Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of All About B2B Marketing. Today we are diving into a very critical topic which is revenue leaks in marketing and how to fix them. So to help us break this down, we have a special guest Mahesh. He's an expert in B2B revenue growth and today he'll share his insights on identifying and fixing revenue leaks at every stage of the buyer's journey. Hi Mahesh, welcome to the show. Hi Sanjana, thank you for having me in your show.

looking forward for an amazing conversation. It's great to have you here. ⁓ So probably let's start with some context regarding revenue leaks. I know that it's often invisible until they cause real damage. So in your experience, what are some of the most common, what do we call, silent revenue leaks that marketing teams should be aware of? Okay. Let me give you a context to it. So I'm a Chief Revenue Officer and I work

with sales marketing and customer support. I believe that as a revenue officer, we do lot of leakage plugins at different channels, whether it is marketing, sales or customer support. let's say, imagine your marketing team is crushing it, leads pouring, campaigns are hitting, ROI targets, but somehow revenue growth is not happening because there is a silent leak happening, right?

marketing passes a lead to the sales, but it's untouched for days. By the time the sales response, the leads gone cold. So I work with a lot of SaaS companies and FinTech companies. So in one of the cases, I'll give you an example, where we found that 30 % of the leads died, ⁓ even during that handoff stage. So there was no automated alerts, nothing. So what we did is we got the automated alerts.

for high intent signals like pricing page, visits, send straight to sales, Slack, response times dropped to two hours, saving 200K in pipeline. That's what we did. What we also observed customer, we call it the ghost journey. I call it the ghost journey where customers leave quietly because onboarding fails. there are many times marketing team need to step in, fix that.

and ensure that when the customer comes in, there's an immediate task which is taken care of. There is an email which is sent. So the churn will drop. So that's one way to look at it. ⁓ Now, post-sale neglect is also something which is very important. Imagine a customer buys your software, but gets stuck during onboarding. If marketing doesn't step in with tutorials or checklists, churn skyrockets.

So we need to understand that. of course, the main takeaway is marketing should own the entire journey, not just the top of the funnel. What happens is we take care of the top of the funnel and we forget the, you know, the entire journey of the lead. The lead comes in, there needs to be a handoff, ensure that the moment the leads are given, the sales is picking up quickly those leads and start making those calls. Otherwise you're going to have leakages.

I'll tell you most of the time the company is loose close to around 60 to 80 thousand dollars if it's a small company spending on marketing almost in a quarter just on revenue leakages. So it's very key that right at the, you know, I know they call it the silent revenue leaks, but that's what it happens. Okay. That's interesting. ⁓ So I know the talk of the town is AI now and AI is transforming marketing. So

Do you see AI playing a role in identifying these revenue leaks so we can save that amount of dollars? Yeah. So first of all, everybody needs to understand AI means artificial intelligence, not automation. lot of the time people mix it up. People think automation is AI. So automation is a flow, is a chart which has been created where you have given predefined information, but AI is more of

you know, using the intelligence today, there's going to be a time when it's going to be AGI, you know, ⁓ we talk about AGI where there is a generative intelligence where your AI will start, you know, using the information and improving itself. So let's get real. AI isn't here to replace marketers. It is here to make us super heroes. That's what I call it. I keep telling that. Tools like Gainsight, you know, they analyze usage data.

⁓ to flag at risk accounts. there was one cybersecurity firm where we were working where AI spotted customers who hadn't used their dashboard in 14 days. So marketing auto sent a stuck. Let's unblock your email result. We got 80 % fewer cancellation. AI chart bots, know, ⁓ what happens is AI chart bots qualify leads 24-7. So one of the client we were using ⁓

drift to ask what's your biggest IT pain point and routed the answers to specialist. So the demo bookings jumped by 35%. So we need to understand that AI shines in predictive analytics and automating grant work. know, take John predictions and all that. So use AI chatbots to qualify leads, but ensure complex queries escalate to humans. ⁓ So that is, that is the most important aspect of

AI is there to enable you, will facilitate you, it will make you better, but it will not replace you. ⁓ Use it, you as a human need to figure out how to use it. Okay, got it. ⁓ you know, buyers these days, they are self educating more than ever ⁓ using, you know, AI tools, of course, and also like doing peer reviews before they even talk to sales, right? So how should marketing teams evolve? ⁓

to ensure they're still driving sales ready leads in this AI driven buying environment. So today we are in the world of buyer's playbook. There's no longer a sales playbook. It's a buyer's playbook. So buyers are more intelligent. They're more smart. They come prepared so they know everything, all the information. So marketing needs to be more aware because ⁓

you need to become a trusted educator, not a promoter. know, so ⁓ it's very key that ⁓ we use the intelligence of the buyer in a smart way because buyer will come with information ⁓ like they know your product because they have done the comparative. have have channels like G2 and all that which gives you reviews comparison and all that. So they are well prepared. So they know. So from the marketing side,

