effectively and to really personalize it at scale, companies need to get as close as possible to that. I'm not going to say they need to have that because I think, you know, we, we would all be chasing the goalposts forever. Um, but I think as close to that as possible, you're going to be more effective if you, um, can get all of those data points. And it's not just marketing bringing in the signal, but you've got, um, customer support. You've got what other.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you've touched on an important point. It's not just marketing and sales data, uh, that we need, because there is that. Yeah. Technical support ticket. Have they deployed everything? Are they. How is their experience of what they've got?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: What's the usage Net promoter scores that, you know, we're talking to an unhappy customer or a happy customer outside of sales. I spoke to them last week. They're really happy. It's like, okay, but have we got visibility into kind of every support ticket? You know, that, that bigger, uh, unified picture of the customer experience? And yeah, you know, Lauren just gave a good example of, you know, we, we had a target set of customers we were going after to, to invite to an experience, and we were fully aligned. You know, it's sort of CEO level of who we're inviting and why. And four, five days later, the invite goes out and I get a kind of, why is this person being invited? And it's like, well, because we agreed that they are, uh, the ideal profile for this thing and that. Yeah, but they had a big escalation two days ago. You know, they're furious with us at the moment. It's kind of like, okay, how. On. How do I have any visibility into that as a marketer with the tools that we're using and the systems we're using? You know, I think it's very hard to get that sort of single pane of glass. And, you know, because I I don't think a lot of martech, if we do just think about infrastructure from a marketing perspective and a sales perspective, I don't think it was necessarily built with ABM type approaches in mind. You know, 20 years ago everyone's talking about funnels and lead flows and you know, it was very much a uh, person comes in at the top getting through to a bdr, getting to pop out the bottom. That's, that's marketing it at scale. And um, a lot of the infrastructure is built to serve that need and um, you know, so I think, I think there's definitely a, a lot of technical workarounds that need to be happen. There's, there's quite a bit of manual work still happens just, just to make ABM work, work effectively. And I guess again that's where the human bit comes into it.

Speaker A: And to pick up on that sort of idea of the, the limitations of tech, the human element there, like when we're talking about these different data points and it can be a quantitative data point, can be a quality data point, how much is it information that can be captured within a CRM? I appreciate that there are many different parts of your tech stack, but fundamentally CRM and how much does it actually just need to be an ongoing dialogue between customer success, sales, marketing when we're looking at sort of an ABM approach.

Speaker B: So to me um, depending on the size of your org, I think the dialogue is going to be very challenging. So I think for a company of our size where it's getting dieted, maybe close to 20,000 employees,

Speaker A: um, I think

Speaker B: we have to rely on stitching the data to, to the best of our ability, um, and not relying on so much on like the dialogue between all the words and so how do you get the data to be stitched together? Well, marketing has their database, sales has their database, the customer support team has their database. I think this is also where, where more and more reliant on it or some objectives or to help stitch all these data runs together. I don't think it should just blow marketing to try and do this.

Speaker C: Oh definitely not. And I think to your point that there's an and and Right. And maybe this comes down to different ABM approaches. So I uh, you know I can be candid about. I won't say how many accounts are in the list but let's just say we, we've got a select, a small selection of accounts where we're really doing one to one. Um, we've got a slightly extended list still only you know, we're talking double digits where we're trying to do that one to one light. Um, and then there's a much broader list where, where we're trying to do it at scale, you know, either by use case or, or verticals. And so realistically you can, I mean if you're in an organization where you've decided let's do an ABM pilot on 10 accounts, then I think it's quite realistic to think you have that very consistent dialogue around those accounts. If you're trying to run an ABM program, an ABM program where you have 500 accounts in it, then suddenly the kind of like the dialogue around each account becomes an almost impossible mission, especially if there's not a subset of those accounts that you've agreed will have focused more than others. And I, you know, it brings me, uh, I once got asked a question in a uh, in an interview where there's a sort of like internal discussion around is there a difference between ABM and just good marketing? M. And, and I think when, when you're looking more at that sort of at scale approach, I think that line gets, that line gets quite blurred. And actually you do need to be able to just orchestrate data in real time at scale.

