October 21, 2025 • 16 mins
In this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio from the Innovation Pavilion at Cvent CONNECT 2025, Matt spoke with Ajith Krishnankutty, Head of Experiential Marketing at Capital Group.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:15):
All right.
Welcome back.
We are live at the Cvent CONNECTConference, third floor and
outside the stars at night.
I assume there must be a big,bright ballroom somewhere
here to continue the song.
"Deep in the Heart of Texas".
Anybody, somebody?
Okay, good.
So, very excited to be hereoutside the Innovation Pavilion
with Ajith Krishnankutty.
You are the VP of ExperientialMarketing at the Capital Group.
(00:36):
Thanks for joining us.
Ajith Krishnankutty: Appreciate that, Matt. (00:37):
undefined
Thanks for having me today.
Matt Heinz (00:40):
We hooked you in.
You were just on stage doing a breakoutsession, I think on the same kind
of topic, just like getting salesmarketing out of silos and into sort
of more of an integrated conversation.
Ajith Krishnankutty: Yeah, it was fantastic. (00:49):
undefined
I think it was a full room.
A lot of people wanted to addressthat topic, and I was talking to Dean
in Cvent, and he was hoping we canfix that issue within 45 minutes,
which apparently is not the case.
But it was a great discussion and I thinkthere was a lot of feedbacks around a
topic which resonates to a lot of theorganizations where there is a disconnect.
Matt Heinz (01:10):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (01:10):
And I would like to put it as much more around
a very positive connotation as anopportunity for us to connect it.
Matt Heinz (01:16):
Yes.
I think it's, more than an opportunity.
It's a mandate.
Ajith Krishnankutty (01:20):
Indeed.
Matt Heinz (01:20):
I think for us to be able to do go-to-market well, sales, marketing,
events teams need to work together.
I think it is almost alwaysa journey, not a destination.
There's always more work to do; notsomething you can solve in 45 minutes
at a conference, and certainly notsomething you're gonna solve, you know,
with jazz hands at sales kickoff as well.
Talk a little about your personalexperience in this area and how that
sort of shaped what you've learned, whatyou brought to the conference today.
Ajith Krishnankutty (01:41):
Yeah, so I would start a little bit backward, like
in terms of who's Capital Group.
Capital Group is one of the world'slargest active asset management companies.
We've been around 93 plus years.
10,000 plus associates.
Three different pieces of theorganization, which is the
investment group, our clientgroup, and our operating group.
So if you really put that together, youknow, bringing the silos together is
(02:03):
pretty challenging when it comes to that.
I came to this organization in 2018when the CMO at that point of time,
the mandate was to really bringevents into the marketing ecosystem.
So until then, events was kind ofspread all across the different parts
of the organization, very perfunctoryin function; no strategy behind that.
Nobody knew why we are doing events.
(02:24):
No collective portfolio of events.
No collective understanding ofwhere we should be really aligned
in terms of the strategies of theorganization and business objectives.
So the intent was to reallybring number one events within
the marketing organization.
Let alone strategy of why it is a big partof a marketing channel, or why it should
be part of our distribution strategy.
(02:46):
So that was step numberone for us to do it.
So I came from a technology backgroundorganization for 16 years into an
asset management organization wheremarketing was not a big focus area.
It was much more getting our thoughtleadership out in print and web.
And from there, if you really look atour industry 60% of our advisors are
(03:07):
retiring in the next five to ten years.
Matt Heinz (03:09):
Wow.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:09):
And new generation taking over, so look
at the challenge in front of us.
Matt Heinz (03:12):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:13):
And the opportunity for multimedia.
And look at, like, we have a big studiolike this in our facility, and we are
leveraging video content more than ever.
Matt Heinz (03:22):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:22):
I would say in the past two years, we have grown
200% more in generating media content.
Matt Heinz (03:28):
Wow.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:28):
And events has grown three folds in the past three years or so.
So that's a big challenge, and it's akind of like, I would say experiential
marketing when I say is a bigger fold,just not events, but it's also multimedia
events, design, everything put together.
How can we inspire our clientsand new generational clients in
a different way of marketing.
Matt Heinz (03:48):
I love that.
The status quo is alive and well.
Isn't it like just the, and thebarriers you gotta get through to sort
of do what you're talking about doing?
You know, you referencedstatus quo in terms of sort
of sales and marketing silos.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:59):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (03:59):
Status quo is in terms of the mix of marketing focus happening,
the status quo in terms of peoplethat have been around forever, and
this is the way it's always been done.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:06):
Always.
