How Cockroach Labs Uses MadKudu to Fish Where the Fish Are

Cockroach Labs is the creator of CockroachDB, a cloud-native, distributed SQL database that helps companies scale fast, survive failures, and thrive everywhere.

With multiple products and plans that range from free to enterprise, they needed an easy and data-driven way to prioritize the prospects most likely to drive revenue.

We sat down with Ryan Kelly, VP of Growth Marketing, and Maria Toft, Director of Demand Generation to hear how they’re using MadKudu to boost their business in three ways:

✅ Create more pipeline

✅ Improve conversion rates

✅ Increase efficiency

Before MadKudu: Lack of Transparency

Cockroach Labs was using a combination of tools (including D&B Lattice, Marketo, and Demandbase) to try and prioritize prospects.

But this setup wasn’t cutting it, with two main problems:

• These tools had a limited view into their product data, meaning they were missing out on a lot of key buying signals, and weren’t able to effectively prioritize leads based on their full behavior.
• There was no easy way for sales reps to access the right buying signals at the right time within their existing workflows – it was difficult to see which users were engaged.

This led to a lot of wasted time. Without a way to prioritize the right leads and surface them to sales at the right time, conversion rates suffered.

Why They Chose MadKudu

Cockroach Labs tried out several options, but MadKudu was chosen as it was able to do all three things that they were looking for in a revenue automation intelligence platform.

• Prioritize leads & accounts based on profile fit and engagement
• Create a predictive scoring model that’s transparent and can be adjusted based on business logic
• Combine all buying signals in a “single pane of glass” within Salesforce

“Being able to pipe in all these different data sources into a centralized platform and have that show up in Salesforce in a way that the reps can leverage. That's the secret sauce with MadKudu”. - Ryan Kelly, VP of Growth Marketing, Cockroach Labs

MadKudu was the only tool with the ability to support both MQL scoring and account scoring, unlike Marketo which only handles MQL scoring (and was more manual) and Demandbase which only handles account scoring.

Plus, the fuzzy logic mapping with personas that MadKudu provides makes it easy for sales reps to know who to reach out to and which playbook to execute.

Another key differentiator was the level of customer support that MadKudu provides.

“We have weekly meetings with our customer success team, and they've been very helpful in guiding us through and helping us continually iterate to get maximum impact. It's not a one and done type of thing, we know they are there for support.” 

Using MadKudu to Fish Where the Fish are

According to Ryan, MadKudu helps Cockroach Labs “fish where the fish are.” With a centralized view of their product, sales, and marketing signals, sales is able to reach out to prospects at the moment they’re most engaged.

MadKudu provides enrichment data through tools like Clearbit, and connects with all of Cockroach Labs first party and third party data, including 6sense intent data to leverage for account prioritization and sales intelligence.

MadKudu’s AI analyzes that data to see patterns and predict results, providing that information within the tools their team uses daily.

Reach out at the right time with MadKudu alerts

One way they use this information is with MadKudu alerts within Salesforce. The Cockroach Labs team creates alerts for events, new tech detected, or new job postings. These alerts let them know in real-time when an account is in buying mode.

Previously they were using Demandbase for these types of alerts, but there was no way to sync product activities, which was critical to understand how free users are interacting with their product in order to understand who’s ready to upgrade.

Plus, as the team has switched more to an ABM motion, with a smaller set of target accounts, the alerts have helped the sales team stay on top of any activity from the accounts they own. 

Maria, who helps manage these alerts explains why they have helped the team. 

 “[AEs] don’t want to wait for marketing to tell them when an account has very high engagement, they want to be able to monitor that for themselves and see everything that’s happening at their accounts.

Quickly prioritize accounts

Cockroach Labs also uses MadKudu to quickly create target account lists that are data-backed and proven to convert.

Ryan had back-to-back meetings with the VP of Sales, US and VP of Sales, EMEA. They both have dozens of reps, and each rep is managing a patch of named accounts.

With only 15 minutes to prep for both of these meetings, he was able to use MadKudu to quickly create a report with accounts that are currently showing engagement. 

Because this prioritization is based on shared data truth and there was transparency into account engagement, both VPs were excited to work the list provided. 

What used to take hours of back and forth with multiple meetings, now only takes a few minutes.

“The impact to the business today is a prioritization one. We have successfully been able to automate where we should be spending our time.”

Personalize the buyer journey 

On the marketing side, they’ve been able to plan their budget and campaigns based on named account engagement. 

For paid ads, they are customizing the content based on where the prospect is in their buying journey. Accounts with lower engagement see top-of-funnel ads, while highly engaged accounts will be served a stronger call to action, such as starting a CockroachDB Dedicated free trial. 

They’re also able to budget wisely when it comes to conferences and events. 

Maria mentioned that she will ask the event organizer for a list of company names expected as attendees before agreeing to sponsor an event. 

She’ll score that list using MadKudu, and see what percentage of attendees fall within their ideal customer profile. If she sees that only a small percentage fall within their target audience, she knows the ROI isn’t there for that event. 

Ready to prioritize revenue generating actions?

With MadKudu, Cockroach Labs was able to reinvigorate trust and collaboration between sales and marketing.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Cockroach Labs found success with MadKudu, and what MadKudu can do for your business, then get a demo today.