Speaker A: Listening to you there, I'm inclined to agree. I mean in many respects what you have described, when it is a one to one approach, you're afforded that time to have the dialogue, have those different data points to be able to learn, optimize based on what is happening in real time. But listening to, I do just wonder whether once you start to get to its scale, once you start to even getting it to sort of the one to few, is it really accurate to sort of talk about that as ABM or to your point actually, is that just actually the fundamentals of good marketing?

Speaker C: And I think that's what you know, coming right back to your original question around sort of expectation management and alignment, I uh, my personal view is that when someone outside of the, any marketing organizations hears abm, they think about one to one, that's how they understand it. And I think, and I don't think, um, unfairly, I think as marketing, when we start, start talking about one to one and one to few and one to many, that's like trying to explain the difference between champagne, sparkling wine and Prosecco to someone that knows nothing about wine or doesn't drink it. You know, we get very into our sort of our own nuances and our own terminology and all the rest of it and the rest of the business is just hearing so, so you can do ABM or not. And I think once we started, start getting to one to few, one to many, there is a level of like boys, isn't that just marketing? Like what, what actually is really tailored to me here because the power of

Speaker A: ABM when it's done properly is that personalization element, um, both in terms of really understanding exactly where that need state is and being able to tailor communications and an approach sort of accordingly. Um, whereas it does feel that once you start to get at scale that that personalization, you know, is lost. I mean from your experience, are you seeing anything which is maybe a little bit more encouraging in terms of the ability to personalize at scale or do you feel that that is always going to be something which is just out of reach?

Speaker B: I think it's achievable. I think that AI, we haven't talked about AI yet. I think that that is opening up, you know, more opportunities to again do things at scale, including capturing data points, stitching them together in a way that makes sense. Um, so I do think it, it's possible. I think it's also important to think about, you know, how buyers are buying from us and how that's shifting. So that may also change how we personalize, where we personalize. I think that, you know, there's less of a need to do in person. I think that um, I don't even know the generations, is it Gen X, Gen Z. Right. If they're now, you know, starting to become more of the buyers, decision makers, key influencers for sure. Um, you know, how do they want to consume information? A lot of it is more self serve and I think that's a, that's just going to continue to accelerate and I think that it probably is easier to personalize when you've got all these digital data points and you are trying to serve information in a way that they consume, can consume it on your own and it doesn't require a human element to me like that that can scale much quicker.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you're right. And uh, we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, didn't we as well, about you know, the difference between Personas and personalization. And again where, where does that line get, get blurred? Because I, you know, because Personas still really important for sort of framing, messaging, common pain points, use cases and again you can tailor that round a vertical an account is in or you can get quite specific to an account if you're doing one to one. For me, personalization becomes a bit more. Hi Benedict Sorry to see that spurs lost last week.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Before you get into, you know, you know, that, that kind of level of contextualization that realistically only a sales rep in continuous relationship with the account can do, it potentially gets, you know, as Lauren was saying, as things get, you know, digitally more sophisticated and I guess with AI, you know, we're talking about that traditional tech stack earlier that, that has the potential to change quite a lot. And you know, we're talking about, there's a, you can realistically conceive a future whereby you could come to our website and rather than, uh, you know, we, we think, um, Benny would be interested in this and we've created an infographic version, we've created a two page version. There's the 30 second video, there's the five minute video. You know, we've tried to anticipate all the kind of what are the forms he might want? And, and how do we make sure that whichever form he wants, we've, we've made sure we've got our message across in a format that we reckon most people will want. And actually in terms of the kind of things you can do with LMS now, like we use, uh, Notebook LM internally, like Google is, you can just upload all your kind of key data and information, as it were, and say, give this to me in a five minute podcast in the tone of Ricky Gervais M. Maybe that's how I want to. And there's, and I guess, you know, you can see a future whereby marketing teams become curators of content and we make sure all the sort of base and source material is there, but whoever's looking to consume it, they can dictate the terms, they can ask for a give ah, me a 500 page encyclopedia of every bit of information written in the style of Aristotle. Or they can say, give me the kind of 32nd comic strip in the style of the Beano, whatever it may be. I can see a future whereby the journey becomes hugely personalized, but it's dictated by the person rather than teams creating what they think people will need or want.

