December 16, 2024 • 61 mins
Every week, Andrei and Vlad speak to 5-10 B2B leaders about their GTM challenges, and work closely with teams as they implement evergreen revenue processes to accelerate pipeline and revenue growth.
Join them in this special episode of FullFunnel Live - Andrei and Vlad will review what they learned in 2024, and the best B2B plans for 2025.
As always, we share live real examples and answer all questions.
RESOURCES:
On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/
Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/
Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://trenches.community/
Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog
Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Join them in this special episode of FullFunnel Live - Andrei and Vlad will review what they learned in 2024, and the best B2B plans for 2025.
As always, we share live real examples and answer all questions.
RESOURCES:
On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/
Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/
Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://trenches.community/
Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog
Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel B to B marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Full Funnel Live,
this time joining from Valencia. My name Led and Andre
will be joining any second now. As always, always curious
to hear where our community is. Joining us from live
and while your guys are typing and sharing, just wanted
(00:37):
to give a quick intro today. We wanted to do
a review of twenty and twenty four what we have
learned kind of the state of full Funnel go to
market strategy, and instead of doing superficial research and looking at,
you know, some survey's admissions and serving a bunch of people,
(01:00):
what we wanted to really dive deeper into all the
conversations that we had this year, or let's say, the
major conversations that we had this year, because every week
we'll be having anywhere between five to ten either discovery
calls or client calls, will be working on clients, implementing
(01:20):
and testing solutions. So this is kind of fresh out
of the press, very recently insights this year. What are
the challenges that we have observed, what are the kind
of trends and shifts that we are observing. How is
B to B marketing involving These are the things that
we want to share today, so kind of behind the
(01:41):
scenes and associating some of the solutions that we tested
to those challenges. So with that out of the whale,
let's dive in and we revisit them one by one.
The first one that we have observed is kind of
a big shift from what you might call acquisition at
(02:04):
all costs. And I think this shift is not new.
It's been happening from you know, twenty twenty three for sure,
where we have seen that it became increasingly difficult to
acquire customers that you know, outbound has kind of started
to decline. But we have also seen changes in VC
(02:30):
land and how you know, capital became more expensive, and
the investors and the board members started to question cost
of acquisition, and you know, it wasn't any more about
growing at all costs, but it was about how do
we grow in a sustainable way at a reasonable cost
(02:52):
of acquisition and not just keep showing kind of top
of funnel acquisition numbers and putting more and more money
into you know, top of funnel into demand capture, et cetera,
et cetera. So we see that big shift and it's
still up to the last calls we have. It's something
(03:14):
that we see as a big pattern. So the way
that our prospects and our clients are expressing that is,
you know, just wanting to share some quotes the opportunistic stuff,
so you know, outside of their ICP, right outside of
those high value clients, those icps that you can actually
(03:40):
share that you can have a reasonable chance of winning
but also then retaining over their long time. This is
what a majority of companies want. They want to focus
on such icps, such redial customers like this. One sales
director mentioned the opportunistic stuff should be twenty to thirty
percent and basically eighty percent seventy percent should be focused
(04:05):
on our ICP. The way that she mentioned this was
on the suite spot accounts that it can close quicker,
deliver value, clicker, quicker and expand quicker Hello Andre.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Hello, everyone got to see everyone again.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So I was sharing the first set of challenges that
have to do with kind of acquisition at all costs,
going broadly acquiring any kind of customer to really a
lot of our prospects a lot of our clients really
want to double down on those sustainable customers. So if
I win an opportunity, if I generate an opportunity, it's
(04:48):
such an account I know that I have a more
chance to win and retain over a long time. And
this has been like a a big shift and a challenge.
And what we see is that it almost doesn't matter
of the size of the company. So we have been
(05:09):
speaking to huge enterprise companies. We have been speaking to
you know, maybe ten twenty thirty million type B to
B SaaS companies. But this is something that is definitely repeated, Bettern,
What is the main reason I think I already mentioned
companies are looking to focus on this ICP because they
(05:34):
want to increase their average deal size, win rates and retention.
