Fixing B2B - Why It’s Time to Rethink the Model - Drew Neisser

Speaker A: Hello and, uh, welcome to Tech Marketing Trends. Today, in this episode, we're going to tackle a critical issue for B2B marketeers and revenue leaders. And we call it fixing B2B. Why? It's time to rethink the model. Big topic. But as we know, B2B companies are facing longer deal cycles, growing buyer committees, things are getting more complex, and, um, a lot of declining close rates and so forth. And many of the traditional strategies that we have been seeing as playbooks for 10 years plus now are not working as efficient anymore. And we have an expert that knows exactly what discussions and ways to solve this, and that is Drew Naser, who is a leading voice in B2B marketing and growth strategy and have a lot of networks and huddles going on with CMOs in the industry. So he will help us today to unpack this topic and I'm really stoked to hear what you have on your mind. So welcome to the podcast, Drew.

Speaker B: Well, thank you, Jake, uh, for having me. It's, it's great to be here. I don't know if I have all the answers, but I do have a lot of thoughts for you all to consider.

Speaker A: I love that, and that's more than enough. And I know you have a lot of, uh, thoughts because you also have a lot of relationships in the industry. You pick up trends very early. But for people who haven't come across you before or have heard the episode we had, I think it was two, three years ago where we talked before. Can you just, you know, what's been up to and what do you do on a daily basis?

Speaker B: Sure. So, March 2, uh, March, April 1, 2020. Very beginning of the pandemic. I founded CMO Huddles and realized there was an opening there for a B2B community that was really facing a crisis, uh, like no other. And, uh, we've been, uh. So what I look at my role, I used to talk about it in terms of community coaching and then content to help the community. Now I call my content Rants, because there is a lot to rant about. But, and I'll give you one specific thing that, uh, that I've been doing. I've been writing actually. Now it's 52 weeks. These Saturday, literally, they are editorial rants on LinkedIn. Maximum amount of words. Uh, and each one starts with a quote from a CMO conversation that I've been having, uh, either that week or recently. And those have been phenomenal in terms of the reach and the conversation and have really. I put some stuff out there that's pretty raw and folks have really responded. It's generated over a million impressions on uh, on LinkedIn. So uh, it's been, it's a really, what it shows is how dynamic things are in B2B right now.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I agree it's a lot going on. Well, a million, that's, that's a popular LinkedIn post, I must say.

Speaker B: Well now I never, not one post, uh, the most, uh, any one single Post got was 140,000 or so impressions. Which still is crazy for a word based post. I mean the ones that do really well are typically videos these days, but um, old school, handwritten, you know, no GPT involved with lots of flaws in them and it's just amazing how much conversation they've created.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you run these huddles, you have a lot of CMOs hanging out with and um, you know, you meet a lot of people in the B BB marketing space on a more or less daily basis and so forth. So that's really good. And um, interesting background or profession to actually talk about. The things that we see don't work as well any longer as well as maybe what is the cure or what do you think? So maybe we should just unpack that a little bit that uh, you know, the B2B landship is shifting. And um, as I said a little bit in the introduction, we do have of course a slower economy as well in many countries. But also deal cycles are getting longer, we do have tighter buying processes and so forth. So the pressure is on in a lot of companies. And what um, do you see from your perspective, how this is impacting your clients and the networks you're working in?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's um, Well a lot is the answer. And it's funny if you look back to 2020 and when I've been having weekly, since I've been having weekly conversations, we went to full stop economically to this later part of 2020-2022 where it was boom, boom, boom, growth, growth, growth, phenomenal. And then last year things really slowed down in 2024 and it looked like we were about to recover and there was some sense of optimism. And then, you know, obviously things have changed uh, here in, in the US and economic uncertainty, which is absolutely the one thing CFOs cannot deal with. They just can't cope with uncertainty. And there, I like to call them when, when they get into uncertainty, the CFO becomes the CF no and when the CF no is out there, deals don't happen. And what's extraordinary is how many CMOs that I talk to, hey, we got all the deals, all the opportunities we want. We simply can't close. And it's not that they're losing to another company, they're losing to nobody. The deals just aren't happening. So that's one big is. Uncertainty is sort of forcing the CFO into, uh, stopping deals. Number two is there's just so much noise and in all channels, um, and, you know, it's overwhelming for everybody. And so we're just tuning out, uh, for the most part. So that's a problem for companies who actually want to communicate something different. And then there's this whole world of shifting expectations that, uh, you and I, when we go to buy something, it's pretty darn easy. We might do some homework. We can go on to Perplexity or, or Google and we search, hey, what do I want to buy for? Where's the best place for this thing? Or so forth. We find our information, we click on a button. If we're on Amazon, it's one click, boom, we're done. There is no friction in the buying process whatsoever. We can get the research that we want, we can make a decision. And that goes all the way up almost to cars, you know, which is a huge purchase decision. But still all the information that we might want, for the most part is available, helpful, uh, and pretty smooth. And if there is a hiccup, they're going to lose, which is why Amazon just keeps winning because it's such a, a frictionless buying experience. So that's our expectation as consumers, and that's the expectation of the new buying group, which are all Gen Z and millennials. They're not boomers are not making decisions in buying committees anymore. So these shifting expectations are really impacting B, uh, 2B as well.

