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Marketing in Progress is a spinoff of Work in Progress that digs into what’s moving the needle in B2B. We feature marketing leaders, sales leaders, and agency owners sharing real stories, smart ideas, and no-filter perspectives—so you walk away with practical guidance to help you do your job better.
Jenn Parrino (00:00):
Marketing influence pipeline doesn't really mean much to anyone outside of marketing. You shouldn't have to educate your audience on your measurements in order to make them care about it. It's got to be something they care about already.
Gayle Kalvert (00:12):
Welcome to Marketing in Progress. I'm Gayle Kalvert. This show is for B2B marketing leaders who are under real pressure to deliver results without a clear roadmap. Each episode is built to give you practical insight you can use right away. We focus on what actually matters, how success is measured, and the decisions and trade-offs necessary for success. If you're trying to cut through the noise, do better work and build credibility inside your organization, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Marketing in Progress. I'm your host, Gayle Kalvert, and today I'm talking to two of my favorite marketers, Jenn Perino, head of Demand Generation and Candice Wright, Senior Growth Marketing Manager at GLIA. They are powerhouse marketing leaders turning strategy into real pipeline impact. Jenn has built and scaled high performing demand engines across startups and enterprises. And Candice brings an account first growth mindset, leading multimillion dollar multichannel initiatives across complex B2B environments.
(01:19):
Together, they partner with sales, rev ops, and product to build scalable demand gen systems that deliver results. In this episode, we get real about how to prioritize what actually drives pipeline and cut the noise. What separates real demand engines from activity-driven marketing and how to align with sales and measure what truly impacts revenue. If you've ever struggled to turn marketing activity into real pipeline, wrestled with sales alignment, or wondered which metrics actually prove impact, this episode is for you. Let's get into it. Hi, Jenn and Candice.
Jenn Parrino (01:57):
Hi there. Hi.
Gayle Kalvert (01:58):
So fun being with two of you today. I'm excited. So Jenn, tell everybody where you're coming to us from.
Jenn Parrino (02:04):
Well, normally I would be coming to you from Miami, but it's spring break, so I'm in St. Pete Beach in Florida.
Gayle Kalvert (02:11):
Oh, very nice. Very nice. What about you, Candice?
Candice Wright (02:14):
I am in lovely Oklahoma City.
Gayle Kalvert (02:17):
Super excited to have you both here. And the reason I really wanted to talk with both of you is because I just love both of you and we had a great time working together. And both of you specifically focus on revenue as a part of marketing. And that's something that we talk a lot about at Creo and on Marketing in Progress this podcast is how marketing is under so much pressure, I think more and more pressure as the years go on to really show revenue impact that can be difficult. I mean, that's not always the easiest thing. Structurally, the way organizations are set up, right? No faults of marketing, but that can be hard. So if you could focus on only one thing to drive pipeline, what would it be and what maybe would you ignore? What are you seeing that's working for you that you would do more of?
Jenn Parrino (03:12):
So we work in SaaS. So when we generate pipeline, it impacts us two, three quarters down the road. So if we want to generate pipeline, it's a long game. Because of that, we have to be very conscious about what we're doing and not just add a lot of activity. So really we have to prioritize what is the right thing to do now. Being clear about who we're trying to reach and I guess where we're spending our time. We have a very, very dialed in ICP, which is really helpful. We know exactly who we want to hit. We know the person we want to hit, how to speak to them. And so being really intentional, I think is more important than a specific tactic. I can't say, oh, do a webinar. It'll generate some pipeline. It may be that we already have people who are engaged.
(04:01):
We're just one step away from getting them into pipeline. And so really focusing in on those types of things, I think is really where we can do the best. And maybe that's just converting people who are close to being pipeline. So for me, it's less about the tactic and more about the focus.
Candice Wright (04:19):
Like you said, we have our ICP nailed down. We know the major events that happen annually. We know we can look forward and really plan the next two or three steps that's going to align with when the deal may close or take a few steps back. If we're seeing some early engagement, it's not so much, well, we know this is the webinar is what's going to convert, but we know we have an opportunity to wooz them coming up here. And that actually aligns perfectly in our timeline of what we've seen historically with lead to opportunity to deal closure. So it's definitely less about the tactic itself and just more about truly knowing your business and your customers and the actions they're taking regularly throughout the year.
