What B2B Marketers Should Measure Instead of MQLs with James Toepfer

James Toepfer, former Head of Campaign Strategy and Demand Marketing for Digital Media APAC at Adobe, joins the show to explain why his team there ditched the Marketing Qualified Lead for the Marketing Qualified Account. He unpacks the disconnect that forced the change, an MQL dashboard glowing green while sales sat in the red, and how an account view reshaped BDR targets and conversion.

Expect a practical breakdown of MQA and advice for lean teams without an insights function.

Guest Introduction

James Toepfer is a senior B2B marketing leader with 20+ years driving marketing strategy, go-to-market architecture, and revenue growth across enterprise SaaS in ANZ and APAC, at organisations including Adobe, Google, Intuit, PayPal, and Optus.

Key Topics

The "green dashboard, red sales" disconnect: why MQL volume and database coverage stopped reflecting sales performanceWhat MQA measures: engagement across a buying group of 7-10 ICPs per account, including "dark funnel" activity, not a single last-touch metricThe multi-quarter transition at Adobe, running MQL and MQA in parallel, led by a global insights team with heavy BDR enablementThe Account Engagement Hub: a self-serve tool for BDRs to prioritise accounts, see engaged contacts, and build outbound plansHow BDR incentives changed under MQA: unchanged pipeline targets, but higher-quality conversations and disposition ratesAdjusting the model under quarter-end pressure by narrowing to the most-engaged accounts, not adding more leadsAdvice for smaller teams: group leads by account manually and work backwards from the revenue numberWhy conversion improved once the denominator shifted to prioritised accounts, alongside sharper, problem-led content

Resources & Links

People

Kerry Cunningham - Former Forrester analyst, now at 6sense, whose talk first shaped James's account-based thinkingJon Miller - Marketo co-founder, early advocate for account-based measurementJon Stona - Global CMO of Airwallex, cited as an example of bold B2B brand marketingNishi Seth - Google Cloud Marketing Lead APAC, cited for her take on continuous optimisationLucinda Barlow - Senior Director, International Marketing at Uber and James's former Google leader, cited for brand built on a customer "jolt"Mark Jones - Host of The CMO Show, which Adobe sponsorsDave Gerhardt - Founder of Exit Five, followed for ABM contentShadé Zahrai - Self-leadership researcher whose "I could" vs "I should" framing James cites as a takeaway

Companies & Tools

Adobe - Where James led the MQL-to-MQA transition6sense - Intent platform Kerry Cunningham now works withMarketo - Automation platform, part of Adobe, co-founded by Jon MillerThe CMO Show - Marketing podcast hosted by Mark Jones, sponsored by AdobeExit Five - B2B marketing community founded by Dave Gerhardt

Contact & Credits

Host: Shahin Hoda

Guest: James Toepfer

Produced by: Shahin Hoda and Alexander Hipwell

Edited by: Alexander Hipwell & Dave Somido

Music by: Breakmaster Cylinder

Podcast Co-ordinator: Jonah Igsie

APAC's B2B Growth Podcast is Presented by xGrowth