B2B Growth: Old Playbook vs. New Playbook with Jon Miller

John Common: Hello everyone. John Common here. So glad you're joining us here [00:01:00] on Growth Driver. everyone, and I mean, everyone talking lately about how the old growth isn't working anymore and it's time to learn a smarter, more efficient new B2B growth playbook. We all see it. We all feel it. If you do B2B growth, you know this. But what are the real differences, like really between the old and the new And how do you actually make that shift? that is what today's show is all about. And we're gonna bring some structure and some rigor to this conversation.

We're gonna do a point by point, pillar by pillar of the old playbook and the new playbook. I am not gonna do this alone today. I have the perfect guest with me on this topic and I wanna brag about him in front of his own face. Lemme tell you about him. His name's John Miller. You probably already know this guy. He's the real deal. Okay? He's a MarTech entrepreneur, a growth executive. A B2B and go-to-market thought leader, I would bet you a dollar that you've seen him speak at a conference you've been at, and I'd be willing to bet you $5 that you've benefited from content that John has created. the CMO of Demandbase. He co-founded Marketo and helped guide it to a successful IPO. was the CEO and founder of Engagio that merged with Demandbase. has literally helped build this category we call enabled growth-focused B2B marketing. Welcome to the show, John.[00:03:00] 

Jon Miller: Well, thank you for having me, John.

John Common: from my perspective, you are one of the true co-authors what we now lovingly call the old playbook that needs to be updated.

And you help write that playbook when you're at Marketo. And you've also been working, from my perspective, iterative iteratively developing the new playbook Demandbase. So I guess the first question that I want to dive in with you. Uh, is, has the old playbook become obsolete? What forces are driving the need for a new playbook, in your opinion?

Jon Miller: Yeah, I mean it's, it's funny, I mean, you would think with all this new stuff, right? It's a, B, X, it's near bound , it's, you know, or before that we had social and mobile and you know, content and like there's always some new thing, right? You would think it would be, we, we would be doing better than ever before.

Right? , you would think like, oh yeah, we're all making all of our pipeline numbers all the time and it's easy because we have all this amazing new tech and all this amazing new methodologies and then it is, it is. That's not the case. You know, and I think it's not the case. 'cause there's some pretty fundamental, I, I think, disconnects in kind of how we've been thinking about the Go-to-market, and admittedly how I used to talk about it, you know, so, I mean, we could, we could spend a lot of time on all the disconnects, but I think there's, there's, uh, three I wanna highlight, you know, the, the first is, you know, buyers have gotten pretty and different to the traditional tactics.

You know, they, they've learned if, you know, they might want that ebook, but if they fill out that form to download it, they're gonna start getting a bunch of stuff they don't want, you know?

John Common: Right

Jon Miller: uh, you know, and, and, and you know, you know, so what, so what do marketers and SDRs do? We just start sending more stuff, right?

And it creates this like, vicious circle.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Um, and as a result, I think the buyers have really rotated towards how can they be more anonymous? How can they do more of their research? . Either, you know, not filling out a form on our website or by going to third party sites, you know, dark, dark sites, you know, and you name it if you will.

John Common: Right.

Jon Miller: And that loses, [00:06:00] you know, part of the original playbook from Marketo was the ability to cookie somebody and track them and score them accordingly. And, you know, so buyer indifference means people don't want, you know, are, aren't responding and we've lost visibility. I, I think that the second trend is that, um, and we're gonna talk about this, but the, the traditional playbook has really overly focused marketing, I think, on pipeline generation

John Common: Yep.

Jon Miller: at the expense of thinking about, you know, the end revenue.

Like, you know, could those same marketing dollars be better spent improving win rates, you know, or accelerating pipeline. Um, and that's not how marketers have been trained to think. That's not how marketers have been. Paid to think.

John Common: right,

Jon Miller: And then the third one, which I've been getting a lot of, I think, positive feedback on social about, you know, in the last, you know, six months or so, is the traditional model is so focused on marketing that's highly measurable.

It means that we have started, you know, basically underinvested in, uh, brand building, you know, which is obviously less measurable, you know? And so as a result, you know, there's research, you know, Erenberg Bass Institute says 5% of our ICP is in market at any given point in time, LinkedIn says it's 1%, you know, whatever.

If it's one, it's five. The point is it's not, most of it isn't. And the problem. Yeah, exactly. And the problem with highly measurable demand gen marketing is it tends to rotate all of our marketing onto that 5%,

John Common: That's

Jon Miller: which is the same 5% our competitors are fighting against, and we're ignoring that 95%.

John Common: Yeah,

Jon Miller: We've lost the art of building our brand

John Common: yeah,

Jon Miller: in many ways. And I think something that a lot of marketers don't give enough credit to is the fact that a strong brand makes your demand perform better and the vice versa. True. A weaker brand means your demand performs worse.

John Common: yeah.

Jon Miller: You know, back in the days in Marketo, you know, everybody wanted to sort of, you know, hear my secret sauce.

How did we have such amazing demand generation results?

John Common: Right.

Jon Miller: And the reality is part of the reason we had all those amazing demand generation results is we had a great brand and I had this. Yeah,

John Common: That's right. I rem I I was in your, literally, I was one of your, was your persona,

Jon Miller: yeah.

John Common: of your personas. And I remember year after year, month after month, being the recipient. of the full spectrum of Marketo's, then go to market

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: and Sure. The, I recall it being, um, heavily weighted toward what we would call active demand, people who are in market or near being in market. But I also remember, and people conveniently forget this part of your playbook, I'm kind of defending you a little bit. Um, they're, um, you marketing. Remember that,

Jon Miller: Mm-Hmm.

John Common: I, I remember being [00:09:00] at your show. but I, but I, remember Marketo stood for

Jon Miller: Yeah.

John Common: you know, and, and that is brand.

Jon Miller: Totally, totally.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: You know, uh, brand is what people think about you when you're not in the room. It's the one or two words that are, that kind of are the associations that get built, you know, and, and so this, you know, [00:09:30] 15 years of. Focusing our marketing on stuff that's measurable has led to across the board, I think, weaker performance for all of our demand gen, because the brand has sort of suffered accordingly.

John Common: Yeah. Alright, well we're gonna dig into that. Um, I, I would offer two other accelerants to the three major trends, why we need a new playbook. You just mentioned three, uh, and we should think about this, but I would say what has accelerated that is all of the tool buying we did, we made things more complex, but I'm not sure we, uh, made things better with, with the million, with the explosion of tools.

That's number one. Uh, and, and, and I would say in some cases those tools aided and embedded, um, bad practices, right? Ma MAP sales engagement platform, the misuse of those two in particular, um, you may or may not believe with that or agree with that, but the second one is, um. Uh, the end of zero interest rate policy has come along and said, and now you must be efficient.

