What happens when your MQL target assumes total market domination? A Conversation with Rachel Trindade
In this episode of How’d You Get That Number?, Daren Lauda sits down with Rachel Trindade, CMO at FlavorCloud and former revenue leader across marketing, sales, and RevOps, to unpack the math behind ambitious MQL targets and what separates smart planning from wishful thinking.
Rachel shares two very different planning stories: one where top-down pressure led to unrealistic assumptions and a missed number, and another where bottom-up collaboration drove near-perfect execution. The difference came down to process, not people.
The Ask: 100 Percent Market Coverage
The goal: bring in every single MQL available in the addressable market that year.
Sounds bold. Maybe even visionary. But as Rachel explains, the math didn’t support the ambition.
Her team started with a top-down revenue number, worked backwards through funnel metrics, and landed on a marketing target of 5,500 MQLs. At first glance, this seemed doable. But once Rachel layered in realistic constraints, the story changed:
- 24,000 companies in the total market
- Remove 1/3 for size and budget fit: 16,000
- Remove those with in-house or non-changing solutions: 12,000
- Factor in contract cycles (only 50% in market): 6,000
- Assign 1,500 to outbound (new team): 4,500 to 5,500 left for marketing
That meant marketing would need to engage virtually every available buyer to hit the MQL target.
“Well-intentioned numbers without the proper planning can lead to major challenges. You can’t just throw headcount and hope at the funnel.”
The team gave it a real shot. First-half tailwinds helped, but market saturation and internal ramp-up issues caught up by Q3. They came in about 20 percent short.
The Reset: Bottoms-Up, Market-Aligned Planning
At a different company, Rachel led a much more disciplined planning process. This time, she was responsible for Sales and RevOps and part of the team issuing targets rather than receiving them.
Instead of starting with a fixed number, the team began with market coverage and territory analysis:
- Used D&B data to define total US targetable accounts
- Assigned accounts by segment: enterprise, mid-market, SMB
- Built the funnel backwards using real conversion data
- Reviewed all assumptions cross-functionally with sales, marketing, and operations
- Aligned campaign investment and inbound expectations by territory
The result was a fully coordinated plan that everyone understood and owned. Each team had input on the math, not just the output.
“We hit 96 percent of the bookings target. It wasn’t perfect, but it was credible, collaborative, and grounded in real numbers.”
What Made the Difference
Rachel credits three factors:
- Joint planning ownership. Sales, marketing, and finance are aligned on every assumption.
- Segment-specific math. Enterprise didn’t follow the same rules as mid-market or SMB.
- Live review cycles. Weekly and monthly metric checks allowed for fast pivots.
- The team built their plan with both top-down and bottom-up logic and avoided the trap of static spreadsheets.
Want more on cross-functional alignment? Read how finance and marketing can team up for smarter budget decisions.
Don’t Forget Brand
In the final part of the conversation, Rachel made a compelling case for rebalancing brand and demand investments. As B2B marketing became increasingly focused on measurable performance, many teams walked away from branding too early.
“You can have a beautiful demand engine, but if you don’t have effective frequency, people won’t remember you. And when the funnel tightens, that awareness gap hurts.”
Cutting brand spend can hurt high-intent channels like direct and referral, even if the correlation is hard to prove on paper. Rachel urges marketers and finance teams to look beyond direct attribution and consider the full lifecycle of awareness, recall, and preference.
Final Takeaway
Planning is not a spreadsheet exercise. It is a leadership process. The more inputs you align upfront, the fewer missed targets you’ll have to explain later.
Rachel’s advice: start with the math, pressure-test your assumptions, and get the full GTM team to own the number together.
Watch the full episode of How’d You Get That Number?
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