134 | Buying groups and AIQLs: The next evolution of B2B
46 min listen
The days of relying on MQLs are numbered.
Beth Redpath Katz, Senior Director at BMC Software, joins host Jon Busby and Director of Innovation and AI, Jonathan Sedger, as she sheds light on the marketing evolution from traditional lead qualification to activated buying groups and AIQLs.
Tune in as Beth explains how leveraging first- and third-party data, predictive AI models, and innovative strategies are transforming the way sales and marketing work together, driving better results and stronger customer experiences.
From breaking down sales and marketing silos to enabling personalized, AI-enhanced customer journeys, Beth outlines the actionable steps marketers can take to meet the demands of today’s buyers—and tomorrow’s decision-makers.
Watch the full podcast below, or tune in on your preferred podcasting platform.
We'd love to hear from our listeners whether this is something they've explored yet - get in touch and let us know!
View the full transcript here
Of course, that's a different role than we had you here last time. Hopefully I got that correct.
Beth Redpath Katz: Yeah, it's a long job title. I realised
Jon Busby: as I was reading it there just how long it was. But last time we had you here talking about Uh, talking about the wonderful work you did at VMware Yes. And building out those kind of activated buying groups.
Absolutely. How you been somewhere else trying to do the same?
Beth Redpath Katz: Uh, very similar. Very similar, yes.
Jon Busby: So, so what's been your journey since you were last on the tech marketing podcast?
Beth Redpath Katz: Um, yeah, sure. So obviously, um, VMware is no longer a, a entity. We've moved over to Broadcom, um, and I'm sure my colleagues are having a wonderful time over there.
Um. And I moved away from doing the traditional buying group projects with lead management over at VMware. And I moved into a really great company called BMC Software. Where, as you said, I look after regional marketing and partner marketing for the field. Um, Across the Amir region. So it's very different.
And now I'm more of an influencer and a consultant of and user of data Within that environment when we are talking about the buying group project Buying groups are very much still alive even in companies. We're Like BMC, where maybe our data strategy is not as advanced as, um, legacy companies like VMware.
Um, but it is a topic that I think a lot of tech companies are talking about. Um, and we are starting to try and develop ways of creating buying groups within our own environments, whatever that might look like.
Jon Busby: I don't think there's a month that goes by, Jonathan, where we don't bring up the previous podcast that we recorded.
Yeah, of course. The AI event that we did last year and the data event that we did this year. Uh, there's always been so much that, that gets us really excited. Like Jonathan, why are you so excited to have Beth back?
Jonathan Sedger: Yeah. I mean, when we did the, the previous podcast a little over a year ago, um, I think, you know, there were sort of some people in the market talking about activating buying groups and actually being able to measure that and hand it over to sales, but it was still.
Quite a quiet conversation. I think since then it's really exploded. Lots of people are talking about it, but actually examples of people implementing that are few and far between. So, you know, I think, you know, we have to give Beth credit again for being part of, you know, one of the pioneers of this tech and actually, um, and then this, this kind of way of, of kind of handing.
Accounts over to sales and and actually delivering that um, and yeah Just just super interesting to to have you back to sort of dive more deeply into that And I think you know, we were just saying for the podcast that that you know This is a new thing for a lot of people be really interested to get like what's your take on?
Uh what this is and how marketers should be thinking about it
Beth Redpath Katz: Yeah, sure. So I think If we take a step back and look at, um, data in general, um, obviously most marketers will be used to marketing qualified leads. So a lead that's been scored to a point where we've decided that it's qualified in marketing's terms, with or without telequalification.
Um, take that one step further, I would say a good half of marketers out there are very well versed in marketing qualified accounts. Um, so either a conglomerate of lead scores that then go up to the account or, uh, that would then be seen as an engagement score at the account level, uh, which is then passed over to the sales team or even the tele qualifiers, uh, maybe BDRs, SDRs, ISRs, who would then say, okay, out that account.
Is there something going on? And therefore there will be leads and people and humans to follow up on. I think it's a progression of that because you've got marketing qualified, um, leads, which are very granular, super, super narrow, um, in themselves. They don't really say much about anything. Marketing qualified accounts, whilst a lot more broad and and they do give you an insight into is their activity.
It doesn't give you that contextual piece of is the right are the right people doing the right things in that account. And I think this is where whether you call them buying groups, activated buying groups, um, Marketing, qualified buying groups, however you want to acronym it, and marketers do love a good acronym, um.