And I think that has pantsed so to speak, the, the inefficiency of the old playbook in most

Jon Miller: Sure.

John Common: for all those reasons, it is time to take a hard look at your growth playbook. So we're gonna do basically for the rest of this episode is John and I have kind of laid out, there are probably 12, 15 pillars of a complete playbook, but we're gonna zone, in, hone in on eight key pillars of any decent B2B playbook. I'm gonna tee up the pillar. I'm gonna tee up a little bit about what the old version of the playbook looks relative to that component of the playbook. then John, I'll hand you the microphone and we can talk about what does new look like and what might be some advice or some warnings as you're moving from old to new in that specific area. So pillar number one, growth goals and priorities. Right. So every good playbook has is, is built on certain components, a critical one, what we hope would be growth goals and priorities.

So in the old playbook, think it has tended to be extremely acquisition focus in its goals and its priorities. I think in the, in the area of how companies set their growth goals, I think [00:12:00] it's been fairly, uh, high level. And the classic example is the CEO walks outta the board meeting with a spreadsheet that says we're gonna grow 30% year over year. And he drops it off to the go-to-market team and they go, okay, uh, where, so I guess just new logos. Is that what we're gonna do? So I think. think that's a piece. And then the last piece I would sort of criticize of the old playbook is the connection between corporate strategy, truly corporate strategy constraints, budget constraints, priorities, and the how that connects and guides go to market strategy has been relatively weak,

Jon Miller: Yeah.

John Common: think that the board has said, here's our corporate strategy and then the CMO, the CRO, the chief product officer, get it. They're not necessarily talking about it together and they're kind of figuring it out as they go along. So that's my tee up of growth goals and priorities. Old playbook. What does the new playbook look like, do you think?

Jon Miller: Yeah. Let, let me just pull that thread for one second because I mean, there's something I think that's, that resonates with me. You know, as a marketer who's been in the seat.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Um, you know, like, like many companies, you know, demand base, you know, we set, you set the bookings goals that sets sales targets. And then we have a very sophisticated model, you know, that knows well, okay, based on win rates and deal velocities and our current pipeline, here's the pipeline numbers we need to create.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: I think something that's a disconnect that has happened in my past, um, and I had to work to change the company's thinking was, you know, when that, when we do that exercise and that exercise comes back with an unrealistic pipeline number, you know, most executives responses, oh, just figure it out.

Marketing,

John Common: That's what I mean.

Jon Miller: you know,

John Common: That's right.

Jon Miller: and, and, and then the marketers end up just be like, okay, we'll do our best job here, . You know, but like, don't be surprised. Come, you know, September when we're missing the numbers. 'cause we can't create enough pipeline. And, and that that, you know, marketing needs to have the credibility to be part of that discussion.

And the planning does need to sort of be both a top down and a bottoms up. So I absolutely agree with what you're saying, you know, in your point.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Um,

John Common: What about, what about this, do you, do you agree that traditionally the old playbook has tended to over index on acquisition to the detriment of total enterprise growth, which requires that you retain your base and probably sell them something else that they would find delightful,

Jon Miller: yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I mean, two, two examples. You know, one, you know, I mean, at Marketo it was so extreme, you know, that, uh, we used to, I, we ignore any response to a campaign from an existing customer. You know, like as we sort of looked at [00:15:00] like, Hey, did that program drive, you know, good responses from the right people?

John Common: right?

Jon Miller: You know, literally, well, well, that, those are our customers. They're not gonna, we're not gonna get pipe new, new pipeline from them. So, you know, take that outta the model. I, we changed that eventually, but for a long time that was, you know, the mindset. Um, you know, at Demandbase, you know, we've had this strong focus on let's improve retention like every company, you know, has had, you know, but then when it comes time to plan your marketing budget, you know what people do?

They're like, well, here's the new bookings target, right? And well, that's grown 10%, so your budget will grow 8%. And we're like, well, what about corporate priority number one, which is drive retention, you know, and marketing can help with that, but it does require time and resources,

John Common: right.

Jon Miller: you said, disconnect,

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: you know, so a hundred percent.

And then the, I, and then I alluded to something even just a little simpler earlier, which is just, well, what about pipeline acceleration? Improving win rates. You know, marketers don't get, you know, compensated or judged on the how their efforts improve those things. Marketers are judged on M QLS and pipeline creation, and again, that creates all sorts of weird incentives.

John Common: Yeah. Alright, so to round out this pillar one called Growth goals and priorities. One piece of advice I would offer, and we do this with, with our clients, um, uh, is, um, you know, and it seems so simple. So sometimes the most elegant solutions are very, very simple, but really commit to having the CMO, the CRO, the CEO, and the CFO in the room throughout the planning process where you break down and connect growth goals to budget realities and timing realities.

I think that's where the, the inadvertent corporate delusion occurs. It, I think it's exacerbated by siloed planning, siloed budgeting. So I think there, there's no silver bullets, but you can make this part of your playbook better if you at least get in the same room and be like, if I accelerate or raise this particular growth goal above another one, that means you have to do something different or do something less.

Do you agree?

Jon Miller: Yeah,

John Common: doesn't happen very often in

Jon Miller: it doesn't, no, I mean, there's, I, there's gonna be a theme I think that goes through a bunch of these trends as we talk about it, you know, which is, at the core, it comes down to kind of marketing's credibility, you know, and marketing's respect to kind of engage in these conversations. Like when we talk about brand, right?

I mean, if in order to increase investment on brand, at the end of the day it's a little bit of like, Hey, trust me, I like, you know, like, this isn't going to be measurable in the same way as the other stuff we've measured, but it will, you know, and, and so the question is. I used to preach marketing credibility and respect by tying everything you do to those pipeline dollars.

And now we're sort of saying, well, it's the world's more complicated than that, you know? And you do need to maybe sometimes do things that improve retention or accelerate deals or just improve the [00:18:00] brand. And when a marketing team can't tie those dollars directly, it's easier to think about cutting that budget.

And so the, the best response, I mean, the best response is I think the CMOs job is evolving to become one of more influence on the c-suite. To advocate for these types of things that we're talking about. You know, and, and, and, and the best CMOs are gonna be the ones who can really, you know, spend the time talking to their peers, moving the, you know, moving this conversation forward

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: way that's probably more about soft skills than it is, you know, look, I have the ROI of this thing down to the last degree, so that's gonna be a theme I think, as we talk about a bunch of these, you know.

John Common: yeah. Let's find out. I, I agree. you kind of just teed up pillar two perfectly, which is two of old playbook. New playbook is does your playbook contemplate and manage the tension and the opportunity? Between and demand creation on one side versus demand capture and conversion the other.

