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Marketing-Led Growth by Nelson Gilliat. 

Understand why the Sales-Led Growth model from the 1980's (Sales Development + AE-SE-CSM Sales Assembly Line) is an outdated and harmful B2B Marketing and Sales model -- and the cause of the main problems today.  Profit and growth is reduced, slower, harder, and more costly.  We see high turnover, low tenure, low performance, and low job satisfaction. Buyers suffer a lousy buying experience with significant friction and annoyance. Marketing is handcuffed, preempted, counteracted, and crowded out by Sales and Sales Development—while they hide behind Marketing and ride off of Marketing’s coattails. Enormous time, capital, and labor is wasted.

Understand why the Marketing-Led Growth model (MLG) is the modern B2B Marketing and Sales model -- and the solution to the main problems today. 

Learn how to achieve Marketing-Led Growth with an implementation framework: "analyze, business case, test, prove, and gradual transition" approach. 


Achieve better profit, growth, a competitive advantage, as well as more productive and fulfilling careers. 
 

Marketing-Led Growth model in a nutshell: 
 

  1. Marketing maximizes self-service on the website with the option for Sales. Buyers can learn about the product, try the product, and buy the product on the website -- and request Sales' help. Marketing auto-qualifies buyers on the website demo request form. Marketing enables qualified buyers to schedule a time directly from a seller's calendar.   
     

  2. Marketing only gives Sales website demo requests, not contact information of uninterested buyers ("MQLs"). A Marketing lead for Sales is defined only as a website demo request that Marketing auto-qualifies on the request form.
     

  3. Marketing is responsible for generating and qualifying leads. Not Sales. Sales must not conduct spam marketing via telemarketing, email spam, and LinkedIn spam to generate a lead. Sales must not manually qualify leads on a phone call ("Sales Development", "Prospecting"). Sales Development should be sunset in favor of Marketing.  Any lead generation that Sales does is optional icing on the Marketing cake, and must not be via spam.
     

  4. Marketing is primarily responsible for generating leads, customers, revenue, growth, and profits. Marketing is primarily responsible for the initial sale, expansion, retention, and customer advocacy.  Sales supports Marketing, not the other way around. Marketing owns all records in the CRM while Sales and Customer Service reps have read-and-write access. 
     

  5. Marketing should report to the CEO. Sales should ideally report to Marketing (the CRO must be a Marketing leader). Marketing must not report to Sales (the CRO must not be a Sales leader). 
     

  6. Marketing is accountable to annual, real goals and metrics. Such as: profit, revenue, CAC, CAC payback, retention, CLV, adoption, win rate, sales cycle, ACV, # customers, # free trial activations, # opportunities, # demo requests etc.)
     

  7. If buyers need Sales, Marketing can enable buyers to schedule a formal meeting on the website, or offer live chat for real-time assistance.
     

  8.  The buyer must not be handed off among partial sellers (AE-SE-CSM Sales Assembly Line). Combine the 3 Sales roles into 1. A single, complete seller. Sunset the 3 different bloated Sales teams into 1. 
     

  9.  Pay Sales a full salary plus bonus like every other department. The buyer must not be pressure-sold by Sales. Eliminate commission (half salary withheld pending performance). 
     

To learn more:
 

  1. Check out the book on Amazon as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook.

  2. Tune into the podcast.

  3.  Consider my consulting service

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