All you need to know about the #FlipMyFunnel movement

1. How did the idea of #FlipMyFunnel get started?

The idea was inspired by Scott Brinker and Jill Rowley at the MarTech conference of March 2015. What perplexed me more than anything is that marketing and sales leaders, who were sharing the same stage, both talked about the rise of the buyer. The MarTech landscape couldn’t have been more complicated with hundreds of new technologies emerging every year. The concepts around account-based marketing and social selling were just getting started. “Why now?” I wondered. And then, I heard the Forrester Research statistic that only 0.75% of all leads ever become revenue. That’s when I drew a reverse funnel on the back of a napkin on my flight back from San Francisco to Atlanta and wrote about the First-Ever MarTech Customer Experience Stack Opens a new window

2. So, what is this stack and why customer experience?

I firmly believe that the B2B CMOs are the next generation of CEOs (by that I mean Customer Experience Officers) of their organizations. If you think about it, marketing touches everything in today’s complicated buyer’s journey. But, the buyer’s journey doesn’t follow a linear path. For decades, we’ve been taught this path is the funnel. I called it the “get skinny fast” funnel, because the traditional funnel literally squeezes everything down. The funnel got its name from the idea of more leads at the top equals to more customers at the end. In theory it is a good idea. But, the problem with the funnel is it’s about filtering through leads to find potential customers rather than focusing on the best-fit prospects at the start. The traditional funnel is about volume and quantity as opposed to quality. In short, it’s a lead-based funnel designed by sales for tracking their opportunities and adopted by marketers to help get a seat at the table.

In the year of 2016, we shouldn’t be marketing like the early 2000s. MarTech has given us all the tools and technology to identify our best-fit customers first. There’s no reason we need to pour 10,000 leads at the top to get a handful of customers. The thought of having to generate thousands of leads made me dread the startup life I was about to embark at TerminusOpens a new window  – an account-based marketing platform.

So, I invented a new funnel. I flipped the old funnel on its head and called it the customer experience funnel. This is a funnel that speaks to me and my needs as a CMO. It can map my strategies and tools to help me meet my pipeline and revenue goals. It’s entirely personal. So I thought, if it has to be a funnel, then so be it, but let’s create a marketing funnel that meets my needs. So here it is:

3. How does this #FlipMyFunnel philosophy map to tools?

This is the fun part. I just didn’t want to put a philosophical argument out there. I wanted to share how this maps back to the set of tools that currently exists. So, here is the first framework that we put out there last year that maps to each stage of the flipped funnel. You can download this on flipmyfunnel.com

With this philosophy of challenging the status quo of B2B marketing and sales, it’s important for me as a practitioner to in turn find the right tools that help me identify the right tools to drive pipeline and revenue. The reality is that as B2B Marketers, we don’t have a job if we don’t drive new opportunities into the pipeline. When times get tough, the first place where companies cut budget is from marketing, because they are unable to show value of their efforts to drive revenue. My quest as marketer and CMO of Terminus is to bust this idea.

I want marketers to have the ability to bring their CEO, CFO, and sales leaders together, agree on goals and target accounts to focus on, and then deliver account-based engagements, so that when we close accounts, marketers have the right data and a strategy to support how they influenced closing new deals.

4. What next for #FlipMyFunnel?

We have hosted three sold-out conferences in Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago. There are more than thousand B2B marketers and sales professionals who joined forces to figure out this new way to drive marketing initiatives that are not activity-based, but results-based. We are doing our fourth conference in San Francisco on February 25Opens a new window (use the promo code “MTA50” to get 50% off). We also have a Slack communityOpens a new window of passionate innovators, who deeply care about building strategies that drive revenue and think about account-based marketing as the holy grail of B2B.

5. How do you define Account-Based Marketing?

There are tons of complicated marketing definitions out there and since account-based marketing is a buzzword today, I think the definitions are even more evolving. For my simple mind, I define it as follows:

Account-Based Marketing = B2B Focused Smarketing.

Here’s why: I call it “focused” because it’s not about creating ebooks, webinars, or sending emails and hoping someone will click that CTA and magically turn into a new customer. It’s about focusing on the right set of target accounts, customizing your content, advertisements, and activities to that set of accounts for a given period of time. I say “Smarketing” because B2B marketers need to stop running campaigns in a vacuum. You have to have your sales team on-board. Not being aligned as one team is a sure way to burn out and not hit your goals. Sales executives need to know that their marketing team is focused on so much more than writing blogs or setting up booths at events. “Smarketing” is working together to target the right accounts, engage those key contacts, and ultimately create new customers who become advocates for your brand.

6. What should you expect at the #FlipMyFunnel conference in San Francisco?

We will be having 12 case studies about how leading companies like Cisco, HP, Vidyard, and many others are doing customer experience marketing through the lens of targeted accounts. The energy is going to be electric. Check out this video from our first conference:

It’s going to be an awesome day with many more surprises. Come and join usOpens a new window to challenge the status quo of B2B marketing and sales.

The #FlipMyFunnel Roadshow is all about challenging the status quo of B2B marketing, sales and customer success. The event features rock-solid thought leaders and will be held in San Francisco on 2/25. RegisterOpens a new window  and get 50% off ticket prices with promo code MTA50.