And in the old playbook, we've already said it, but just in case you're keeping notes here, in the old playbook, there's a strong tendency to overfocus at the bottom of the funnel. But demand capture, active demand, sales, conversion. there has been a, I'm gonna use the word neglect of reputation and brand building because of that. And I would say when companies, uh, step away from their responsibility slash opportunity at the brand level, at the demand creation level, nature abhors a va, a vacuum. Do you think your buyers decide to not learn? They, they go learn from someone else and they, if they're not learning from you. If they're not developing, buying preferences, they're buying, developing those preferences somewhere.

And if it ain't you, that's not good. So that's old playbook. think the new playbook, you just, you said it a second ago and I've heard you, um, recently on LinkedIn say, Hey look, I recommend roughly if you have a, if you need a starting spot, 40% of your budget should go into brand and 60% should go into demand, which is probably, there are jaws falling on the floor right now.

'cause they're like, oh my God, if I could only spend 40% on brand, but whether it's 40 or 30 or 20 or whatever,

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: or 50, how, what's a piece of advice you would give to that CMO who's walking into a meeting with C-E-O-C-F-O for how to have the trust, the rigor, the gravitas to pull off them saying, well, you know what, I, I'm gonna approve you spending that money on brand.

Jon Miller: Well, I think if that's the first conversation, you're in trouble,

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: right? I think, you know, that conversation happens after the last six months of talking to them about marketing, about how marketing, [00:21:00] you know, actually affects buying, how buying has changed, where you know where things are, you know, and, and then finally, you know, almost like in a perfect world, Socratically, all right, well what should we do about this Mrs.

CEO? Right?

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: You know? And they're like, well, we probably need to. Improve some of that brand stuff, like, you know, and, and that, that's the point. I'm saying like, th it's a different set of skills for the CMOI think to sort of, you know, talk about these. Now, a couple things I wanna point out. A lot of brand investments take a long time to pay back.

Um, and that is weird in a world where the average tenure of A CMO is just over two years, right? You know, does that mean that, you know, the brand investments you do today are gonna actually pay off for the person after you, you know,

John Common: CMOs, most CMOs are a one term president,

Jon Miller: you know,

John Common: right.

Jon Miller: uh,

John Common: you know, so be careful about, you know, the great society. If you're gonna push that through Congress, you might not be the

Jon Miller: yeah, totally. You know, and it's, I mean, it's ironic that, you know, most CMOs, what's the first thing they do is they change the brand. Right. You know, that . And so, you know, there, there there's some, you know, again, there's some cha cha thinking changing that needs to happen here now.

John Common: you said don't if the first time, if the first thing that comes outta your mouth is I'm gonna need 40% for brand. Um, that is called a career limiting move. But instead you said, educate over time. And, and say, Hey, don't hate the messenger. This is how our buyer buys. This is where they go for information. is how, what percentage are in market at any given time?

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: is what percent are already under contract in a three-year contract and aren't gonna come up.

This is our ICP. Now you tell me where do you wanna

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: if we only focus on hot burning active demand, there are roughly X hundred accounts that we're gonna have to go out there with a knife, fight in our competitors and try to win. Or we can use a portfolio approach to

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: strategy.

Right. That's

Jon Miller: Now the, the, here's the tricky part, right? Let's just say you really wanna move to, let's say a two thirds, one third, you know, split brand and demand. You know, nobody in the world is gonna suddenly get 50% more budget to sort of make that work, right? You're gonna have to take investment away from the demand, you know, and this is the CMO has to get comfortable with this take.

You know, I'm gonna take money away from the demand and move it to, to brand, which is gonna break every assumption you've had around how do your pipeline, how do dollars translate into pipeline, right? You've, I guarantee you most people listening have some model, [00:24:00] you know, that says, all right, in order to generate a hundred million to pipeline, I need a $10 million budget.

You know? Um, and, and in order to really embrace this, like buying is different, I'm gonna put some money in brand. You gotta get to the place where you believe you're gonna generate that a hundred million on 6 million of demand gen investment, because it's gonna get lifted by that 4 million of less measurable brand that you did.

John Common: that's right.

Jon Miller: So it's, it's, it's really both educating your peers, but also you gotta believe it yourself. , you know.

John Common: this is good. I knew, I knew we were gonna have a good conversation. And can I, so I'm gonna And what you did, yes. And I think part of the solution lies in the next pillar, which is how do you define your target audience? So the old playbook tended to go, when it came to target audience, the old playbook tended to say, Hmm, go-to market is go to Tam. Or my go-to market is go to these top five market segments that contain these generic personas. But I'm teeing you up, man. This is one of your sweet spots. But like, um, you want to get more efficient, take a fresh, more rigorous look at how you define your target audience. So talk to us about what the new playbook looks like when it comes to target audience.

Jon Miller: Well, I, I, I, I think ultimately it does come down to understanding where your potential buyers are in their buying journey, and then adjusting your marketing with the right message accordingly.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: Let's break down what, what does that mean, right? So, you know, we're gonna market to a hundred percent of the audience, not the 5% that's in market, but part of it is let's identify that 5%, you know, make sure we know who they are, you know, and make sure we are engaging with them in a really kind of tiered, in appropriate way.

But now for the other 95%, right? We're building our brand with that, right?

John Common: Well, and, but, but isn't the other 95, don't you think? Don't you think that most companies are going after a total market? We, you and I would probably call it an ICP, either they don't have one it is far too broad, and because they are focusing on a too broad of a number of accounts or size of alleged target market, it's forcing them To spend brand or demand resources on accounts that are like, dude, they're not gonna choose you. Why are you wasting the time and money?

Jon Miller: Well, or even maybe they would choose you, but it's gonna be, you know, half as efficient to get them as somebody else,

John Common: yeah. There we go. There we go.

Jon Miller: you know? So, so, yeah. I mean, I, I was, I was gonna get to that. I mean, so, you know, ultimately if we're going to be identifying the people in market, we're gonna be building brand with the, with the rest.

We have to recognize we can't do that for every possible account,

John Common: I see.

Jon Miller: you know? And so you do need to have a really, I think, intelligent process [00:27:00] for choosing how you're gonna refine . Refine that focus,

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: know, and a lot of companies will just do a target account, not target account, you know, uh, I actually think there is a lot of value into doing it with some tiering, tier one, tier two, tier three, non-target.

John Common: Hmm.

