Don't ditch MQLs as everybody advises on LinkedIn. Instead, fix the broken lead generation playbook. Here is how.

Let's start with the definitions.

MQLs are:

- Accounts that fit your ICP but AREN'T SALES-READY (no buying intent)

- Hit engagement threshold (spent 30 minutes on the pricing/case studies or other high-intent pages, signed up for a product webinar, etc.)

⛔️ 𝐌𝐐𝐋𝐬 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍!

The last point is critical.

If MQLs were sales-ready, they'd book a call with your sales team right from the website. It's not that hard to fill in the "request a demo" form.

Never save MQLs to CRM, assign them to sales, and add them to the automated outbound cadence. Also, never include MQLs in the marketing or revenue report.

Do this instead.

✅ 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐃 𝐃𝐎 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐌𝐐𝐋𝐬.

1. 𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: define the revenue potential.

2. 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠.

Collect more info about needs, goals, and priorities.

Connect and engage on LinkedIn with Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts, or follow up by email with an open question. Build relationships and continue nurturing.

3. 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐦-𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠.

Depending on the tier, add an account to the relevant nurturing program. From 1-1 fully personalized programs to standard retargeting and semi-automated non-sales touches.

Simple example:

We connect with people who fit our MQL definition, asking for feedback on the content they consumed and if they found what they were looking for.

We genuinely try to help, continue engaging with them, and building the relationship.

It doesn't generate an immediate opportunity, but these opportunities come in 8-10 months whenever our "MQLs" have a need.
---

I prefer to call MQLs "Engaged accounts". It describes more precisely the stage of the buying process.

"Leads" by default should have a buying intent.

Most B2B companies I've talked to have a broken MQLs playbook.

They assume that gated content download or webinar sign-up = buying intent, and it's all a game of numbers. Hence, they motivate marketing to generate more MQLs to generate more sales opportunities.

It doesn't work!

The buying journey is not linear. You can influence it, but you can't push your buyers.

Instead of immediately attacking MQLs, understand the revenue potential, and the buyer journey stage, connect and help. This way you lay a solid foundation for your future pipeline.

Also, don't blindly follow the advice of ditching MQLs.

If your organization cultivates full-funnel marketing, MQLs are a perfect leading indicator to measure:

- The success of awareness campaigns
- Forecasting ABM programs because MQLs are the perfect accounts to be included in warm-up campaigns

B2B marketing reporting shouldn't be complex. Here are 3 categories and 11 core metrics I recommend looking at for a B2B company with high ACV and a long sales cycle.

REVENUE METRICS.

1. 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠-𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞.

How much revenue came from marketing campaigns? Aim to increase the % compared to sales-sourced revenue. It proves the efficiency of your marketing and growing brand recognition.

2. 𝐖𝐢𝐧 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞

If the win rate is low, it means that either you have bad targeting, have low-quality opportunities (ICP issue), or have a misalignment with sales.

3. 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐲𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐡.

When the sales cycle length decreases, you are accelerating revenue.

4. 𝐀𝐂𝐕 (average contract value).

5. 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲.

Sales pipeline velocity demonstrates revenue trajectory according to your sales cycle length, sales-qualified opportunities, ACV, and win rate.

If this metric is growing, it proves that you:

- target the right accounts,
- have a marketing message-market fit,
- good buyer enablement
- no friction points in the buying process.

6. 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐎𝐈.

Demand or brand activities can't be measured by sales opportunities or CAC.

Hence, I recommend holistically looking at marketing-sourced revenue, sales pipeline velocity, and budget spent to calculate marketing ROI.

You need to have a holistic approach.

PIPELINE METRICS

7. 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐬.

The more engaged accounts you have in your pipeline, the more sales-qualified opportunities and marketing-sourced pipeline you'll generate.

I also recommend looking at the length of conversion from engaged accounts to sales-qualified opportunities. It will help you to make better revenue and pipeline forecasts.

8. 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠-𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬-𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬.

BRAND METRICS.

9. Inbound opportunities.

10. Media invites

Podcast invites, speaking gigs, and featuring in guest posts - all are positive signs that your brand gains traction.

I also recommend looking at the quality of the invites. The more invites you are getting from the industry-leading media, the higher your brand anticipation.

11. Brand traffic and brand mentions.

Pay attention to how often your product is being recommended on social and in communities. The more mentions you gain, the higher your brand recognition.
---
Depending on your business model, you might change metrics by adding churn, LTV, CAC, but the principles will be the same.

You need to have an integrated revenue report.

That being said, every marketing program you run should have its own set of metrics.