This is what you see, like I said, from twenty
million to three hundred million and above, this is like
a focus for a lot of companies. Now, I wanted
to share not just the challenges that we are seeing
in the shifts, but I also wanted to share kind
(05:57):
of the behind the scenes, behind the scenes how we're
thinking about this, and also some of the solutions that
we have tested, because this year we have tested some
new solutions on how to be more focused on your
ICP with cluster based programs. So maybe that's something that
Andrea you can explain.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think before we'll touch this part,
I saw a question from Aaron which is very relevant
to the challenges that you have shared. So I think
we can just very quickly touch on it. And the
question is which is more specific to account based market
but I feel it really overall APS was what you
(06:42):
have just shared. We have a large ABM priority account
least seven hundred accounts. I struggle to scale programs with
the right level of personalization while also ensued we have
the proper air coverage for all accounts. How they suggest
teams approach it? And I think it's this is where
the problem lies, right, it's by the fault all of
(07:04):
these accounts. And I know I don't know obviously your
target addressable market, but the point is that the question
that you need to ask yourself and your team how
many of these accounts know us as the vendor? And
you need to come up with a tangible criteria right
this via Marketing and Sells Aligned Wiz, what does it
(07:28):
mean to call a specific account being vendor?
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Aware.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That's the first thing, right, and that's the answer to
your coverage part. Now, the second question is do we
know if this account is in the buying mode? What
is the current buyer journey stage? Most specifically, what is
what do we know they need? Do we understand how
(07:57):
can we help, how our product can help?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Right?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
And lastly, is there anocentce that tells us that these accounts,
that these accounts might be likely to buy our product currently?
So from the perspective of personalization, you'll never be able
to personalize the seven hundred of accounts. It's just realistically
(08:23):
not possible. Or you need to have I mean, you
need to work for a company like IBM or Microsoft, etc.
And have an army of sales reps who can do
you one on one personalization. So the key point is
it's all about segmenting these accounts. But by this level
of relationship, product need evidence signals and likelihood of becoming
(08:50):
sales opportunity. And then you create completely separate playbooks accounts
that don't know you and you don't know their need.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
What should you do first?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You need to create awareness as simple as that, whenever
they hit your engagement threshold, whenever they hit this awareness createria.
The next step for both and marketing and sales would
be installed or creating the playbooks to run account research
and validate the need of this account or understand the
need or figure out if there is a need at all, right,
(09:24):
and your playbook would be all about this. And lastly,
you have accounts which we call active focus. These accounts
hit your engagement threshold or awareness threshold. They know you.
Then this account you have a validated need or you
see the product need evidence signals. Right, something tells you
that these accounts are likely to have a need in
(09:46):
your product. And this is where you've worked on one
on one playbook. This is where you leverage the full personalization.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So from the perspective of marketing and sales, the bigger
the biggest list would be this class to ic the
accounts that don't know you, and altogether you can define
how you can create awareness there.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And this is like what already mentioned the cluster approach.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
You don't try to come up with one size fits
all content or offering, et cetera. Right, you define the cluster,
which is typically your let's say bread and butter use
case or the typical challenge that your accounts UH phase
and you solve it with your product and you start.
You can run ads, you can do a lot of
let's say CUBT leadership content, newsletters, events, webinars, whatever, Right,
(10:34):
the point is to make sure that these accounts become
aware of you. Then the second group is why you
install the most specific processes. And this could be if
we'll use ABM's lend the let's say one of a
few playbooks, right. And the third one would be where
you work on fully personalized account engagement, right. And but
(10:56):
this the last group actually focus accounts, these accounts that
likely to become sales opportunities. And this is why you
invest time of your marketing and sales team. If you
just try to if you just try to cover seven
hundred accounts with one on one ABM, it's never going
(11:17):
to work simply because of not having these resources. And
I doubt that sales reps would be willing to do this.
But at the same time, just pretending that you can
do you know, some sort of personalization, it will also
never work. So this would be the best advice to this,
and that leads us to the next point. That's what
(11:39):
mentioned the alignment on ICP clusters and prioritization criteria.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That's I think Andre explained it very well already, and
that is a lot of the programs that we run
around this year were based on this approach, I think.
Just to wrap up essentially what Andrea explaining, you can
see also for those who join us live they can
see here on the screen. Is first of all, you
(12:08):
figure out what are the typical like under mentioned and
the bread and butter use cases, the reasons why customers
buy from me. So let's say, you know, we observe
that a lot of companies after the merger acquisitions are
doing some unification of their text tech and this is
(12:28):
one of the triggers. Or we observe that I don't know,
like a lot of PLG companies who want to introduce
enterprise sales motion are looking at ABM and ABM solutions
as an example. So this would be like very specific
use case. Now you take that use case and you
(12:50):
try to identify accounts, and that's what we call the cluster.