Jon Miller: Um, and, and again, don't just, but, but really watch these, don't pick [00:27:20] too many, you know? Um, and that's so hard for marketers. We've been trained to think about volume, right? We've been trained, you know, to think, well, I gotta touch everybody and I gotta do this. And like, you know, but, but the whole idea is when you have fewer dollars and fewer resources, you've gotta re focus them better on the ones that are going to have that [00:27:40] highest, highest impact.

John Common: And I, I think, this pillar lies a big chunk of how that CMO says  in, in return for having the ability to go invest in brand, I have to spend less on demand. How can I do that? And I think part of the answer is in this is what you're talking

Jon Miller: Yeah.

John Common: and

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: we're talking about target audience, do you have even 30 or 45 seconds for, for about how we should be thinking about, um, buying teams? Not just personas, not just accounts, but that sweet spot in the middle buying teams.

Jon Miller: Yeah. So typ typically, uh, we've talked, you know, in, in, in the A BM world or in the account focus world, we're like, well, it's all about the account. It's the account that buys not the person. And we've recognized that we need to look at the account to really understand the signals of what's going on.

'cause any one person doesn't really give the signal. But the reality is the accounts are too big. You know, if le, if leads are too narrow, accounts are too broad, especially for any business that has where you, you, you, uh, one account could represent more than one selling opportunity, which is most common for large enterprises that have multiple products, you know, product, you know, they're sure they're a customer for product one.

But they're just a prospect for product two. And the problem with a BM by itself is you've just say, well, that account is a customer, you know, and you miss the, the nuance of kind of what's going on. So the sophistication of the new playbook, you know, is to be thinking about your account selection and your understanding where buyers are not at the lead basis, not at the account basis, but on that buying group basis.

John Common: Yeah. Okay. Pillar four is how, whether old playbook or new book, we, we have to make decisions about how, what channels we will use to engage our buyers and what kind of buying behavior we encounter when we engage them with those channels. So old Playbook says, engage your audience with our websites, with email, with corporate social feeds, and then try to engage them in those channels with what I would call either kind of corporate focused, brand focused content, or bottom of funnel product focused content. Um, [00:30:00] I think another Traditional or old playbook, uh, engagement channel, uh, aspect is really expecting paid media to do a whole hell of a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to awareness and demand, um, to the exclusion of non-paid channels. Um, I think the old playbook is extremely reliant on interruptive outbound SDR, and I think the old playbook doesn't leverage intent data the way that it could or should. So that's me beating up on the old playbook. So if that's how the old playbook thinks about engagement channels and buyer behavior, what does the new playbook start to look like?

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: does it take encounter and take, take consideration.

Jon Miller: Yeah, I guess I first, I want to take one second to defend the old playbook because

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: you know, as I practiced this at Marketo, you know, the content was not meant to be. About us and about the product and all that. You know, I always preach the content just needs to be educational or entertaining for the target personas.

And I think what's happened is a bastardization, you know, of that playbook, you know, where people ended up doing, you know, what you're, what you just talked about

John Common: Right.

Jon Miller: lost sight of the fact that, you know, this con, you know, the, the, the, the, you, you build your brand on content. Of course that's, I mean, that's what works in B2B, you know, um, but the, the content kind of needs to change, you know, needs to change.

John Common: Well, and but defendant, I just to give you a character witness, I could literally go up my copy of the Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing from that

Jon Miller: Change, yeah.

John Common: I think you authored.

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: that was, that was you were not selling Marketo in that guide.

Jon Miller: So.

John Common: to your point,

Jon Miller: Absolutely. But now, now, so now let's talk about old playbook versus new playbook. 'cause the old playbook was go write a definitive guide. You know, go write this like awesome ebook that was like, full of rich media information that was educational and hopefully entertaining to the target audience.

New playbook. Nobody wants to download a, a big ebook anymore,

John Common: That's right. That's right.

Jon Miller: you know? Um, I mean, I wrote this one at Demand Base, you know, the clearing,

John Common: was that thing? That was like 60 pages

Jon Miller: the nurturing one or the demand base one?

John Common: yeah. The nurturing one.

Jon Miller: The original one was about 40. And over the years, my, my definitive guides have gotten bigger. My most recent one at Demand Base is 200 pages

John Common: Just write a book. John, you already did

Jon Miller: is a book. Yeah. I mean, and, and the reality is like, I mean this, this, this latest one from the Demandbase, I would say is my best book yet in terms of the quality of the content. And it's been hard to get people to download it.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Um,

John Common: And that's

Jon Miller: so.

John Common: You're saying that the old Long form content on a thing that you read is, and not to put words in your mouth, but I think that's what you're, yeah.

Jon Miller: Yeah, well, especially the gated ebook,

John Common: Hmm.

Jon Miller: you know, which has was, I would say the, the, the core [00:33:00] pillar of old playbook thought leadership. So I think new playbook, there's, there's really two things that, um, I think companies are doing that is, uh, innovative and kind of, you know, gonna help stand out. The first one is, you know, executives.

There's, oh, there's some research I just saw on the other day on this one. Um, but it, it was that executives, um, I'm not gonna find an exact quote, but are, are looking for, they're not looking for like the pundit who is just sharing like, Hey, here are 10 best practices for B2B marketing. They're looking for proprietary insights and research that only your company can provide.

And you know, a lot of companies have done this for years with like surveys and other kinds of research studies and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think the gold standard that I've seen is what Gong has done with Gong Labs, you know, and their ability to use machine learning to actually mine all these call recordings across all of their customers

John Common: I agree.

Jon Miller: and create real useful, valuable insights

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: sellers.

Like when should you swear on a sales call? You know? And what words are the best words to bring up pricing? And like literally they have the data that tells you that

John Common: Well, you know, honestly, you know what that sounds like to me in my ears. turning your go to market into a product itself. It's leveraging your market position.

Jon Miller: Sure. Although saying it's a product implies you might be selling it or something. And, and you know, and I think, I think the point is you're giving away value.

John Common: that's my

Jon Miller: Yeah. Um, so I, you know, I think a trend is more companies can and should be, you know, really thinking about how am I going to mine my unique insights and data to produce content or, you know, literally research that nobody else can produce.

Um, the other trend that I see people just starting to talk about and shout out to Anthony Cannata from Audience Plus for being really the champion for this, but sort of moving, you know, instead of moving away from gated content and moving more towards building our own audiences, you know, and communities, you know, which can be as simple as come to my website and just like when you go to the New York Times, you register to read the stuff, you know, you're gonna come to my site and you're gonna register to kind of, you know, access all my great content, but none of it's gated.

You're just registering to kind of, you know, get to it. It's a slightly subtle different mindset, but, you know, I think the goal is, you know, how do we be producing the quality content that, you know, people will sort of say, sure, I will register to be part of that audience. And then you get into like the brand associations of being part of an audience.

