B2B buyers want less sales contact by Mike Pastore

B2B buyers are shifting toward self-serve—around 61% don’t want to talk to sales reps unless it’s absolutely necessary. But right at those crunch-time moments, like choosing the best solution or weighing risk, they actually welcome sales’ help to simplify complex decisions. Sellers who step in with tailored insights during these key moments are 3x more likely to close deals than those who just stick to basic 1-on-1 conversations.

Stop Segmenting Like It’s 2015: Why B2B Marketers Are Still Struggling to Reach the Right Buyers by Sonia David

B2B marketers are still stuck in the past, using outdated firmographic and account-based segments instead of focusing on real humans and their actual behavior. They’re often targeting companies instead of the decision-makers, influencers, blockers, or users inside them. To do better, teams need to shift toward dynamic, behavior-driven segmentation that maps out who’s involved and what they’re actually doing.

Forrester: AI search is reshaping B2B marketing by Mark Brohan

Forrester’s report shows that AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are shaking up B2B marketing by delivering “zero-click” answers—2–6% of organic traffic now comes from AI, and that share is growing over 40% each month. Instead of browsing vendor websites, buyers are getting smarter insights straight from AI, arriving at sites more informed, sticking around longer, and asking deeper questions. Marketers need to rethink their playbook and craft bold, AI-friendly messaging, optimize for generative search, and create clear, quotable content that AI systems love to surface.

Influencer marketing best practices for B2B brands by Tim Murphy

Influencer marketing in B2B is most powerful when it’s interactive and collaborative, like hosting polls, challenges, or user-generated content campaigns with influencers rather than just handing them scripted posts. Webinars aren’t dead, but they should educate and entertain with dynamic formats, polls, and Q&A rather than dry slide decks. In short, successful B2B influencer campaigns lean into co-creation, meaningful engagement, and authentic content that respects both your brand goals and the influencer’s voice.

Why B2B Sales And Marketing Need To Stop Aligning And Start Unifying by Sarah Goodall

Sales and marketing teams in B2B are past the “alignment” stage. It isn’t enough anymore. Instead, unification is about building shared priorities, programs, and success metrics from the ground up. Right now, sales blames marketing for low-quality leads and marketing blames sales for letting leads go cold, but that back and forth just slows everything down. Treat sales and marketing as one unified engine that collaborates from planning to results, showing up together for buyers and measuring performance as a team.

Have a wonderful weekend and thank you for reading!  If you have B2B news sources you rely on we’d love to hear about them.  Please share them with us.  

The post B2B Reads: Buyers, Out-Dated Segmentation, AI Search, Influencer Marketing, and More appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

Choosing the right marketing consulting firm can be overwhelming—there’s no shortage of options, and it’s not always easy to tell who’s truly the right fit for your business. We get it. That’s why we put together this FAQ: to introduce ourselves, share what we’re all about, and help you decide whether we might be the right partner for your marketing needs.

In this blog, we’ve compiled the most frequently asked questions we hear from B2B marketers when getting to know Heinz Marketing. 

What is Heinz Marketing?

Established in 2008, Heinz Marketing is B2B marketing agency that brings a full funnel approach to help clients drive measurable results that bolsters revenue impact and boosts sales pipeline.

We are a team of sales and marketing experts that create custom strategies for clients that are rooted in our Predictable Pipeline Methodology, which are the foundational elements of any organization.

(And no, we are not affiliated with Kraft Heinz, the ketchup company!)

What does Heinz Marketing do?

Here are some of the services we provide:

1. GTM Strategy: Establish foundational marketing elements (Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), buyer personas, buying committee, messaging, content, sales cycle and enablement, resources and technology, and metrics).
2. ABM: Develop and execute ABM strategies including sales training based on our Predictable Pipeline work
3. GTM Orchestration: Develop and implement the planning to execution process including roles and responsibilities, inputs and outputs, communication, and more
4. Customer-led Growth: Quarterly strategies with themes and content ideas to keep customers happy and turn them into evangelists for your company
5. Staff Augmentation and Program Implementation: We can augment your team when you need export support whether it be program development and execution or strategic work

Why should I use Heinz Marketing?

We bring a foolproof approach for exceeding sales, marketing and go-to-market goals with our clients. That full funnel approach is what we call the Predictable Pipeline Method – a blueprint for b2b demand generation success.

More importantly, we treat every engagement as an opportunity to positively impact careers and lives by enabling work that matters, for your team and ours. We’re a team of thoughtful sales and marketing experts who understand the value in driving measurable results that bolsters your team’s revenue impact and boosts your sales pipeline.

Who uses Heinz Marketing?

B2B companies that understand the value of marketing and sales foundations who need help navigating complex sales cycles and cross-team collaboration.

We typically work with mid to enterprise level organizations, headquartered in the United States, but we have worked with marketing teams across the globe. 

We have worked with clients across many industries – manufacturing, healthcare, SaaS, cybersecurity, professional services, and more, including notable names like Pathfactory, MW Industries, and Vera Whole Health. 

Case studies and testimonials can be found on our Client Results page. If you’re curious about a specific industry, reach out and we’d be happy to provide more information.

What are your mission and values?

Our purpose is to positively impact careers and lives by enabling work that matters – and we do that through work for our clients, impacts to our community, and supporting our employees.

Our values are important, and we seek clients and employees that are a match and bring the following to their work:

• Poise – Bringing order and predictability to high-pressure and ever-changing situations.
• Drive – Learning and growing while focused on finding the right solutions for our clients.
• Confidence, Without Ego – Coachable and transparent while eager to continually improve.
• Commitment – Making our clients, our team, ourselves and our families and communities better.
• Can-Do Attitude – Proactive and evolving to always look for the best in people and situations.