you know, try to ⁓ make curated community playbook, ⁓ promoted via LinkedIn, you know. So, you know, when you get the inbound leads, you know that the buyer is well prepared. he has got the information. Let's say, ⁓ use intelligence, AI, let's say, AI powered ROI calculator. Let's, you know, let's buy and input the data and see the potential savings. You know, why not give that, give that tools to them. So if you're

content doesn't help buyers win internally, is irrelevant, right? Whatever content you create will not make any sense. So you need to ensure that your content gives enough information for the buyers to come prepared. It's good to the buyer is prepared. So the energy for the sales guy to actually convince the customer will not be too much and your sales cycle will come down. So I feel that

⁓ In the current age of AI and the current age of buyer being very smart, marketing needs to play this key role of equipping the buyer with lot of information, whether it is interactive content, whether it is community building, you decide what works for you. Yeah, I guess the old playbook doesn't work anymore and I think all marketers should keep evolving in terms of the channels and the strategy that they use.

Correct. So it's all about buyer's playbook these days. ⁓ Buyers are, know, like sales guys know more about buyers. Now, even the sales team, I've got AI tools like chorus and all that where ⁓ they know the buyer's personality, what kind of information buyer has got. Similarly, buyers also come with those kind of, you know, information. So why not go ahead and equip them more, give them more information.

It's okay. If the information is given to the buyer, he'll come up with right questions. Remember, if the buyer asks you right question, that means he's interested in buying your solution. That means he's already come with a lot of information. Awesome. So speaking of sales, knowing a lot about the buyers these days, we should also be touching upon the sales and marketing alignment. think it's very crucial to spotting revenue leaks early.

What data point should both teams analyze together to catch these these issues before they escalate? So ⁓ See I've been a CRO that's one of the advantage I have is I work directly with sales marketing and customer support now one of the reason now CROs are becoming very successful or Earlier there were no CROs in the last five six years the CROs have come now. What does a CRO do? He's a revenue master and

revenue doesn't come only from sales, comes from marketing, comes from customer service. ⁓ one core change which has happened already and if companies are not doing it, are way behind us. Sales and marketing need to align. Now, ⁓ it could be simple data handshake, right? ⁓ Let's say if a sales takes eight hours to reply and but 70 % of the deals go to vendors who respond in one hour, that's a leak, right?

So you need shared dashboard with real time alerts. So let the dashboard be shared between sales and marketing. So there's an alignment coming in. ⁓ know, ⁓ sales and marketing should create, co-create, competitor battle cards. Why should only a marketing creator competition analysis? Let, because the sales is in the market, let them bring also some intelligence, co-create the competitor battle cards. Why not? Why only the sales should do it or marketing should do it.

⁓ One more thing, one of the key important aspect is ⁓ during the deal stage duration, you know, when the sometimes the deals linger in negotiation stage, know, marketing can come in can come in pitching because marketing is updated about the entire information about the sales growth. Let's say there is one customer where the entire customer's journey right from discovery to demo to, you know,

negotiation stage, the marketing is also abet.

there is a notification going on. There's a common dashboard, which clearly said this is a stage and it's stuck in the position. Marketing teams should immediately pick it up. You know, talk to the sales team, figure out why it is stuck. Let's say that if they are looking at competition, so marketing should have the information in place to share those details to sales. So there's no time lost. So I believe in today's world, ⁓

you know, sales and marketing needs to be aligned. They need to address the gaps. They need to address those ⁓ whispers, the corridor whispers that, know, I've got five leads, this lead is not working, that lead is not working, that should go off. No more corridor whispers. Everybody's on the same room, having the same information and go for the one goal that is closing the deal. I really like the point about

how you said you have to co-create your competitor battles with your sales. ⁓ I think that's a very important point. I'm going to go back to my team with that point definitely. ⁓ I used to collaborate with my product team when I create these battle cards because it's more of like what kind of.

product improvements that my competitors are working on and how we could improve based on it or like just comparing our products but I've never gone to a sales team and to get their inputs it's more of like they ask us for a battle card and then we deliver it to them and then they just go ahead with it but I think it's a it's an interesting point there. See the logic is very simple.

Sales team is in the market. They are talking to customers day in day out. Let's say they got on a call with a customer and they're giving a demonstration of their solution and customer says no, no, the solution is... ⁓

My ex-competitor is giving this point. But you're not aware, the sales is not aware. Because marketing had limited information because their information is based on the research. Their research might not be hands-on. Their research might be based on Google and AI and all those, chat GPT and all those. But sales comes with a hands-on information because the customer is giving them a live information. So immediately the sales can take down those points if there is a common dashboard or a

common, let's say in today's world, Google Sheet, put it in it and let the marketing access it and say, these are the new information I'm getting. So let's go create it and become strong. sales can win if they are equipped with information. Marketing can be the, you know, the driver for that winning because sales are sitting behind marketing is in the front.