Speaker A: Super interesting. That's a few big trends down there. So how have you seen that impact the marketing departments and, um, you know, whatever traditional B2B tactics we have been using now over the last few years, um, how. What areas do you see losing their effectiveness when it comes to marketing tactics or strategies in today's market?

Speaker B: This shift that happened once marketing became, quote, digital marketing came in and people could measure it. This obsession that CMOs, some CMOs in our community, we've really moved away from MQL. But I still see it out there. I still see the term, and it drives me crazy because there's no business value in an mql. It's, it's kind of this useless number. Um, and yet there are still CMOs out there who sort of go okay, well we have this many leads and we got to MQL and then Those converted into SQLs and those convert, converted into opportunities. And uh, the amount of money and energy that goes into trying to get this lead to an mql, to an SQL is unbelievable and often a complete waste of money. So that's a big uh, area and problematic is what you're measuring and what you're driving to. And then there's another trend and I'm not winning this battle. Just so you know, I've, I mean I'm losing it uh, because most CMOs that I talk to separate their quote growth, budget and teams or their demand gen teams and their brand teams. So they literally have people who only do quote brand stuff and people who only do demand stuff as if those things don't constantly interact, don't work together. And so you can have a demand gen team who has no clue what the brand building team is doing. And there's no intersection of story. And the result of this, brands get smaller. There's no unifying idea. And, and this is hugely important. But I'm sure it's the same for your clients if you, you ask them do you have a brand or growth uh, uh, budget and so forth and they separate these budgets. And it's really problematic too because when it's time to cut budgets, the CEO, cfo, they see the brand stuff. Well cut that, that's useless. Just focus on demand. And I can go on, on this one because there's an interesting place that happens in brand. Can I keep going on this one? Because I think this is a fascinating example.

Speaker A: This is really interesting because I have also come across this conflict. You know, before it's basically short term and long term investment in. Right in marketing.

Speaker B: And as I said I, if, If you polled 100 CMOs in our community, 95 of them would have these separations of groups and budgets. A few of them have managed to not have their budget broken out that way. They don't sort of show it into the buckets that way. But let's take something like analyst relations. Analyst relations usually sits in communications and PR somewhere. It's a brand building thing. Every salesperson knows that if you're in the top quadrant of a forester or Gartner thing, that's money in the bank, that's going to be revenue. How long does it take do you think, to build, to change a perception of an analyst? A week, a quarter, a year, sometimes two years. Really it's usually between A year and two years where a, uh, well constructed analyst program will actually yield the results that you need to build growth, to use it to help close sales. Right. Now I could call that if I put that in my brand budget and you cut my brand budget, I cut analyst relations, I set the company back for years. Right. So, and, but it's a good example of something that everybody knows it has value, but the value is longer term because it takes time to build these relationships, to become a credible resource for the analysts that they trust you, where they're giving you real time feedback from what the customer is saying about your brand so you can actually make improvements that the analysts recommend and therefore move up on the quadrant. It's, it's a process and to me it's one of the strongest levers to create demand because suddenly there's a third party who everybody trusts and believes in, who matters, who's, who's on your side. So it's just a fascinating thing to me. And this also, by the way, there's another reason why CMOs often don't invest heavily in that area is that they don't expect to have enough time for it to work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So they're focused on this short term. I'm going to try to drive demand, which is always about optimization and changing little things. Uh, and you know, look for CMOs to have major impact, they need to be focused on the big stuff. You know, you want to build a super brand or do you just want to optimize your demand gen? And these are choices.