Which marketing and sales tools do you support? 

We are tool agnostic, meaning we can work with whatever you have in your marketing and sales technology stack. We have experience across marketing automation platforms, CRM systems, sales automation, analytics, project management, etc.

Who is the founder/owner?

Matt Heinz started Heinz Marketing back in 2008 and continues to serve as President of Heinz Marketing today. He is a prolific author, podcast host, and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, with 15+ years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. He is a dynamic speaker, memorable not only for his keen insight and humor, but his actionable and motivating takeaways.

To keep up with Matt, follow him on LinkedIn.

How can I learn more?

We’re happy to answer any questions we’ve missed here. Check out our website, blog, resources, sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.

Want to chat? Email us for a free brainstorm session!

Image by CocosICE from Pixabay

The post Frequently Asked Questions About Heinz Marketing appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

With B2B growth increasingly powered by customers—not just marketing and sales—traditional funnel models are falling short. Linear approaches miss the nuance of how companies actually adopt and scale solutions internally.

To address the issue, I’ve built an Account Development Model rooted in the principles of product-led (PLG) and customer-led growth (CLG) and inspired, in part, by the theory of innovation diffusion. This model reflects the real internal journey accounts take—from first signal to full strategic partnership—by aligning sales, marketing, customer success, and product around how buyers adopt innovation over time. The model can apply to a single buyer journey or a longer, customer-led land-and-expand journey. And that is where it truly shines.

Here’s a breakdown of the model and how each stage supports long-term, sustainable B2B growth.

1. Awareness and Identification

This is where the seeds of CLG are planted. A buying team becomes aware of a problem—or recognizes a broader trend—that requires change. Your role here is to ensure your solution is visible in the proper context, but more importantly, that your message resonates with the earliest signals of need. One member of your target audience may even be trialing the free version of your product (if applicable) on their own.

At this point, the goal isn’t to push or sell—it’s about being discoverable when buyers are quietly conducting their research.

2. Interest and Exploration

Once awareness is established, a subset of individuals begin to explore their options. These are often change agents or internal champions seeking solutions. They’re not building a business case yet—they’re gathering inspiration.

Your strategy here is to educate, enable, and empathize. Help them understand what’s possible, not just what your product does.

3. Evaluation and Analysis

This is where buying teams widen. The focus turns to feasibility, internal alignment, and organizational fit. Procurement, IT, finance, and leadership get involved.

Instead of selling harder, your job is to make evaluation easier: clear case studies, comparison tools, frameworks for internal alignment, and collaborative decision-making.

4. Trial and Pilot

For CLG to succeed, early adopters within the organization must experience value firsthand. This isn’t just about running a pilot—it’s about designing a pilot that leads to a “wow” moment for the right people.

Help buyers test your solution in the context of their unique workflows. This is where product and customer success become critical partners.

5. Initial Adoption and Strategic Buy-In

Once the pilot succeeds, a few strategic leaders begin to take a more active role. They see potential, but haven’t scaled it across the organization yet.

CLG’s success depends on these early internal advocates. Help them shine by enabling them to share outcomes internally and align with others.

6. Integration and Optimization

Adoption expands beyond the pilot group. Integration into systems, processes, and teams begins. Optimization becomes key—this is where you move from proving value to improving outcomes.

The goal here is to reduce friction and increase stickiness. Don’t just support users—support internal change management.

7. Full Adoption and Internal Advocacy

The product is now embedded across teams. Champions emerge organically. Users help other users. Internal Slack channels pop up. You’ve gone from vendor to partner.

CLG occurs when your customers begin driving internal growth, without you in the room.

8. Achieving Critical Mass

At this stage, usage is widespread. More importantly, your solution is seen as essential infrastructure. It’s easier for new stakeholders to adopt than to opt-out.

This is your tipping point. Your job? Don’t take your foot off the gas—double down on customer education, enablement, and success metrics.

9. Strategic Partnership

Now, you’re not just solving a problem—you’re shaping strategy. You’re co-developing roadmaps. You’re seen as a long-term enabler of competitive advantage.

This is the north star of CLG: when your success and the customer’s success are so interdependent, growth becomes mutual.

10. Long-Term Partnership and Account Growth

Here, you begin to expand use cases, business units, and geographies. You’re not reselling—you’re co-building the future.

What is your best growth lever at this point? Listening deeply, iterating collaboratively, and guiding the customer to the next step.

11. Advocacy and Referrals

Finally, customers become evangelists. They speak at conferences. They join your advisory council. They refer peers.

This is where CLG becomes exponential. Your best salespeople don’t work for you—they work for your customers.

Final Thoughts: The Power of Mapping Growth to Adoption

What makes this model different is that it doesn’t treat the “deal close” as the finish line. It doesn’t assume internal adoption is linear or even guaranteed. It respects how real buying teams behave inside complex organizations—and it gives sales, marketing, CS, and product a shared language for growing accounts over time.

In a customer-led world, the organizations that win aren’t the ones shouting the loudest—they’re the ones listening the closest.

Let your customers lead the way. You need to meet them at each stage of the journey.

