Jon Russo
Founder and CMO · B2B Fusion LinkedIn
Interview or Panel
Key takeaways
- 15:15Account-level targeting alone is not precise enough: targeting Microsoft as an account means trying to reach 163,000 people when the real buying team may be around 20, so the odds of hitting the right people are very low.
- 11:11Roughly 99% of people never click on advertising, so every click is a meaningful signal of attention and intent — sales teams should never miss it.
- 7:07The MQL handover model breaks alignment: marketing stops being accountable once leads pass to sales, ignores other buying committee members, and drops top decision makers who simply lose interest for a few weeks.
- 2:03SiriusDecisions/Forrester frameworks evolved from people-based to account-based (2017) to buying-group focused (2021), but they are theoretical constructs that companies struggle to operationalize because every go-to-market motion is different.
- 16:16Person-level engagement insights — who clicked ads, visited the website, downloaded content but never filled a form — tell sales development reps exactly which contacts to prioritize and what topics to engage them on.
In Jon Russo's words
“In my experience in taking their frameworks and bringing it into companies, there's always been a challenge of taking the theory and bringing it into practice.”
Influ2: Putting the buyer back into the ABM funnel | June 20212:03