The Metrics Brothers, Dave Kellogg and Ray Rike open with their introductory bit, which this week included Statler and Waldorf, the grumpy old men in the balcony from the Muppets, before diving into a thorough review of the Norwest B2B Sales and Marketing Benchmark Report, a102-page study published in November 2025, that included 177 participants (77 Norwest portfolio, 100 third-party VC/PE-backed).
Key Topics Covered:
- Overall Report Assessment: Praised for its breadth, year-over-year trend data, and even split of marketing (40%), sales (42%), and combined (18%) respondents
- Marketing Budgets: Smaller companies ($5M–$15M ARR) saw dramatic budget cuts — down from $3.3M to $825K, nearly a 75% decrease
- Top GTM Challenges in 2025: #1: Positioning product as a "must have" — 44%, up 6% YoY
- Revenue Re-Forecasting: 66% of respondents changed their revenue plan mid-year; 43% increased it (down from 48% prior year), while 23% decreased (up from 18%)
- Renewals Ownership Shift: Customer Success owned renewals 56% of the time in 2023 — now just 29% in 2025
- MQL Scoring Model Collapse: Use of formal scoring models (demographic fit + engagement)
- Top Marketing KPIs: #1: Dollar value of opportunities (pipeline) was number one metric at 56%
- CAC & Cost-Per-Lead Awareness - The "Bonus" Topic: 45% of respondents didn't know their CAC; 41% didn't know their cost per lead
- Closing Recommendations: Both hosts recommend reading the report, including pages 80–98 covering AI adoption in sales and marketing, that they were not able to cover in this episode
If you are a GTM executive leading a software company or the CFO responsible for driving revenue growth and profitability - this episode and the associated report is a great source of insights!
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