Speaker A: And do you always feel that the UM, CMOs need to fight the CFOs now to actually get funding for the more long term ROI investments?

Speaker B: Yeah. It's an interesting conundrum and it's not just the cfo. And again, this is where our world may be in the, in the US So many of the companies that I talk to, the CMOs work for P E backed firms. And P E backed firms are not building companies to last, they're building companies to sell. And that's a big difference. And I get it that, you know, they're looking to flip a company in three to five years. And it's really important for the CMO to understand that horizon because they have to translate what they do to have impact on that time frame. So it's a, it's a tricky thing to say to a CFO who is working for a PE firm that wants to sell in the next year. Yeah. But we need to do this analyst relationship program which is going to you know, which will really pay out in two years if in a perfect world we'd all be building companies to last. Right. That's a great goal. Um, unfortunately short termism is a big, big impact. So I'm not sure I answered your question, but I think I provided some interesting concepts.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I've seen it a lot as well. And, and um, it's probably quite complex, um, task for CMO to navigate in that, you know, short, short span of return investment is, is the only focus and so forth. So.

Speaker B: And by the way, before you go on, I, I realized I forgot something. So this is really fundamental to all of this. There are a few things in a playbook and we actually have this first 90 days. If anybody of your listeners want to just have them ping me. Drew, uh, @cmohuddles.com we have a, uh, first uh, 90 days quick wins checklist that we continue to update. There are things that CMOs can do that might be able to optimize that are pretty easy. Right? They need to do that. But the reality is the big things that they're going to do aren't going to really come to play for six months, nine months, 12 months. And this is the problem. Sales lives quarter to quarter. Marketing is going to, is really going to have the biggest impact in nine months, in 12 months, in 15 months. So what CMOs need to start doing, which most of them don't, is they need to have brand impact of some kind in place that sort of aggregates and shows the trends of the, the impact that they're having in the market in terms of brand health. And there's a lot of different measures and most of them are public. So if they had that in place, and I was talking to a CMO literally last week, who did, who showed the impact of track brand impact. PR budget got cut, guess what? The brand impact score went down the next, the quarter and then the next quarter and the impact on pipeline was two quarters later. So if you have the data you can show correlation. Most CMOs don't have that data and they don't have time in their role to accumulate that data, which is problematic as well. But they're always dealing with these different time frames and that's just something that's a mindset the CMOs need to have. There's the short term and there's a long term and they need to be able to live comfortably in both of those areas. And it's really hard because the notion of uh, differentiation and having a brand that actually stands for something is a leap of faith. It is. You've got to believe that if we stand for something and we go to market with a consistent story that's different from our competition, that this is going to work.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And, um, how do you see that relationship play out between sales and marketing leaders now? Is there a bigger divide or friction?

Speaker B: So funny.

Speaker A: The same as always.

Speaker B: Well, it's a great question. And it's so funny because I would have, if you had asked this question a year ago, I would say, God, it's a love fest right now. Sales and marketing are doing great. Um, everybody's hitting their numbers. Marketing and sales are presenting data together. It's a beautiful world. Uh, and you know that when a new CRO or salesperson comes in, the marketing person gets to interview them and vice versa, and they're all lined and it's a beautiful thing. You know, fast forward a year and it's like, oh my God, it's horrible. You know, there's just. Everybody's throwing rocks at everybody because we didn't hit our numbers.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: And so it's unfortunate because it is if marketing and sales aren't aligned in the overall story, in the go to market, in what's important in the icp, you know that in terms of who we're targeting then. And by the way, even definitions. What's an opportunity? Yes, the salesperson. Well, an opportunity is, you know, uh, well, beyond appointment. Yes, the marketer. Well, opportunity. And they'll say, well, it's, it's, uh, they've seen the demo, they've set up a meeting and they have a budget and we've talked to at least one decision maker anyway, they have to get all of those things aligned for things to work. But uh, here's the truth. When the going gets tough, everyone blames marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that sucks. So, so how do you help your CMOs in your networks and, and what are the key shifts that you recommend them or that you huddle up and um, agree on or can see as trends where companies who might have navigated into this quite complex, uh, phase of the economy and uh, and so forth. What do you see working or where are they going?

