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

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

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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.