There will likely be a crossover in a few KPIs between DG and PMM. This however is not a bad thing, it ensures your PMM counterparts are invested in making sure GTM activities are successful. For example both groups might take an opportunity target. For DG this is our bread butter. For PMM it helps drive behavior around not just putting assets and programs into market but marking sure they are helping to drive quality leads all the way through the funnel. PMM will likely focus on, to name a few: * Delivering customer references and case studies * driving product adoption and enablement * site visitors or web traffic to specific pages or within a target audience * execute product launches * various thought leadership items like favorable AR endorsements DG will likely focus on: * Funnel performance * Responses/form fills * MQLs (quality/quantity) * Opportunities (count/ $ value) * Upsell/cross sell

Strategies usually get defined bi-annually or annually and most of us don't have complete influence and control on what gets defined. So allow me to stray a bit and take this opportunity to share some 'tactics' that have worked for me. 1. Do you use common vocabulary? You will be surprised how many salespeople in your organization don't understand the difference between an 'acquired contact' and a 'marketing qualified lead'. Many times, this could be attributed to a combination of a lack of commonly agreed definition and lazy communication from Demand gen 2. Are you measuring the same thing? Acknowledge that solving their problem is your problem. Your success and reputation depend on whether your programs are planned to help them achieve their goals. In the PLG world, it could be a commonly agreed definition of what is a PQL. In the ABM world, it could be the definition of 'Engaged accounts'. 3. You know their 'stated position' but do you have a pulse on their 'interest'? A stated position from sales is usually concrete and explicit. For example, it could be 'I want more leads'. But look for the underlying interests, which are usually unexpressed. For example, it could be 'I need better quality leads - leads that display engagement on the website or inside the product or both'. When you appeal to the 'real interests' of your sales teams and succeed at meeting them, you will build trust and emerge as stronger partners. 4. You need to be okay with not being able to resolve 'all' issues. There will always be a few 'open' questions and opinions about the other team that might never get resolved. For example, as a Demand gen marketer, you'd want a multi-touch attribution model to be instituted but sales might never refer to it. In fact, they could vouch for the clarity provided by a last or a first-touch attribution model. Another one - Sales might have feedback on why marketing needs to do more of a certain kind of content (because the competition does) and deep down, you know that it is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. 6. Divide and conquer. collaborate with your counterpart in Product marketing who can help ease off the pressure on you by helping sales win and keeping up the momentum. They make sure Sales are engaged and are enabled with a winning message, collaterals, and direction. 7. Cultivate a champion in the sales team. Do you have someone from Sales who helps validate your Campaign theme and messaging, and vet prospect emails so they don't read marketing(y)? This is the person who will stand up and speak on your behalf when things get tough for you (which they do occasionally). 8. Identify opportunities to build alignment. Invite champions from your sales team to build the buyer journey and the persona map along with you. Collaborate with them when you conceptualize the PQL logic for your PLG motion or define the segmentation strategy for your next campaign. 8. Build an Always-on feedback loop - given the nature of the roles, it is possible that the Sales-Demand generation relationship could get transactional very fast. Avoid this at any cost. As Demand gen marketers, the onus is on us to elevate the discussion (and our relationship) and ask higher-order questions from a place of curiosity (I know this is super difficult and I'm also learning). One way to do this is to find the right opportunity to pose strategic questions such as 'what is good for the business' and 'do we need to revisit our Ideal Customer Profile' as against 'You are not touching these leads fast enough'. Strive, as much as possible, to attain the right balance in every conversation.

Where do I see Demand Generation heading? That's an interesting question. Like most DG roles I am see them being converted to Field Marketing. In my humble opinion, a traditional Demand Generation role is much more than just Field Marketing. With Demand Generation you basically sit with one foot in marketing and one foot in sales. You not only strategize and run campaigns, but you track the metrics, ROI, leads and conversation rates/success metrics all the way to closed won. Those skills are the reason I LOVE DG. It is all encompassing. This is not to undervalue the importance of the Field Marketing role, my title event recently has shifted to include Field Marketing in it. Maybe the real future of Demand Generation is converting Field Marketing to it?!

* Metrics are the data points you are measuring the success of the campaign around (either leading or lagging indicators). This can be # of meetings from your account list, # of campaign responses per account, # of impressions or CTR by account, # of opportunities, $ pipeline generated, etc. Any goal you’re measuring yourself on. * Analytics is the process of acquiring Insights from the data. Why should the team care about these metrics? * How are those metrics driving the business? * What action items can we take from here? * How will we apply these learnings to future campaigns?

