The traditional MQL model, focused on individuals, can be dangerously misleading. A real-world example showed 27 MQLs from one account were rejected by sales, completely hiding the immense collective buying intent of a large committee. This highlights the need for an account-centric view.
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The next frontier in B2B marketing, enabled by AI-powered segmentation, is identifying the specific 'buying group' within an account relevant to each product. This granular focus moves beyond traditional Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to more directly correlate efforts with pipeline generation.
Research shows half the buying committee consists of "invisible buyers" (e.g., C-suite, procurement) that sales can't access but who hold veto power. Marketing's primary ABM role is to build brand trust and familiarity with this hidden cohort to prevent them from killing a deal due to unfamiliarity with your solution.
CloudPay stopped using the word "lead" and adopted "signal" instead. This semantic shift prevents sales reps from chasing a single junior contact and encourages them to research and target the entire buying committee (CFO, CHRO) at the interested account.
ABM often fails because it's treated as a siloed marketing initiative. To be effective, it must be an "Account-Based Experience" (ABX) where marketing, sales, and operations are fully integrated to create a seamless, unified journey for the entire target account.
Your CRM's lead rejection data is a goldmine, but only if you scrutinize it. Vague reasons like "not a fit" often conceal systemic GTM flaws. Interviewing SDRs to understand what this label actually means can reveal critical disconnects between marketing's targeting and sales's enablement.
To overcome internal assumptions that only the "head of payroll" mattered, the marketing team analyzed past wins. The data showed that 17 different job roles were involved in the customer's buying process, providing definitive proof to justify broadening their account targeting.
In B2B sales with multiple decision-makers, tracking individual MQLs is a "lazy metric" that misrepresents buying intent. Success depends on identifying and engaging the entire buying group. Marketing's goal should be to qualify the group, not just a single lead.
The current trend of treating "buying groups" as a new concept is misguided. Effective ABM has always required comprehensive stakeholder mapping from the very beginning. If you haven't been engaging the entire buying group, you haven't been doing ABM correctly.
The buying committee is larger than just the key contacts sales engages. Hidden influencers, particularly in procurement, play a crucial role. If they have no brand awareness or trust in your company when the deal reaches their desk for final approval, they can single-handedly block it.
Despite wide acceptance of committee-based buying, an alarming number of sales pipelines remain flawed. In some organizations, over 80% of deals in the CRM have only one contact person attached. This data highlights a critical execution gap between knowing the right strategy and actually implementing it.