But both needs to be balanced. If the sales is not giving the information of what is happening behind marketing cannot do justice to it. is what I think. Exactly. That's a very nice point. Awesome. coming back to...

the marketing team now. So marketing success is often measured by MQLs and let's say PQLs also, but we know that's just one piece of the puzzle. So beyond MQLs, what key metrics should B2B marketers focus on to prove their impact on ⁓ leakage prevention?

See, I always tell my people, MQS are like counting likes on a post, right? Let's say if there is a post and you have got like 10,000 likes, ⁓ we have done a great job. They feel good about it, you know, but that likes don't pay the bills, Those likes doesn't transfer into engagement. And that's one stop of the engagement that doesn't translate to the customer actually reaching out to you. So I believe there are two, three of them on top of my head. One is the NRR, which I call it the Net Revenue Retention.

⁓ So we were working with a company where 30 % of expansion started with the marketing email about new integration. ⁓ So if your campaign don't move NRR, you're just decorating the top of the funnel. You're just telling, yeah, my top of the funnel looks good. My integration has happened. And the customer has opened the email and he has just left it. Now what has happened? It's just like counting likes. ⁓ I've got open rate of, let's say 90 %

All emails are getting opened because that was the thing. So you need to calculate your NRR. Time to value, again that is something which we all talk about. The time to value from 30, bring down your TTA, TTV. Bring down it from 30 to 14 days with your onboarding webinars. Let's say,

Most of the time, lot of SaaS companies are failing because they don't have a great implementation timeline. What happens is when you sell the solution, the implementation timeline is, let's say, three months, four months, or two months, or 10 weeks. Bring that down. ⁓ Bring that onboarding ⁓ quick.

get a webinar done, see your churn will increase. that will automatically, these are metrics beyond MQL, right? So we are not talking only about MQL. MQL is one step of the whole thing. The another thing which I always believe I tell my marketing is ⁓ that when the deals are closed, after that the marketing is escaping or there's no marketing.

involvement to it. So I believe marketing should be part of the influence in the revenue. Let's say we had one client and we found that 60 % of the closed deals ⁓ interacted with marketing late in the funnel. Let's say case study. ⁓

So that's not a leakage. That's more to do with the leadership style of the taking the lead by marketing in influencing the decision making. So I believe these are some of the two, three things which I feel which are more, goes beyond MQL because MQL is just a nowadays in today's world, MQL is just to satisfy your ego that I've got thousand MQLs. We have to go beyond that.

Yeah, exactly. I completely agree with that. ⁓ Fine. So one last question before I let you go. So if you could fix just one revenue leak in the B2B buyers journey, what would it be and how can marketing lead the charge in solving it? So I would vaporize this, the siloid data, know, the silo data, I would vaporize it.

Imagine this marketing can't see that a happy customer hasn't logged in for a month. Sales doesn't know they have complained to support. So both of them don't know what's happening after the sale has happened, right? A unified dashboard, you know, where the entire journey of the customer is there with this marketing, with sales and customer support. All three needs to be there. So I feel ⁓ one of the most important

thing you need to fix is how a unified dashboard ⁓ which showcases the marketing growth journey, the sales journey and the support journey and when a marketing team opens the dashboard they will know that where the customer has done, how much time he has locked in, you know.

Is there any customer support request which has been raised? Nothing. So we know if the customer is happy or not, we don't know. So I believe that unified dashboard is one of the things which we need to really focus and we should see that that's the first fix and one of the magic band we can use. I think that's the big takeaway here. I don't know how many companies do this, but I guess every company should be working on having a unified dashboard because

That prevents a lot of leakages, as you mentioned. So I that's a very important point. ⁓ That's all. are at the end of the discussion today. ⁓ This has been super insightful. Mahesh, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. Thank you. Thank you. before we wrap up, where can our viewers connect with you to learn more about the topic or about your work?

So one, they can go to my LinkedIn profile. They can check me on LinkedIn. Second is on my LinkedIn, I have a newsletter called Future is Bright, which has got like 1000 plus subscribers. Subscribe to that newsletter because I published every week something on marketing sales. Recently I published on AGI, you know how AGI is going to change sales and marketing. So that should be something interesting. I'm going to do a series on AGI. So probably that will help.

own podcast called Mr. Iyer's Digital Dialogue which is available on Spotify, Apple so they can go ahead and listen to ⁓ those. There are a lot of sales and marketing leaders who have come on my podcast so you can hear from the horse's mouth more information.

Definitely, I vouch for that and I'll definitely share all the links in the description for people to check it out. Awesome, that's all. Thank you again, Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for having Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. See you again. Bye. See you.