Speaker A: And how far away do you think that future is? Because I think the theory stacks up and to be fair, the technology, as you sort of said, is there. Um, but what we're seeing sort of more generally is that companies are still not getting their, the ROI on AI investments at the moment. Now, Palo Alto is clearly absolutely at the forefront of technology, full stop. And I'm sure that's reflected in your organization. How realistic or how near term is that? Future that you have described based on your experience?

Speaker C: Well, there's the million. There's a million dollar question.

Speaker B: Right. I don't, I don't think it's too far off. Personally. I think that to me, um, AI needs to get a little bit more accurate. I think that's the, what's holding it up is people's confidence in its accuracy. But once we get over that, I think it'll be very quick to adopt like the vision that Andrew just outlined.

Speaker C: And um, just to be clear, it's not my personal, you know, it's based on conversations I've had and input and you know.

Speaker B: Well, I think it's a realistic, like direction.

Speaker C: I think it is. So to answer, I think technologically we can get there pretty quickly. I think the challenge is going to be to what extent are, um, marketing teams actually able to sort of orchestrate and execute on that? I think I told you about a little meme I saw on LinkedIn that tickled me. Um, it was, you know, Siebel came out and marketers went amazing. Now we're going to be able to do personalization at scale. Then Marketo came out and people went, amazing. Now we're going to do personalization at scale. Now AIs come out and people are like, amazing. We're going to be able to do personalization at scale. So these technological innovations come about, but there's still the kind of the complexity of the environment you're operating in to make that effective. So does the tech exist? Yeah, in theory you could do it today with Notebook lm, but to re engineer an entire company based around here's our infrastructure and here's how we're going to start serving content. And that's, that's where it becomes a, uh, I couldn't, I really couldn't tell you how long that will change.

Speaker B: I think there's also a cultural element to this that we haven't chatted about yet, where you are asking marketers maybe to do things differently. Right. Even within our own company, you know, we were very like in person event forward and we're now shifting to more digital because this is the direction that, you know, the industry is going. Um, it's also a lot more cost effective. Right. So if our budgets are tightening but our targets are increasing, you know, that's another way that you can, um, you know, hopefully get more bang for your buck. But I think the cultural shift that I'm talking about is just, you know, a mindset shift to, okay, I'm going to have to yeah, orchestrate things differently. The customer journey that I'm building in, the assets are going to change and even for sales too, like they're not going to maybe be brought into um, you know, an initial conversation with a customer as early as they have in the past. Because a lot of those people have done initial research upfront and they're coming into that first meeting with a salesperson with their short list of vendors. They've already done a lot of the research. So your or you know, the sales pitch is also going to need to shift because the prospect is coming into that meeting at a different place than they have in the past. So that's what I mean by a cultural shift. I think on the marketing side and the sales side, everybody that's part of the revenue process is going to need to start, you know, shifting the way they do things, um, to accommodate this future state.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And the impact is radical. I mean we've, we've seen just over the past 15 years about how um, the point at which a buyer is engaging a salesperson is getting further and further along within that buying journey. I think it's very interesting. We're talking about agentic AI. Um, now there's an automatic assumption that we are sort of talking about the agentic AI on behalf of the brand, but also agentic AI works for, on behalf of the buyer as well. And now actually in terms of when they are shortlisting suppliers, there isn't an interaction even with the brand in many respects because you're putting into ChatGPT whatever it might be. And ChatGPT is doing that qualification process based on your criteria and then you are spat out of a short short list. So it really is, um, moving it much, much further down before you can have a sort of a meaningful interaction. So it will change things, I suppose. Maybe just to sort of bring it back to some of the original topic of conversation. I'd love to get your guys perspective with the changes that we have just described. Do you think that brings sales and marketing close together or does it push them further, further apart?