Matt Heinz (04:06):
All barriers to breaking down those silos.
Talk about what have you found aresome of the most common reasons why
these teams fail to work together?
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:14):
I feel like, number one, to your point, status
quo is always the challenge.
And when you go into larger organizationswhere people have been working in
the similar roles for many years,they know the usual notion is this
is how we've been doing it forever.
And also, I feel like there is avery, you know, taken-for-granted
approach in terms of "this ishow the organization operates".
Matt Heinz (04:35):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:35):
And you know, there is no outside in perspective
on what that really means.
And also partnering across the table.
So think about sales as an organization,and they meeting these clients on
a day-to-day basis, and marketingputting together a portfolio of
events without talking to them.
Matt Heinz (04:48):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:49):
It doesn't resonate to each of them.
Matt Heinz (04:50):
That's right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:50):
And that's where I feel like the challenge is
not always working together; It isalso understand who your consumer is.
So for marketing to understand salesis their consumer, and sales and
marketing to understand our end clientis our joint consumer, I think that
point of view changes the perspectiveof how we operate the business.
Matt Heinz (05:07):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:07):
So for me, that was the biggest challenge, at the same
time, an opportunity that I saw withinthe organization to really go into
there and then say that to the salesguy as to I'm here to support you.
Matt Heinz (05:17):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:18):
Let us know how we can help you.
Matt Heinz (05:19):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:19):
But at the same time, I saw the opportunity of
data and technology underneath that.
Bringing data into the forefront,using the data to have a much more
informed conversation, and showing them,"Hey, listen, we can add more value.
If you redistribute some of theresources and money in a different
part of the business, whichis more building, more sales.
And I'm giving them insights forthem to actually run that as a much
(05:43):
more better portfolio of an event.
And I think that changedthe point of view.
Matt Heinz (05:47):
Well, and so, I mean, good, there's anecdotes that can
help with that, I think, but I, youknow, how do you bring a number into
that to help people understand howcostly that silo environment is?
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:57):
I would say Matt, if you really look at our
portfolio, we were doing close toaround 300 plus events pre COVID.
And we never had a virtualevent strategy until COVID hit.
And I think most of theorganization started to adopt that.
And we were spending, I would not saythe number, but multimillion dollar;
double digits number in terms ofhow much we were spending on events.
Matt Heinz (06:18):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (06:19):
So from there, it's also really looking at it and
see there was no connecting the dots.
So I'll take a conferences as an example.
Going into a conference, our intentis to really go and talk to people.
There was no strategy behindbringing a lead back in.
Using a technology to nurture that lead.
Use that to grow the business, workingwith the broader marketing team
(06:40):
to nurture that lead and create amarketing qualified lead into sales
call; that notion never existed.
You have to start with it.
And I can't put a number against that,but I feel like it's a, we are almost a
3 trillion in an organization from an AUM(Assets Under Management) perspective.
Matt Heinz (06:55):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (06:55):
I would say it's a couple of billion dollars.
Matt Heinz (06:57):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (06:57):
I would say at that point of time in terms of lost
opportunities we could have done amuch better job in being proactive with
our clients to address their concerns.
And what helped us was the adoptionof technology like Cvent, et cetera.
Yep.
Is to bring that together, use thetechnology, drive the business,
and drive the business together.
And I would say to answer yourquestion is multi-billion dollars.
(07:20):
But we see that as an opportunity andshowcasing this lost opportunity with
sales helped us move the needle faster.
Matt Heinz (07:27):
So let's break down some of the building blocks and think
of driving that better alignment.
And let's start with just joint planning.
Like how do you do this?
I mean, it's a lot harder if you'rejust gonna versus doing this in a
silo to say, I'm gonna get my event,my marketing, my sales team together,
but it's critical to make sure you'restarting from the right place and have
some consensus on the what and the why.
What does planning look likefor you to make that happen?
Ajith Krishnankutty (07:45):
So in Capital Group, the planning cycle, we
operate on a calendar year while
the budgets are on a fiscal year.
Matt Heinz (07:51):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (07:51):
Like, you know, I don't know why we create that complexity.
I'm sure a lot of theorganization have that complexity.
Matt Heinz (07:57):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (07:57):
If you really look at different channels like
social, events, multimedia; everychannel has a seat at the table.
And we are jointly working hand-in-hand.
So we have three levels of thatplanning cycle: the initial planning,
the level one, level two, level three;level three is where it goes to the
management committee for approvals.