Don't measure ads, demand generation activities, or a specific channel in isolation - this is a recipe for disaster. Don't make decisions about what works in marketing based on the last-click attribution only.

Develop a blended attribution model and understand what influences the buying process.

The best way to plan ABM programs for a specific cluster of accounts (1:few) is to create a cluster challenge map. Here is how.

1. Select a use case.

E.g. Fixing marketing and sales misalignment and developing joint playbooks to drive revenue.

2. Involve SMEs and sales to discuss challenges related to that use case.

Structure all challenges by painful and non-painful.

Painful: Low MQL to SQL conversion and lack of collaboration between marketing and sales.

Non-painful: Not enough sales enablement content.

3. Go through the list of questions:

- What are the signs of the challenge?
- Why did it occur?
- How to prevent it?
- How clients try to solve them?
- What are the efficient ways to solve them?
- What are the typical objections? What is the change management we need to initiate?

4. Create a 1:few program based on the collected insights.

- Decide what content should be created
- What messaging should you deliver through ads?
- What activation formats would you use?

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Remember that most buyers are not in the market.

Cluster-based ABM programs help you to become relevant for a specific set of accounts, educate them and become the first vendor they think about when the need emerges.

But this requires thorough planning and execution by all GTM teams: marketing, sales, SMEs, and client success.

We're back with a Full-Funnel Virtual Summit. Grab a FREE ticket here and win the recordings of past summits here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/azinkevich_b2bmarketing-fullfunnel-activity-7161335023344713729-pf_M?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop We saw a huge demand last year from marketing and sales teams for practical advice:

- How to fix a broken marketing and sales playbook and develop joint playbooks to drive revenue

- How to create awareness among target accounts that are not in the market (not buying)

- How to land enterprise deals when you sell to hard-to-reach buyers

Here is what the 5th Full-Funnel Summit is all about. Meet our speakers.

𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 & 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤

- Jen Allen-Knuth: How to Overcome the Buyer's Mental Spam Filter
- Morgan J Ingram: How to Assemble a Content Army of SMEs That Drives Pipeline
- Leanne Chescoe & Paul Gibson: Connect, Engage & Win Deals
- Nate Nasralla: How to Craft a Compelling, Value-Based Message that Doubles Win Rates in 2024
- Me and Vladimir Blagojević: Full-funnel ABM: How to drive sales opportunities THIS quarter while creating a FUTURE pipeline

𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 & 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤

- Jonathan Bland: How to Build a Modern Paid Social Strategy
- Megan Bowen: The Case for Change & What's Required for Your Business to Win
- Kathleen Booth: Community-Led Growth: Best Practices and Proven Strategies for Driving ROI
- Drew Spencer Leahy: The Demand Ladder: How to Create Behavioral Change with Your Messaging
- Alex Olley: 10 Steps To Execute an Allbound Strategy
- Kerry Cunningham

𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐆𝐓𝐌 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤

- Steffen Hedebrandt: The B2B customer journey benchmarks that you need to be aware of
- Thomas Sjöberg & Daniel Nackovski: The Art of building a B2B Community!
- Corrina Owens: Creating Micro-moments That Win Over Your Audience
- Dani Woolf: Navigating the Trust Barrier: Effective Marketing Strategies for Skeptical IT Buyers
- Sam Kuehnle: From Big Swings to BDRs to Building a Team: Getting (and Keeping) Leadership Buy-In

The summit is FREE to attend because of the support of our partners: Goldcast, Reachdesk, Demandbase, 6sense, and Dreamdata. But after the summit, the recordings will be locked in our vault.

Want to win the recordings from the past summits including keynotes of Peep Laja, April Dunford, Gaetano Nino DiNardi, Chris Walker, Jon Miller, Sam Jacobs and other fantastic speakers?

Sign up for the event and tag 3 colleagues in the comment who might be interested in our summit.

We'll run a live random selection and announce the winners on Friday.

Depending on the market and ICP, we develop a mix of activities from each of 6 groups to warm up target buyers:

- create awareness of our product- engage and connect with them (awareness of us)

- validate their needs and understand where they are in the buying journey (progressive profiling)

These activities always include personalized non-sales engagement, content aligned with Jobs-To-Be-Done, and micro collaborations to get acquainted and build a relationship.

You don't win enterprise deals because of programmatic display ads, 21-touches outbound cadence, or dynamic personalized landing pages.

You win enterprise deals when you create trust with the buying committee and have Champions who would like to work with you.

​In the new episode of Fullfunnel Live we cover How to warm-up target buyers, including:

- 6 categories of warm-up tactics and why they don't work if siloed.