The it's the contextualization of understanding that there is a buying group in a form of a hierarchy. So a decision maker, an influencer, a tech user and a user of sorts all coming together and actually researching on the same product and engaging with your brand all at the same time to indicate or approximate the fact that they are in a buying cycle.
Jon Busby: Um,
Beth Redpath Katz: and I think that that is something that. Most marketers understand they would love to get to, they kind of understand maybe how they potentially could get there. But the orchestration within their marketing tech stack or in their CRM stack is actually quite complex. And I would say it's complex for a couple of reasons.
Firstly because they don't own all of the data, um, and they don't control all of the tools. And that's really important. As soon as you work in contacts, that's the sales arena. And once you start orchestrating in more of the CRM area, to hand over these objects, however which way you want to configure them, you are working within a sales ops environment.
And that transition from marketing ops to sales ops is actually quite difficult and hard to penetrate.
Jon Busby: Yep.
Beth Redpath Katz: Um, and that's the arena that we find most marketers in nowadays are saying, oh, buying groups are really cool. How do we do that? And they don't, they don't quite know to, to that last degree.
Jon Busby: See, see, I actually, I see the challenge slightly differently, but I think your, the contextual piece is something I hadn't appreciated.
Um, 'cause I, I think we're on a. We're on a journey in marketing at the moment away from MQLs towards something new. I think, I think that's something new is buying committees or activated buying groups or whatever name you want to call it today. Um, and you're, you're right by adding that context to it, which is we need to understand who the decision maker is versus who's the influencer.
Um, I think it's important to understand the relationships between those different orbs, if you think of them. And I think one of the biggest challenges is we, we don't have a way of, yeah, so that's a quite a complex problem. Like you've got these different people interacting, um, interacting with each other as part of that buying committee.
And we haven't found a way of describing that and understanding it simply. Um, and I think you, although you, I think you also spot on like the other challenges that we don't also have a complete picture because we don't own all the data. Um. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, where, you know, in your journey at VMware and now at BMC, like, how do you, how do you get started understanding what that looks like and bring, bringing people along on that journey?
Beth Redpath Katz: I think it's fundamentally, it's just very hard. So let's not think that I've have some sort of secret sauce into how to orchestrate stakeholders and make them hold hands because that's just simply not the case. And, and even at VMware, there was, there was a massive amounts of, um, Conflict when it came to how we orchestrated this process.
Um, I think the biggest key to all of this is around the structure and the harmonization of the data and understanding relationships, as you've already mentioned, but getting those key stakeholders in a room to understand how how that data behaves, depending on either a product lens, a vertical lens or a challenge based lens, depending on what type of organization you are.
And you will end up, um, almost with the most complex looking grid, should we say, of depending on what the account might be buying, there will be a difference or a nuance in the buying group, um, at that account. Um, and just to give you an example, you know, as a regional marketing lead, I will. I will be the buying decision maker about an event.
However, um, when it comes to, uh, the marketing automation tool that we use, I am a user. Um, I'm an influencer over tooling that we may well buy for the marketing team because of my position within the marketing, um, organization. And I may well be the technical buyer of a tool like a Demandbase or a Sixth Sense because of the way that my team will use it and my experience.
And I've just described how I am a different member of the buying group depending on the product we're buying. And if you have a company that sells all of those things, I am a, I am four different profiles. within one account across those different product sets. And I think that that is something that we really need to harness and understand before you actually go and orchestrate this.
And I think that's one of the bigger keys.
Jon Busby: And I don't think, I mean, having, you know, we've all seen inside many CRMs, you on the client side, me on the, on the agency side. I'm not sure I've ever seen a CRM be that advanced with how it thinks about different roles and personas and, and people. Like that's fundamentally quite a shift to take
Beth Redpath Katz: someone on.
Um, I think yes, it is. I don't think it's so much of a shift that we can't do it. Um, and I think the, the biggest issue, at least in recent times I've come up against, it's the way that we view our data. So historically and traditionally, you know, marketing is before the sale and sales is after the sale.
And they separated us out into, well, you deal with leads because that's before the sale. And then they transition at some point during the opportunity cycle into a contact. And then sales deals with contacts. And therefore you have the separation between marketing and sales. You also have the difference between marketing ops and sales ops.
That barrier needs to be broken. Um, forward thinking companies. We'll be starting to break down the idea of MQLs and we'll be starting to search for something more. They also need to start breaking that mindset of there is a barrier between sales and marketing. Marketing value turns into sales output and vice versa.