Speaker B: So let me start with one, one sort of notion. Part of what we do is simply empathy. It's a really hard job. It's always been a really hard job. And one of the things that really helps cmos is when they hear that from another cmo. So that it's like, oh, I'm not alone. Wow, my Salesperson said this to me too. Um, so it's really hard and you know, if your CEO walks in the door and said, our PE firm is saying this is our EBITDA, we're about to miss it. You got to cut $1 million out of your $2 million. You know, discretionary budget. You know, you've pretty much have to do it and you have to say this is going to be the impact on it this quarter, next quarter and the following quarter. So, um, look, there's been this idea that you could create a predictive marketing or demand generation engine and in an ideal world you would actually be able to do that where it just, it's not an ideal world. Right? In this ideal world, yes, you would be able to say we are bringing in qualified opportunities and we are, uh, and we're doing it on a consistent basis and sales is uh, you know, hitting their quarter. I'm trying to, I think there's several things here that CMOs could try. And again, it depends on where they are in their, in their maturity and their market share, uh, how long they've been around. There's a lot of variables in this, who their ownership structure is and so forth. I mean, look, if you are a CMO for a firm, that firm is pretty much going to tell you how they want you to go to market and you're going to have a hard time fighting that unless it happens to be uh, one that's willing to, to go a different way. So there are several things that I think that, that CMOs could be thinking about right now. One, for example is close rates. Close rates are well below one in five right now. It's crazy. So you have 20%. So how do you improve close rates? Well one, you have a more uh, consistent story across all touch points. So that when the buying committee, which uh, Forster now says is 22 people, including nine outsiders, everybody's sort of saying this company is great because of this. Every single person understands why we should be buying this company. So that's a consistency, uh, thing. But more importantly, if marketing was delivering fewer better opportunities, which gets back to my problem with MQLs at the beginning, right? Fewer better opportunities. So now we're spending less time nurturing garbage and more time focused on what's real intent look like were we on their list and where we at the top of the list. And it's just about keeping the other, the number two and number three out of the deal. So close rates are a really interesting place for CMOs to start to think about. Examine listening to the sales calls, understanding going on sales calls. If they can help that so that the opportunities that they're delivering, they can deliver fewer, better opportunities, that's going to make it easier for the marketer. But when they look back where that opportunity come from, how did it get nurtured? You know, why were they uh, why were we on top of their list in the first place? So that they again can spend more efficiently. Uh, there is, I don't think there's a marketer out there that hasn't been asked do more with less this year. Yeah, I uh, hate that expression by the way, if I never heard it. I mean, it makes me want to pull my hair out because if we're really smart about marketing, we'd say marketing is an investment and the CFO should be going to the marketer and saying, hey, I want you to do more with more.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, maybe it's time to dust off the guerrilla marketing book series from the 80s and 90s.

Speaker B: My favorites, my favorite. So I didn't give you. So I think there are some other things that CMOs could be thinking about.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, one is community led growth. A number of brands are having success in that area.

Speaker A: Uh, I've always double click on that a little bit. Where do you see what kind of product segments or industries do you see Community led growth actually work?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's a lot of SaaS brands, I mean Gong has done it, Sixth Sense has done it, Canva has done it, Notion has done it. And it's not like that's the only thing they've done. But by having a lot of users championing the brand and developing community and supporting community and allowing the community to have voice, they have higher close rates. Oh, um, so that's one area. Another area, and I talk a lot about this in my book and I still think it's relevant, is flip the targeting. Right now if you looked at normal B2B plan, it would be 90% of the dollars are spent on prospects, 10% on existing customers and nothing on employees. They don't even have it. They've turned that over or left it in the HR department. Flip it around, say we're going to be an employee led growth company. Well, what does it mean to be an employee led growth company? Well, it means that you better have a powerful purpose that every single person wakes up in the morning goes, oh my God, I love this company. I can't wait to help the world discover it. That's unbelievably powerful approach I know a number of companies, again they tend to be private, they sell more family owned uh, like case paper and they built an incredible employee led brand. Uh, and it's just, it's phenomenal to, to see that work. Very few B2B P backed firms have the bravery, uh, to do that and takes courage and that's challenge.