Speaker B: I'm hoping that it brings them closer together um, because I think that's the only way to tackle this successfully. Um, you know, I know I, I've, I've, my team has done a lot around buying groups and you know, something that we're trying to do is package up all these great signals that we have in the way that, you know, sellers are already talking to sales. And so I feel like, you know, that's an example of where you Know, marketing is trying to better align itself with sales and I think vice versa. Sales should be, you know, doing their part to, you know, align more closely with marketing. So. And I know, um, you know, one of the questions that you had brought up was like the CRO and you know, uh, like culturally, is that somebody that um, you know, could help with this? In my opinion is, is. Yes, definitely. I think that if all the revenue teams, so you're talking about, you know, marketing inside sales field sales, you know, all those teams have a part in that. They play in, you know, closing a deal. And I think right now, um, when sales and marketing are under two different leaders, um, that, that alignment just isn't there. There's no cohesiveness in the way that marketing and sales are operating together. It's still like, okay, you own that piece of it, I own this piece of it. But in reality, like they're both going to be touching the deal throughout the whole cycle, just in different ways and they need to be okay with that too. I think that's where I think we,

Speaker C: I think we have a slightly differing views on that though. I'm not a fan of the idea of marketing being under a croat, um, I guess the caveat, if a CMO role still existed under that, then maybe, yeah, in my opinion, because where I see the risk is marketing is art, uh, and science. Right. And there's the longer term storytelling component of it, brand building and I guess certainly in the field working alongside sales organizations, the focus is invariably, rightly so, a lot more short term. Are we going to hit next quarter's number? Are we going to hit this quarter's number and how are we forecasting for next number? And you're kind of, you're always focused on the, I mean there's phrases around, you know, you're only as good as your last quarter. And every quarter in the company we joke sort of day one of the most important quarter in the history of Palo Alto Networks. You know, that's, that's how it works. It's very immediate and short term. And I think a CRO would be very focused on that as well. And I think where marketing shoulders a responsibility is, uh, what is our longer term pipeline? What's our pipeline looking at for the next 365 days? Like, yes, we're looking for good for next quarter, but what about the quarter after? What about the quarter after? I think you talked earlier about new products. Um, as a company we're going through a, ah, you know, or we are a company that has acquired other businesses and often they will um, start small, but they're a longer term key pillar in our product strategy.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: And in a way, uh, it's not like loss leading market, but we've almost had to sort of over budget for. We're creating a market here and we're seeding a market and we're seeding it for messaging. And the reality is, you know, CRO might look at it and it's like, well this, this is only a small part of my revenue. And it's like, yeah, but five years from now, if you look at the kind of the TAM and the cagr, this is going to be a huge part of your revenue. And one of us needs to be thinking about that now. And my concern is that if marketing sat under a CRO, we would, yes, there'd be a lot of alignment in a lot of ways, but it would get very functionally driven around driving short term numbers. Um, and where would that longer term brand building market creation piece go? Would that get sacrificed as a. Yeah, but that's not going to help me hit next quarter's number. And it falls by the wayside a bit. And I think that short termism would be a risk.

Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I just feel like a croissant. Their job is to be more of that long term person. The head of sales, I agree, is focused on the quarter, but they too should be looking at, you know, future pipeline. Because I'm pretty sure, you know, the head of sales, their job hangs on the line each quarter. Um, so they, you know, have to hit each quarter. So if they're not thinking about the next quarter, um, that's probably a problem for their career longevity. Um, but I feel like uh, I guess the flip side of what you're saying, my feeling on the marketing side, when it's not associated or aligned to like a CRO or somebody who's more thinking about revenue, is that we get a lot of marketers who don't think about the impact of their campaigns on revenue. They're just thinking about, great. I ran an event and I got this many people to attend and now I moved on to the next one. And were those the right people who attended? What are you doing with those people afterward if they didn't, you know, if they're really not ready to talk to sales, how are you going to nurture them and retarget them and get them to the next event? And that's the piece that I think is sometimes missing from um, marketing teams when they're not aligned to um, revenue and maybe this comes down to just um, you know the right KPIs good,

Speaker A: we've got a bit of attention. So I suppose just to um, I suppose evolve the conversation. Um, Andrew. No, no, no. I want to say I'm actually staying, I'm staying with, I'm staying with this. But like Andrew, do you, do you agree with um, you might not uh, agree with the, the cure maybe, but do you agree with some of the diagnosis that Lauren has offered there in terms of where there's that misalignment there's not being.

Speaker C: I was just going to say and yeah maybe reflecting on my own sort of you know I've had a number of roles in the company over the years and I once heard it explained to me as like there's hard hat marketing and soft hat marketing. You know in terms of you think about if you're on a building site and I guess you know my, my role now is field. My role when I, I've held field and central GTM and campaign roles in my career and it is different in terms of atmosphere because when you're in a field role essentially you're aligned to a uh, revenue leader and it feels like there's an incredibly aligned what does good look like in terms of business outcomes and you feel a lot of the pressure. You're really at the cold face and in a way that's your cold face and in a way that's your sort of hard hat marketing experience. What I've noticed in when I'm more in sort of like central campaign and GTM functions and your stakeholder set almost becomes other marketing people and you know at global or in other regions or whatever you can, there's, it is easier to get that sort of navel gazing tendency of operating your own little world. And you know, and I, I, I can honestly say I think, I think I've and I don't, and I don't mean this disparagingly because almost it's not their necessarily the role or the way businesses are set up. But yeah sometimes you, you speak to marketers and you're like have you ever spoken to a salesperson or, or a customer even more importantly because you know there's really that sort of marketing world. Uh, so I actually fully agree with Lauren say and I guess you know you're coming at it the perspective of someone that sits in marketing operations and a lot of the stakeholder ownership is those internal marketing functions.

Speaker B: I'll give you an example.

Speaker C: I'm coming at it from the someone who perspective of someone who works with a sales leader.

Speaker A: And it's like, we've got a killer example here.

Speaker B: We own, um, you know, lead scoring. And so, you know, I'll get marketers who ask me, oh, can we. Can we just change lead scoring for this event? Because, you know, they all need to. Or this webinar, because they all need to get over to sales. And I'm like, okay, I. I understand you want to do that. Like, what are you trying to achieve? And it's like, oh, well, we need, um, you know, we were told that we need this number of POCs. Like, okay, well, adjusting lead scoring is not going to help your conversion rate if we just fake it. Right? So I think that's where just too many people are thinking about, oh, I just need to get, you know, these across the line to sales. And it's like, well, if they never convert, what's the point? And you actually are just, you know, now wasting your marketing effort. Because if they go over to sales and they're not ready, then they circle back into marketing. We have to retarget them again. And, you know, they may be irritated that sales is reaching out to them when they're not ready. So, um, anyway, that, yeah, that's an example of something that happens probably monthly.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: And, uh, look, and I think that what. What we're hearing is that there is, you know, you're almost describing. There's that disconnect from. In terms of like a walk m my actions and the ultimate outcome that we're trying to drive here. And as you said, like, what's the point in changing these scoring if it's not going to convert? That's just vanity. And you spoke there almost about the dislocation that some marketing teams might have from both the market and even the sales teams and their colleagues. So we've got one solution, which is being put forward, which is the chief revenue officer, you know, unite them under one, um, one. One leader. And Andrea, and I think you. You have a slightly different opinion. What do you feel would be the sort of the. The right model to make sure that we've got the necessary checks and balances to get to the outcomes ultimately, which I think you're both, you know, committed to.