Gayle Kalvert (05:05):
Yeah, 100%. And it's shocking to me, I will say, when I'm meeting with marketing leaders, how often they might be doing some guessing about their ICP. So what you said, Jenn and Candice, two of the things I heard was really being dialed in on who your ICP is. What are their pain points? How can you solve them? If you want, you can get into more detail about what you know about your ICP. I think that could be helpful. But before that, the second thing you said was doing less. And time and time again, we see that, yes, that everybody's thinking, well, if I'm not getting the pipeline generation that I need, or if I'm not getting the results that I need, we should add something. And I'm hearing that narrative a lot now that it's actually about doing less and doing it in a more focused way.
(05:58):
And like you said, Candice planning and knowing where you're going to be, but that requires a strong gut. So when things are dicey to stick with it.
Candice Wright (06:08):
That's something that everyone has to actually go through to really realize you can hear it, but I think our knee-jerk reaction is to do more. We're taught numbers, numbers, numbers, games. So well, the more we have, the more we're going to bring in. And I think it's just a rite of passage in marketing that you have to go through it to realize that's not the best way to go. That's not the best approach.
Gayle Kalvert (06:30):
Jenn, on the ICP side of things, can you tell us what kind of information do you need to know about your ICP to do it well?
Jenn Parrino (06:38):
So for us specifically, I can tell you, we know we're in the financial industry, and so we can actually get a lot more information about those types of accounts than maybe some other industries. So we're very lucky in that respect that we know how big they are, how well they're doing. We know the names of every single one in our ICP. We know what size we're going after. We know exactly what titles and personas we're looking for. We've really, really dialed it in from that respect. It's probably a little more difficult for some other industries, like if you're in hospitality or if you're a business to consumer, it's a little more challenging to get those signals, but we have really, really strong signals of who we're targeting and that was very intentional. The product itself, we've geared it towards the specific financial industry, but in theory, the product itself could be much broader.
(07:28):
But by design, we focus on financial institutions because you could spread yourself way too thinly, trying to hit everybody, hit every pain point, hit every industry. But where we've found what works for us is the focus aspect.
Gayle Kalvert (07:42):
Are you a marketing leader in B2B tech? Do you want to hear what your peers are actually doing? What's working, what they're ditching, and how they're navigating the pressure we're all under? Well, you're in luck. We just launched the Marketing and Progress community. It's a space for sharing ideas, learning from your peers and having fun along the way. Visit creocollective.io/marketinginprogress to learn more and join us. I love that both of you are so singularly focused on revenue, but not every organization sets their marketing team up like that. So is there anything that you could say maybe is really not worth the time that you're seeing done out there?
Candice Wright (08:25):
I know from my experience through trial and error, I thought we should send five different email streams to five different titles because we think this very niche line is going to be what hooks that one person. And at the end of the day, it was not failed because we learned from it. We realized we didn't have to get so nuanced in specific tactics. If we really want to personalize, maybe it's we're hosting a webinar that appeals to CFOs exclusively, but to have five different emails with the same asset, the same offer with slightly tailored messaging, it's not worth the squeeze. So when you really want to personalize, do it in a theme or in an overarching tactic that is to a specific audience, but don't try to get so granular that you're splitting hairs by the end of the day.
Gayle Kalvert (09:19):
No, I love that because there's such a focus on getting super uber personalized. So I love that. You were going to say Jenn too. I think there's a lot. I mean, look, we've all tried things that have failed, and so that's okay.
Jenn Parrino (09:31):
Yeah. And I wouldn't even say it was a failure. We did see an increase in click rates and open rates and the things that you look at when you look at email metrics, but what we didn't see was an increase in conversions or pipeline from it. So it's like, yeah, we had more people who, I guess, resonated with the copy, but at the end of the day, it was the juice worth the squeeze and we've found that it wasn't. If I had a 25 person email team, maybe, but we found that it wasn't really getting us the gains that we wanted. And the thing is now, everybody can personalize copy because everybody's got an AI tool at their fingertips, but that doesn't make it better necessarily. We found like, yeah, we can create our own copy. We can create a lot of noise on that end.
(10:17):
But at the end of the day, the quality is still not as good as a human who writes it for us. Shout out to our writer who does such a great job. But I mean, it helps us automate a lot of things that we were doing manually, but now it's like still if you want to break through the noise, you really need some good quality at the right time. Just because I identify that you're the right size, you're the right company, you're the right person, it doesn't mean you're ready to buy. The timing is also extremely important for us.