Sales output then turns into marketing value and it should be cyclical. Um, also companies that have multiple products and services, uh, VMware is an example, BMC is a great example, where You assume, the minute you've purchased a product, you are no longer a prospect. But if you have more than one product and complementary products to sell, you then become a prospect.
So the whole principle of you marketing, you deal with leads, you sales, you deal with contacts, has to be broken. And I think that mentality has to be dissolved. And then you are working in one object and then developing more intelligence around that. Now, does every CRM have the ability to map a job title to a persona to a member of the buying group hierarchy by product?
Maybe.
Jon Busby: I
Beth Redpath Katz: think it's possible with custom objects, etc. Is it there out of the box right now? No. Um, but I blame the CRMs for their lack of R& D. into their own insight around how sales will evolve.
Jon Busby: Yeah, I think you made a point earlier, you said sales leads to marketing value as well. Like, what did you, what did you mean by that?
Beth Redpath Katz: So once a product has been bought, The way that they buy that product, the way they've interacted in the opportunity, the way that the, um, negotiations with legal has gone on, um, and then the post sale, um, onboarding, and that, this is, this is all data. Remember, think about any form of unstructured data to a marketer is valuable, the way, depending on how they can structure it.
So all of that unstructured, anecdotal, um, data that you're going to be getting out that customer around how they interact from the time of, um, legal negotiations all the way through to post sale implementation and, and, and the, and even the initiation of consumption is all around the digital journey of the customer.
Which is all data that marketing can utilize and use and then help understand to increase consumption, understand where there may will be, um, additional challenges within the account to cross sell. Um, they also might be able to upsell. Um, individual elements of that product. So not just about consumption of the original product.
It's like, how do we make sure and then also increasing the MPS score of the, of the customer, which ultimately is an output of, have we done a good job as a customer, as a company? It's all about that. So I think that when you say that it ends with sales, I think that sales and leads into marketing again,
Jon Busby: and I think it becomes a brutal about this before the podcast, right?
Depending on the type of company you are like that post sales journey also becomes It's really quite vital, right? If you're in a SaaS business, it's all about retention.
Jonathan Sedger: And
Jon Busby: actually when you fall at the bottom, you need to be, that data needs to come back into the top to make sure that you're being marketed to, to make sure you're happy with the purchase, to make sure you're going to renew again.
If it's, if you're part of someone like BMC, you're right. It's around upselling. Like you may have product A and knowing the data that product B, C and D could be just as valuable to you. You know, should be fed into those teams. So like, I think, you know, we are still looking through some of that data as a very, through a very simplistic lens.
Um, and we need to take that to the, to the next level, really. Jonathan, what are you thinking is next?
Jonathan Sedger: Well, I'm just thinking like, yeah, this is all fantastic. And that will kind of drive so much value for a business is able to unlock and utilize that data. But just going back to kind of where we started talking about the fact that, you know, it's well documented and we had loads of conversations at the, uh, first party data event about people acknowledging.
The fact that MQLs just don't work and that's not the right way, uh, for marketing teams to be sort of measured and to how they should be handing off to sales. I think the challenge is, you know, it's not just about the technology, it's not just about the data, it's about actually this is quite a massive, uh, transformational change in an organization.
And it requires, as you said Beth, so many different teams to be aligned on, actually this is the way that we're gonna, uh, measure marketing, and this is the way that we're gonna kind of have that interaction between sales and marketing and all the other departments that you talked about. How do marketers Start that conversation and lead it if there's not a conversation that's already happening, you'd hope that there is in most companies.
But if it's not, how do they how do they kind of get that motion started? Would you say?
Beth Redpath Katz: Yeah, such a good, such a good question. Um, you'd hope that there was a conversation happening at that top level. Um, but often when, um, regional marketers or, or, or a marketer of any kind wants to bring up this, this transitional change, and it doesn't have to just come from field, just because I'm in that role right now, but it can come from anywhere, um, often it's because that there is a pipeline gap.
That sales are feeling sales are having that pain and marketing cannot plug that gap through The activities and the output that they're having so the value that they're giving over to sales is not good enough and that sparks the conversation of Should we not be trying something different and should we be not packaging things up differently for sales to deliver value output to them?