But we are actively working with them.
And the reasons are twofold.
(08:18):
One is making sure that we are givingthem a proactive way to support the
business, and second is do we havethe right resourcing and capacity to
manage that as part of that equation.
So that's the way we plan it.
And one of the thing that we havechanged during the planning is
most of the portfolio events arekind of, I would say 80% are same;
20% vary based on new vehicles andstrategies that we are evolving.
(08:41):
So think about ETF as an example,or public private funds that we are
launching right now - that wouldneed a little bit more focus from
a go-to market strategy standpoint.
So instead of doing a 12 months,so three months planning cycle on a
12 months period and squeezing yourcapacity to execute events in nine
months, we have gone to an 18 monthsexecution cycle, which essentially
(09:03):
gives us more capacity around that.
And so we have created a capacitymodel within the space with different
tiers of events and that levers thatwe can pull us moving events from one
month to a different month where thecapacity is not that much affected.
We are really looking at and sayingis they, should we move this to a
different side of the country wherethe cost is much less, et cetera.
(09:23):
So there is theorized approachthat we have been adopting
within the organization.
Sales teams allows it, because nowthey have a 18 month cycle of event,
versus a nine month cycle of an event.
And we do a three month planning.
So I feel it has worked for ourorganization incredibly well.
They value us, because we arebringing data and insights to
(09:44):
the table to drive the business.
Matt Heinz (09:45):
Awesome.
This is amazing.
We got some great insights today fromour guest in this episode, Ajith
Krishnankutty, VP of EnterpriseMarketing at Capital Group.
So we talked a little bitabout the planning, and sort of
aligning the teams around that.
Let's talk about what happens afterthe conference, or after the event,
'cause too often, especially whenyou've got like a robust event
schedule like yours, it's easy tostart moving on to the next event...
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:05):
Absolutely.
Matt Heinz (10:05):
...versus capitalizing on what you've built and the momentum you have.
Like, talk about the culture andthe habits required to do that well.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:11):
I would say is one of the thing that we have
actively done, Matt, is the postevent is where I feel like most of
the organization don't do a great job.
Matt Heinz (10:20):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:20):
And we have been focusing on that as an opportunity, and I
was talking about iCapture as a solution.
Matt Heinz (10:25):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:26):
So we recently work with Cvent in terms of adopting
iCapture, and implementing iCapturein conferences, and, and the, in most
of the organizations, what they woulddo is they will adopt the iCapture,
they capture the leads and that's it.
Matt Heinz (10:39):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:39):
So we have solved one part of the problem; so we worked
with the consulting arm of Cvent interms of adopting it and also bringing
in sales and lifecycle marketing.
And when I say lifecycle marketing,it's a different mentality within
Capital Group right now to reallylook at an always-on journey.
Matt Heinz (10:54):
Got it.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:54):
Versus a one time journey with a client.
Matt Heinz (10:56):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:57):
And really understanding behavioral triggers by the
consumer to really address what they needversus what we want to give it to them.
Matt Heinz (11:04):
That's right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (11:05):
As an example, think about the leads that we are
getting out of a conference now; wehave a great mechanism where it is now
integrated with our Salesforce database.
The sales team sees that if theyhave an existing contact; marketing
team will see that if it's not anexisting contact, and we can nurture
those journeys based on a conference.
So if I'm going to future proof, which ispredominantly driven by ETF as a product,
(11:27):
and if a client is walking into a booth,we are meeting during the conference,
and we are talking about ETF, now thereis a trigger which essentially goes
into whether it's a fixed or equity ETF.
Matt Heinz (11:37):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (11:37):
And I can cater to the client based on what they need.
So I feel like you spoke a littlebit about the lost opportunity; this
is how we are addressing the lostopportunity to be much more proactive.
And the sales team is happy, andwe as a marketing team has also
adopted a digitally driven leadgeneration campaign, which adds more
value as a collective organizationin terms of meeting our goals.
Matt Heinz (11:57):
You also talked about how you spend time training the sales
team to listen for signals at events.
What does that look like?
What kind of signals are you prioritizing?
How do you stack rank those to knowwhich of them are maybe longer term
buying signals versus which of themcould use some immediate follow up?
Ajith Krishnankutty (12:12):
So it's also going back into a portfolio
of events that we construct.
And again, going back any organization,I think there are two goals: one
is how do you retain your clientsand how do you grow your clients?