Gayle Kalvert (10:46):
Jenn, it's really good to hear. And so much of this I find is hearing from other people doing a similar job as you and being validated in what your gut is telling you, it's really, it's helpful for me too. Yeah. Is there anything that you say is non-negotiable that you would not give up doing when you're focused on ... If somebody's listening and they're focused on demand gen, is there anything, and this could be in the world of marketing that you feel is non-negotiable that you really need to be doing?
Candice Wright (11:19):
Delivering a tactic that's answering the questions that your sales team's being asked. I know that sounds kind of fluffy, but for example, my biggest thing is never stop producing the content that your customers or your prospects are asking. For us, it's just been in the form of we've seen a lot of success in quick little 30, 45 minute group demos, a quick little lunch offer. I mean, and we were doing it weekly and still seeing the numbers and they were growing. And so I can't say not everyone can do a live demo perhaps or whatever. So you have to figure out what your niche tactic can be, but ultimately it's just being timely, being relevant, being where your customers and prospects are, listening to their questions, being in those forums and just making sure that you are responding to those questions, whether it be directly or through your own channels and tactics.
Gayle Kalvert (12:12):
You said something just now, which leads me to my next question perfectly. Thank you. Candice is sales, right? Marketing cannot be successful in a vacuum, but there are a lot of marketers out there that either don't have the access to sales that they might need or want, or structurally you might report to different leaders who have differing views on what's priority. So how do you both successfully engage with sales? I know this is something you've done well throughout your time at Glea, because we worked together a long time ago, and this is always really strong for you all. So do you meet with them regularly? How are you finding out what it is that they're hearing so that then you can feed that into your marketing efforts?
Jenn Parrino (13:00):
We do focus a lot on our sales alignment now, and we do it from every level. So the CMO level from me as the director level, and then Candice, and everyone on my team meets with every single sales rep. So we have made sure that we leave no one behind. Everybody gets a touch with marketing. They know what our goals are, and our goals are the same as their goals. I think that's really important too, because if our goals are impressions, clicks, MQLs, they don't speak that language and they don't relate to it. And so it's hard for them to understand what we're doing. And so we've made sure that our goal is their goal. So we want pipeline coverage, we want a company pipeline number, those types of things, alignment on a goal, but also staying in touch with them constantly and at every level to make sure their sales leadership is reinforcing what we're doing from the top down and the bottom up.
(13:56):
So just making sure everybody's on lockstep together and then they're bought in and that they care about what we're doing because it's ultimately benefiting them.
Candice Wright (14:04):
I've never worked with a sales team where I've built these types of relationships. It is truly transformed from a guessing game into almost like they come to me for, I don't want to say approval because obviously they're excellent at what they do, but they're like, "Hey, what's your thoughts on this? I'm noticing this or I'm hearing this. " An example being one of the AEs I work closely with is experiencing a lot of accounts that are going through M&A. And so when you think of it to my last response, I can take that now. I'm like, oh, okay. So now I'm talking to other growth marketers and they're hearing the same thing. So now we're able to take this and now we're able to produce content, produce live virtual experiences and get the right people in the room. "Oh, you're going through M&A, you're going through one.
(14:54):
How are you building this? What does your transition look like? How are you? Oh, you use Cli already. How are you leveraging it? "And so this is that invaluable information that we're sharing and we're hearing just in conversation that otherwise may not ever make its way back to me. It's created such an organic form of communication two ways that is allowing us to truly have a deeper level of appreciation for each other's roles, a better understanding of what's going on. And it's just evolved us to work more cohesively. And so it's been such a great experience and it has improved relationships, opportunities, everything. I mean, to actually know what pipeline coverage looks like on an individual basis, how much more can you really dive into a business? Marketers, that's never been something we've had that much insight into, but at the end of the day is our purpose.
Gayle Kalvert (15:52):
I was always the marketer that the minute I joined an organization, the first people I talked to were the salespeople because they are on the front lines, but I just sort of took that upon myself to do it. And some people might feel a little bit nervous or not really sure how to go about that. So is it weekly meetings? Is it more informal? How are you keeping in touch with sales?