If you want to chat about CLG or anything in this post, please reach out: acceleration@heinzmarketing.com

The post Rethinking Account Development: A Customer-Led Growth Model for B2B appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

If you read our B2B Reads, then you know I have been digging into custom GPT-building for some of our internal operations.  This post is a compilation of the lessons learned on properly structuring these things for customer marketing.  The goal is to speed you up in getting to a workflow that integrates better AI tools.  Before we get too far into it, here are a few other things to note:

1. If you are unfamiliar with custom GPTs, I will try to sum it up. They are essentially modules within ChatGPT (or other option) that you can load with prompts and knowledge-base documents, and instructions for how to use them.  They are great for repeatable processes such as persona creation, campaign planning, messaging design, and plenty of other functions.
2. This is not a guide on the mechanics of building them, if you need that I recommend you check out Andy Crestodina’s excellent guide. He has lots of other practical ideas and advice on this too.
3. I am still pretty new to this function, but we are on this journey together.
4. This is from doing “customer-led growth” work, but the concepts could easily be adapted to other areas of marketing.
5. Know your AI usage policies before uploading data/templates/materials into ChatGPT. Proper care should be taken to avoid any sensitive data being divulged.

There is a lot of trial and error in building these tools.  I have gone back and tweaked/adjusted GPTs that we have used for campaign development, persona creation, and others.

While not an agent, this is closer to the concept than just talking to ChatGPT.  Access to targeted information, templates, and docs brings it much closer to a purpose-built function.

And it can all be built in plain English.  Sweet.

If you are looking for ideas on what to do with a new CLG GPT, here are a few relevant posts from our blog:

• Rethinking the Account Development Growth Model
• FAQ: CLG Metrics
• Practical Tips for Precision Customer Marketing Campaigns

Let’s get into it.

Give it mixed data

For purposes like designing campaigns, generating user personas, or identifying opportunities, custom GPTs function best when given access to both quantitative and qualitative data sets.

This is an old soapbox for me: LLMs really open the doors for marketing to embrace mixed-methods analysis.  With clean and compliant data sets, ChatGPT is great at digging through qualitative data like survey responses, call transcripts, and account notes.  This stuff is time-consuming and often subjective.

Link this with nice, objective, quantitative data about things like product adoption, usage, and churn, and your GPT gets a great grasp of the behavioral patterns and the context that triggers them.

Admittedly, this one is tough to activate.  Cleaning is the challenge here.  How much time this takes depends on the policies, volume, and types of data you are working with, but expect to spend a lot of the time on this part.  The good news is you don’t have to do this very often.

I imagine it is good to update this data on a regular interval (like yearly or 6 months depending on cycle length), but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Use the GPT to troubleshoot itself

This one was pretty fun.  Obviously you don’t want a front-facing GPT to reveal its inner workings, but while working internally on it, I find it is helpful to have it analyze its own actions.  More specifically, I found that if I built some troubleshooting specifications into the instructions, that was a great way to get to answers faster.

I would then go through my campaign strategist GPT.  Each time an answer was wrong or different, we would dig in together.  In fact, the most useful thing I found to do was to have the GPT write instructions for itself on how to reach and replicate the desired outcome.

It is a pretty meta thing to have it writing itself when the outcome is incorrect, but it makes sense.  Who knows you better than yourself?

You can also take this one step further and even have it optimize its own prompts and instructions.  Andy suggests this in his guide, and I found that to be an excellent tip.

Don’t have it make decks

Ok, this one I decided wasn’t worth the troubleshooting time.  Making decks seems like a low ROI activity.

A custom GPT can read decks and pull out information, but I have had a real bear of a time trying to get it to input information into a deck template.  Some solve must exist, but I have not found a time-efficient way to make it consistently produce a template-correct deck.  My lesson is to just avoid it altogether.

Technical difficulties aside, converting to the deck yourself is a good exercise to review the work that the GPT did.  It forces some critical thought. If you remove too many of these human checkpoints, things get real same-y, real fast.

Be specific in defining template usage

“Be specific” was something my high school teachers said when search engines were just getting started.  Some things never change.

Even though it struggles to fill out slide templates, it can still use templates quite effectively.  Specificity is important to effective usage.  For example, I want our GPT to put out information that is relevant to our campaign template, without going too far astray.  However, I don’t want it to make a deck since future users won’t know to expect it to mess that up somehow.  So I got specific, and now the responses are structured in a way that aligns with my needs, and are faster to be review-ready.

Give it supporting information

Think about what all you ultimately need from why you are using the GPT, and give it support documents.

For example, on a whim I fed our CMO’s Guide to Marketing Orchestration into the knowledge base of our Campaign Strategist GPT.  Now, when it spits out campaign strategy thoughts, it includes next steps that are aligned with our orchestration processes and workflows.  I did not ask for this, it just did it.

Operational documents are really solid adds to the knowledge base as the GPT will naturally look to connect the dots.

Here are some other ideas that will help get you further, faster:

1. High performing ad-creative. You could target this by customer segments, with ads named according to the segments they performed well in.
2. Project plan templates. This will help it suggest immediate next-steps.
3. Your org chart.  This helps it assign roles for next steps.  It misses the boat here sometimes, but it has gotten me more than halfway most times.
   1. You can specify that it assign next steps to a role rather than an individual, it does this pretty well.
4. Email/report templates if you want it to suggest points to add to your next QBR or whatever.

Conclusion

So there we go, 5 lessons I have learned from build custom GPTs to help with customer marketing.  Happy to talk through this with you, if you want to schedule a conversation please reach out to us.

The post Lessons from Structuring GPTs for Customer-Led Growth appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

Your buyers are telling you what they need long before they ever talk to sales. But too many teams are still focused on vanity engagement metrics that don’t translate to pipeline.