Like if you're doing a really good job, people will want access to your [00:36:00] merch. Um, and, and things like that. And when you've, when you're succeeding there, you've built a brand.

John Common: Yeah. Hmm. That's really good. Uh, anything about anonymous buying, dark funnel implications of that?

Jon Miller: I mean, I mean ultimately you've, you know, you know, your buyers are there, you know, and so how are you going to kind of, you know, be part of that conversation? Um, I think the, the things we just talked about can help

John Common: right.

Jon Miller: the, I guess there's one other tactic, which is we did a demand base that was really successful, you know, which was we paid for our best advocates to be members of some of these private communities like pavilion.

You know, it's not cheap to join pavilion, you know, but you know, our 10 or 15 best champions all got membership sponsored by Demandbase and we're not telling them what to write on that thing. But you know what, if there's a thread that's saying, Hey, which is the best a BM platform, we're at least gonna tell them, Hey, there's a thread.

Maybe you can comment on it.

John Common: yeah.

Jon Miller: You know? And that's, that was a very effective tactic for, you know, I think just kind of, you know, tying into some of these dark communities.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Mobilize your advocates.

John Common: Yeah, to, I love that. And to just to round out this pillar of how do you engage your market and what kind of buying behavior will you encounter when you do, I think what the, the piece of advice I'm taking and, and sharing is it's time we need to open the aperture when we think about channels of engagement and, and like what you, what you just said is a really great example of that.

It's like, think more creatively, much more broadly about how you reach your target audience beyond the traditional paid channels and outbound SDR touch your website. Yes. Those are still the workhorses maybe,

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: there's so many more.

Jon Miller: Okay. Maybe if I could just make one other kind of little bit of a, sort of non-sequitur point, but something I realized that we haven't kind of gotten to. You said a, a while ago that, you know, for a lot of companies, display is sort of in the workhorse of brand building. Um, and you know, I think the problem is that, um.

You know, display is a brand building medium and not a demand generation medium. And when people start putting click here buttons on their ads, right? They are just exactly doing the wrong thing.

John Common: Right.

Jon Miller: So whether it's, whether it's display advertising or any other kind of brand building, remember that you're, you're speaking to the reptilian brain, you're trying to connect to the amilia where emotions live and not logic, you know, and, and, and you, we have to adjust how, how we think about our message and our creative accordingly.

And that's an art that has been, I think, largely lost from B2B in the world of the traditional playbook.

John Common: Yeah. It's, it's a [00:39:00] casualty of over-indexing on bottom of funnel.

Jon Miller: Yeah, exactly.

John Common: agree more. So pillar five, data in the old playbook, our use of data. Sure. It was primarily first party data that we have gathered through websites, through events, through forms. Old playbook still was buying lists of dubious recency and quality. Old playbook had disconnected data sets. The obvious disconnection is marketing data versus sales data, but it was even and more disconnected to that. Disconnected by funnel stage, disconnected by platform. Which leads to another aspect of the old playbook, which is there, there was absolutely no single view the prospect or the customer or the account, because we did not integrate that data.

So what does new playbook look like in the pillar data

Jon Miller: So, you know, this one I think is really just about supporting the other things that we've said. You know, like, like the core strategy is. A, we need to focus our resources onto the accounts that are really worth the most worth our time and resources. And then B, we need to be able to understand where the buying groups at those accounts are in their unique journeys.

So we can adjust things accordingly if you just say, well, those are the two things I need to accomplish. The question is, what kind of account intelligence gives me those insights?

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: You know, and that is not go to ZoomInfo and just buy a list of contacts. Right? We need to,

John Common: is it, is it. Go with a cross your fingers and go do an enormous multi-year CDP project. Like what is the answer?

Jon Miller: um, well, you know, maybe to oversimplify it, you know, I always have liked the fire acronym here, just as a [00:41:00] way for people to sort of think about. Kind of how to break this down.

John Common: Yeah,

Jon Miller: So fire, the F stands for fit, you know, and this is the kind of firmographic data that tells you, is this a company you're gonna be interested in?

Typically that's, you know, industry, company size, location. But interestingly, at least for technology companies, a  demand base, we have found that the number one predictor fit is the existing tech stack. You know what, what if, you know, if you set, if you sell technology, what other technologies does that company own?

John Common: sure.

Jon Miller: Um, so that gives you type of data that you need. You know, if you're a tech company, you probably need accurate technographics data. The eye in fire stands for intent.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: And this is partly playing off of that loss of traditional lead scoring that I talked about earlier. Right. You know, you know, you wanna know if somebody's hot, but we no longer can tell, you know, because, you know, by tracking them on our website, they're doing their research elsewhere.

And that's all anonymous. We don't know who that, you know, what people are doing off on our website, but we, but companies don't have a right to privacy. People do. And so we are able to sort of aggregate at the company level what's happening out on the open web and use that to create insight and signals

John Common: Got

Jon Miller: that's become, you know, of possible because of big data and machine learning.

And, and interestingly, people don't talk about this a lot, but there's two kinds of intent data. You know, there's, there's your, your average level of interest in a topic, you know, and you can kind of think about, like, that's your bank account balance, you know, or if you're a math person, like that's the level where you are.

And then there's spikes or the rate of change, the first derivative or your income statement for whatever analogy you want. You know, and, and interestingly, the, the base level is a pretty good indication of whether or not that account, it should be interesting to you. All, you know, 'cause an account that tends to be interested in your topics is a better account than one that isn't.

And it's the spikes that is what tells you they're moving into the 5%. So being a little more nuanced about how we think about intent data, um, the r in fire that stands for relationship. Um, this one is, is squishy as data for some companies, but it's really context and history. You know, like, and sometimes that's your CRM opportunity data.

Have you sold to them in the past, you know, et cetera. Um, there is, there are interesting data sources that help you track how people move across companies over time. So a great source of data is if you had somebody who was a customer at one company and now had they moved to another company.

John Common: Boomerang.

Jon Miller: And then the E is engagement.

And this is, you know, based on a belief that I have that  before somebody spends money with you, they spend time with you. And so can you track. Are they spending time with you? Are they coming to your website? Are they responding to your [00:44:00] campaigns? And again, we may not know the individuals because of this anonymity we talked about, but we can aggregate it and roll it up at least at the account level.

So you can combine these four ingredients, I think, to sort of do those two main things. We talked about who should I be going after and when are they entering that 5% ready market?

John Common: I'm so glad you brought the fire acronym and the fire concept back up. I,

Jon Miller: I'm bringing the fireman,

John Common: dude, you bring the fire, but the, When did you, when did you first bring the three years? Four years ago. But it's still very relevant. It's an, it's a great framework.