Candice Wright (16:14):
I think you have to be very intentional with this type of program. It's easy to fall back into old ways. And so by design, it is a weekly cadence. It is intentional. There's channels that we're working with our teams with. There's constant communication. We're always async being able to get exposure from our channel team, from our BDRs, whatever it may be. It's really opened up the business to our organization to be able to bring what their expertise is into an opportunity, into a territory, whatever it may be. And so it is by design, very intentional, very scheduled so that we don't lose that momentum in that relationship.
Jenn Parrino (16:58):
One thing I would add is it can be a little more difficult if your organization is much bigger. So like my last org had hundreds of salespeople, so there was no way I was going to be able to do that. So I mean, I would say not a caveat necessarily, but for us, we're able to do that because of the number of sales reps and the number of marketers. But when I was at FIS Global, it was more like, how do I make it meaningful for the sales leaders so that they push it down because I can't possibly meet with 500 salespeople.
Gayle Kalvert (17:29):
One way I got around that too, Jenn, was going to QBRs. So every organization might have a call different things, right? But typically there's a sales kickoff or a company kickoff at the beginning of the year. Certainly getting access and being able to attend that is great. And I think that happens most of the time for marketing that they're part of that. But then those quarterly touchpoints, even if you need to dial in virtually and can't get there physically, you're then hearing directly from the sales team about how did it go last quarter? What are your plans for next quarter? And so that way, again, even though you might not be talking one-on-one to every salesperson at the organization, you're getting more real information about how your marketing is impacting their success. And the other thing is everybody records calls now all the time. Most organizations, it's mandatory that all sales calls are recorded.
(18:29):
So got to get some recordings and listen to sales calls if you don't have the time or you're not given the budget necessarily to meet with sales regularly. I think there's a lot of ways you can tap in. We talk about measurement. This is something we get asked at Creole a lot is, how can I better market myself and my team internally? We're doing great work. We're having great impact. Maybe you're still being measured on MQLs even though you think that's silly. So how do you think about that and really market yourselves?
Jenn Parrino (19:09):
I guess internally how you would market yourself is you have to find the common ground with who you're marketing yourself to. And that's kind of what we found is marketing influence pipeline doesn't really mean much to anyone outside of marketing. And so you can't really speak to that. You really have to find like, okay, what is marketing doing that's converting into pipeline or into meetings or what is something that sales cares about? What is something product cares about? And then you can kind of lean into those metrics. I mean, there's no shortage of metrics when it comes to marketing and how you're measured. It's everything, but we want to make sure we talk about what's converting. Those are things that people find really important. So it doesn't matter if you have one billion MQLs, if only half a percent convert into actual pipeline. That's kind of where we found we've got to find that common ground with sales to make sure anyone else in the business, because when you start talking in SQLs and SALs, they glaze over a little bit because they don't understand it.
(20:12):
You shouldn't have to educate your audience on your measurements in order to make them care about it. I think it's got to be something they care about already.
Gayle Kalvert (20:21):
I love that. Yeah, that's so true. Using their language in your results. Candice, do you have anything to add on that one?
Candice Wright (20:28):
No, honestly, I thought you did great.
(20:32):
Well, I mean, I would say, yeah, learning to speak their language because we are looking at every facet of the business as it relates to marketing, starting from subject line conversion to clicks to everything, really honing in one to two core metrics. What is it your company is speaking about internally and how can you immediately align what you need to say to those objectives? I think that's to Jenn's point where a lot of the fall off comes from is we want to shout from the rooftops because there are so many milestones that marketing hits. There are so many different channels, tactics, levers pulled, and unfortunately that just doesn't get too exciting outside of our team. So yes, like Jim said, honing in, really keeping an ear open for what's the words you're hearing these people say? What are they fascinated with? What is the focus right now and how can you make your result land in that bucket?
Gayle Kalvert (21:35):
Jenn, Candice, thank you so much for being so honest and I loved having the two of you. So we're going to have to do this again. I hope you don't mind. You're going to have to come back and we'll check in and see how things are going, how things have changed because as we know, marketing does not ... I mean, nothing is standing still right now. So who knows what we will be doing to drive pipeline next year. So Jenn Candice, we will put your LinkedIn in the show notes so everybody could find you. Thank you so much and we'll see you soon.
Jenn Parrino (22:04):
Thank you.
Gayle Kalvert (22:06):
Hi. If this episode was helpful, please follow Marketing in Progress and tap like. It helps other marketing leaders find the show. And if you know someone who's navigating similar challenges, feel free to share this episode with them. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.