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The B2B Roundtable

The B2B Roundtable

By: Brian Carroll
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The B2B Roundtable is a podcast about what dashboards miss in B2B revenue systems. Most GTM teams manage what their dashboards can measure. But the breakdowns that cost real revenue often live underneath – in handoffs, definitions, follow-up gaps, scoring assumptions, and the friction buyers feel but reports don’t reveal. Hosted by Brian Carroll, GTM system advisor and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, the show features candid conversations with GTM operators, leaders, and thinkers about how revenue systems actually break – and what it takes to fix them. Learn more at https://www.markempa.comCopyright 2026 markempa Career Success Economics Management Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • The Gumball Machine Is Broken: Jon Miller on What Comes After the MQL

    The Gumball Machine Is Broken: Jon Miller on What Comes After the MQL
    Jun 3 2026
    About this episode Most B2B marketing still runs on a single number: the marketing qualified lead. Jon Miller is one of the few people who can tell you where that number came from, because he helped build the system that produced it — first at Marketo, where he helped create the marketing automation category, then at Engagio, then at Demandbase. What makes this conversation different is that Jon went back and diagnosed his own creation. He’s not quietly onto the next thing. He’s saying, out loud, what the MQL got wrong about how people actually buy — and he’s careful to credit what it got right before he takes it apart. The short version: roughly 95% of buyers have built their shortlist before they ever talk to a seller. The MQL was designed to catch the last 5% who raise their hand. So the real question isn’t how to optimize lead capture. It’s what you do with everyone who isn’t ready yet — the 95% the old model was built to ignore. We get into why buying behaves more like weather than a vending machine, the three-tier model Jon uses instead of MQLs, why he thinks legacy automation tools can’t keep up, and how the best CMOs are quietly rewiring what they report to the board. If you’ve ever felt like you were pedaling into a headwind running the playbook that used to work, this one’s for you. About Jon Miller Jon Miller founded Marketo in 2006 and helped define the marketing automation category. He went on to found Engagio, which was acquired by Demandbase in 2020, served as CMO at Demandbase, and is now building Phave, an AI-native marketing automation platform. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Jon Miller and his journey 01:24 Diagnosing the MQL model 03:27 The gumball machine / nonlinear buying idea 07:23 What the MQL got right 10:14 The three-tiered model of engagement 14:22 The role of CMOs in modern marketing 18:17 AI’s impact on marketing automation 19:55 The Spotify playlist analogy 22:53 The Peppers and Rogers/one-to-one thread 24:43 Common mistakes moving off the MQL 25:25 The three CMO dashboards 27:25 Advice for CMOs making the shift A few things worth taking away The MQL started as a good idea — a contract between marketing and sales — and got gamed over time as teams chased volume.Buying isn’t linear. With six to sixteen people on a buying committee researching in places you can’t even track, “run a campaign, get a lead” no longer describes reality.Hand raisers are the gold standard, but waiting for them means you only ever talk to the 5% who already built their shortlist without you.Jon’s three tiers — hand raisers, MQX, and MEX — give you a way to work the 95% instead of ignoring them.When you move off MQL volume as your headline metric, expect the numbers to drop before quality and conversion rise. Set that expectation early, or you’ll hit a buzzsaw.The strongest CMOs report pipeline across all sources to the board and stop fighting over who sourced what. A few lines that stuck with me “Put your quarter in, get your gumball out. Put your campaign in, get your MQL out. I just don’t think that’s the way buying works.” — Jon Miller “If you only wait for somebody to raise their hand, you’re talking to the 5% in market. And they’ve already built their shortlist without you.” — Jon Miller “You can’t get there with a rules-based system. You just end up with spaghetti.” — Jon Miller Resources mentioned The B2B CMO Project — research on the strategic CMO and the three-dashboard modelMike Bosworth, Solution SellingDon Peppers and Martha Rogers, The One to One FutureKathleen Schaub, Marketing in the Great Big Messy Real World Transcript Brian Carroll (00:05) Welcome to The B2B Roundtable, where we go inside the ideas, people, and decisions shaping modern revenue teams and how they actually work. I’m Brian Carroll, and today my guest is Jon Miller. I first met Jon way back in 2006, when he founded Marketo and helped build the marketing automation category as we know it today. In 2015 he founded Engagio, which was acquired by Demandbase in 2020. Now he’s building Phave, an AI-native marketing automation platform. Here’s what makes this conversation different from other podcasts you’ve listened to: Jon didn’t just build the next thing and quietly move on, the way a lot of founders do. He’s gone back and started diagnosing the problems with something he previously created. He’s talking about what’s wrong, and why it’s failing buyers today. And here’s why it matters right now. Before they ever talk to a seller, 95% of buyers have already designed their shortlist. The MQL is built to capture the last 5% who self-identify. What about the 95% who haven’t yet? So, Jon — when did you first start thinking the MQL model was broken, not just underperforming? How did you get there? Jon Miller (01:24) It started, more than anything else, during my time at Demandbase. After we merged Engagio and Demandbase together ...
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    29 mins
  • Why 75% of Buyers Don’t Want Reps and How Framemaking Can Win Them Back (with Brent Adamson)

