Leaders in Marketing Innovation: Beth Redpath Katz of VMware

Go slow to get smooth, get smooth to go fast.

That’s the mindset Beth Redpath-Katz, Global Director, Lead Management Integrated Demand Services at VMware, took when moving her team from a leads/MQL approach to opportunity-centric MQA focus. 

Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs) flip the traditional lead generation model on its head. Rather than looking at individual leads, MQAs focus on which companies are showing the greatest level of interest. 

At first, they transitioned slowly, ensuring that they’d completed all the right data validation points and spoken to the right stakeholders to get their buy-in. Taking it slow at first allowed Beth and her team to then accelerate the project faster because they laid the necessary groundwork to ensure a smooth transition.

While this made the process take longer, the payoff was worth it. The shift now allows Beth and her team to focus more on aligning their efforts to the accounts that actually matter to sales reps and to the business overall.