Speaker C: I'll give you what my answer would. I thought my answer would be, and I've slightly modified, uh, well, now I think Lauren's Lawrence be very persuasive. So, yeah, she has. She has been very persuasive. And I think some of it probably Comes down to my own bias in that, you know, you said I'm talking about a CRO, not a head of sales. In my head, somewhat cynically I'm like it's the same thing. A CRO is someone who runs the sales organization just with a fancier title. So I think potentially a CRO is workable depending on the remit and the profile of that person. If it's a uh, glorified head of global sales, I think my, my reservations stand. Yep, I would agree if and, and I guess I've never worked in an organization where I have experience to CRO. So you know, some of it's probably coming from my own cynicism, guardedness or whatever. But if, if the right role could get created for the right person and the organizational setup around it, you know, I can see that as a very workable solution. Um, in the current world where you know effectively you are looking more at sort of global, global head of sales and often they have sales ops and go to market and all the rest of it with it. I think marketing ultimately used to own and deliver uh, on KPIs that are aligned to business outcomes in terms of pipeline. And I've worked even in this organization in sort of both ways of where marketing has a sourced pipeline target and where marketing ultimately is accountable for the overall pipeline target of the organization. I think there's pros and cons to both. If anything I quite like, I think it helps to have the scenario whereby marketing carry the same pipeline as the sales organization because there's nothing worse in my view. Certainly when you're in a sort of field capacity of when sales have missed a number. But marketing are high fiving themselves in the corner of like well we did our bit actually. There needs to be a real sort of shared ownership of the business outcome. It can create challenge in terms of ambiguity because then it opens up the kind of like well how much is marketing actually driving and can you prove it? But you know, so I think different things will work for different organizations. But where I see big problems if marketing is KPI'd on MQLs and sales accepted opportunities and click through rates and all. So what I think all of those metrics useful, great. But that should almost be our internal narrative, our uh, internal dialogue. They are leading indicators to more important outcomes. I don't think they're things that should ever really be discussed with the sales organization. And I think coming back to your internal marketing people that care about all of those things, I think they need to have KPIs that ladder onto a business outcome versus hi Fi. If we've got 200 people on a webinar, the target was 180.

Speaker B: Yeah. And enable them on how to have that conversation with sales so that sales understands the value that marketing is bringing. Right. And um, interestingly I just had somebody on my team, um, so I mentioned we've been doing all this work around buying groups and it's an SVP of strategic sales, um, in the US who emailed us and was like I want to learn more about what you guys are doing with buying groups and marketing. If I hear about MQLs one more time, I'm going to lose it. Like that was literally the gist of his message. So um, you know, Andrew's spot on that. I think marketing talking about MQL is fine as an internal KPI. Should it be like a top line KPI? Absolutely not in my opinion. Um, but we need to figure out how do we sell our value to sales effectively. And I think some of it is to Andrew's point like sourced pipeline. But realistically, is marketing at a company of our size going to, you know, source pipeline for these large high tech industries? Um, you know we may not be that first touch and I think so many people get lost in the, you know, who had the first touch and who sourced it. But really it's how our marketing and sales, sales working together on the right mix of touches to land the deal. And so how do you build, you know, attribution models that, that highlight that right mix of touches to again sell the value of marketing to sales? I think that's something that a lot of companies struggle with and I think

Speaker C: it's creating the culture where did we win the deal or not that matters to sales and marketing. Yeah, there's not the kind of ah, uh, too bad, missed our revenue target. But hey, at least we got loads of people on our webinar. Like that drives me crazy but there's too much of that goes on.