Matt Heinz (12:22):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (12:23):
And I think it's more about objectives of the business
that we need to lay out and say that, hey,if a sales guy is saying that I need to
go to a X conference because we alwaysbeen there, the question is much more
as how has that yielded results for us?
And showing, and we have a great ROIframework that we have done it, and the
framework is based on twofold (12:41):
one is we do something called a connected ecosystem,
where connected ecosystem is market.
Like you and I'm like, a financialadvisor with the same portfolio of
things and you attend one of ourevent and I don't attend an event.
How does your behavior and yourconsumption change based on my, so
we have a connected, you know, like adata science model that we have built.
Matt Heinz (13:04):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (13:04):
And that model triggers in terms of
have you taken more meetings?
Is your sales gone up or gone down?
Et cetera.
So I think we give that insights and wedo a six months post-event engagement,
and ROI, and now the sales guys havea clear understanding of how that
drove sales; how that drove meetings,because getting meetings with AFAs
are the most difficult piece of thepuzzle that we are trying to solve.
Matt Heinz (13:26):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (13:27):
And that gives us the right insight of should we be going there?
And if we are going there, is thatconference a growth opportunity
or retention opportunity?
And which sales person or wholesalershould I be sending to that conference?
So a lot of the decisionsare made based on data.
Matt Heinz (13:43):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (13:43):
If it is made out of emotions, I don't think so.
That is always where the ego kicks in.
That's when the sales andmarketing doesn't work together
in a lot of the organizations.
So that's my observation onhow things have been different
within our organization.
Matt Heinz (13:57):
So last question for you as we wrap up here.
I think, you know, the bar continuesto get higher for people getting outta
their home office and getting on aplane and going to events like this.
Ajith Krishnankutty (14:05):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (14:05):
There's a great advantage to that from an event production as
well as an event attendance standpoint.
And yet you get to a conference like thisand you see the energy and the passion of
people that are here and just the optimismfor where events are going moving forward.
For you at a Capital Group, what doyou see as the future of events as
part of your go-to-market strategy?
Ajith Krishnankutty (14:21):
Great question.
We look at the portfolio.
I spoke a little bit aboutour strategy was always due
diligence meetings.
And I think if you
really look at asset management firms, most of their
strategy is due diligence meeting.
And pre-COVID virtualstrategy was relatively zero.
And if I really look at ourportfolio right now, we do close
to around 600 events a year.
(14:42):
And if I really look at the mixof it, it's 70/30: 70% sponsor.
30% hosted.
And within the hosted events,I would say is 80% is virtual.
Matt Heinz (14:51):
Okay.
Ajith Krishnankutty (14:52):
And I'm looking at it and saying is that virtual things,
and the larger due diligence meetingsare also changing the perspective to it.
Virtual meetings are much more replayed.
So I'm really looking at a virtualevent that is happening and taking
that to a LinkedIn or, you know, likeInstagram to do short snippets and
driving people to watch the replays.
And the larger due diligence meetingsare being changed to road shows,
(15:16):
and the smaller road shows arereally driving, so we are taking
the content to the local market.
So we just finished like a 11 citytour in Canada launching an ETF.
Was an incredible success.
And it's a great way for us toreally look at that as a product
instead of doing one large farm andexpecting clients to fly to you.
Matt Heinz (15:34):
Yes.
Ajith Krishnankutty (15:35):
Why don't we come to you?
And then, and create that, and we callthat as Capital Ideas Live as a big event.
Matt Heinz (15:40):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (15:40):
And we are doing the road shows, not just
in the US, across the world.
And I think that is one ofthe way we are changing that.
Second is this whole notion of trade boothand all of those things are changing.
So think about future-proof as an example.
You know, we've been partnering with them.
It's called Festival and the boothproperty over there, that notion is
changing, and we are now launchinga pickleball court over there.
(16:02):
I think it's more about bringing peopleinto the mix, seeing people as people,
and then really building relationships.
And I think that is much betterthan walking somebody into a 10'x10'
or a 10'x20' booth and expectingthem to walk away thinking that
they're gonna buy your product.
Matt Heinz (16:18):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (16:18):
So I think that the landscape is gonna change.
And of course, embracing AIis a great component of it.
Really technology isa key component of it.
So as marketers, if you're not doing it,and really leveraging the data to convert
them to actionable insights, I think weare missing the game on that otherwise.
Matt Heinz (16:33):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would agree with you.
Awesome.
Thanks so much for being here.
Ajith Krishnankutty (16:36):
Appreciate that.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Matt Heinz (16:37):
Of course.