Um, a great example is if you're feeding MQLs, and I could give you an arbitrary figure, say you're feeding them a thousand MQLs a month and it's only resulting in maybe one opportunity. The amount of effort that sales has to go through to get to that one piece of gold is too much. So not only are they Like doing cycles upon cycles to get that one opportunity.
They've also not plugging that pipeline gap at the same time. So your sales leaders will start sparking off conversations of marketing isn't doing enough. They're producing the volume, but the value isn't there. Um, quality over quantity may well be an issue, but you should be able to show it through data.
Um, and I guess that brings our. Another whole massive conversation of if you have your ELT or your SLT, um, awake and aware of how valuable data is and how they view the data. They will know that marketing isn't doing something right by continuing to just deliver MQLs over to, um, to the sales organization.
And I say that with a caveat. There are certain types of leads that you still will always need to hand over. Hand raises, so contact us, uh, form fills, et cetera, free trials, hands on lab requests, workshop requests, et cetera, depending on type of organization, you'll always produce those. Those always need to have an SLA.
And there will always be a certain high priority lead type that you will always pass through direct to either a tele salesperson or to a salesperson. Yep. But for the majority of the rest, that should take up 10 percent of your volume. The majority of the rest is all just noise. And you're You're fishing in an ocean to find that, that, those pieces of gold.
But what do you think the
Jon Busby: biggest, because I completely agree with you, which is this whole focus on MQLs at the moment that's been around for a long
Jonathan Sedger: time.
Jon Busby: You know, I think it's, it's unsustainable because all you're doing is frustrating all these buyers. Anyone that kind of vaguely looks like they might be putting up their hand and then get chased.
Where do you think that challenge is coming from? And how do you start to fix it in an organization?
Beth Redpath Katz: Well, um, from, from experience, it's, it's the fact that we are, we're not really looking at when people are in the buying cycle. We, we can't predict that buying cycle and it comes back to predictive marketing.
So, you know, Ye olde days, we were very much like, well, someone comes through the door, we'll follow up on it. Otherwise, we're just, we're just guessing. We're now in a world where we have a lot of data, so we shouldn't be guessing. We actually should know, but a lot of marketers still don't know how to use that data in an effective way to understand whether someone is in a buying cycle or not.
And that comes down to, and I blame it on, on two different things. Firstly, the data skill set of the marketer, um, and also the data that we're collecting. Is that relevant to actually indicate whether we're in a buying cycle or not?
Jonathan Sedger: Okay,
Beth Redpath Katz: so you could introduce things like Sixth Sense, Demand Base, TechTarget, Priority Engine, um, ZoomInfo, for instance, to layer over different pieces of data, which would indicate, yay or nay, to are they in a buying cycle?
So are they in market? Are they researching the product or service? Um, are they interacting with your campaigns? Are they, have they done enough interaction to, you know, be engaged? Are they doing that on mass within the account? So can we look across our data set and say, well, that account, how many people are looking at that?
Even if you don't have a buying group in a hierarchy, you can kind of approximate the amount of volume. Um, is that account there for high, medium or low engaged compared to the rest of it? And I think we could get a little bit more intelligent about what we throw across Um, to sales versus what we don't, um, even if we don't have a buying group model or some sophisticated piece of information, I think we could do better with the data that we have and how we predict what is and what isn't in a buying cycle.
Jon Busby: Yeah. And I think that's kind of like if I read. Kind of what you're saying there like it's the move from I'm trying to think the garner terms they have for this But it's like okay you you would the old school way would be someone's interacted with five bits of content Therefore they must be put in there.
There must be scoring highly and hands up. But if those five bits of content are Some product documentation that's all the way down here. That doesn't mean they're necessarily in a buying cycle.
Beth Redpath Katz: Exactly.
Jon Busby: You've got to look at everything through a customer lens. Mm hmm. Um, okay, okay. So, some of the terms we've used, we've used MQL a lot.
Mm hmm. Like, I'm going to go out there and say, I think the MQL days are numbered. I think we all agree here. Yeah. You've talked about MQL, MQA being the next stage there. Um, and we've got here, like, the relatively new terminology of AIQL.
Beth Redpath Katz: Yes. What
Jon Busby: is an AIQL?
Beth Redpath Katz: So, um, I can't take credit for this. So, within the BMC environment, uh, we have some very, very, very clever, um, and intelligent people who have started to look at, um, more of a dynamic scoring model based on third party and first party data to approximate a score of likelihood of good.