Speaker A: Well, I mean we, we had a bit of conflict and I think we probably got to a point of reconciliation. Healthy debate indeed. And I think that the key thing is um, around look, whatever structure. And we'll return to that very briefly to end the conversation in a second. It's necessary to have shared goals, shared ways of measuring success and also just probably sharing success and failure a little bit more. Um, now you guys kissed and made up there I think and we've got to a beautiful place. So my final question maybe will unveil a little bit of misalignment, but we'll see. You might be violently aligned. Now run me with me a little bit in terms of hypothetically, you know, uh, we do move to a model where a CRO is in installed and you have that greater integration of sales and marketing. Should that CRO come from a sales background or a marketing background? I'll give you both an opportunity to answer that. Thinking about it within the context that we've described of how the, um, the buyer journey is changing and the way that people, you know, consume information, make a purchase decision. Lauren, you're next to me. So I think I'm going to give you the first, first option.

Speaker B: My opinion is they should come from a sales background because. And uh, because I think that everybody who's part of the revenue process, including marketers, should have had some sales experience in the past. I don't care if it was an internship or like a rotation. But I think it's so valuable for everyone at the company to understand like, what's the end goal of this? And I think too often, you know, we shared examples, right, where people just, they miss the entire point of why they're doing something. And so that's, that's why, you know, despite, you know, I do think that they should hire a CMO underneath them. But I think that um, a sales background is extremely valuable to keeping like eye on the prize.

Speaker A: Okay, so we've got sales one, marketing nil at the moment. Is it going to be scoring draw or conclusive victory for sales? It's in your hands, Andrew.

Speaker C: I was going to say either, but because I think, you know, in this sort of CRO example we talked about, there would be a head of sales underneath it and there would be a, uh, cmo. Uh, I'd be inclined more to like lean towards, um, what Lauren is saying. Um, I guess where, where I was thinking is, is there a default that it has to be either or actually, should it could it be someone with a like COO type background or sales operations type background almost? If you have the person that's like global head of sales, knows how to run the sales organization, you have a CMO that knows to run, um, marketing, do you need someone that's actually more focused on the operational framework of the company of how do we make, build that all together? Because if you're looking really at a revenue engine, there's tech aspects and everything. Um, so that, that's another skill set that you could have in the role. If, if I was pushed to pick one off sales or marketing I would agree with um, sales, you've, you finally

Speaker A: managed to say the word sales. You were sort of, you couldn't bring yourself to say so. I agree broadly speaking with what Lauren has said but we've come to it and look, I mean I do understand um, I think, think the uh, the diplomacy which you sort of like exercise when you were sort of talking about that. But I think that as you said having that real bottom line understanding of outcomes and also just some of the real challenges that are faced when it comes to driving revenue is very, very important.

Speaker C: Let's face it, if you want someone that senior as a CRO, you want someone that understands the pressure of carrying that kind of number. And if you think about the size of the team that's going to be under them, sales org is going to be way bigger than a marketing org. And so just in terms of like culture of the organization you're going to build and what have you, that's it's the logical choice.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, it's been a, it's been a far ranging conversation and I think we've, we've ended the conversation in a very different place to where we started which was talking about abm. But in many respects I think that you know, what we were talking about with ABM was a microcosm for the conversation that we've gone on to have. Um, and ultimately look, it's not about working in perfect lockstep one another. You need to have a little bit of tension between the groups but there has to be that alignment in terms of what you're trying to achieve. And I think that that really is the conclusion of the, the conversation here. For organizations to be successful there has to be that complete alignment when it comes to driving revenue. Now we ended up with ah, a sort of conclusive victory for sales in terms of heading up that organization. But unless there is that sort of mutual understanding, those mutual goals, it's always going to be very, very difficult to achieve the results. So Lauren, Andrew, thank you very, very much for joining on the podcast. That was a really interesting conversation.

Speaker B: Thanks for having us.

Speaker C: Thanks for having us. And hopefully the thanks for having us was more enthusiastic than the.

Speaker A: Ah, yeah, absolutely. I think we revved it up. We revved it up. B2B marketing, the provocative Truth is brought to you by Alan H Agency. To find out more head to alan-agency.com you can stream B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else great podcasts are found. And don't forget to click subscribe to ensure you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Allen, thanks for listening.