- How to warm up buyers who are not active on social

- The right KPIs to measure "warm up" program performance
https://youtu.be/SdU4eiVovyY?si=ngo9lqyuV-j-Huct

In the new post I share how to select the accounts that are likely to become sales opportunities this quarter, how to prioritize and approach them.

https://open.substack.com/pub/fullfunnel/p/selecting-accounts-for-the-abm-program?r=11qrwn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Demand generation ≠ ads promoting ungated content, random webinars and product content. To avoid random acts of marketing we need a demand gen calendar.

Here is how we create it.

1/ DEFINE CORE DEMAND GEN PILLARS.

Define core awareness, demand gen and demand capturing programs.

If you don't have a mature function, select 1-2 programs per pillar and run them until you excel at them.

2/ DEFINE DAILY ACTIVITIES.

We do:

- Thought leadership
- Engaging with our target accounts, clients and peers
- Engaging in our Trenches - B2B marketing community

3/ DEFINE WEEKLY ACTIVITIES.

Questions that resonate with our ICP we cover in-depth on weekly Full-Funnel Live and our newsletter.

4/ DEFINE MONTHLY ACTIVITIES.

We either host live workshop, deep dives, or webinars where we explain a specific concept or work on a specific challenge.

---
We'll host 2 live workshops on launching a pilot ABM program 30.09 in Amsterdam and 3.10 in London.

If you're interested in attending, leave a comment - I'll share details.
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Once a month we also aim to release a new practical case study with our clients either in the format of an interview or a written case study.

5/ DEFINE QUARTER ACTIVITIES.

Depending on market trends and demand we either host a live bootcamp, record a new on-demand course or create a free email course to maximize nurturing of our market on broader pillars of full-funnel B2B marketing:

- GTM strategy
- Demand generation
- ABM
- Thought leadership and social selling on LinkedIn

6/ DEFINE ANNUAL ACTIVITIES.

Once a year we run two major programs: Full-funnel summit and The State of Full-Funnel B2B marketing research.

These programs help us to engage with a broader community and amplify brand awareness.
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A lot of B2B teams complain they don't have time, stack, budget or resourses. But I think the root reason is lack of prioritization and proper planning.

You don't need 15 different programs.

You need 3-5 programs which are split between daily, weekly, monthly, quarter and annual activities that you excel at.

Here is an overview of a cohesive B2B demand generation and ABM function
(and 6 steps to develop it).

1. DEFINE CLEAR ICP CRITERIA.

- Firmographics/technographics
- Account qualification and disqualification
- Buying committee roles

2. DEFINE ACCOUNT PRIORITIZATION CRITERIA.

Develop an internal opportunity likelihood assessment: Which accounts can become sales opportunities this quarter?

- What tells us that this account is "vendor aware"?
- What information do we need to have to be able to create a personalized offer?
- What signals can tell us they have a need in our product?
- What is the revenue potential of accounts we want to focus on? Prioritize Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts.

3. DEFINE SOURCES OF INTENT AND ENGAGEMENT DATA.

Prioritize:

- Social repetitive engagement
- Website intent
- Event sign ups
- Champions/power users joined a new company
- Content hubs

Define an engagement threshold to select accounts that are already aware of you.

4. SEGMENT ACCOUNTS INTO THREE LISTS.

Segment all accounts into 3 lists:

- Cluster ICP: vendor unaware, product need is not known.

Goals: make them vendor aware, get engagement from the buying committee members.

- Future pipeline: vendor aware, product need is not known.

Goals: collect information about account needs, build relationship with potential Champions.

- Active Focus: vendor aware, product need is known + strong buying signals.

Goals: create internal Champions, generate sales opportunities.

To create champions you need to generate enough credibility and set up a belief that you have the right solution to their challenge.

Spend 20% of marketing and sales activities on Future Pipeline and 80% - on Active Focus.

Cluster ICP (where accounts from territory planning should fall down) should be added to your demand gen program.

5. ACCOUNT MAPPING.

If you are targeting enterprise companies, you can easily end up with hundreds of people who have VP/ Chief / Head Of ..<your solution>.

Define the right buyers you need to engage with, understand their jobs-to-be-done, KPIs, roles in the strategic account initiatives.

Then, align them with the buying committee roles: champions, decision-makers, blockers, etc.

6. PLAN LIST ACTIVITIES.

Answer 3 questions:

- What content and activities should we run to create vendor awareness and generate demand for our product among cluster ICP?

- How can we build relationships with the buying committee of Future Pipeline accounts and validate their challenges?

- How can we nurture and accelerate buyer journey of Active Focus accounts to generate a sales opportunity?