If you’re still optimizing for form fills, you’re missing the real cues.

Sales cycles are slower. More deals stall. And across marketing, sales, and customer success, teams are flying blind without a clear view of what buyers and customers are actually signaling.

This post breaks down how leading revenue teams are cutting through the noise—triaging signals, mapping expansion paths, and building cross-functional systems to act. It includes frameworks and checklists you can put to work right now.

1. Signal ≠ Intent: Triage Before You Trigger

Most teams treat all engagement as good engagement. But that’s how you burn out your SDRs and tank your conversion rates.

Instead, implement signal triage. Layer signals across two axes:

• Customer Health (based on usage, sentiment, adoption)
• Customer Value (based on ACV potential, strategic fit)

This matrix gives you four segments:

Signal Triage Grid: Health vs Value Matrix

2. Whitespace Mapping: Your Hidden Revenue Engine

Once you’ve identified expansion-worthy accounts, you need to map their whitespace.

This means identifying:

• What products/services they don’t have yet
• What needs or usage patterns suggest they’re ready for more
• What outcomes they’re trying to achieve

Whitespace Example: Account-Level View

3. From Signals to Sequences: Activation Across Teams

Capturing signals is just step one. The real power comes from aligning your GTM teams to act on those cues.

That means:

• CSMs receiving alerts from product usage or NPS spikes
• Marketing launching dynamic nurtures triggered by signal thresholds
• Sales following up with tailored plays linked to behavior or milestones

Example Workflow

4. Don’t Just Measure Backward: Use Forward-Looking Metrics

Pipeline acceleration and customer growth depend on early indicators, not just closed-won data.

Start tracking:

• NPS shifts over time (especially early surges)
• Product usage increases by role or segment
• First-time logins from new personas
• Referral or advocacy behavior
• Self-serve training engagement

5. CLG Tactics Checklist: Execute with Confidence

Signal Strategy

[ ] Define and document what “meaningful signals” look like at each stage
[ ] Tier signals by buyer intent, product engagement, and customer sentiment
[ ] Segment signals by account type
[ ] Document signal triggers and the GTM responses tied to each

Activation Readiness

[ ] Set signal thresholds that trigger outreach
[ ] Map signal types to specific plays
[ ] Use modular content aligned to signal themes
[ ] Build cross-functional workflows triggered by signal behavior

Expansion Engine

[ ] Maintain a Health vs Value matrix for active customers
[ ] Create a whitespace map per top account
[ ] Enable QBRs with signal insights
[ ] Track forward-looking signals (NPS, referrals, usage trends)
[ ] Compare results of signal-based vs manual campaigns

Conclusion: Build Your Signal Stack

The best-performing teams aren’t just reacting to buyer behavior—they’re predicting it. And they’re aligning Sales, Marketing, and CS to act before the window closes.

It’s not about chasing MQLs. It’s about decoding curiosity and acting with precision.

Want to see how real revenue leaders are making it happen? Join us for two upcoming webinars to see these tactics in action:

• July 17: “From Signals to Revenue: The Modern Growth Playbook for CMOs and CROs” (Register today!)
• August 6: “Ghosted to Growth: Revenue Leaders on Buyer Reengagement” (Register today!)

Send us an email to discuss how to make your full lifecycle marketing and growth more efficient. 

The post Read the Room: Operationalizing CLG Signals That Actually Matter appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

CMOs who consistently earn the trust and support of their CFOs know that predictability is everything. Through our work with high-performing marketing leaders, we’ve seen a common thread: they don’t just report on marketing performance—they forecast it with accuracy and speak to it in terms their CFOs care about. In our last post, we explored how sales velocity can serve as a starting point for forecasting marketing’s revenue impact. But to build true credibility and secure long-term investment, CMOs must go further. This article builds on that foundation, highlighting how successful marketing leaders leverage conversion data, benchmarks, and financial packaging to create a trusted, mutually beneficial partnership with finance.

Why Forecasting Matters to CFOS

CFOs are responsible for managing risk and ensuring steady financial performance that meet their investors expectations. When forecasts miss, CFOs must act. In many times this means tightening of budgets.

True story: fewer than 25% of sales teams achieve 75% forecast accuracy or higher. Even worse, less than half of sales leaders trust their own projections. If sales—whose forecasts are revenue-based—are that uncertain, marketing projections often draw even more skepticism. And when projections feel like guesswork, CFOs play it cautiously by cutting budgets.

That’s why accuracy—not optimism—is essential. When your forecasting is consistently close to actuals, marketing earns a seat at the table. With predictive data and diligent calibration, CMOs prove to be their business partners, not budget line items.

Beyond Sales Velocity: Elevating Your Forecasting Game

Sales velocity is a great place to start—it’s simple, intuitive, and directly tied to revenue. But earning lasting confidence from your CFO requires a more complete view. The most successful CMOs layer in additional forecasting tools and conversion data to build models that are not only accurate, but defensible. Here’s how to take your forecasting game to the next level.

1. Funnel Conversion Modeling

Track your end-to-end funnel metrics and calculate:

Start with your top-line goal (e.g., $X revenue), convert with known rates, and reverse-engineer needed funnel volume. This bottoms-up approach gives your CFO a transparent, data-rooted forecast.  Here’s a spreadsheet to get you started.

2. Predictive Analytics & Historical Lift

Tools like MadKudu, Clari, and 6sense surface buying signals and model how prospects behave. AI/ML models have shown the ability to boost forecast accuracy by up to 20–30% .