Jon Miller: I cannot claim credit for authoring it. Um, like many great ideas, I've, uh, appropriated them from others. Um, I first saw that being used by a company called EverString.

John Common: Oh, I remember EverString

Jon Miller: Yeah.

John Common: Well, props to EverString. I know. We all know some great people that came from there.

Jon Miller: Matt Amon was their head of marketing. Great guy.

John Common: he's, he's totally great. Um, okay. That's great. Okay. Pillar six of the old to the new playbook. Everybody stand up, get some fresh air. We're we're, we're almost there. Pillar six, is the roles by sales and marketing role clarity?

Who does what and how do they orchestrate? So playbook. know this man, you know this. It's a cliche because it's been so painfully true. Old playbook, sales and marketing are in a relay race working in a silo. Marketing's up at top of funnel. SDR and field marketing are kind of in the middle sales at the bottom of the funnel, and CSS is on an island and everybody's giving lip service about alignment, and they do trust falls at the SKO they can't orchestrate their way out of a wet paper sack. So that's the old playbook. What does sales and marketing role clarity, responsibilities look like in the new

Jon Miller: So I think a much better analogy in the new world is a soccer or for some of our overseas friends, a football team, um, you know. You ultimately, the, the, there are, you have players in different positions, right? There are forwards and there are fullbacks. Um, but they are gonna pass the ball back and forth,

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: as they move as a team to achieve a goal.

John Common: right?

Jon Miller: And one of the things I like to think about is like, follow the path the ball takes as it moves down the field. It's gonna be a very non-linear path. And I think that looks kind of like the path our buyer's journeys look like today. Uh, and so it's about people knowing their roles and playing their positions, but ultimately really working together.

So now how do you make that happen,

John Common: Right.

Jon Miller: Well, what does a good soccer team do? You know? And now I'm gonna start mixing some sports analogies, but you know, one of the things is they wanna have as much kind of information sharing as [00:47:00] possible, right? Whether it's yelling out to each other, you know, or just kind of, I think the, what they call field awareness.

You know, and I think the best sales and marketings teams share a lot of information. Um, and then, you know, now switching to American football just for, for a second, you know, what do you do before you run the play? You have a huddle? Uh,

John Common: You have a play for one

Jon Miller: sure. Well, all right. There is a playbook , you know? Fair enough. You know,

John Common: No, but I mean, I'm not being

Jon Miller: no, no, you're right.

You're right. You're right, you're right. Totally. Like, you know, presupposing that exists. You have a playbook.

John Common: yeah,

Jon Miller: but then you have a huddle. And in, in this new world, I mean, something I've seen some of the best companies do, snowflake does this, for example, with their A BM program, is you have this like biweekly meeting, you know, with the sales rep and the marketer and the SDR, right?

And it's five to 10 minutes, it's a standup, and you're talking about that rep's accounts, what's going on and what plays are we gonna run?

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: You know what, it's, it's not rocket science, but it's so powerful. And now, you know, I know a lot of the customers listening work at pretty big companies and you know, an objection sometimes I hear is like, well, we have hundreds of sales reps and there's just little old us in marketing.

How can we do that? And what I try to coach people is we're talking about a 10 minute meeting every two weeks or maybe once a month.

John Common: right.

Jon Miller: You can cover a lot more than you think you can. And the value is probably very little things, few things you can do that will have a better impact with your time.

John Common: That's awesome. That's awesome. Couldn't, couldn't agree more. Um,

Jon Miller: Soccer, not relay.

John Common: soccer.

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: and football.

Jon Miller: Yep. Which has a really good segue into our next pillar around metrics.

John Common: pillar seven metrics, attribution, old playbook. Uh, do I even need to say what the old playbook looks like? It's, it's, uh, you try to measure everything. You end up learning nothing. Old playbook is your, when you do measure shit, you tend to measure the wrong shit. It's leads, it's clicks, it's impressions. Um, you have been trained, unfortunately, by this B2B growth industry to ask and try to answer what was marketing sourced? Completely separate from sales sourced. And, uh, I think in the old playbook, I, this, this, this is the one that me on a weekly basis. John is,

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: um, executives who come to the go to market growth space and they go, which which single tactic is making me grow my company? like, the problem is with the question, man. So, um, that's the old playbook.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

John Common: does the new playbook look like?

Jon Miller: Yeah. I mean, can you imagine a soccer team, ? That had, you know, two different scoreboards, you know, one for scores from the forwards and one from the [00:50:00] fullbacks. You know, like it's, it's absurd. And like, and they would never pass the ball back and forth, you know, or, you know, another analogy I used the other day is like, you know, trying to sort of give credit to a single tactic is like trying to give credit to the one raindrop that started a wave, like, like, like the, like buying is complex.

There's, there are many buyers, there's many touches that are happening across the point, those touches of span marketing and sales. We've gotta move away from that sort of, you know, attri trying to sort of use attribution to assign, you know, or give credit, you know, and, and instead, I think companies really want to focus on what I call, you know, just team-based metrics.

Um, you know, like what is the total pipeline goal? What is the revenue goal? What is the win rate? And ultimately how together are we gonna kind of make the, make all this work? People get really nervous about this one.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: and they're like, well, but I have to have marketing sourced measure measures so I know what's working or not working and you know, which team, you know, do I blame or, you know, or, or whatnot.

I, I, I go back to the sports analogy. There's one scoreboard. You win or lose as a team. That doesn't mean you don't review game tape, right? You, you can still look at individual's performance, but you're not doing it to prove the value. You're doing it to improve the performance. And that's how we should be thinking about using attribution, right?

It's not a, something that's accurate down to like the nth degree. ROI was 18.2%. It's about this worked better than that. We should do more of this and less of that. And, and, and changing our mindsets accordingly, I think are, are, are, are, you know, pretty essential for success here.

John Common: Dear listener, what John Miller just said, is use your metrics reporting and attribution to improve your, I would call 'em go to marketplace or go to market motions, not to prove the value of your left leg versus your right leg. Like how,

Jon Miller: I.

John Common: you get, how did you get to a touchdown and took both of your legs?

Took all of your body, right? So, well, which leg got the credit? The body got the credit right. And I think that's so true. Um, and I also want to pull on a thread, so to speak on one more thing. You know, I'm a CEO. You've been a CEO knowing you, you're gonna be A-C-E-O-I dunno, six hours from now. But, um, uh, I don't think it's that CEOs are dumb or CFOs are dumb and they're like, oh, I can't contemplate the fact that B2B growth is a team sport. they know that, but I think that the reason they sweat us into marketing versus Salesforce, just because they're looking for that accountability again, go play. Go back 60 seconds in this podcast and listen to [00:53:00] what you said, John. 'cause I think what you said is, no, no. Watch the game tape. The way that a team a goal is the combined efforts of each player. And yes, you're allowed to hold each player accountable, but it's in service to the play goal. Am I, am I picking up what you're putting down?

