How do you make the leap from lead gen to demand gen?

It can be a tough sell to leadership, but this episode of Demand Gen U looks at how Kaylee Edmondson, Advisor at Chili Piper, steered her team toward demand gen success.

We discuss what Kaylee did when she first joined the team, how she sold the idea of demand gen to leadership, and how the team measured progress. We also hear how Kaylee’s team learned to “crawl, walk, and run” with demand gen and what the result has been like for the company.

Keep reading for the top takeaways from this conversation or press play to hear more.

Top three takeaways:

Takeaway 1: Convince your leadership team with proof

When leadership are quite comfortable with lead gen, it can be tough to get them to jump into demand gen as well. But Kaylee was determined to sell this idea to leadership. Being close with the CEO at Chili Piper was a big help, she said. But she also wanted to put down a solid case for demand gen and how it could tie into day-to-day sales/marketing operations at Chili Piper.

So she created the Centers of Excellence document on how demand gen could function within Chili Piper, how it could address issues the company was facing at the time in terms of growth, and how it would shift the marketing and sales teams’ focus to buyer behavior. 

The good news is that the CEO at Chili Piper was really receptive to it and gave her the go-ahead to start trying things out.

Takeaway 2: Asking permission to “crawl” is the first step

Rather than jumping headfirst into demand gen, Kaylee wanted to start small. So she asked for “permission to crawl” first because it would raise fewer concerns and worries for the leadership and sales teams.

It was a good opportunity for Kaylee and the team to start small, try things out, and learn along the way because, in her words, they “hadn’t quite cracked the code” yet.

If you’re considering a demand gen focus in the future, you don’t need to jump into it with both feet. You can start small and build from there. As Kaylee puts it, you can crawl before you walk and walk before you run with demand gen.

Takeaway 3: Sometimes the best insights come from speaking with customers

In Kaylee’s view, sometimes B2B and SaaS brands forget that it’s important to have conversations with customers.

It was an important part of her strategy early on to speak with people through the podcast as well as potential and existing customers.

Rather than wondering, simply asking customers what’s worked for them and got them to convert can make the whole process of moving to demand gen much smoother. It’s something Kaylee wishes they’d started much sooner.

For more insights into breaking into demand gen in a company, listen to the full episode.