Historical lift analytics also help forecast: If a $100K account-based effort generated 20% more pipeline historically, show how similar investments should produce predictable returns again.

3. Forecasting Cadence & Rigor

Forecast accuracy improves when reviewed actively. Korn Ferry found formalized forecast reviews bump forecasted win rates by 17% . Establish regular review cycles (weekly/biweekly) to tighten assumptions and keep adjustments plugged in.

Benchmarks CFOs Actually Care About

Benchmarks can be a valuable reference point—they give CFOs familiar ratios and comparisons to evaluate marketing performance. But they’re just that: reference points, not rules. Relying too heavily on benchmarks without the context of your specific business model, sales cycle, or go-to-market maturity can lead to flawed conclusions. Use them to inform your strategy, not define your success. Here are a few metrics CFOs tend to trust and how to use them wisely.

• MQL → SQL Conversion
• Opportunity → Win Rate
• Pipeline Coverage Ratio
• Customer Acquisition Cost
• LTV Ratio
• Forecast Accuracy

These benchmarks help finance evaluate whether marketing plays are efficient, scalable, and financially sound.

Package Marketing in CFO Language

Even the most impressive marketing results can fall flat if they’re not communicated in a way the CFO understands and values. To build credibility and secure future investment, CMOs need to translate marketing impact into the financial terms that matter—think efficiency, ROI, and forecast accuracy. Here’s how to frame your results so they resonate in the boardroom.

Additionally, track forecast accuracy:

“We predicted $1M in pipeline last quarter; actuals hit $1.05M (+5% vs forecast).”
“For this quarter, we’re forecasting $750K pipeline, based on funnel metrics and historical lift from similar campaigns.”

Bring the CFO into the Process

CFOs are far more likely to support marketing investments when they’ve had a hand in shaping the assumptions behind them. Involving finance early in your planning and forecasting process creates shared ownership of the numbers—and greater confidence in the outcomes. It’s not just about alignment; it’s about building a foundation for smarter, faster decisions across the business.

• Invite finance to model reviews—ask for their input.
• Share dashboards that show marketing spend vs. forecasted pipeline and outcomes.
• Create a rolling forecast model—updated monthly—to reflect real-time changes.
• Cite data-backed benchmarks and models so finance sees the rigor in assumptions

A Deloitte study found 79% of high-growth companies have CFOs and CMOs aligned on performance metrics—compared to just 55% in slower-growing firms. Proving alignment = growth.

Why this Matters

This isn’t just about delivering numbers—it’s about elevating the role of marketing as a revenue-responsible function with a true seat at the table. When CMOs use accurate forecasting, meaningful benchmarks, and financial language, they gain more than just CFO approval—they gain strategic influence. A strong partnership with finance helps marketing lead, not follow—shaping priorities, guiding investment, and having a real say in how the business grows. For marketers, it’s not just about protecting budget—it’s about owning outcomes and having greater control over your team’s (and your own) trajectory inside the organization.

If you’d like to talk to one of our consultants about how to get started creating a revenue-responsible marketing function for your organization, please feel free to reach out to us.

The post Data-Driven Forecasting and Budget Justification – A CMO’s Guide to Speaking the CFO’s Language (Part 2) appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

In my recent post (5 common CMO questions about marketing orchestration), I said one of the best things you can do to improve your orchestration is hire project managers.  Well my thinking on that… hasn’t changed!

PMs are arguably the most important role in the orchestration needs of anything, but marketing is especially in need.  The problem is that since PMing is an investment that doesn’t directly produce revenue, it can be a tough sell.

That is usually because folks aren’t accustomed to seeing PMs in marketing teams.  While I am a firm believer in a PM being key the moment you start producing content and campaigns, there are some teams with greater need.  If you are a 25+ person team with multiple cross-functional groups, for example.  If you have multiple GTM motions, product groups, or any time at all you have an internal creative resource servicing requests from multiple teams.

To further drive the point home, here are some reasons marketing teams should really consider hiring some PMs:

1. CEO to Engineer, everyone has a ton of ideas about how they would do marketing right. PMs can help filter and direct this in productive ways or divert it entirely.
2. Most marketing efforts change hands multiple times. PMs are necessary to facilitate this.
3. Project management tool usage is difficult to get consistent. Improving this is a core remit and success metric for PMs.
4. Without consistent, owned time tracking then SLAs will be nearly impossible to get accurate.

There are many more reasons.  To put it frankly, if great PMs can get projects done in spite of bad organization, imagine what they can do in well-orchestrated efforts.

Just like any other function, PMing needs to be supported properly to make sure you get the most out of it.  Here are the 5 biggest things to consider when designing how PMs should operate within a marketing team.

As an added bonus, at the bottom I have some questions for you to help you figure out where to start.

Impact on Accountability

One of the biggest roles of a PM is to hold the line about process.  Unfortunately, many PMs can’t really hold accountability to process because they aren’t the manager of the individual contributors.  If the leadership on each team isn’t willing to support the PM in holding their direct reports accountable, then the PM process cannot be feasibly enforced by the PM.

If you are going to bring in a PM, all of the team leads need to be on board with the process, how it works, and why it matters.  They should take PM feedback and requests seriously.

A good example of when this goes wrong: PM tool usage.  Most PM tools are supposed to be center points of communication.  Yet inevitably conversations happen elsewhere and are never logged, comments are mad-houses, and the rigidity of the tool yields lost updates if things go awry.

PMs should be maintaining these project boards as they grow and evolve.  Like a bonsai tree, projects and steps will need to be intentionally developed and pruned as they go and the ground shifts beneath them.

