Why It's Time to Bury the MQL – With Jon Miller, the Marketo Co-Founder Who Helped Popularize It

Mar 4, 2026

Jon Miller, co-founder of Marketo and Engagio and former CMO of Demandbase, rethinks the playbook he helped create. He explains why MQLs and funnel thinking broke, how brand and account engagement actually move pipeline, and why modern measurement, cross-functional teamwork, and AI-driven 1:1 personalization are the future of B2B marketing.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ADVICE

Stop Measuring Marketing Versus Sales Sourced Leads

Avoid using marketing-sourced versus sales-sourced as a KPI because attribution is inaccurate and it destroys cross-functional teamwork.
The original MQL definition was useful but got bastardized into easy-to-hit downloads and movable scoring thresholds.

ADVICE

Measure Brand With Regular Surveys Not Just Web Traffic

Do invest in brand metrics (surveys, awareness, perception) because AI and changes to web traffic make traditional proxies unreliable.
Run quarterly brand surveys (≈100 responses) to track directional shifts in how your ICP thinks and feels about you.

INSIGHT

Account Engagement Is A Brand Metric And Leading Indicator

Account engagement is a brand metric: before customers spend money they spend time, so track whether target accounts' right people are engaging.
Use account-stage counts (awareness, engaged, qualified buying group, opportunity) as leading indicators.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Jon Miller co-founded Marketo, the company that helped turn MQLs, lead scoring, and the demand waterfall into the operating system of B2B marketing. Now he's the one telling you to throw most of it out.

When Jon did the same playbook at Demandbase that worked brilliantly at Marketo, it flopped. That failure changed how he thinks about almost everything.

In this conversation, Carolyn sits down with Jon, co-founder of Marketo and Engagio (which merged with Demandbase), to dig into why the traditional B2B marketing playbook stopped working, what brand actually does for demand gen that most teams never account for, and what a modern measurement framework should look like in 2026.

What we cover:

Why the same playbook that worked at Marketo failed at Demandbase

Why MQLs aren't inherently bad, but how they became a game most marketing teams were rigging without realizing it

The case against marketing-sourced vs. sales-sourced attribution (and why it breaks the teamwork you need to win)

What a modern CMO dashboard should actually include

Why the buying process is chaotic and nonlinear and why treating it like a simple funnel has always been the wrong model

How AI is finally making true 1:1 personalization across millions of buyers possible

The one question to ask your CFO socratically that will reframe the entire conversation about brand ROI

This episode is an absolute MUST listen for any marketing leader or revenue operator who knows something is broken but keeps hitting a wall trying to fix it.

🔗 RESOURCES:

🎥 ⁠⁠The GTM Factory Framework Explained⁠

🎥 ⁠9 Metrics Every B2B SaaS GTM Team Needs to Track⁠

Passetto's April sprint cohort is almost full. 2 weeks. A complete marketing and pipeline audit. Real GTM clarity before Q2 hits. ⁠[Work With Us]⁠

Book a [FREE] 1:1 Revenue Visibility Assessment to find out why you can't answer the pipeline questions that matter most. ⁠[Schedule Your Session]⁠

⁠⁠Follow Carolyn on LinkedIn⁠⁠

⁠Follow Jon on LinkedIn⁠

—

This episode is powered by ⁠⁠Passetto⁠⁠. If your pipeline dashboards aren't giving you straight answers, you're in good company. Most GTM teams simply don't have the visibility to understand what's truly driving pipeline and revenue, what's slowing them down, or where to focus next.