The cluster of accounts is a group of accounts that
has that use case and then which use case? First
of all, like which use case these select you select
those which with where you have historically the highest sales velocity,
the best deal size, win rates, good sales cycle length. Right,
(13:13):
and then, like Andrey explain, you start you develop a
program for this cluster. Right when you said like for
example air cover and personalization, Well, if your goal is
to create awareness, because these accounts are not aware of
your brand and what you can do for them, well,
(13:34):
then the personalization would be in level of that use case.
So you can talk about very specific challenges that these
accounts who have the use case experience. And then as
we see that these accounts have some sort of awareness
of us, they are you know, engaging with specific content,
They're engaging with our brand, visiting a website or you know,
(13:57):
visiting our events, are engaging with our com and on
social media, we can start more focusing on them. Like
undred invention to define the problems that I have to
validate it essentially, do they have the product need, do
they indeed have the use ky? What is the actual
need that they have? And then you can start personalizing
(14:19):
for those where you have the validated product need, there
is awareness, you start doing the one on one personalization
and that's what you can see here. These three lists.
What you can see under the list or can't see
because it's small, our detailed criteria. So you really want
to turn or define very clear criteria and signals so
(14:44):
that you can basically classify your accounts or prioritize your
accounts and according to their level of or where they
are in their buyer journey. And then obviously what you
want to do and we are not don't have the
time to go into detail, is to also align your
activities with the with the buyer journey, with where they
(15:09):
are in the buyer journey. So like when it was
mentioned in creating awareness with you know, different kinds of
activities here with content and content distribution, nurturing and validating
the need through multiple touch points here and doing one
on one activation playbooks on those that are in the
active pipeline list. All right, So this was all about
(15:33):
this shift of acquisition, going from kind of acquisition at
all costs, any anybody who can who could potentially become
a customer, let's go after them, to a very very
focused high end accounts. Let's look at the next one.
The next one that we see here is all about
(15:56):
awareness creation and it's a bit lengthy it's my fault.
I formulated like that I wanted to capture maybe too
much of this challenge. But there are several things that
we see here. A lot of accounts are struggling to sorry,
a lot of our clients and prospects are struggling to
create awareness in those high value accounts. And also when
(16:21):
it comes to awareness, because a lot of companies might
be doing well when it comes to product marketing, when
it comes to demand capture, very frequently they experience kind
of a commodity perception, like they are perceived as commodity vendor,
(16:41):
in other words, one of many vendors, and they're looking
to shift to more being perceived as more kind of
a strategic partner rather than that kind of commodity commodity vendor.
So I don't know if you wanted to share maybe
a and there is some observations from your experience working
(17:03):
with clients and talking with prospects how these challenges observer,
you want us to jump into the solutions here?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Absolutely, I would summarize everything that is that everything that
everybody could see on the slides. In a conversation that
I had recently with VP of Sales, which actually happened
yesterday in the evening and we were talking about what
(17:31):
led them to launch account based market and program, Right,
was what was the main trigger? And he said two things. Look,
so the first thing, we write a lot of different
activities in the past, and what is happening to our
sales reps? Our outbound emils are not getting any replies
(17:53):
quite because we are selling to they are selling to
big financial associations and institutions. So these people and they're
very reluctant to reply to the outreach of you know,
sales repsy. They have no clue who are these people?
And the second problem that is associated with this that
(18:14):
they are not the only one vendor that tries to
sell their product to the same buyer persona. And I'm
not talking only about their competitors. These are all other
vendors who are selling to financial vertical why because it's
one of the let's say the most like creative verticals.
This is where the money is right and everybody is
trying to sell to the same CEO, to the same
(18:37):
you know, like whatever buyer persona you might have in mind, right,
everybody already tries to sell to them, and everybody is
pitching them and everybody might be using clay, you know,
change to kind of come up with personalize the mails.
But this doesn't help a lot. Now, the second problem,
he says, like they try to send connection requests and
(18:58):
linked and to open the conversation, and people simply don't
accept the connection connection requests.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
So, and one of the reasons, one of the conclusions
was is that these accounts are simply not aware of us.