Marketing’s inherent unpredictability requires the finesse and flexibility that only a PM can provide.

Boundaries

We all love boundaries, until they get in our way.  Yet boundaries are crucial to the wellbeing of the team and quality of the work.  PMs need to have the power to hold the boundaries when appropriate and escalate when needed.

RACI’s can help define boundaries

Sometimes priorities shift, and often this kills marketing efforts quickly.  Yet, if there is a process for handling that, then PMs can make sure things are kept shipshape even in the face of change.

At one client, we were tasked with developing a prioritization model for marketing work.  We did, basing it on one leadership-subjective field and three objective ones.  The key to the efficacy of this tool was that PMs were empowered to lead this prioritization process.  This included going to leadership and facilitating their discussion around the subjective field (which was often the tiebreaker of the objective fields).

The result was clarity around what teams should be working on, and an accepted process for prioritization shifts.

The bonus of this is that the PMs were able to articulate the consequences of changing a priority.  This means that leadership made informed and committed decisions, making life much easier for the creative teams.

Power over process

Since PM’s live the process, they should be the owners of the process.  What are the steps?  Which ones are necessary?  What redundancy can be removed?  How can persistent bottlenecks be designed out?

These are all important questions that can sink a workflow if not dealt with, over and over again.  The work of optimizing a process is never done, especially as teams grow and scale.

Typically this is done through retrospectives at the end of specific projects.  Here is how we built it at a client:

During projects, PMs would use the risk-management function of Adobe Workfront.  They would log project risks and categorize them but an accepted group of standard categories.  These are reviewed at the end of the project, and on a quarterly basis by the project management office (PMO).

Consistent risks to projects indicate a pattern that can be changed/adjusted.  This process brings together data from across projects so that templates, workflows, and roles can all be refined for the organization as a whole.

Reporting to Ops

While you might have PMs that serve specific teams or functions, all PMs should report to marketing operations.  This third party accountability is key to PMs being able to do their jobs effectively.  They need to look across functions at how teams work together, so having them report in one of those teams creates unnecessary myopy.

PMs are in blue and report to Ops in our standard ecosystem.

The above points are all extremely important to this one being successful.  Operations and the various team leads need to have a great mutual respect and a firm commitment to boundaries.  If they don’t, then PMs won’t have the sway to be effective, and you will wind up with a workflow plagued by work-arounds and process breaches.

Managing the Change

If you are looking for where to start, I recommend taking an honest, candid look at your team.  Ask yourself a few key questions:

1. Do your teams have trust in one another?
2. Are they willing to all commit to a process?
3. Are you currently undergoing change efforts?
4. Do you have a PM tool at least somewhat adopted?
5. Is it clear who is accountable to a project’s success?
6. Can you succinctly describe what that success looks like?

If you answered no to any of those, that is likely a better place to start than hiring a PM.  I am not saying you wouldn’t get any benefit, you would.  Like I said earlier, a great PM can operate in spite of bad organization.  However, if they are coming into a solid foundation, they will accelerate and improve considerably faster.

You can also check out this post on how to tell when it is time to improve your marketing orchestration.

I am here to talk to you about your orchestration.  Feel free to reach out to us.  You can even ask to speak to me directly, I would love to chat.

If you are looking for more ways to improve, check out “B2B Excellence through Marketing Orchestration“.

The post Structuring Project Management in a Marketing Team appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

Understanding and activating the B2B buyer’s journey is essential for marketers looking to drive real revenue impact. A buyer-aligned strategy helps teams build meaningful engagement, personalize content, and collaborate more effectively with sales to convert leads into customers.

In this blog, we’ve compiled the most frequently asked questions B2B marketers ask when mapping the buyer’s journey and aligning with the sales cycle to accelerate deals.

FAQs About the B2B Buyer’s Journey and Sales Cycle

What is a B2B buyer’s journey?

A B2B buyer’s journey is the process a prospect follows, from becoming aware of a problem to evaluating solutions and ultimately making a purchase decision. It typically includes three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.

How do we use the buyer’s journey to inform an ABM strategy?

By aligning your ABM strategy to the buyer’s journey, you can deliver stage-specific messaging and experiences to different stakeholders within your target accounts. This ensures personalized, relevant engagement at every step.

How do we utilize a buyer’s journey to drive tangible actions across marketing and sales?

Start by mapping buyer questions, pain points, and decision criteria to each stage, then align content, outreach cadences, and metrics accordingly. This turns strategy into specific actions—like what emails to send, what events to invite them to, and what sales resources to share.

How do you build a B2B buyer’s journey?

Interview customers, review sales calls, and analyze buyer behavior data to map the key stages, stakeholders, and touchpoints. Include what triggers progression to the next stage, common objections, and decision-makers.

What are the key stages of the B2B buyer’s journey, and how do they differ from the sales funnel?

The buyer’s journey centers on the buyer’s experience and decision-making process—typically awareness, consideration, and decision. The sales funnel focuses on internal progression from lead to closed deal. They should be aligned, but the journey is more customer-centric.

How do we identify what stage a buyer is in?

Look for behavioral and intent signals, such as content downloads, demo requests, or repeated visits to product pages. Pair that with CRM and ABM platform insights to assess the stage accurately.

What types of content or touchpoints are most effective at each stage of the buyer’s journey?

• Awareness: Educational blog posts, industry trend reports
• Consideration: Case studies, comparison guides, ROI calculators
• Decision: Demos, customer references, pricing details

How should sales and marketing measure success at different stages of the buyer’s journey?