    Why 75% of Buyers Don’t Want Reps and How Framemaking Can Win Them Back (with Brent Adamson)
    Oct 12 2025
    About this episode Most B2B buyers say they would rather buy without talking to a sales rep. That sounds like a sales problem. Brent Adamson says it is deeper than that. Buyers are not just avoiding sellers. They are struggling to make confident decisions. Brent is one of the clearest voices in modern B2B sales. He is co-author of The Challenger Sale, the book that changed how many sales and marketing teams think about commercial conversations. In this episode, we talk about his new book, The Framemaking Sale, and why the next era of sales depends less on persuasion and more on helping buyers make sense of complexity. The short version: buyers do not need more information. They already have too much. They need help knowing what matters, what to ignore, who to involve, what questions to ask, and how to move forward with confidence. We get into why 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free buying experience, why customer confidence matters more than supplier confidence, how framemaking differs from Challenger, why thought leadership can make buying harder, and what AI changes about the role of the human seller. If your sales or marketing team is still trying to prove value by adding more content, more insight, or more follow-up, this conversation will make you rethink the job. About Brent Adamson Brent Adamson is a researcher, speaker, and author best known for co-authoring The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. He spent years leading research at CEB, later Gartner, on B2B buying, sales effectiveness, and commercial transformation. His latest book, The Framemaking Sale, focuses on how sales professionals can help buyers make confident decisions in a world of complexity, information overload, misalignment, and uncertainty. Connect with Brent on LinkedIn Get the book: The Framemaking Sale Chapters 00:00 Why buyers prefer rep-free buying 04:12 Becoming the seller buyers want 09:40 What buyers need from salespeople 11:35 Why decision confidence matters 16:05 What framemaking means 21:26 Framemaking and The Challenger Sale 25:39 Buyers need sensemaking 28:18 Helping teams become framemakers 35:01 Marketing’s role in framemaking 39:34 AI and the future of human selling A few things worth taking away B2B buyers are not always trying to avoid humans. They are trying to avoid sales interactions that make buying harder.The 75% rep-free statistic measures buyer preference, not buyer reality. Many buyers still have to talk to sellers, but that does not mean they want to.Decision confidence is one of the strongest drivers of high-quality, low-regret deals.The confidence that matters most is not the buyer’s confidence in your company. It is the buyer’s confidence in themselves and their own decision.Most sales and marketing teams are still trying to build supplier confidence. Framemaking shifts the goal toward customer self-confidence.Buyers are overwhelmed by complexity, information overload, internal misalignment, and uncertainty about outcomes.The Challenger Sale helped sellers reframe the customer’s thinking. The Framemaking Sale helps customers make sense of competing ideas so they can decide.Thought leadership created a new problem. Everyone sounds smart, so buyers are left with more content, more claims, and less clarity.Marketing can support framemaking by interviewing customers about the buying journey, not just the product outcome.The best question from Brent: “If you had to do it all over again, what might you do differently just to make your lives a little bit easier?”AI may answer questions, summarize options, and produce tables. But buyers may still want to talk to someone they trust before making a hard decision. A few lines that stuck with me “The data does not say 75% of B2B buyers would prefer a human-free experience.” — Brent Adamson “What would it take to be the one seller, the one sales team, that your customers actually do want to talk to?” — Brent Adamson “It’s not customers’ confidence in us that matters. It’s customers’ confidence in themselves.” — Brent Adamson “While we’re all in sales and marketing solving for getting customers to know something, the single biggest secret passage to growth is getting customers to feel something.” — Brent Adamson “What if your value as a seller isn’t your expertise, but your access to the experience of other companies like them?” — Brent Adamson Resources mentioned The Framemaking Sale by Brent AdamsonThe Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent AdamsonThe Challenger Customer by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner, and Nick TomanGartner research on rep-free buying experiencesRobert Cialdini, Influence, and the idea of social proofCEB / Gartner research on decision confidenceEcosystems and value management maturity models Listen and subscribe If you found this episode helpful, subscribe to the B2B Roundtable Podcast wherever you listen. Full transcript Brian Carroll: Welcome to the B2B ...
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    43 mins
  • Brand Activism Isn’t a Campaign. It’s a Company Decision with Philip Kotler