Jon Miller: No, that's exactly right. You know, the other thing that kind of, you know, kicks in here is people are like, oh, but I have to, you know, but I have to have marketing source, you know, versus sales sourced, you know, and back to you're like, you take two legs to score the goal. Like, you have to recognize that will always be false, right?

Like, it will, like, it just, that is not the way buying works, you know? And, and so, you know, as I'm, I'm trying to, you know, help the CMOs and the other marketers who are listening, how do you convince the rest of your executives to move to this world of team-based pipeline, you know, or team-based metrics.

It's by again, showing like, like, you know. It is never true that it is sourced solely by one. Here's the data to, to indicate that that's not true. So why would we spend time and energy trying to figure out this false thing when that has the only implication of hurting the teamwork that we're trying to create?

John Common: it's true. We, we took, we took one ICP one closed one deal with a client of ours, a technology client of ours last year, we did the hard work with them. Spelunking through all of their various systems to identify from the very beginning, top of the funnel all the way through closed one. What were the marketing touches, SDR touches and the sales touches. we mapped it and then showed it at the SKO on a huge screen. And you know what, it showed exactly what you said. Oh, wait a minute. Marketing was involved. I don't know. It was like, it was like an appalling, it was like 780 touches or something, I

Jon Miller: Uhhuh, . Uh huh.

John Common: SDR, it was soup to nuts. It was not] at the top of the funnel.

It was across the whole damn thing. SDRs were small, but powerful, pivotal moments. And the sales was also engaged lot in the middle and a ton at the bottom. But it, it, it, it was the soccer play that you talked about. so just if, if, if you're wondering if it happens in the real world, I've seen it happen in the real world.

So, okay. We have now arrived at Pillar eight, the last of our eight pillars. Old playbook, new playbook relative to technology platforms and tools. So in the old playbook, in my opinion, we had a decade of a total technology SaaS platform buying binge. Those technology applications tended to be purchased in the absence of any kind of overarching guiding strategy. I would describe it as buy it and the ROI will naturally happen. I think that after binging on all of these different tech platforms, they were poorly or under implemented and under [00:56:00] integrated. And then we threw a scoop of low levels of training, and then we allowed marketing and sales to live and run in technology and data silos.

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? So, okay, so that's the old playbook when it comes to technology. What does the new playbook look like? Okay.

Jon Miller: Well, you know, as I start thinking about my next startup, I'm thinking a lot about this, uh, , you know, and what, what, what is future technology look like? Um, you know, so you honestly, John, you probably see more about kind of this consolidation and some of those other trends. And, and actually I'm gonna leave that for you to comment on and, you know, I'll focus on where I've been thinking about, you know, these days, which is just, you know, artificial intelligence and ai,

John Common: Please.

Jon Miller: um, you know, as, you know, something, which I think has the opportunity to truly, fundamentally transform, uh, you know, how we think about all this kind of stuff.

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: Um, you know, if we just sort of use, um, cars as like an analogy, you know, if, if you know, old playbook is your regular car , um, you know, then you know, sort of the second generation, you might argue something like a Tesla. Which is, it's still a car, right? It's, it, it has a four wheels and a steering wheel and a driver, but it's using, um, a lot of really cool advanced technology to do things that regular cars can't do.

Um, but that's still not the next gen, full self-driving where this autonomous thing picks you up and there's no steering wheel and you just get in the backseat and there's like a movie theater and , you know, and you can, you know, um, you know, and, and so I think we're, we're, we're at an evolution right now where I think we're starting to see the Tesla of, you know, MarTech, if you will.

You know?

John Common: assist,

Jon Miller: Yeah. You know, and, and that's exactly what people talk about. AI today is your co-pilot, not your autopilot. Um, but eventually we're gonna get to the full autopilot. And I think an interesting question is, you know, what's it gonna take to get there and how long is it gonna take?

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: but more than, but funda, fundamentally, this is going to have some deep, deep, profound transformations in, in how, you know, in the playbook and, and, and, and I think also in terms of how marketers can use best practices.

You know, so, so anyway, I'm thinking a little bit about this, uh, you know, but, but happy to hear any closing thoughts you have on tech.

John Common: Yeah. Well, you know, I first of all totally agree with everything you said, and I think in, if you come back to the present tense, I think, I think your, your forward looking prediction is right. The question is how long, how hard? And I would add like, what are we, what are we gonna do when, when it gets here?

But [00:59:00] meanwhile, what, what is our target? What does our audience today listening to us do now? And I think there's a couple of just sort of pragmatic things that I would recommend. One is relative to your technology platforms and your tool set, give yourself permission to take a fresh look. At your tech stack, that's what's happening.

I like the tech consolidation. Pick, pick The reason why. could choose because of, um, the, the, the mandate for efficient growth. You could choose because of organizational turnover or lack of training, whatever your reason, yourself permission to to, to fall out of love and not just in love with your tech platforms now and then.  

 What do you do now? Now I'm, I'm a little able to imagine a different tech stack or changes in my tech stack. One is I would make your go-to-market strategy and your growth play. Those growth plays. John and I have been talking about use your updated go-to-market strategy and growth play strategy as your guide to tell you what technology you need, not just buy what you think is cool, buy what you actually need to execute your Go-to-market strategy. like a great idea, right? Secondly, now that you're doing that. As you're doing that, you will now be able to discern what are my must have core platforms, what are my nice to have platforms? You're gonna have see a continuum. Some things you're gonna see, I don't even need that anymore. You also might find technology where you're like, why do I have 40 seats?

I only need five that you can really save some money. You're gonna make your CFO happy, you're also gonna find some core platforms. You're like, holy shit. either don't have that and I need to go get a different or additional core platform, or I do have it. And we need to actually get good at that, either in-house and or with a partner. Last thing I would say is adopt, learn and adopt a rev ops mindset. And I, John, you and I might agree or disagree about this. I didn't say change your org chart. I didn't say go hire a VP of rev ops and

Jon Miller: I like that.

John Common: on, but bring a mindset of this idea of like, if I'm gonna go execute [01:01:00] soccer, like John Miller's telling me I should do. It's gonna be a lot harder if my tech and data is siloed in marketing versus SDR versus sales versus Cs. So Rev ops comes along and says, Hey man, you don't have to change your org chart, but start properly, integrating and thinking about your tech and data stack and analytics through a one revenue team perspective versus silos. So those are some pieces I know the, the, and we can talk to, reach out to me if you want to. I can give you some more specific, like what to do with your use case.