Use stage-specific KPIs: engagement and reach for awareness, influence pipeline for consideration, conversion rates, and deal velocity for decision.

How do we use the buyer’s journey to improve campaign planning?

Use the journey to guide your content mix, segmentation, and timing. Each campaign should serve a purpose for a specific stage and be designed to move buyers forward.

How does the buying committee impact the buyer’s journey?

B2B purchases often involve multiple stakeholders, each with unique priorities. Your journey map should include persona-specific concerns and define how to engage the entire committee across the funnel.

Why should marketing care about the sales cycle?

Marketing is key in accelerating deals. It generates qualified leads, nurtures interest, and enables sales with content and insights that speak to what buyers need at each stage.

Where should marketing be involved in the sales cycle?

Marketing should stay involved from the first touch to the end. This includes nurturing stalled opportunities, providing targeted sales content, and supporting later-stage conversations with customer proof or tailored messaging.

Why is marketing and sales alignment important to the B2B sales cycle?

Alignment ensures consistent messaging, smarter hand-offs, and faster deal progression. When both teams collaborate around a shared journey and goals, buyers experience a seamless path to purchase.

How do we adapt the buyer’s journey for complex or long sales cycles?

Introduce more granular sub-stages, nurture programs, and account-specific playbooks. Use intent and engagement data to keep momentum and prioritize outreach at the right time.

How can we align campaign planning and lead scoring with the buyer’s journey?

Lead scoring should reflect stage progression, not just activity volume. Assign higher scores to buying signals (e.g., pricing page views, demo requests) and build campaigns that match journey stages to content and outreach.

What common mistakes do companies make when mapping or using a buyer’s journey?

Common pitfalls include: making the journey too generic, ignoring persona differences, over-relying on linear models, and failing to activate the journey through content, sales enablement, and reporting.

How often should we revisit or update our buyer’s journey map?

Revisit your journey every 6–12 months or whenever you launch a new product, enter a new market, or observe significant shifts in buying behavior.

Summary

The buyer’s journey isn’t just a theoretical framework—it’s a powerful tool for aligning marketing and sales, personalizing engagement, and accelerating pipeline. By understanding how your buyers make decisions and taking action to meet them where they are, you set your go-to-market teams up for success.

Want help applying your buyer’s journey to campaigns and pipeline acceleration?

Contact acceleration@heinzmarketing.com to connect with our team.

The post Frequently Asked Questions About the B2B Buyer’s Journey and Sales Cycle appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

One of the fastest ways to a CFO’s heart is through data-driven forecasting. For CMOs championing new GTM initiatives, being able to forecast pipeline and revenue with accuracy – and tie marketing spend directly to those future outcomes – is paramount. CFOs, as stewards of financial stability, value a sure thing. They’re more likely to back marketing investments if the CMO can show, with data-driven confidence, “Here’s what we expect in return, and here’s why you can trust these numbers.”

Why Data-Driven Forecasting Matters (Especially to CFOs)

Forecasting is traditionally a sales domain, but in modern revenue operations, CMOs are just as accountable for predicting pipeline and revenue contribution. For CFOs, the marketing forecast is a key input to financial planning – yet it’s often viewed with skepticism if based on gut feel or optimistic assumptions. In fact, studies show fewer than 20% of sales organizations have a forecast accuracy of 75% or greater, and less than half of sales leaders have high confidence in their forecasts. If sales – with its direct line to revenue – struggles with forecasting accuracy, marketing’s projections can be even more fraught. This uncertainty is why CFOs sometimes earn the nickname “CF-No” when faced with big marketing budget asks; if the ROI and revenue can’t be forecasted with confidence, their default is to pull back funding.

Adopting a data-driven forecasting approach directly addresses this concern. Rather than basing pipeline projections on educated guesses and experience, data-driven CMOs use empirical evidence and models. They look at historical conversion rates at each stage, sales cycle lengths, average deal values, and lead volumes to calculate what future pipeline and revenue will be if certain investments are made. They incorporate benchmark metrics – for example, if marketing spend is increased by 10%, what has been the historical lift in pipeline? If lead quality improves via better targeting (see my post from last month), how might that raise the lead-to-opportunity conversion rate? These data points form the basis of a predictive model that can forecast outcomes in a language the CFO trusts: numbers.

Leverage Sales Velocity and Pipeline Metrics to Predict Revenue

To get a solid read on future pipeline and revenue, we encourage CMOs to borrow a few metrics that traditionally live with sales or revenue ops—especially sales velocity. It’s one of the best ways to understand how quickly you’re turning opportunities into revenue. We’ve even built a simple Sales Pipeline Velocity Calculator to help with this.

The formula’s straightforward:

Sales velocity = (Opportunities × Deal Size × Win Rate) ÷ Sales Cycle.

Why does this matter for marketing? Because every one of those inputs is something marketing can influence directly.

• Number of opportunities: Marketing drives the top of the funnel. Better targeting and more effective campaigns (as described in my post from last month) can increase the count of quality opportunities entering the pipeline.

• Win rate: Improved lead qualification and nurturing means by the time leads get to sales, they are warmer and better fit, which can improve close ratios.
• Deal size: Marketing can target larger enterprise prospects or craft value messaging that encourages bigger purchases, influencing average deal value.
• Sales cycle length: Marketing’s enablement content and multi-threading with buying groups can accelerate deal timelines by addressing buyer questions earlier.

