1) These funnels can and should exist together. The old way is still relevant when someone in your ICP raises their hand. Insight Partners has a "Double Funnel" concept that I really like
2)The easy solution for poor quality MQLs is change the criteria for an MQL. MQLs should only be 'hand raisers' in your ICP (not a score out). To identify what a 'hand raiser' is, you need to look at the conversion rates for the entry points into your funnel and it will be very obvious, but usually it's a demo request form fill, a request for a meeting at an event, etc...
3) These are all great tools to collect data and signals, but CRM and MAT tools don't make it easy to visualize an account-centric view. We have some customization in Salesforce and Looker dashboards to solve for this, but curious what you recommend?
Very fair points, Mike! I personally like the unified view where a 'hand raiser' is treated as one signal of buying intent alongside other potential signals of where someone is in their journey. We ran this playbook on the VC marketing side and found success with HubSpot custom reporting (hired a 3rd party consultant to help) -- agree that this type of support wasn't readily available out of the box.
There are definitely multiple ways to attack this. The main reason we keep the MQL funnel in place still is to trigger a response (and have well defined funnel metrics) for when someone wants to speak with us, but we also use person-level handraises as a signal in an unified account view.
Totally hear you, this isn't a new concept by any means! The new-ness is in better data/tech to apply this methodology at scale and trying to make a case for SaaS GTM teams about how/why to think this way (the MQL has a strong grip!).
I've so consistently observed major problems with the traditional mql/SQL framework that I started to wonder if anyone actually succeeds with it over a longer period of time, ie through different successive phases of growth in a high growth company. I love this alternative way of thinking
Hi Kyle, big fan of your work as well as your articles including this one. Being my own devil's advocate here - would you say your points still hold true in a low ACV (<$3k) high volume, small business environment?
I have a question about visualizing the movement/ journey a prospective account/contact makes through these unified GTM metrics.
In my mind, I picture changes to lead scoring driven by signals being the key thing that makes an account/contact move down (or up) this unified GTM funnel.
What I would love to see (but haven’t yet) is someone who has created a visual representation of these changes/this journey over time.
In my mind, it could be on a graph of some sort (x axis = time, y-axis lead score) but I haven’t seen someone share this yet.
I think it would be super powerful for sales, marketing, and CS to see the journey someone has been on and where they are on their buyer journey vs a list of events in Hubspot/SF.
If anyone has any ideas or best practices for creating this visual or tools that help you do this I would love to learn more.
(For transparency, I haven’t put a system in place like this before but start my first GTM engineering role next week and plan to push for this framework - so this could be a dumb question :)).
Thanks for the piece. Have you founds any better option than Apollo or HubSpot to help SDRs prioritize the leads they work on? I find both limited form ABM motions where you want to prioritize the hottest leads given a variety of signals
Great piece!
A few comments:
1) These funnels can and should exist together. The old way is still relevant when someone in your ICP raises their hand. Insight Partners has a "Double Funnel" concept that I really like
2)The easy solution for poor quality MQLs is change the criteria for an MQL. MQLs should only be 'hand raisers' in your ICP (not a score out). To identify what a 'hand raiser' is, you need to look at the conversion rates for the entry points into your funnel and it will be very obvious, but usually it's a demo request form fill, a request for a meeting at an event, etc...
3) These are all great tools to collect data and signals, but CRM and MAT tools don't make it easy to visualize an account-centric view. We have some customization in Salesforce and Looker dashboards to solve for this, but curious what you recommend?
Very fair points, Mike! I personally like the unified view where a 'hand raiser' is treated as one signal of buying intent alongside other potential signals of where someone is in their journey. We ran this playbook on the VC marketing side and found success with HubSpot custom reporting (hired a 3rd party consultant to help) -- agree that this type of support wasn't readily available out of the box.
There are definitely multiple ways to attack this. The main reason we keep the MQL funnel in place still is to trigger a response (and have well defined funnel metrics) for when someone wants to speak with us, but we also use person-level handraises as a signal in an unified account view.
Insightful and practical, as usual, @Kyle Poyar.
Amazing article.
Hey Kyle.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE your content, but isn’t this more or less the 5 stages of awareness coined by Eugene Schwartz?
I totally agree it makes more sense the the current acronym soup :)
Totally hear you, this isn't a new concept by any means! The new-ness is in better data/tech to apply this methodology at scale and trying to make a case for SaaS GTM teams about how/why to think this way (the MQL has a strong grip!).
I've so consistently observed major problems with the traditional mql/SQL framework that I started to wonder if anyone actually succeeds with it over a longer period of time, ie through different successive phases of growth in a high growth company. I love this alternative way of thinking
Very fair question... it's such a sticky methodology despite having so many flaws 🤷
This is a really interesting take.
Appreciate it, Sergio!
Hi Kyle, big fan of your work as well as your articles including this one. Being my own devil's advocate here - would you say your points still hold true in a low ACV (<$3k) high volume, small business environment?
Great article - found it super insightful.
I have a question about visualizing the movement/ journey a prospective account/contact makes through these unified GTM metrics.
In my mind, I picture changes to lead scoring driven by signals being the key thing that makes an account/contact move down (or up) this unified GTM funnel.
What I would love to see (but haven’t yet) is someone who has created a visual representation of these changes/this journey over time.
In my mind, it could be on a graph of some sort (x axis = time, y-axis lead score) but I haven’t seen someone share this yet.
I think it would be super powerful for sales, marketing, and CS to see the journey someone has been on and where they are on their buyer journey vs a list of events in Hubspot/SF.
If anyone has any ideas or best practices for creating this visual or tools that help you do this I would love to learn more.
(For transparency, I haven’t put a system in place like this before but start my first GTM engineering role next week and plan to push for this framework - so this could be a dumb question :)).
Thanks for the piece. Have you founds any better option than Apollo or HubSpot to help SDRs prioritize the leads they work on? I find both limited form ABM motions where you want to prioritize the hottest leads given a variety of signals