Being in a buying cycle. So it's an A. I. Q. L. So it's a qualified lead based on an A. I. Model, which will approximate, um, based on their interactions and what they're doing in market on third party and first party data. Are they in a buying cycle? And it's more like a It's a predictor score rather than an actual engagement score.
Yeah, it's like a propensity to buy score. It's a guesstimate. It's like, how confident are we? Are they are going to be in a buying cycle? So when you pick up the phone, are they going to tell you to go away? Or are they going to entertain an initial conversation to find out more about your brand? Um, and generally we, we go with the idea that over an 80 percent confidence score is good enough to call.
Um, so we send over a few of those every day. But remembering those scores will change every single day, depending on what they have done in the last 28 days, but also what they've done in the last 24 hours, because it could vary from day to day. So your score does move up and down. Um, so that's why having, um, a recency of follow up, uh, with the BDRs, uh, or your SDRs or your ISRs is really relevant and timely within that instance.
Are they as hot as a hand raiser? Absolutely, for sure not. Um, but are they better than an old score MQL? Probably. Um. What
Jonathan Sedger: have you seen in terms of like outcomes improving in terms of AOIQLs versus MQL?
Beth Redpath Katz: Well, at the moment it's still very early stage, but from, from what I can see is that we are delivering a lot less volume, but seeing a relatively good.
Uh, return. So for me, it's if I deliver 1000 leads and I get one opportunity out, that's not great. But if I can produce 10 leads and get one opportunity out, that's where I want to be.
Jon Busby: And
Beth Redpath Katz: that's what we've done with the hand raises. So hand raises, the volume of hand raises are so much smaller than just the generic volume of MQLs.
We've prioritized them, put a very stringent SLA around them, and actually we got quite good ROI out. Um, And this is what we're, we're trying to find out and hone in on how do we fine tune those AIQLs so that we're only producing 10 or 15 of them, but we're still getting one opportunity out. So it's a much, much better return.
Jon Busby: Yeah, like thinking about the outcomes we were talking about earlier, right? Because, you know, in some ways I want to move away from this MQL towards something like an AIQL, right? And actually one of the outcomes I think we need to be aware of there is If there is, that means you need less salespeople because if you were delivering them a thousand MQLs before that's a thousand phone calls that they all need to go through, you know, a thousand different interaction or accounts they need to view in, in Salesforce and you're going out to 10, that's quite a, that's quite a jump.
Like what are the ways that your teams are seeing success or you're starting to see some, some difference in the metrics?
Beth Redpath Katz: So I'm going to go on one of your points first. I don't think it actually changes the amount of sales that you need. I think what happens is, is that instead of them doing volume follow up, they're actually focusing much more in delivering a much better customer experience for the opportunities that they do get.
There's also a much more, um, collaborative approach between sales and marketing when you deliver less volume but more value. Um, because they actually genuinely value what they get. So then you get much more collaboration back on, um, them inputting into your metrics, them inputting into how you prospect, them inputting into how that, that lead, um, developed into, um, a, a pipeline opportunity in close one.
You get much more valuable feedback from them and more time with them. So I would say, Delivering less volume actually delivers much more sales value back and there isn't less need for sales It's actually much more Customized bespoke customer journeys that they can deliver. Yeah, and they can therefore hit their target more easily And for me, that makes happy salespeople and happy salespeople make happy marketing people.
Jon Busby: Like, and I think that comes into another really important point that we've talked about before. Yeah. When you're on the podcast, which is that personalized experience, that customer experience. Again, looking through a customer lens.
Beth Redpath Katz: Yeah.
Jon Busby: Like how can marketing help sales achieve that? Like what's, what's our role and how, how is that changing?
Beth Redpath Katz: Oh. It's a, it's a massive role. Um, and actually this is part of the reason why I'm in London for the next couple of days, actually, to, uh, talk with some of the web team and the customer success teams around their projects around digital go to customer. Um, and this was off the back off. Um, we mentioned earlier on, uh, when we were talking about there's a Gartner paper that mentioned that by 2025 80 percent off the buying cycle will be on a digital platform, and that's not just in the tech industry.
That's just a broad brush statement. I
Jon Busby: mean, we've been seeing it go that way.
Beth Redpath Katz: Exactly. So all of a sudden, no. Um, BMC and then and lots of other companies are waking up to the idea that we're having to interact with people before the sale and also during the sale and post sale on a more digital platform, but also how we, um, how we exchange that value back to them for the data they give.