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Not all accounts that demonstrate high engagement are ready to buy.

Instead of siloed functions, we should focus on marketing across the whole funnel.

This model helps you create a cohesive loop to activate accounts that are ready to talk to you and stay top of the mind of the companies that are not ready to buy.

Every year B2B companies complain that sales cycles become longer. But they ignore 4 fundamental reasons that extend the buying process...

1. FRICTION POINTS ALONGSIDE BUYER JOURNEY.

When B2B buyers arrive at the vendor's website, they want to see WITHOUT talking to SDRs:

-How does your product work, and what makes it different?
-Industry use cases
-Price
-Product overview (sandbox or self-trial)

B2B companies hide this information because they assume competitors can steal it, price will scare the prospect or price requires a lot of customization.

As a consequence, they deal:

-No show-ups and ghosting leads
-Long sales cycles

2. LACK OF BUYER ENABLEMENT.

Despite the enthusiasm of your Champions for your product, they still need to secure budget approval and convince other members of the buying committee.

During the buying process, they will get dozens of questions about:

-Budget justification and ROI
-Vertical use cases
-Migration, security, and onboarding

If you are not armoring your Champion with the content to address these questions, the buying cycle extends.

3. LIMITED BRAND AWARENESS.

Again, even if your Champion is super excited, but other buying committee members have never heard about your product, the sales cycle extends.

Nobody wants to risk.

4. UNQUALIFIED SALES REPS.

B2B buyers want thorough answers to their questions when speaking with sales reps. They don't want to go through BANT qualification and a boring demo, followed by phone and email follow-ups from a junior SDR.

We are not in the "Wolf from Wall Street" movie. Sales reps are consultants first, sellers - second.

HOW TO INFLUENCE AND SHORTEN THE BUYING PROCESS

-Tailor your marketing message to your ICP

-Target the buying committee group with 4 demand programs:

*Paid content distribution
*Social engagement and thought leadership
*Events
*Content collaboration

-Join and engage with communities where your buyers ask for recommendations or learn about new products.

-Show product price or at least give an estimate (product calculators help)

-Create product tours or sandbox accounts

-Share detailed vertical use cases

-Prepare content your buyers need during the buying process

-Make sure everybody in your company who talks to customers knows your product well and understands ICP's jobs to be done.

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Enterprise B2B companies will always deal with the long buying cycle due to the nature of their business. That being said, they can prevent it from getting elongated.

Reduce friction points from the buying process.

Interview your customers and understand what information they usually gather during the research, then - create the necessary content.

Become a well-known trusted brand.

Invest in the education of your sales reps and make sure they have an extensive product and market knowledge.

There are clear signals that tell you need to change your marketing and sales programs ASAP.

1. REPETITIVE GTM challenge that you can't resolve despite applying best practices.

Often, the problem lies in solving the wrong problem instead of fixing the root reason.

Challenge: Decreasing outbound pipeline.

Wrong solution: Changing SDR or hiring lead gen coach instead of fixing the obsolete lead gen playbook that is completely misaligned with how customers are buying.

2. Lack of DATA and INFORMATION to define the right solution to your GTM challenge.

Standard example: lack of customer research. Instead of asking customers about their buyer journey, companies make a hypothesis about how customers buy ending up with the "fantasy funnels".

3. Constantly SWITCHING from one playbook to another.

Experimentation and innovation should be a part of your marketing plan, but you need to allocate only 20% of your resources to it.

Without established core marketing and sales programs, your GTM team plays lottery.

4. Current programs STOPPED working.

You can clearly see it by:

- a declining pipeline and revenue curve
- increasing sales cycle length
- decreasing win rates

5. RAISING disagreements with sales.

The more often fingerpointing and blaming happens between marketing and sales, the faster your team should sit down at the table and recreate GTM approach from scratch.

6. NO CONFIDENCE in the new ideas and solutions.

This is a consequence of the #2 challenge - Lack of DATA and INFORMATION to define the right solution to your GTM challenge.

Your team is likely to play the marketing lottery and do random acts of marketing.

7. DO MORE with limited resources.

Revenue targets are higher, budgets and resources are smaller.

You have no choice but to develop cross-functional collaboration with sales, client success, subject-matter experts, and product marketing.

We have a detailed guide on it. If you're interested, just leave a comment, and I'll share it.

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We often neglect GTM challenges and react to them late when the problem becomes critical:

- Missed revenue targets
- Missed investment round
- Dissatisfaction and pressure from key stakeholders

But if we can stay alert and pay attention to the signals that clearly tell us it's time to change, we can stay ahead.