    Brand Activism Isn’t a Campaign. It’s a Company Decision with Philip Kotler
    May 25 2021
    About this episode Customers care more than ever about the values of the companies they buy from. It is more than purpose. It is more than what you sell. They want to know what kind of company you are, what you care about, and whether your company exists to do more than drive profits. That is why I interviewed Dr. Philip Kotler, known as the father of modern marketing. Dr. Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and co-author of Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action. In this conversation, Dr. Kotler explains what brand activism is, why trust in institutions has fallen, how customer expectations have changed, and why companies need to think carefully about purpose, reputation, and action. We also talk about what brand activism means for B2B companies, why it cannot be treated as a marketing campaign, and how leaders can use frameworks, scorecards, and customer research to make sure their actions are authentic rather than superficial. About Dr. Philip Kotler Dr. Philip Kotler is widely known as the father of modern marketing. He is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is the author and co-author of many influential marketing books, including Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action. Chapters 00:00 What is brand activism? 02:21 Why brand activism matters now 04:05 The evolution of branding 06:53 How customer expectations changed 09:01 Brand activism in B2B 14:24 Why this is not just marketing 16:59 What marketers can do 20:47 A framework for brand activism 24:49 Authenticity, empathy, and action 28:41 Where to learn more What is brand activism? Dr. Kotler: Brand activism is a movement toward making a brand do more than just tout the virtues of a product or a service, its usual function, and to identify some value or values that the company has and cares about. For example, The Body Shop, when it started under Anita Roddick, was not only selling skincare products. The company was also fighting for animal rights, civil rights, fair trade, and environmental protection. So, her brand was active. I do not mean that all other brands are passive, because they do a lot of work. But the implication is that companies carry reputations, and they want to carry a good reputation. More and more consumers would like to know what kind of company this is and what it cares about. Our society is saddled with many problems. Does the company care about any of these problems, or does it just think it is supposed to make money? An increasing number of companies would like an identity that goes beyond just making the product or service. That is what we are calling brand activism: the brand that connects with some cause or causes. A lack of trust in society Brian: That is a helpful distinction. You recently wrote a book on this topic. I would love to know the story behind why you wrote Brand Activism and why now. Dr. Kotler: If you look at barometers, like the Edelman Trust Barometer, the level of trust in society today has certainly been falling. As a result, many companies are not going to be trusted either, as part of government not being trusted and other institutions not being trusted. Companies ought to be the first to fight against bad companies, rather than stand near them or be part of them. At this time, companies want to be profiled in a certain way. The reputation a company has could be whatever happens in its course of behavior. Or it could be something designed better. Consciously better. What are the stages of branding? Dr. Kotler: The whole idea of a brand has gone through several stages. I think brand activism is probably the highest stage. Brian: That would be great. Evolution of brands from marketing-driven to values-driven Dr. Kotler: The first stage is when the company simply does its best to feature the good side of its product and services. The brand name was an identifier. Then brands moved into trying to define the company’s positioning, but not social positioning. Just their positioning: Walmart is lowest price, Disney is family entertainment, DuPont is highest quality, and Toyota is long-lasting, reliable performance. In that second stage, the brand became not just one mentioning a product, but positioning the product. Then the brand moved further to define a set of qualities about the company. For example, John Deere might describe itself by its quality, integrity, and innovation. This is really positioning, but it is multi-positioning. It says the company stands high on a number of traits that most people value. But this could move into a fourth stage where the brand adopts a very specific cause. A company may say it cares about the climate problem and wants to help move solutions toward keeping a safe climate in the world. Or it could be some other cause. Then brand activism is alive with ...
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    27 mins
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