Speaker A: That's interesting.

Speaker B: So we got employee led, we've got community led and then you know, dare I say purpose led. It's a weird time to be talking about purpose again.

Speaker A: Uh, oh, I think that's interesting. What do you mean?

Speaker B: Well, uh, you know when we have a recent study showed that 200 uh, of the Fortune 500 companies, half of them had scrubbed ESG and DEI from their websites.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Summit dropped it completely. Some that just changed the language. So when you hear the word purpose you often hear think of sort of those kinds of things Ei and, and I don't think it has to be the case. I think that I talk about this in my book. There's big P purpose and little P purpose. You can just be focused on something and stand for something. And I don't think enough companies actually have a uh, differentiated value prop, A uh, differentiated go to market strategy. And when you find those companies that do, it's amazing. I mean again I think Gong is a really good company to look at in the B2B space. They've done interesting marketing. They are a uh, highly engaging brand and it helps that they've had the same CMO for a long time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I suppose so they don't restart their take on how to do things every second year or so. Yeah, that's great. And yeah, super interesting. So we need to rethink not only put rinse, repeat on the old playbook. I think this is super interesting. If companies don't adapt and reevaluate, I suppose we're in for a rough ride.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I don't want to be melodramatic but I think survival's at stake here. I mean spam, email blasts, cold outbound, undifferentiated messaging and by the way, I love generative AI and the things that I can do with it. However, it is leading to more garbage in people's inboxes. These artificial uh, in quote personalization are not personalization. And so it's your, the dilution of all brands but specifically yours is happening because you're making your brand small. Uh, we want to make your brand big. You want to make it stand out and that is consistency. Think about water on a rock, you've got to be able to say consistently say the same thing over and over again over time and back it up and ideally back it up with your customers saying wonderful things about you. So yeah, I think survival, I think there's going to be a lot of companies that are going to suffer in 2025 and I hate to be that because I'm such an optimist in general.

Speaker A: Ye.

Speaker B: But uh, I do think there's going to need to be a shift in step backward and a few companies, the big ones, who actually do stand for something, not maybe not thrive, but certainly will survive the next 12 months.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. And that's quite dramatic. So with that forecast, which is as you say, quite serious, we need to really think long and hard about this. What is the one closing advice it would send with the B2B leaders listening to this podcast now or their go to market strategy or whatever marketing plan they have for the so I go

Speaker B: back to a very basic definition that I have for marketing, which is marketing is an epic battle for mind space. What do you own? What can you own that is differentiated to help your company? So your job is to own some space. Getting there means aligning behind, you know, figure out what your CEO's vision, turn it into a short, pithy purpose statement that everyone in the company knows and can rally behind. I talk a lot about this in my book. I don't think that's changed. No matter how much technology is, either your brand stands for something or it stands for nothing.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great Drew. This has been a great discussion and thank you so much for sharing these insights, which is, you know, hard to come by and um, take a lot of your time together and talking to people and so forth. So super interesting to see a little bit from your perspective who talking to so many CMOs on a weekly basis. So thank you so much for that. For people who want to, you know, oh, I love this content and Drew have so much good ideas and things I need to read more about. Where can they find you and uh, where can they buy your books and so forth?

Speaker B: Uh, well let's see. So you can find me at, uh, Drew Nyser on LinkedIn. Um, our media brand renegade marketing.com has our newsletter, podcasts, blog posts, um, most of my rants from LinkedIn and so and then the book is called Renegade Marketing and it's available uh, all over the world.

Speaker A: Wow. Um, well thank you so much. I wish you all the best now and let's hope you and all the listeners can, uh, take heed of all these great advices and avoid that problems that we've been talking about now, but instead have growth and prosperity for the next year. Thank you so much. I wish you all the best.

Speaker B: Thank you. Really appreciate what you're doing.