How to plan long-term marketing and sales programs

(and get executive buy-in).

1. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘀.

Sprints include detailed tasks, metrics, outcomes, and responsibilities. They are capacity- and priority-based, not based on wishes.

2. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 3 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀:

- Positive signals that prove that the program works (e.g. engagement from target accounts)

- Leading indicators: actions the marketing team will do regularly (e.g. posting 3x weekly on LinkedIn)

- Lagging indicators: sales pipeline velocity and revenue metrics.

3. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

Connect the dots and explain how the planned activities will impact pipeline velocity and revenue and help to achieve the goals.

4. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆.

You might need to involve multiple team members. Make sure they have enough time to execute specific tasks and that they will own them. Avoid multi-ownership and where possible the dependencies.

5. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀.

Break down leading indicators into weekly pillars: actions everybody involved in the program should perform.

Plan in the calendar 30-60 minutes meetings to review the pillars, define and remove bottlenecks, and cross-share the results.

6. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰.

Not every program should be measured the same way. Running thought leadership programs and demand-capturing ads would have a completely different set of metrics.

Develop the reports accordingly, but make sure that you have an ultimate revenue report that shows marketing-sourced revenue and pipeline, revenue metrics, and sales pipeline velocity.

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One of the most common reasons why long-term marketing initiatives don't get support from stakeholders and sales is a lack of clarity, not because they don't get marketing.

Vague presentations full of marketing slang like:

"We are going to run a demand gen program, ungate all content, and deliver value consistently on social"

are often shut down, because executives:

-don't understand what exactly the marketing team will do

-how it helps to achieve the GTM goals and hit the revenue targets

Avoid ambiguity and flip your marketing planning.

Present the goals and outcomes you want to achieve.

Next, present sprints with clear tasks and task owners.

Then, present the key leading indicators, positive signals, and reports.

Explain how these sprints will impact the revenue and GTM goals.

Your marketing plan should be data-driven, not vanity-driven. Then, you get all the support and buy-in.

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A detailed guide and marketing plan template are here:

https://fullfunnel.substack.com/p/marketing-plan-wtemplate

Every year we do a holistic overview of full-funnel marketing strategy and key marketing and sales operations using this template.

It includes:

GOALS & CHALLENGES.

- Business goals: How are they defined?

- Business challenges

- Marketing goals

- Marketing challenges

- Sales challenges

NEW INITIATIVES

What do you want to achieve with the new initiative?

Where do you need help?

What skills do you need to launch it?

TEAM

What skills do we have in our team?

Do we have an internal alignment?

Are the jobs-to-be-done and responsibilities defined properly?

Do we have clear SOPs and workflows for every program we are running?

Do we need to upskill our team?

STACK.

What technology do we have?

Are we using it to a whole potential?

Who regularly uses it?

GTM Strategy

- Target markets and segments

- ICP

- Positioning and value proposition

- Buyer journey + channels

- Marketing plan

- Partnerships

- Role of marketing

- 3 main competitors

- How competitors beat us?

- Where do we overcome competitors?

- Collaboration with sales (1-5). What can be done better?

- Reporting: key reports and metrics

- Budgeting

AWARENESS AND DEMAND GENERATION

- Content creation worfklow with SME

- Content calendar

- Content distribution plan

- Demand gen ads

- Thought leadership

- Social engagement

- Podcast

- Webinars

- Field events

- Newsletter

DEMAND CAPTURING

- Retargeting

- Content hubs & buyer enablement

- Intent data tracking

- Playbooks with sales algined with the intent level

SALES

- Territory planning and account prioritization

- Product knowledge by sales

- Prospecting routine

- Bottlenecks and dropoffs in the sales process

- Social selling

- Collaboration with marketing (1-5).

- Help they want to get from marketing

CLIENT SUCCESS

- Onboarding

- Customer interviews

- Expansion insights (how they collect)

- Case studies / testimonials (how they collect and create)

ABM

- Current stage and experience

- List building process (is list shared with marketing)

- Account qualification

- Account segmentation

- Account research

- Account development playbook

FRICTION POINTS

- Clear pricing or price estimate

- Simplified inquiry form

- Lead routing

- Product overview / Sandbox

- Buyer enablement

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Due to lack of text, I missed a few part including SME interviews, revenue analysis, etc.

But the key point is:

Define the key areas of your GTM strategy and regularly evaluate them.

- What can be done better?

- What is missed?

- Where should we double down or focus more?

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I'll share the template with a whole breakdown on Friday with our newsletter subsribers. Sign up here: https://fullfunnel.substack.com/