So customers starting to wake up to the fact that the data they hold about themselves has a value.
Jonathan Sedger: And they
Beth Redpath Katz: will give that to you if you will deliver value back to them. Um, so a couple of statements I made in a, in a recent presentation to some of my sales colleagues was if, um, a person is more likely to buy from you by up to three X times, if you can make a personal emotional connection with them and deliver them a great experience.
Now, like, hold up, hold up. You just talked about digital and then an emotional connection. I said, yes, a brand needs to create an emotional connection with someone on a digital platform to encourage them to buy.
Jon Busby: So how do you go about doing that? Like through
Beth Redpath Katz: hyper personalization, it makes people feel like you care.
Um, it makes. You then feel like they, you are taking notice of the information that you're giving them. You're weighting that information in terms of the value that it has. And then you're delivering back a hyper personalized experience that means something to them. And I think that that is something that.
Brands are starting to wake up to BMC has absolutely woken up to that. Um, and I think that people will start understanding how that hyper personalization means something. So that goes back down to, do I want less salespeople? Absolutely not. I don't want less salespeople. I want as many if not more salespeople within my organization.
But I want them delivering a hyper personalized, digital first experience for all of their customers with human element. We're not saying No human element. When we talk about AI, I think human led, uh, AI enabled is absolutely the way to go. I think digital first, human enabled, um, is absolutely the way to go, uh, for the customer experience.
Jon Busby: But to, to, to tie a few of these threads together. Yeah,
Beth Redpath Katz: go for it. Because
Jon Busby: I think it was I think it might have been one of our previous podcast guests for this year. We had, we, you know, we, we brought up the argument that we think B2B marketing is more emotional than B2C. Like B2C is a very transactional element.
A lot of people normally disagree with me on that point, but B2C is very transactional. B2B, you're putting your job on the line, you're putting your, you know, your, the kudos that you've built up inside a company to say, I want to buy this solution, these are the reasons why.
Jonathan Sedger: Yeah.
Jon Busby: Um, so, so I think we agree, it is more emotional, but just to tie that in to, to what you just said, like it is, you know, that means, There's so much going on here in my head, like from a sales perspective, that means we need to take advantage of some of the modern technology, like personalization, but also things like live chat in order to still make sure that we are building that human connection, but being cognizant of the fact that the modern buyer doesn't want to necessarily spend time on the phone or in meetings,
Beth Redpath Katz: like that's a
Jon Busby: real challenge, like Tying those two things together is difficult.
Beth Redpath Katz: I, I agree.
Jonathan Sedger: It's high stakes as well, right? Because if you get the personalisation wrong, you can have the opposite effect. So you need to make sure that
Beth Redpath Katz: you get it spot on. Totally, totally. And I think there is even, I think sales is also going, going to be going through an even harder transition over the next decade.
Jon Busby: I, I mean, I, I think we talked about this last time and I'm going to, I'm going to say it again. Like I've, I think this change that 80 percent stats means.
It's now time for marketing to take the lead, not sales. Oh, 100%. But that's
Beth Redpath Katz: contentious. It is contentious, but I think there's also, we're, we're dealing with the digitalization of the customer journey, but we're also dealing with the shift of the decision maker. So the shift from the baby boomer, um, to the Gen X was subtle.
Because in principle
Jon Busby: Was it subtle?
Beth Redpath Katz: I think so. to say I think, coming from a millennial, it was subtle. Um, but the gen The millennials to the gen alphas.
Jon Busby: Oh.
Beth Redpath Katz: You're not telling me that that's not going to be a major shift. I mean, we're still trying to work out as a millennial which, which height of my socks I need to have to be able to be cool.
Um Alphas, alphas are, they don't even look at my socks. They, they just, they are online, they're impersonal, they are brand agnostic, they will, they are totally as a service. Um, they are a whole different world away. They never grew up in an environment where there wasn't part of their life that was on social media.
Jonathan Sedger: Yes.
Beth Redpath Katz: Whereas we're the decision makers of today. I mean, the millennials, maybe some of the Gen Z exes. We grew up in an offline world. Um, our, our, our, our childhoods weren't on social. Uh, we are not digital first from a childhood perspective, you know, climbing trees was not, um, completely out of the question.
Whereas, The alphas, they were handed an iPad from their, by their parents at the age of six months, 18 months, two years old. They have never known an environment where they weren't watched, they weren't catalogued, they weren't in an online environment. And I think that shift, and unfortunately my generation did that to them.
