Qualified had the honor of joining the Marketing Trends Podcast—a fun, innovative podcast that is dedicated to all things marketing. Every week co-hosts Ian Faison and Lauren Vacarello are joined by marketing leaders from companies like Salesforce, Google, and Twilio to dive into their career learnings and talk about the ever-changing marketing landscape.

We were super excited about the opportunity to sit down and talk about Conversational Marketing and how this new space is completely transforming the way B2B companies sell.

Want the highlights? Here’s a recap:

• Modern customers have higher expectations: As consumer companies continue to up-level their sales processes, business buyers expect the same personalized, white-glove sales experience. (36:00)
• Businesses have been selling the same way for over a decade: The demand gen model for B2B companies has been completely stagnant. Businesses ask buyers to fill out a form and spend weeks chasing them down to schedule a sales meeting. This process is painful for both buyers and sales reps and simply won’t cut it anymore. (7:00)
• Demand Gen strategies need to change: In the past, demand gen was a numbers game. Marketing leaders would ask their teams “How can we put as many people as possible into our marketing funnel?” Today it’s less about quantity and more about quality; marketing leaders need to shift their mindset to “How can we have valuable conversations with the right prospects at the right time?” (16:00)
• Introducing Conversational Marketing: Conversational Marketing is about greeting your hottest prospects with a frictionless sales experience (real-time chat, screenshare, online meetings) right on your website and moving them through the sales cycle faster. (18:00)
• What about ABM? Conversational Marketing makes your ABM sales strategy even more powerful. What if your sales reps could connect with your target accounts the moment they land on your website? That’s a game-changer. (30:00)
• Other apps supercharge Conversational Marketing: Conversational Marketing is part of a much larger sales and marketing strategy and is best used in concert with your other business apps. By connecting Qualified with apps like Salesforce, Salesforce Pardot, and Clearbit, you can fuel your qualification engine with more prospect data and have more contextual sales conversations. (48:00) 
• How to get started with Qualified: Start small but think big. Look at your highest value marketing campaigns and start talking to those people now. (52:00)

Cruise over to the Marketing Trends website to see their episode recap. Huge thanks to the crew at Marketing Trends for having us. Until next time!