So we generate we have a high success when referrals
recommend us or some I mean some of the existing customers,
they tell the story and they love our I mean,
then people love our product, they like pre buy in
(19:29):
the entire philosophy, and the conversation goes well. But to
start from scratch, start with the called account, it's just
really not possible. And this is this is why we
want to do account based marketing.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
We want to be sure that we're not perceived as
just a commodity product that wants to sell, that wants
to charge the enterprise price for it. Right, that's the
first thing. And the second one we want to make
sure that our emotion is efficient that whenever our sales
reps are reaching out to these people, then there is
(20:02):
a high chance that these people will reply back. And
also to give you an idea what's essential why it's
essential the sales cycle. Typical sales cycle is around twelve
months and average contract value arise from one hundred k
to five hundred k or less annual cost.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
So obviously from that perspective, you need to have consulted
your sales approach.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
But if you if you want to implement it, but
your product is considered oh yeah, just like one more
as we have seen on the market, you're not going
to solve this challenge.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
So creating awareness among target accounts, as you can guess,
is very tight to being perceived as a strategic vendor.
So this is in a nutural the conversations that we
have heard this year, right, and account based marketing in
this case is one of the best ways to solve
(21:02):
the misalignment between marketing and sales and to proceed to
this specific activity if you'll come back to everything that
we have shared, right, and if you'll follow the same
philosophy of dividing accounts by the likelihood of creating opportunity
and their current status. Now us don't know us we
(21:23):
have a relationship. We don't have relationship we know the need,
we don't know that need. Right, you can easily adjust
your playbooks. And despite of this, if you'll take the
class approach right, you will be always as one team.
You'll be always focused on, first of all, creating awareness
among these target accounts, right, and reposition yourself as a
(21:47):
strategic vendor tool. I think one I would like also
to call you what I think what would be also
important here to share is how to come up with
this strategic narrative right, how to be how even to
create a plan to be too? Activities that could help
(22:08):
you to be as I say that as a strategic vendor.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
For all of these activities, we need to involve senior leadership.
Recently you have had this engagement, was one of the clients.
So I think it would be beneficial if you'll just
share the outline of this conversation and what is essential
to get from senior leadership to be able to implement
it now.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Absolutely. I think it's also interesting to mention why is
that important, the reason why this is so important, to
another reason why this is so important to be perceived
as a kind of strategic vendor and to talk about
srech challenges because if you look at enterprise buyers especially,
(22:53):
they are kind of risk overs and they prefer to
work with brands that they trust, that they know. And
there was actually this year there was a study, big
study done by Trusted is Pavilion, and one of the
conclusions was that eighty six percent of enterprise buyers will
buy or shortlisted least vendors that have already known, so
(23:15):
vendors that have discovered before starting their buying process. What
does it mean. It means that if you want to
be in that consideration set, it means that you need
to market and communicate two buyers who are not buying. Right,
So why is that related to the strategic position in narrative?
(23:39):
Because if your buyers are not buying and your product
addresses like one specific part of their like let's say they're,
you know, leading the marketing function for example, they're a CMO,
and you know, they have to do various things, and
one of the things that their team needs to do,
(24:01):
for example, is run these large events. And they might
be at a certain moment looking for a tool like
golf cast, which is a tool to run large events,
but it's not the top of their mind. It is
part of their job, right. So if gold Casts would
want to be positioned as a strategic partner, they can't
(24:23):
just be talking about the best tool for running online
events or running massive online events, or whatever the way
that they're positioning themselves. They need to be talking about
bigger topics, right, topics that are top of mind of
your buyers, even if they're not buying. So coming back
(24:47):
to Andreas prompt right about strategic narrative. That's why this
is so important because you need to understand if you
want to be perceived as a strategy strategic partner, the
first thing you need to understand is what are those
strategic challenges that are on top of your buyer's mind? Right,
Because you're usually your product is a piece of the puzzle.
(25:09):
It is a solution, a solution or a or a
part of the solution of a bigger challenge that is
hopefully like top of mind of your buyers and is
important enough for them to care. Right. So if you
want to come up with content and messaging that is
(25:29):
going to position as a strategic channel, the first thing
you want to understand what are those strategic challenges that
are top of their mind. The next the next thing
you want to know, you want to understand is how
would our buyers like to be perceived? And what I
mean by that is, let's say you're selling into HR,
(25:53):
and you know that HR is kind of actually very
similar to marketing, very freely, not perceived as a strategic function.