Jonathan Sedger: Because we
Beth Redpath Katz: are the parents of the gen alphas. And I think that sales unfortunately, so going back on topic. Sales will have a harder transition as the Millennials move out of the decision maker and more into the consultative board members. The, the, the speed, the Moore's Laws effect of how quickly these alphas are going to become decision makers are going to make heads spin.
Jon Busby: I, I don't disagree, but I think we're going to have an even more rockier ride than you're forecasting there. Um, I mean, even if I, if we reflect back on all of our careers, this meeting 10, 15 years ago, I would have been in a full suit, probably with a tie, right? Like, that's just the way it was. Like, you turned up to meetings, like, then we moved away from having a tie.
I mean, I'm probably still over dressed even for this. Um, you know, most business meetings now where you might be making a million pounds worth of discussions, most people are in trainers and, and t shirts. And it's just, it's just going that way. I think if we look at. What I think is going to make it rockier, though, is that Gen Alpha, as they come into the workforce, it's, it's not going to be the same procession of generations that we've seen, because AI is shaking that up as well.
Totally. But they're
Beth Redpath Katz: already AI enabled. They're, they're already using chat GBT to help them research their homework. They learn how to do this
Jon Busby: system is caught up with that. No,
Beth Redpath Katz: no, I agree. But they learn everything through
Jon Busby: YouTube.
Beth Redpath Katz: They don't ask their parents, how do I go to do this or do to do that they come up on Oh, I've just done this.
Jon Busby: How
Beth Redpath Katz: did you do that? Well, I learned it through TikTok,
Jon Busby: Snapchat,
Beth Redpath Katz: YouTube. My friends told me, they
Jon Busby: Googled it.
Beth Redpath Katz: They, they have an, uh, this overwhelming independence that I've never seen or experienced before in any other environment. And so the, the ability to have reliance on your colleagues and collaboration, that instinctive.
basis of how you learn is completely different for that generation.
Jon Busby: Which is, which is going to shake up the bio group even more.
Beth Redpath Katz: Oh, totally.
Jon Busby: Because we're going to go from being Goodness, right. If you, if you extrapolate that out further, we might go from having stronger relationships as part of the bio group to having weaker ones.
Totally. Even, even towards kind of a, like, where the, where the bio decision maker may feel more, it may be more of a hero and villain approach that they're taking to things where they, they want to be seen as the hero that comes in and brings in, And saves the day for everyone. I don't know. Like we're, we're theorizing here.
Beth Redpath Katz: Oh, totally. What we're
Jon Busby: definitely saying is there's going to be a change.
Beth Redpath Katz: Oh, 100%. I think that there, there will be a change. I mean, go back 10 years ago, ABM, um, you know, we, we all talked about the decision maker and their sphere of influence and understanding the sphere of influence based on who their, who their direct hires are.
Um, you know, you could tell a personality type based on who they're. who the last three hires were because they're often filling the gaps of maybe the skill sets that they don't have as they come into a role. Um, and the people around them in their wider circles will also tell you more about how their personality, um, and how, and how they interact and develop connections with people.
Fast forward, we're talking about buying groups and how Those interactions would shape how someone would make a decision. And primarily those people have met face to face. I think the shift that you're talking about is in 10 years time that buying group will have made a connection purely on a digital channel.
And they won't have met face to face.
Jon Busby: And I think how people collaborate is going to be a key part of that.
Jonathan Sedger: If you get this right, so we've talked about MQLs, we've agreed that those are out the window. We've talked about the fact that MQAs is kind of the next level, and actually at BMC you're looking at AIQLs as a kind of, I think the event you were saying, the AIQL is a kind of halfway point between MQLs and the kind of promised land of activated binding
Beth Redpath Katz: groups.
Jonathan Sedger: If you get this right and you kind of get to those activated buying groups, like what does that mean? Like, what did, what did you see, uh, VMware that has kind of given you the conviction that, you know, we did it, we achieved our result. Uh, and actually we started to see some outcomes from getting to that promise land.
What were the, what were the sort of key things that you put
Beth Redpath Katz: quite simply? It's, it's the, if you give a buying group over, it's the propensity to buy, it just increases. Um, so if, if a buying group is delivered in the right way, a timely product specific and everyone's activated when there is, like, I wouldn't say twice as likely, but it's near twice as likely for them to close win than to close lose.