The most important thing around influence is clearly identifying and communicating how your work is contributing to sales success and ultimately having a positive impact on the business. Early on in my career, I learned that the most effective marketers are deeply committed to designing their goals around metrics sales teams actually care about. This essential insight is what inspired me to shift away from measuring leads to measuring marketing-generated pipeline. Changing metrics may be daunting at first but it’s ok to be uncomfortable. In my experience, it’s the best way to move away from a dynamic where marketing and sales blame other teams for standing in the way of their success. If you see this dynamic bubble up, consider it an invitation to reframe your work in the context of finding shared metrics that ladder up to a larger company goal. By measuring your success with metrics both stakeholders actually care about, you’re laying the foundation for a trusted partnership that has the potential to drive tremendous growth for your business. When you have that trusted partnership, the sales team should feel really excited about your roadmap and be asking how they can get more support because they find your work so valuable to them. This is a great opportunity for you to jointly present for additional resources - having sales and marketing both make the same budget or headcount request is much more powerful than marketing doing it alone.

This is a great question! I can't tell you the number of times I've created content because someone in the C-suite thought it would be a good idea, or because a sales reply simply couldn't close a deal with a highly customized 1-pager. The truth is - content should be created with a purpose. Here are the questions I like to ask when conducting a content audit: * Does this content answer questions our customers are asking? Does it help our customers & prospects accomplish their goals? * How does the reader feel after consuming this piece of content? Does that feeling align with what our goal was when we created the piece? * What is the purpose of this piece of content? Is it still serving that purpose? * How often is this piece of content used, by who, and in what capacity? * When was the last time this content was refreshed? Is this something we want to be a staple in our library? * In what other forms does this content exist (blog, podcast, short video, webinar, etc)? If the answer is none, should it be created in smaller, more digestible snippets? 

Great question. Difficult to answer, without knowing more about you as a human (feel free to reach out to me on LI and we can chat more specifically). That said, here is my general thinking on the subject: First, leverage your experience. You sales background is a huge asset. Use your experiences to help the Marketing team get a better understanding of customer pain points, buyer personas, and the nuances of the sales funnel. Your team will find your knowledge to be invaluable in crafting effective demand generation strategies that resonate with potential customers. That said, you will have a lot to learn about how the function of "demand generation" works. * Digital Marketing: Learn about SEO, SEM, social media marketing, and content marketing. This is often the largest discretionary spend in your entire company. Experts here command executive attention, have a huge impact on spending decisions and can make or break your top of funnel volume. * Marketing Automation Tools: Get hands-on experience with tools like HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot. Learn how scoring works. Get a sense of how email campaigns are developed, what your marketable database looks like, and how you can help the team improve their segmentation efforts. * Data Analysis: Marketing data is adjacent to Sales data, but it's a whole new pile of stuff (100's of metrics across the different parts of the org) to learn. Get a sense of what matters most and what are nice to do metrics. Develop skills in analyzing data to understand campaign performance and ROI. * Content Creation: Work with the content team to understand the machinery. How does content marketing generate leads? What content is mapped to what stage? How is that content scored? You can be a big help here; help the team brainstorm new and relevant topics at the awareness, consideration and decision stages. Help the PMM team develop one pagers for sellers that actually matter. I'd suggest that you work to deepen your understanding of the customer journey from awareness to decision. Spend some time with the PMM team, growth team, or your lifecycle marketing person. Get a sense of how your organization creates create touch points that guide potential customers through the funnel will be essential in a demand generation role. What are the "aha" moments in your product that signal a potential long-term paying customer? How many touches in your SDR sequences or in your marketing nurture emails. One interesting, big concept to consider: How can you start to shift your focus from individual sales (1:1) to broader, more programmatic marketing strategies (1:Many). Consider how you can leverage what you know, and how you can apply it at scale, to attract, engage, and convert leads to closed won. Making this mental shift will be critical to your success in Marketing and Demand Generation. This is a big one, a mandatory IMO. Please please please please please communicate your career aspirations with your current manager or HR department. You need to find the right balance between being direct but non-threatening. You want them to know what you want and when, but not make them feel like you have checked out or are not worth continuing to advocate for and invest in. Managing this carefully will be key to making a smooth transition between roles. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Stay curious, keep learning, and be adaptable to new tools and trends in demand generation. Attend events, participate in webinars, and read read read read read everything you can get your hands on. Continuous improvement will be key to your long-term success, whatever path you choose to pursue. Of course, I'd be remiss if I did not suggest you work to connect with professionals who are already in demand generation roles. You can't go wrong seeking mentorship from experienced colleagues and industry experts. Their guidance can provide valuable insights and help you navigate the transition smoothly. Some thoughts if you are still in your Sales role: Demonstrate your capability and interest in demand generation. Spend some time with your DG partners. Offer to assist with marketing campaigns, contribute to content creation, and help with lead nurturing efforts. Showcase your company knowledge, your proactive approach and you're going to win both kudos and a better chance at landing a Marketing role. Finally, I'd recommend working to build your "T-shaped career." A generalists breadth and broad understanding of marketing concepts will help you accelerate and become successful and valuable in smaller companies. As you grow, you'll develop the long leg of that "T" - your specialization. This will become more and more important as you grow in seniority and look to take on more senior roles. Companies usually hire because they have a problem they want to address, and they are looking for folks who have specialties in addressing them. This WILL become a huge part of your later career value proposition, so start thinking about it now.