All right.
Welcome back.
We are live at the Cvent CONNECTConference, third floor and
outside the stars at night.
I assume there must be a big,bright ballroom somewhere
here to continue the song.
"Deep in the Heart of Texas".
Anybody, somebody?
Okay, good.
So, very excited to be hereoutside the Innovation Pavilion
with Ajith Krishnankutty.
You are the VP of ExperientialMarketing at the Capital Group.
(00:36):
Thanks for joining us.
Ajith Krishnankutty: Appreciate that, Matt. (00:37):
undefined
Thanks for having me today.
Matt Heinz (00:40):
We hooked you in.
You were just on stage doing a breakoutsession, I think on the same kind
of topic, just like getting salesmarketing out of silos and into sort
of more of an integrated conversation.
Ajith Krishnankutty: Yeah, it was fantastic. (00:49):
undefined
I think it was a full room.
A lot of people wanted to addressthat topic, and I was talking to Dean
in Cvent, and he was hoping we canfix that issue within 45 minutes,
which apparently is not the case.
But it was a great discussion and I thinkthere was a lot of feedbacks around a
topic which resonates to a lot of theorganizations where there is a disconnect.
Matt Heinz (01:10):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (01:10):
And I would like to put it as much more around
a very positive connotation as anopportunity for us to connect it.
Matt Heinz (01:16):
Yes.
I think it's, more than an opportunity.
It's a mandate.
Ajith Krishnankutty (01:20):
Indeed.
Matt Heinz (01:20):
I think for us to be able to do go-to-market well, sales, marketing,
events teams need to work together.
I think it is almost alwaysa journey, not a destination.
There's always more work to do; notsomething you can solve in 45 minutes
at a conference, and certainly notsomething you're gonna solve, you know,
with jazz hands at sales kickoff as well.
Talk a little about your personalexperience in this area and how that
sort of shaped what you've learned, whatyou brought to the conference today.
Ajith Krishnankutty (01:41):
Yeah, so I would start a little bit backward, like
in terms of who's Capital Group.
Capital Group is one of the world'slargest active asset management companies.
We've been around 93 plus years.
10,000 plus associates.
Three different pieces of theorganization, which is the
investment group, our clientgroup, and our operating group.
So if you really put that together, youknow, bringing the silos together is
(02:03):
pretty challenging when it comes to that.
I came to this organization in 2018when the CMO at that point of time,
the mandate was to really bringevents into the marketing ecosystem.
So until then, events was kind ofspread all across the different parts
of the organization, very perfunctoryin function; no strategy behind that.
Nobody knew why we are doing events.
(02:24):
No collective portfolio of events.
No collective understanding ofwhere we should be really aligned
in terms of the strategies of theorganization and business objectives.
So the intent was to reallybring number one events within
the marketing organization.
Let alone strategy of why it is a big partof a marketing channel, or why it should
be part of our distribution strategy.
(02:46):
So that was step numberone for us to do it.
So I came from a technology backgroundorganization for 16 years into an
asset management organization wheremarketing was not a big focus area.
It was much more getting our thoughtleadership out in print and web.
And from there, if you really look atour industry 60% of our advisors are
(03:07):
retiring in the next five to ten years.
Matt Heinz (03:09):
Wow.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:09):
And new generation taking over, so look
at the challenge in front of us.
Matt Heinz (03:12):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:13):
And the opportunity for multimedia.
And look at, like, we have a big studiolike this in our facility, and we are
leveraging video content more than ever.
Matt Heinz (03:22):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:22):
I would say in the past two years, we have grown
200% more in generating media content.
Matt Heinz (03:28):
Wow.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:28):
And events has grown three folds in the past three years or so.
So that's a big challenge, and it's akind of like, I would say experiential
marketing when I say is a bigger fold,just not events, but it's also multimedia
events, design, everything put together.
How can we inspire our clientsand new generational clients in
a different way of marketing.
Matt Heinz (03:48):
I love that.
The status quo is alive and well.
Isn't it like just the, and thebarriers you gotta get through to sort
of do what you're talking about doing?
You know, you referencedstatus quo in terms of sort
of sales and marketing silos.
Ajith Krishnankutty (03:59):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (03:59):
Status quo is in terms of the mix of marketing focus happening,
the status quo in terms of peoplethat have been around forever, and
this is the way it's always been done.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:06):
Always.
Matt Heinz (04:06):
All barriers to breaking down those silos.
Talk about what have you found aresome of the most common reasons why
these teams fail to work together?
