The Key to Unlock Revenue Growth: Bringing Intelligence to Automation

The tool and motion bubble has officially burst. 

If you're a CMO or a revenue leader, you will probably agree that for the past 15 years, "more more more" has been the name of the game. Implement two to three new tools every quarter, evaluate and buy new data every year, jump on new channels as soon as they appear, and make sure to run the latest GTM motion as soon as they come, may it be inbound, ABM or PLG.

Like it or not, it has worked pretty well for many revenue leaders–even if it brought a lot of stress. But those days are over and we are entering a radically different period. It's a fantastic opportunity for those who embrace the change fast, and it will be challenging for those who don’t.

Act I: The age of brute force automation

I like to think of the last decade as the ‘age of brute force automation.’’ To automate a job meant immediate ROI. 

Whether that be prospect nurture with Hubspot or Marketo, account and lead research with data enrichment from Clearbit or ZoomInfo, sales outreach with Outreach or Salesloft, online conversations with Intercom or Drift–it became very cheap to automate the work touching thousands or even millions of leads. It was a game of quantity over quality. 

This led to a tool built for every possible motion, channel, function, and platform in marketing and sales. For a while, adding more tools did generate significant ROI. 

This is a lot less clear now. Automation has become tablestake. Sending thousands of cold outbound emails is not a magic power anymore. Most channels are saturated with automation.

And operating dozens of tools creates lots of complexity in B2B businesses. 

Quick test: How many properties does your contact object have in Hubspot? How many tabs and fields do your sales people see in Salesforce? Is your answer “wayyyyy too many”?

What is the next era for revenue teams? Lots of data points and customer conversations point to “automation intelligence”.

Act II: The age of automation intelligence

Few will disagree with the belief that AI will dramatically change the world of marketing and sales. But what does that mean beyond having GenAI write emails for us?

99% of revenue teams don’t have a good grasp of what activities and actions will actually generate revenue. There are constant questions around: which account is actually in the market, which person will take a call, what value prop and message will resonate, how much should I bid on a keyword?

To get to a point where your marketers understand what pipeline drives demand and your sales people are only working deals that have the highest likelihood to close there is a TON of data grunt work. 

The data has become noise not insight

This could mean large teams of data scientists at big organizations or a singular marketing operations person in the weeds of all your data. 

This is bogging down teams and creating a critical need for not only automation but intelligence of that automation to find the truth in the data. 

This is where we introduce: revenue automation intelligence. 

The revenue teams who win today are those who can predict and prioritize the right revenue generating actions, not just understanding what those actions are but truly which ones they should take. 

We are seeing our customers 2-3x their conversion rates on their leads by adding intelligence to their automation, and intelligence in their sales workflow. We are also seeing our customers get 50% more revenue with half the number of leads, a strong pivot away from quantity and over to quality is showing massive results. 

Revenue Intelligence: Understanding the space

Revenue intelligence is a massive and growing market that includes tools such as Gong for sales conversation intelligence and Clari for forecasting intelligence. 

MadKudu’s Revenue Automation Intelligence is a part of this broader revenue category, automating intelligence so teams can predict and prioritize actions. By analyzing external and internal signals, MadKudu pushes only the actionable revenue signals into team’s systems of record. 

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We are seeing this market grow rapidly, and for revenue intelligence to work across the entire customer journey you need the automation component that MadKudu provides. 

Where MadKudu is going

When we first began at MadKudu we embarked on the challenge of democratizing data science to bring quality lead and account scoring to marketing teams. We saw through this work that lead and account scoring was only one part of the puzzle. 

As we have broadened our capabilities to support revenue teams, pipeline agnostic, we have grown into a revenue automation intelligence engine. It doesn’t matter where your leads are coming from, what you need is the intelligence to know which ones are best and who to go after, as well as the automation of those tasks for your team. 

In 2023 alone MadKudu has 10x’d our user base with MadKudu Sales Intelligence, and we are close to a billion dollars of revenue powered by MadKudu revenue automation intelligence.

With our revenue automation intelligence engine you will have: 

• Automated marketing insights: MadKudu analyzes your marketing channels to identify which efforts are driving high value leads, so you can spend your resources only on channels that drive revenue.
• Leads & account prioritization: MadKudu’s predictive scoring surfaces the best-fit prospects based on key characteristics and behavioral analysis, allowing your revenue team to focus on the leads and accounts that are likely to buy from you.
• Sales process intelligence: MadKudu sends alerts when a hot prospect is ready to buy, along with insight into what is top of mind for them, so you can reach out with a personalized message.
• Churn risks & expansion opportunity detection: MadKudu detects which product usage patterns are significant for your customers, so you can proactively engage at the right time.

We’re investing aggressively in the product, obsessing about these key principles:

Fully explainable (transparent vs. black box): Many intelligence tools operate as a ‘black box,’ you are receiving insights but you aren't completely sure how the tool creates them. This results in a lack of trust between specifically marketing and sales–and a lack of trust in the data. 

Work within your tools–not another app to log into: Marketers are logging into dozens of tools a day–alongside trying to get sales reps to do the same. This is where the breakdown happens: you need intelligence and automation where your teams already work. This also pertains to your specific GTM motion: PLG, SLG, ABM, Inbound, Outbound. Your engine is going to continue to change as rapidly as the market. 

Automates repetitive workflows: There is still some grunt work left in marketing and sales even with the rise of automation. It is critical that all repetitive workflows are able to be automated to allow your revenue team to maximize their output. 

We know that revenue teams are facing more challenges than ever to grow. But the revenue community is one of the fastest to adapt. I cannot wait to see how automation intelligence changes the game now and I am excited to see MadKudu lead the way in this new world.