Below are 9 best practices for scoring leads 1. Build your scoring model with demographic and behavioral scoring. 2. Collaborate with your Product Marketing team to define the ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. These will help with demographic scoring attributes such as company size (# of employees), revenue, vertical/Industry, job title, job level. Use data enrichment tools such as Clearbit, Zoominfo etc to populate this info wherever possible 3. Collaborate with your Campaigns team to define behavioral scores for triggers such as downloaded content, registered/attended webinar, visited website, multiple high-value pages visited in the same session (product page, pricing page), opened/clicked an email, requested a demo/pricing. Be sure to give conversions from students or job seekers (careers page visit) negative scores 4. Build the lead scoring matrix. This is typically a table with 16 cells. Low to high Behavior 0 - 100 points. Grade these as 1,2,3,4. Low to high ICP score 0 - 100 points. Grade these as A,B,C,D. Leads would then be graded into 16 buckets ranging from A1 (High ICP score and high behavior score) to D4 (low ICP. low behavior) 5. Collaborate with SDR/Sales teams to define the MQL threshold. You don't want to send premature leads over to SDRs/Sales. When you have alignment document it and train the SDR/Sales team on the model 6. Plan for ReMQL. Sales will want to send some leads back to marketing when MQLs aren't ready to buy 7. Test the lead scoring model before implementing 8. Track MQL to SQL conversion rates. Also, ask the SDR/Sales team for feedback. 9. Refine and optimize the model every 6 months

The best questions you can ask yourself as a marketer are always: * who is my target audience? * what do they care about? * where do they spend time? Make sure you have a dedicated sales development representative to follow up on leads. You can have some excellent marketing but if the leads don’t get followed up with, what’s the point? Build programs that provide a steady drumbeat that can act as an always-on “net” to attract and convert traffic to your site and also serve as offers you can promote in paid channels to accelerate activity until you have established an audience. 1. Develop 1 long form high value piece of content a quarter tied to your marketing themes and repurpose the heck out of the content making it into many “snackable” pieces. Release blogs regularly (SEO & ungated value to your audience, offer other CTAs on the page such as links to your larger pieces of content) 2. Have a newsletter (low friction way to collect email info and gain permission to continue communicating with your audience) 3. Once you have a “net” (always on programs that nurture your audience) go build/grow your audience with some strategic paid digital channels that you use to promote the content in your always-on strategy and accelerate audience growth 4. Invest in a couple of key events for the year where you have target audience alignment and get creative. Having a captive audience and a specific moment in time is a great reason to leverage the channel as part of an integrated marketing campaign that builds up to and off the back of that experience.

Lead scoring is an integral part of my demand gen strategy to help gauge intent and engagement. It should be used along with other programs, like 3rd party intent data, contact and account enrichment, and 1st party data from sales teams to determine when a lead is highly engaged and likely ready to speak to a salesperson about a solution or product. The first step in setting up a lead scoring system is to determine the activities, actions, and demographics/firmographics that make up the scoring and the points associated with those activities. It is imperative that determining the activities, actions, and demographics/firmographics is a collaborative effort between marketing and sales, including any BDR teams, if they exist, and ideally should be based on historical data that indicates what successful activities/actions lead to opportunity creation. Once these have been established you should then determine a threshold to indicate sales readiness and an operational handover point where the lead is handed over to sales.