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:14):
I feel like, number one, to your point, status
quo is always the challenge.
And when you go into larger organizationswhere people have been working in
the similar roles for many years,they know the usual notion is this
is how we've been doing it forever.
And also, I feel like there is avery, you know, taken-for-granted
approach in terms of "this ishow the organization operates".
Matt Heinz (04:35):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:35):
And you know, there is no outside in perspective
on what that really means.
And also partnering across the table.
So think about sales as an organization,and they meeting these clients on
a day-to-day basis, and marketingputting together a portfolio of
events without talking to them.
Matt Heinz (04:48):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:49):
It doesn't resonate to each of them.
Matt Heinz (04:50):
That's right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (04:50):
And that's where I feel like the challenge is
not always working together; It isalso understand who your consumer is.
So for marketing to understand salesis their consumer, and sales and
marketing to understand our end clientis our joint consumer, I think that
point of view changes the perspectiveof how we operate the business.
Matt Heinz (05:07):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:07):
So for me, that was the biggest challenge, at the same
time, an opportunity that I saw withinthe organization to really go into
there and then say that to the salesguy as to I'm here to support you.
Matt Heinz (05:17):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:18):
Let us know how we can help you.
Matt Heinz (05:19):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:19):
But at the same time, I saw the opportunity of
data and technology underneath that.
Bringing data into the forefront,using the data to have a much more
informed conversation, and showing them,"Hey, listen, we can add more value.
If you redistribute some of theresources and money in a different
part of the business, whichis more building, more sales.
And I'm giving them insights forthem to actually run that as a much
(05:43):
more better portfolio of an event.
And I think that changedthe point of view.
Matt Heinz (05:47):
Well, and so, I mean, good, there's anecdotes that can
help with that, I think, but I, youknow, how do you bring a number into
that to help people understand howcostly that silo environment is?
Ajith Krishnankutty (05:57):
I would say Matt, if you really look at our
portfolio, we were doing close toaround 300 plus events pre COVID.
And we never had a virtualevent strategy until COVID hit.
And I think most of theorganization started to adopt that.
And we were spending, I would not saythe number, but multimillion dollar;
double digits number in terms ofhow much we were spending on events.
Matt Heinz (06:18):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (06:19):
So from there, it's also really looking at it and
see there was no connecting the dots.
So I'll take a conferences as an example.
Going into a conference, our intentis to really go and talk to people.
There was no strategy behindbringing a lead back in.
Using a technology to nurture that lead.
Use that to grow the business, workingwith the broader marketing team
(06:40):
to nurture that lead and create amarketing qualified lead into sales
call; that notion never existed.
You have to start with it.
And I can't put a number against that,but I feel like it's a, we are almost a
3 trillion in an organization from an AUM(Assets Under Management) perspective.
Matt Heinz (06:55):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (06:55):
I would say it's a couple of billion dollars.
Matt Heinz (06:57):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (06:57):
I would say at that point of time in terms of lost
opportunities we could have done amuch better job in being proactive with
our clients to address their concerns.
And what helped us was the adoptionof technology like Cvent, et cetera.
Yep.
Is to bring that together, use thetechnology, drive the business,
and drive the business together.
And I would say to answer yourquestion is multi-billion dollars.
(07:20):
But we see that as an opportunity andshowcasing this lost opportunity with
sales helped us move the needle faster.
Matt Heinz (07:27):
So let's break down some of the building blocks and think
of driving that better alignment.
And let's start with just joint planning.
Like how do you do this?
I mean, it's a lot harder if you'rejust gonna versus doing this in a
silo to say, I'm gonna get my event,my marketing, my sales team together,
but it's critical to make sure you'restarting from the right place and have
some consensus on the what and the why.
What does planning look likefor you to make that happen?
Ajith Krishnankutty (07:45):
So in Capital Group, the planning cycle, we
operate on a calendar year while
the budgets are on a fiscal year.
Matt Heinz (07:51):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (07:51):
Like, you know, I don't know why we create that complexity.
I'm sure a lot of theorganization have that complexity.
Matt Heinz (07:57):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (07:57):
If you really look at different channels like
social, events, multimedia; everychannel has a seat at the table.
And we are jointly working hand-in-hand.
So we have three levels of thatplanning cycle: the initial planning,
the level one, level two, level three;level three is where it goes to the
management committee for approvals.
But we are actively working with them.
And the reasons are twofold.