It's perceived as an order taker. It's perceived as a
very operational function. And we know that for example, hrs
and marketers have this desire desire to be perceived as
(26:15):
kind of a strategic They have strategic importance within the
organizations they have, They deserve a seat at an executive table,
et cetera, et cetera. Now that you understand that, to
become relevant and to be able to create that awareness,
the strategic narrative that will create awareness at the right
(26:37):
at the right level, you also want to understand, Okay,
how can what is the best way to talk about it?
Should I be talking about just events? Well, probably doesn't
make sense if they are not looking to run an
event now, if they're not looking for the tool right now,
how can I be that one of the let's say,
(27:00):
shortlisted products even though they're not thinking about it. So
you need to be thinking about. Okay, if the strategic
challenge of my buyers is let's say my buyers are
let's say hyde of market or head of demand for example. Right,
so there's strategic challenges are we are discussing them today.
(27:24):
So how do we create demand and awareness in those
target accounts? So this is one of the one of
the strategic challenges that you know, for example, goldcasts could
be you know, creating content about But then also like
the next question you can ask your leadership is okay,
and you can also involve salespeople, is like, what are
(27:46):
the things that are happening right now, maybe trends in
the industry or changes or shifts in the market that
are happening right now that are making kind of the
the urgency to change or our creator, let's say, creating
them making the usual practices that to deal with. So
(28:11):
our prospects have always a solution to their challenge. They
are doing it in some way, They have a solution
in place, right, they are running their events in one
way or another for example, But is there something that
is happening right now that is making those practices obsolete,
(28:32):
that is making those practices and in other words, that
is creating an urgency to change. Right. So, for example,
we might say that we do observe a big shift
in the way that the buyers are buying and discovering solutions. Right,
So if you want to create a demand, you need
(28:54):
to adapt your marketing to the way that they are
discovering solutions. Thought leadership becomes very important because this is
how your buyers and discovering solutions today. They are not
you know, looking at the ads or googling. They're actually
discovering by consuming podcasts and content or attending events we
(29:16):
thought leaders and other experts that I follow. Okay, so
you need to adopt the way that you market to
those So let's say I have a solution executive for that,
and goodcast is an excellent product. We do use it
as well for our thought leadership programs. Now I could
start to talk about those things, right, So instead of
(29:38):
basically talking about, oh, we have the best features, we
have the best product to buyers who are actually not
even looking to the product, They're not comparing us to anybody,
we start talking about their strategic challenges. We position our
our brand as a strategic partner who can help you
achieve you know, can help you be perceived in the
(30:02):
way that you want to be. We also link to
some of the changes that our bidges are also aware
of the changes that are happening that are driving this
urgency to change. Right, And this is how you start
creating a strategic narrative. You could think of it, I think,
(30:22):
and you're askin talks about the old and the new game,
this is how you could be thinking about it. The
old game the absolute way of doing let's say, demand generation,
and the new way of doing demand generation? Right, what
is the new game? Right? So, this is how you
can be thinking about it and the questions that you
want to answer. And then once you understand that, you
(30:44):
can start creating content around these strategic challenges, you know,
basically communicating these messages in your market to positioning yourself
as a strategic partner. And I think another to wrap
it up as well, another important thing to understand there
is also who do your who do your buyers aspire to?
(31:10):
Who do they follow? Who do they respect and trust?
And then also because one way to be perceived as
a strategic partner is to be associated with people and
brands that your buyers respect, aspire to, and trust, right, again,
so if it is like demand gen leaders, we know
(31:32):
like some of the people who are famous in demand
and demand generation, so maybe we should also do some
collaboration with these people to start associating our brand with
those people, because then suddenly we will also create this
perceptional strategic partner. Because the industry or the industry influencers
(31:54):
and the industry leaders are talking about us, we are
associated with them.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
All right, And I actually sack it's common from Karen
that it's created to share with CFOs because they don't
they are not willing to invest in the print awareness.
And like, whenever this happens, we always recommend to do
two things right. First, one, you can collect external stats
(32:24):
like this one that you can see right that can
prove it. But aside from this, we always recommend to
debrief your sales team right, look at the lost deals,
look at the lost deals, and also on the efficiency
of prospecting. This is one of the keys, right, and
(32:46):
then you can just start the conversation, Hey guys, what's
like in ideal world. You need to have the numbers,
but not all sales teams are tracking this, right, so
you can ask, like, what's your average connection request? Acceptance r.