By analyzing these factors, a CMO can predict how tweaks in strategy translate to revenue. For instance, if an upcoming account-based campaign will focus on higher-value accounts, you might anticipate average deal size to rise. If you’re implementing a new lead nurturing program, perhaps win rates will tick up. Using our Pipeline Velocity Calculator provides a framework to turn marketing inputs into an expected revenue output and support true data-driven rationale that the CFO can trust.

The conversation would go something like:

“We plan to generate 30 qualified opportunities next quarter via Campaign X. Given our historical win rate of 25% and average deal size of $40k, that’s roughly $300k in potential revenue. With our current sales cycle (~3 months), most of that would close by Q2. Here’s how those figures roll up into our revenue forecast.”

For CMOs looking to gain CFO confidence and budget approval, reliable forecasting is key. This post introduces sales velocity as a simple yet powerful starting point for building data-driven revenue projections that tie marketing activity directly to financial outcomes.

In my next post, we’ll build on this foundation with additional forecasting tools, conversion benchmarks, and ways to package marketing performance in CFO-friendly terms. If you have any advice or tips on how to have these conversations with your finance partners, please submit them here.

Image provided by Freepik.

The post Data-Driven Forecasting and Budget Justification – A CMO’s Guide to Speaking CFO Language (Part 1) appeared first on Heinz Marketing.

In B2B marketing, precision matters. Knowing who you’re selling to—and how they make buying decisions—is key to building effective campaigns, aligning sales and marketing, and accelerating pipeline. But many teams struggle to create actionable buyer personas, identify the right accounts, or understand who’s on the buying committee.

In this blog, we’ve compiled the most frequently asked questions B2B marketers ask when building their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), developing buyer personas, and mapping the buying committee.

Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP)

What is an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) defines the type of company that would benefit most from your product or service and is most likely to buy and succeed with it. It’s typically described at a firmographic level—industry, size, revenue, geography, and key characteristics like technology stack or compliance needs.

What are the key components of an ICP?

Key components of an ICP include:

• Industry and vertical
• Company size (employees and/or revenue)
• Geography
• Pain points or needs
• Buying triggers
• Technology environment
• External drivers

How do you choose an ICP?

Choose an ICP by analyzing your best customers—those who see value quickly, renew often, and have strong retention. Look at patterns across company size, industry, use cases, and decision-making dynamics. Then, validate with sales and customer success to ensure alignment.

How do you create an ICP?

Gather data from your CRM and customer base to identify your most successful accounts. Segment them by firmographics and technographics, then conduct interviews with customers and internal stakeholders to surface qualitative traits. Use this data to build a documented, cross-functional ICP definition.

How is an ICP used?

ICPs align go-to-market teams. Marketing uses them to target the right accounts, content, and channels. Sales uses them to prioritize outreach and qualification. Product and CS teams use them to ensure the company builds and supports the right customers for long-term value.

Buyer Personas

What is a B2B buyer persona?

A B2B buyer persona is a detailed representation of a specific role involved in the buying process. It includes job responsibilities, goals, pain points, buying motivations, and how that person evaluates vendors. Personas are typically tied to the ICP and represent roles across the buying committee.

What is the difference between a B2B and a B2C buyer persona?

B2B buyer personas represent individuals making decisions on behalf of a company, often as part of a group. They focus on business goals, cross-functional collaboration, and professional outcomes. B2C personas focus on individual consumers making personal purchase decisions, driven by lifestyle, emotion, and convenience.

How do you create personas?

Create personas by interviewing customers, sales reps, and other stakeholders. Identify common job titles, priorities, frustrations, and decision drivers. Use this data to document each persona’s role in the buying process, content needs, objections, and preferred channels.

How do I action the personas I’ve created?

Use personas to tailor your messaging, content, and campaigns. Match personas to buying stages and create relevant content paths. Train sales teams to speak to different personas’ priorities and align them with value propositions and proof points.

Buying Committees

What is a buying committee?

A buying committee is the group of people involved in evaluating and purchasing a B2B product or service. It typically includes multiple roles—decision makers, influencers, users, technical evaluators, and procurement—each with distinct priorities.

Who makes up the buying committee?

The buying committee often includes:

• Economic Buyer or Business Decision Maker (BDM): Controls the final budget decisions.
• Technical Decision Maker: Can say “no” if the technical aspects of a product aren’t adequate.
• Champion or Internal Advocate: The primary partner to your sales team through the sales process. They recommend to the BDM.
• Business or Technical Influencers: Often the user, they often do the initial research with the champion and do initial vetting.
• Validators such as Procurement or Legal: One of the final hurdles to get through before closing. Don’t forget them.
• Business Stakeholders: Tertiary business stakeholders, often the executive counterparts to the BDM.

How is a buying committee used?

Marketing and sales use the buying committee map to tailor each role’s outreach, content, and messaging. Understanding who’s involved and how they influence decisions helps coordinate multi-threaded engagement and improves conversion across longer buying cycles.

Using ICPs, Personas & Buying Committees

Who uses your ICP and buyer personas?

Marketing, sales, customer success, product, and executive teams all use ICPs and personas. They guide campaign targeting, sales messaging, customer onboarding, and product road-mapping. The clearer your personas and ICP, the better your teams can align around shared goals.

Summary

Defining your Ideal Customer Profile, building targeted buyer personas, and mapping the buying committee are foundational to any successful B2B go-to-market strategy. Each element helps ensure you’re reaching the right people with the right message at the right time.

Want help creating or refining your ICP, personas, or buying committee strategy? Reach out to us at acceleration@heinzmarketing.com to connect.

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