(08:18):
One is making sure that we are givingthem a proactive way to support the
business, and second is do we havethe right resourcing and capacity to
manage that as part of that equation.
So that's the way we plan it.
And one of the thing that we havechanged during the planning is
most of the portfolio events arekind of, I would say 80% are same;
20% vary based on new vehicles andstrategies that we are evolving.
(08:41):
So think about ETF as an example,or public private funds that we are
launching right now - that wouldneed a little bit more focus from
a go-to market strategy standpoint.
So instead of doing a 12 months,so three months planning cycle on a
12 months period and squeezing yourcapacity to execute events in nine
months, we have gone to an 18 monthsexecution cycle, which essentially
(09:03):
gives us more capacity around that.
And so we have created a capacitymodel within the space with different
tiers of events and that levers thatwe can pull us moving events from one
month to a different month where thecapacity is not that much affected.
We are really looking at and sayingis they, should we move this to a
different side of the country wherethe cost is much less, et cetera.
(09:23):
So there is theorized approachthat we have been adopting
within the organization.
Sales teams allows it, because nowthey have a 18 month cycle of event,
versus a nine month cycle of an event.
And we do a three month planning.
So I feel it has worked for ourorganization incredibly well.
They value us, because we arebringing data and insights to
(09:44):
the table to drive the business.
Matt Heinz (09:45):
Awesome.
This is amazing.
We got some great insights today fromour guest in this episode, Ajith
Krishnankutty, VP of EnterpriseMarketing at Capital Group.
So we talked a little bitabout the planning, and sort of
aligning the teams around that.
Let's talk about what happens afterthe conference, or after the event,
'cause too often, especially whenyou've got like a robust event
schedule like yours, it's easy tostart moving on to the next event...
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:05):
Absolutely.
Matt Heinz (10:05):
...versus capitalizing on what you've built and the momentum you have.
Like, talk about the culture andthe habits required to do that well.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:11):
I would say is one of the thing that we have
actively done, Matt, is the postevent is where I feel like most of
the organization don't do a great job.
Matt Heinz (10:20):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:20):
And we have been focusing on that as an opportunity, and I
was talking about iCapture as a solution.
Matt Heinz (10:25):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:26):
So we recently work with Cvent in terms of adopting
iCapture, and implementing iCapturein conferences, and, and the, in most
of the organizations, what they woulddo is they will adopt the iCapture,
they capture the leads and that's it.
Matt Heinz (10:39):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:39):
So we have solved one part of the problem; so we worked
with the consulting arm of Cvent interms of adopting it and also bringing
in sales and lifecycle marketing.
And when I say lifecycle marketing,it's a different mentality within
Capital Group right now to reallylook at an always-on journey.
Matt Heinz (10:54):
Got it.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:54):
Versus a one time journey with a client.
Matt Heinz (10:56):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (10:57):
And really understanding behavioral triggers by the
consumer to really address what they needversus what we want to give it to them.
Matt Heinz (11:04):
That's right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (11:05):
As an example, think about the leads that we are
getting out of a conference now; wehave a great mechanism where it is now
integrated with our Salesforce database.
The sales team sees that if theyhave an existing contact; marketing
team will see that if it's not anexisting contact, and we can nurture
those journeys based on a conference.
So if I'm going to future proof, which ispredominantly driven by ETF as a product,
(11:27):
and if a client is walking into a booth,we are meeting during the conference,
and we are talking about ETF, now thereis a trigger which essentially goes
into whether it's a fixed or equity ETF.
Matt Heinz (11:37):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (11:37):
And I can cater to the client based on what they need.
So I feel like you spoke a littlebit about the lost opportunity; this
is how we are addressing the lostopportunity to be much more proactive.
And the sales team is happy, andwe as a marketing team has also
adopted a digitally driven leadgeneration campaign, which adds more
value as a collective organizationin terms of meeting our goals.
Matt Heinz (11:57):
You also talked about how you spend time training the sales
team to listen for signals at events.
What does that look like?
What kind of signals are you prioritizing?
How do you stack rank those to knowwhich of them are maybe longer term
buying signals versus which of themcould use some immediate follow up?
Ajith Krishnankutty (12:12):
So it's also going back into a portfolio
of events that we construct.
And again, going back any organization,I think there are two goals: one
is how do you retain your clientsand how do you grow your clients?
Matt Heinz (12:22):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (12:23):
And I think it's more about objectives of the business
that we need to lay out and say that, hey,if a sales guy is saying that I need to
go to a X conference because we alwaysbeen there, the question is much more
as how has that yielded results for us?
