AI isn't a silver bullet. Morgan Cole of Red Canary argues it amplifies the underlying health of your GTM motion. If your sales and marketing teams are misaligned, AI will only accelerate that dysfunction. Conversely, strong alignment becomes supercharged.
The common "brand vs. demand" debate is flawed. Panelists argue that consistent, long-term brand building (creating "brand gravity") is not something to balance with short-term pipeline goals, but rather the foundational investment that makes demand capture easier and more predictable.
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.
Instead of waiting for intent, Demandbase proactively builds future pipeline by scoring cold accounts. They create lookalike models based on their best customers and invest marketing spend against high-scoring cold accounts, anticipating they will enter a buying cycle in 9-12 months.
To solve the "what do I do with this signal?" problem, 2X CMO Lisa Cole created a custom GPT. Trained on their positioning, messaging, and intent signals, it acts as an on-demand coach for sales reps, providing specific outreach strategies and messages for high-intent accounts.
Critical buying journey insights are hidden in unstructured data like Gong transcripts. 2X CMO Lisa Cole notes that AI can surface mentions of communities, analysts, or even other AI tools that influenced a deal—signals invisible to traditional marketing attribution tools.
2X CMO Lisa Cole likens a strong brand to having gravity. This gravity is built by creating "digital mass"—a large footprint of valuable, findable content. This mass pulls buyers into your orbit during their anonymous research phase, long before they formally engage with sales.
Don't just hand signals to sales and expect them to act. Marketing should co-own enablement. A "Pipeline Wednesday" meeting is used to actively help the sales team connect specific marketing signals (e.g., account intent) to concrete messaging and outreach tactics.
2X CMO Lisa Cole identifies the most potent buying signals as a trifecta: a business catalyst (like new leadership), third-party intent data (e.g., from Demandbase), and first-party engagement (content consumption). The presence of all three indicates a high-probability opportunity.