Jon Miller: That's great stuff.

John Common: so we, we've done it. So we've gone through the eight pillars. talked to you about what the old playbook looks like. We've talked to you about what the new playbook looks like, pillar by pillar. Before I pivot into quick lightning round, couple of questions that I want to end the, uh, the, the, the interview with. Is there anything about playbook, about what you and I have talked about? Any kind of key themes that just come up for you, John?

Jon Miller: Um,

I think we hit the highlights to, to, to be honest. You know, it's, it's, I, the, the main just thing I'll, I, I'll come back with though is, you know, I, I don't, you know, I don't wanna be the guy who's just saying, oh, you know, this is what you should do. And also, oh, and it's gonna be easy, , you know, because

John Common: this is a great point. This

Jon Miller: I wanna acknowledge that this is hard.

John Common: Yes.

Jon Miller: You know, that that changing how other executives think about brand investments is hard. You know, especially given the average tenure of the CMO, you know, that change, like if you work at a private equity company, it's not so easy just to come along and say, I'm not gonna track marketing source pipeline anymore.

You know, folks. Um, so I guess, I guess that's the takeaway here is like knowledge that like, I believe this is the direction we need to be moving in. I believe this is hard, and I hope by doing podcasts like this and talking about it, you know, it's forming, you know, a movement that eventually will support marketers to move in the direction we need to move

John Common: I love that is such a great place to end. This old playbook is, is is a big fat dose of pragmatic realism. Uh, thank you. That's great. Alright, I'm gonna, we're gonna go into lightning round now. Um, lightning round. You know how it works. It's hard, easy to say, hard to do. I'm gonna ask you a question and I want you to, you don't have to overthink it, just let it go.

All right. So name trend within B2B marketing and go to market that you think our field is not paying enough attention to Currently.

Jon Miller: Let me say our field.

John Common: Yeah. Like this

Jon Miller: Oh, oh, oh, oh.

John Common: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Uh, first reaction is, you know, as much as we're paying attention to ai, you know, um, you know, it's funny, there's a trend here where we tend to sort of over overemphasize o overestimate the impact something has in the short term and underestimate the impact it will have in the long term. And I think that's exactly where, what's going [01:04:00] on.

You know,

that's.

John Common: That's just like, that's, that's fantastic. Alright. One, I, we're gonna, this is gonna be hard, but just stay with me. Uh, you have been A-C-E-O-A-C-M-O-A-C-P-O-A C3 po. An A-F-L-C-I-O. Um, you are very qualified to give this advice. I'd like you to give one piece of advice for the CMO, how the CMO can have a higher quality, more effective relationship with the following executives. So they're all, it's the, the, the mission here is how can A CMO improve her or his relationship with, I'll go first. CEO one piece of advice.

Jon Miller: Well, I mean, I think it's true for all of these, right? You know, I, which is, I mean, so I will have this kind of, the, the generally the, the, the same advice, um, which is as a mark, as marketers, I, we don't spend enough time, I think marketing, our marketing internally. I. Um, and as, and I've alluded to enough time, you know, really bringing the insights and the data to help people understand, you know, what's happening in marketing and how it's changing and how marketing actually works.

So, you know, the, the one piece of advice is, you know, that's a  big part of your job. is kind of, you know, that peer-to-peer communication, education. Um, and you know, you, you know, they're, you know, you have to do it in a way that's gonna have them lean in, right? And not just like, Hey, here's, here's John coming, talking about the way marketing works again.

You know? Uh, so it's, as I said, it's, it's a different set of skills potentially, but

John Common: Yeah,

Jon Miller: it's really, I think it's, it's what's gonna make the winners in the next decade.

John Common: you're right. I was about to,  I was about to force you to answer that for leader, C-F-O-C-P-O. But I think your answer is right. I think you're like, for all of them, learn how to market your marketing and you didn't say sell your marketing. You said market your marketing, which is education and engagement,

Jon Miller: Yep.

John Common: not Okay. Um, XL explosion, XLG explosion, the XLG explosion, meaning growth, community led growth, near bound outbound, A BX, this explosion of go-to market motions. In your opinion, is it truly new is it just new names for an old thing, is it a bit of both?

Jon Miller: Um, I, I think there, there's, there's always value in naming something that exists already, you know, and like putting a structure and a framework onto things. Um, so, you know, so yeah. Yes, it is both, right? You know, IE people have marketed with partners before in the past. Um, you know, at, you know, our first product at Marketo, you could come to our website and fill out a [01:07:00] credit card, you know, enter your credit card number and start using it.

Lo and behold, that's product like growth, you know?

John Common: right?

Jon Miller: so yeah, a lot of these things have been around, but, but at the same time, by naming it, by defining it, by codifying it, you know, I think you can kind of, you know, bring the best practices more to bear and bring the discipline forward. So, you know, I, I'm not against, you know, whatever the sort of the, the, the next thing is because everybody's trying to do the same thing, which is, you know, let's help everybody do better.

And then the other factor, which I don't think enough discussion goes into is like, not every business is the same. We sell different kinds of products at different price points to different potential personas with different kinds of sales cycles. The reality is, you know, it's not one size fits all, you know, and so it's, it's okay to have PLG and a BM and demand gen, et cetera, because, you know, they're really just all flavors of go-to market.

John Common: That's right. Fantastic. Alright, last question to round it out. Um, kind of, I kind of want to it home a little bit. Um, how do you get out of work mode and take care of yourself given, uh, are, you're so busy. We're so busy. Work is all encompassing. How do you take care of yourself? How do you get outta your head?

Jon Miller: Sure. Well, you know, I mean, there is some research, you know, that, that, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs are pretty good at compartmentalization, you know, um, and, and I think that is a, uh, an important survival skillset. So, you know, I, I, I think I, first of all, I have that ability to kind of, you know, nope.

Okay, now, now it's time for something else. You know, working out, working out is important to me. I make time every day to work out. Since the pandemic started, you know,

John Common: Mm-Hmm.

Jon Miller: I was doing yoga almost every day.  Now it's at least four or five times a week. Um, and then my vice is, I still kind of end my day usually by making a cocktail and, and, and something about like, I'm making the cocktail the day's over there is, there's a bit of a transition moment there for me too.

John Common: That's fantastic. Um, I think I might be running that playbook myself, my friend.  Um, man, you, uh, you know how to do this. I really appreciate your time, John

Jon Miller: Thank you for, you know, it's a great conversation. Thanks for kind of pushing me to push the talking points forward.

John Common: Yeah man. Alright, well, we'll let you go and, uh, thanks again for being on Growth Driver.

Jon Miller: Cheers.