Um, so if you could say to someone, okay, well, we currently have a, a close rate of 50, 50. If you follow up on these five leads, rather than those. ones that we don't really know anything about, but these five activated buying groups, you have got twice as likely to win them than anything else in the world.
That's a very compelling reason.
Jonathan Sedger: Absolutely.
Beth Redpath Katz: So even if, you know, and in my industry, 25 to 35 percent is fairly normal in terms of closed win based on opportunity ratios. If you could double that by doing absolutely nothing. So in the sales has to do nothing more than just follow up in an exactly the same number of leads, even maybe even slightly less, um, in the form of an activated buying group.
But they've got, they've got a likelihood of twice as many times to win that deal than to lose it. It's a very compelling reason for a sales to pay more attention to it. Um, A and B give us more information, um, along the way and then the results speak for themselves. So it effectively, it's money, you know, most, most reasons why you would do anything is because you're going to create more money or earn more money or create more pipeline to give business outcomes.
And that's basically why you would do a business buying group.
Jon Busby: I mean, The story you just told, I think, is exactly what we need to be head for. I'm going to be quite contentious and say, I think marketing, as you were describing doubling that close rate, I was just sat there adding up the bonus figures for the sales guys closing in thinking, Hey, in marketing, I want a piece of that pie.
Like, isn't it about time we got some of the recognition for that?
Beth Redpath Katz: That's a contentious question. I think it's the marketers that understand a how to orchestrate that buying group, understand the data on why that buying group is a buying group and the propensity of that buying group to buy and not
Jon Busby: to buy
Beth Redpath Katz: will reap the rewards of being the next CMO.
Jon Busby: But I, but I still come back to, I think, I think there's a gap in how marketing is recognized as part of that journey.
Beth Redpath Katz: I, I, I agree. I know, but I think that that's a big mindset shift for marketing to feel like they are, um, responsible, uh, for the overarching pipeline and close one revenue. And this then comes into that maybe wider conversation of is. is marketing more of a revenue, um, rev ops sort of model? Should it be going into a model where we, our goals and our aims and objectives are solely based on closed one revenue?
And therefore, should we be more geared to revenue marketing rather than Just purely tactical marketing that generates activity and an awareness. Um, and then you will end up having a separation of marketing where you deal with maybe more of the brand awareness and air cover on one side, maybe slightly Softer areas of marketing, and then you'll have more of the harder data driven areas of marketing that deals with the buying groups and deals with effectively pipeline generation.
Jon Busby: One of my previous podcast guests likes to refer that as in market demand gen and out of market demand gen, the softer parts, but this is, that's a whole other whole other conversation as well. We need to get to a point where we're, we're wrapping up here and providing some, some useful advice to our, to our listeners.
So firstly, like we, we. theorize a lot about how generation is going to come in and change this we've talked a lot about the future of MQLs like What's what's next? What's next on your agenda to approach a BMC?
Beth Redpath Katz: Um, for me, it's hyper personalization at scale. What does
Jon Busby: hyper personalization mean to you?
Beth Redpath Katz: So it's being able to take human generated content Um, that is standard and generic and then being able to hyper personalize it to that human, to that organization, to that vertical, um, or to that go to market product area, um, at scale within an AI enabled environment, um, so that we can deliver effectively one on one to one to few programs at scale.
Which goes into more of an ABM type of model, but then ABM type models really go with and are hand in hand with buying Greek models. So that would be my next piece and I think an expansion on the digital go to, I think it's a go to customer prospect and partner. And I think that that digital model needs to be expanded upon.
Jon Busby: I mean that, that very aligned with how, how we're thinking about stuff as well. And I'd love to pick your brains on that, on a future podcast. Mm-hmm . But to give our listeners one more closing thought, if they were, if someone's listening to this thinking, Hey, I need to get on board with it. Like, what's the first step to getting started with something like an AQ at ai?
Ql,
Beth Redpath Katz: look at your data. Genuinely look at your data. Be happy with the data you have. And then think about how you could build on to it and monetize what you've got. And then look at the data sources that you might need to add in to add contextual pieces to that data to drive value out of it.
Jon Busby: That's
Beth Redpath Katz: where you would start.
Jon Busby: Brilliant. Well, thank you, Beth. It's been a pleasure to have you back on the Tech Marketing Podcast. And Jonathan, of course, to have you joining me on the sofa. And I'm sure we'll have you back again soon. Yes, thank you.