And showing, and we have a great ROIframework that we have done it, and the
framework is based on twofold (12:41):
one is we do something called a connected ecosystem,
where connected ecosystem is market.
Like you and I'm like, a financialadvisor with the same portfolio of
things and you attend one of ourevent and I don't attend an event.
How does your behavior and yourconsumption change based on my, so
we have a connected, you know, like adata science model that we have built.
Matt Heinz (13:04):
Yep.
Ajith Krishnankutty (13:04):
And that model triggers in terms of
have you taken more meetings?
Is your sales gone up or gone down?
Et cetera.
So I think we give that insights and wedo a six months post-event engagement,
and ROI, and now the sales guys havea clear understanding of how that
drove sales; how that drove meetings,because getting meetings with AFAs
are the most difficult piece of thepuzzle that we are trying to solve.
Matt Heinz (13:26):
Right.
Ajith Krishnankutty (13:27):
And that gives us the right insight of should we be going there?
And if we are going there, is thatconference a growth opportunity
or retention opportunity?
And which sales person or wholesalershould I be sending to that conference?
So a lot of the decisionsare made based on data.
Matt Heinz (13:43):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (13:43):
If it is made out of emotions, I don't think so.
That is always where the ego kicks in.
That's when the sales andmarketing doesn't work together
in a lot of the organizations.
So that's my observation onhow things have been different
within our organization.
Matt Heinz (13:57):
So last question for you as we wrap up here.
I think, you know, the bar continuesto get higher for people getting outta
their home office and getting on aplane and going to events like this.
Ajith Krishnankutty (14:05):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (14:05):
There's a great advantage to that from an event production as
well as an event attendance standpoint.
And yet you get to a conference like thisand you see the energy and the passion of
people that are here and just the optimismfor where events are going moving forward.
For you at a Capital Group, what doyou see as the future of events as
part of your go-to-market strategy?
Ajith Krishnankutty (14:21):
Great question.
We look at the portfolio.
I spoke a little bit aboutour strategy was always due
diligence meetings.
And I think if you
really look at asset management firms, most of their
strategy is due diligence meeting.
And pre-COVID virtualstrategy was relatively zero.
And if I really look at ourportfolio right now, we do close
to around 600 events a year.
(14:42):
And if I really look at the mixof it, it's 70/30: 70% sponsor.
30% hosted.
And within the hosted events,I would say is 80% is virtual.
Matt Heinz (14:51):
Okay.
Ajith Krishnankutty (14:52):
And I'm looking at it and saying is that virtual things,
and the larger due diligence meetingsare also changing the perspective to it.
Virtual meetings are much more replayed.
So I'm really looking at a virtualevent that is happening and taking
that to a LinkedIn or, you know, likeInstagram to do short snippets and
driving people to watch the replays.
And the larger due diligence meetingsare being changed to road shows,
(15:16):
and the smaller road shows arereally driving, so we are taking
the content to the local market.
So we just finished like a 11 citytour in Canada launching an ETF.
Was an incredible success.
And it's a great way for us toreally look at that as a product
instead of doing one large farm andexpecting clients to fly to you.
Matt Heinz (15:34):
Yes.
Ajith Krishnankutty (15:35):
Why don't we come to you?
And then, and create that, and we callthat as Capital Ideas Live as a big event.
Matt Heinz (15:40):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (15:40):
And we are doing the road shows, not just
in the US, across the world.
And I think that is one ofthe way we are changing that.
Second is this whole notion of trade boothand all of those things are changing.
So think about future-proof as an example.
You know, we've been partnering with them.
It's called Festival and the boothproperty over there, that notion is
changing, and we are now launchinga pickleball court over there.
(16:02):
I think it's more about bringing peopleinto the mix, seeing people as people,
and then really building relationships.
And I think that is much betterthan walking somebody into a 10'x10'
or a 10'x20' booth and expectingthem to walk away thinking that
they're gonna buy your product.
Matt Heinz (16:18):
Yeah.
Ajith Krishnankutty (16:18):
So I think that the landscape is gonna change.
And of course, embracing AIis a great component of it.
Really technology isa key component of it.
So as marketers, if you're not doing it,and really leveraging the data to convert
them to actionable insights, I think weare missing the game on that otherwise.
Matt Heinz (16:33):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would agree with you.
Awesome.
Thanks so much for being here.
Ajith Krishnankutty (16:36):
Appreciate that.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Matt Heinz (16:37):
Of course.
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