Terry Flaherty

Learn what changes and what stays the same when you're shifting away from MQLs and toward opportunities and buying groups.

This Saying Goodbye to MQLs blog identifies the role of the opportunity entity and why your team should use it in the revenue process today.

In this week’s Saying Goodbye to MQLs blog, we discuss the relationship between accounts, buying groups, and opportunities.

This week’s Saying Goodbye to MQLs blog post looks at how leveraging signals to identify buying groups can drive value for your organization.

Welcome back to this multipart blog series answering why leads-centric marketing approaches don’t work. In this post, we look at what happens to the individuals if we focus on buying groups.

We received many great questions in our webinar on why leads-centric marketing approaches don’t work. In the first post of a multipart blog series, we focus on the shift from leads to opportunities.

The “Saying Goodbye to MQLs” blog series is dedicated to answering your questions when making the shift from leads to buying groups and opportunities. You can find all blogs published in this series below.   Making the shift from MQLs (marketing-qualified leads) to buying groups and opportunities continues to be a hot topic that boils […]

Switching from marketing-qualified leads to buying groups and opportunities can drive tremendous improvement, but success is also heavily dependent on your process. Learn more at this year’s B2B Summit North America.

What was once considered heretical by some has now moved to the forefront of marketers' priorities. At this year's B2B Summit North America, get advice for successfully transitioning from a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) focus to an opportunities-based approach.

The key to an optimized revenue process is context. As discussed earlier in this blog series, both the marketing qualified lead (MQL) and the marketing qualified account (MQA) suffer from context issues. But if you use the opportunity-centric approach, you can leverage this context and optimize the revenue process between marketing and sales throughout the entire revenue process.

In part 1 and 2 of this blog series, we explored why the focus on MQLs is a restrictive approach. Just as B2B buying decisions are not made by an individual person or lead, the buying decision is also not made by an account. In this blog, we explore why shifting the focus to the MQA (marketing qualified account) is equally problematic.

In part 1 of this blog series, we looked at reasons why organizations need to end their focus on individual MQLs (marketing qualified leads) as the focus of their revenue process. In part 2, we look at more reasons why the transformation away from MQLs is necessary.

For more than 20 years, the MQL (marketing qualified lead) has been the focus of most B2B revenue processes. But it fails in providing actionable insight and drives misalignment across various functions in the process. In part 1 of a four-part blog series, we explore why the MQL era is antiquated and needs to end immediately.

This is the ninth in a series of blog posts that provide demand and account-based marketing best practices in honor of the 12 days of Christmas.

• The demand management process often lacks consistency and alignment on key factors
• The SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall^® is a modular framework designed to bring alignment and consistency to the demand management process
• The Demand Waterfall family includes three versions designed to address a variety of go-to-market strategies

• One major trend that continues to grow is for marketing organizations to own a quota for marketing sourced revenue
• With volumes defined, marketers can align their programs and budgets to support their goals
• Base your lead conversion goals on the current state, external reference benchmarks and identified process improvement impact

• Just like a relay race, the B2B lead management process requires smooth and efficient handoffs across team members
• The sales accepted lead (SAL) stage provides the signal of successful change in control of a lead from marketing to sales
• Companies who incorporate an SAL stage in their lead management process experience dramatic increases in Demand Waterfall throughput

• Demand Waterfall® conversion benchmarks are used to set performance targets, determine demand creation budgets and align programs to revenue goals
• There is not a best-in- class benchmark that can be used for all Demand Waterfalls; waterfall benchmarks should be aligned to context
• Using the incorrect Demand Waterfall benchmark can lead to missed targets, misaligned budgets and restricted waterfall performance

• Here are some core skills, behaviors and knowledge necessary for functions responsible for lead nurture flows
• Skills include data evaluation, business logic skills and the ability to forge strong relationships with other key functions
• Lead nurture teams must be able to work with internal peers and agency partners