What's your average positive reply rate? I'm not just saying that.
When you send out bound message and people say unsubscribed,
(33:07):
it's also could be counted as a reply rate, but
it's not something that we want to hear. Right, So
what's your positive reply rate to your outbound emails?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
How many of opportunities are booking through your prospective activities?
Collect the initial input and then the second question, why
do you think we have low numbers? Why we are struggling,
Why we're not hearing back from these accounts, why don't
we have more replies?
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
And also the deals that were lost. You can go
through the analysis. Whenever we hear that you lost to
the competitor, and there is no like, there is no
huge differentiation between what competitors suggested to that company, right,
So it means that they just won on the print level.
(34:01):
What were the struggles? Why the sales cycle was so long?
You can hear a lot, and you need to pick
it up and come and present rates to your CFO
or the senior leadership. In most cases you'll hear that
whenever they will be replying back to you, they will
be here and values and the competitor because they like,
this company is more established or is better known than
(34:24):
our product. And whenever you'll start talking about the efficiency
of prospective outbound etc. They would say that it's probably
because these people don't know us, right, And these are
the perfect arguments. It's just like if if we'll formulate
a statement for CFO, if this is not, if this
(34:46):
is one be changed, if this one be changed, we'll
deal with lower response rates with like with less deals
generated through outbound activities. And you know what it also means.
It means that the unit economics will become worse. Right,
So it means that the sales resources become too expensive
(35:09):
and it's likely to lead to the round of layoffs. Unfortunately,
it's just the reality, right, And maybe sales people they
don't think that way, and I mean not usually teams
are not thinking that way. But it's good to communicate
between each other saying hey, guys, look, this is the reality.
And if I'm not going to communicate it well and
(35:30):
present as and this this is also a perfect opportunity
to come up as one unit as a sales and
marketing as one unit and presented the sales leadership. Hey, guys,
if I want, if we're not going to change it,
we'll have well, we'll have a trouble, right, and we
really believe that this is the way. Obviously, then you
need to have a good playbook. You just you can't
(35:52):
come and say, hey, let's create awareness, right, you need
to explain how you're going to do it. But that's
another story. So I just wanted to drop five cents
on it.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, And I think also, like if you're talking to CFO,
you're talking about you needed economics. The one part of
the economics is the cost, like the Andrea was mentioning.
The other part of it is the output or the result.
So if you want to create, if you want to
create customers that are going to spend most money with
(36:24):
you and stay along with you, it's usually we're talking
about larger, typically upper mid market and enterprise customers, you
will need to earn that awareness position yourself not as
a commodity vendor. Right, This is another piece of the puzzle.
I think that that is important studying those best deals
(36:46):
in how they are they are created, how did they
hear about you, and then essentially explaining that usually these
deals are created through previous awareness. So we need to
do more of that. I think it's also so interesting
to answer one question, although it's not really necessarily about awareness,
but I wanted to answer this question from Carlos, what
(37:08):
is the best approach when it comes to creating personal
assets in ABIM campaigns without risking target audience calling you
out for it? And I think I wanted to also
link this to awareness because when we speak about awareness,
we don't often speak about personalized ABM. Right, I wanted
to quickly answer the question, So, create personalized assets without
(37:32):
risking to create something that is actually not relevant for
them is by validating your insights. So when we were
explaining this approach where you go from accounts who don't
know you and you don't know them, to accounts who
might have heard about you but you're not really sure
(37:52):
what their needs are all the way to accounts or
you have actually validated the product need, this is exactly
what we were talking about. You want to understand what
Let's say imagine you come to your sales a sales
colleague and you ask them, if you had to bet
your compensation on a deal on an account, what would
(38:15):
you like to know about them? Like, what are the
what kind of information would you need to know so
that you can create a personalized, one hundred percent personalized,
perfect proposal that you know they cannot say no to. Right,
What are those insights that you need to have? So
(38:35):
your goal is to answer these questions about those accounts,
like maybe what their priorities and challenges are, what are
they're using currently, et cetera, et cetera, through a count research,
but also through a number of touch points in conversations
(38:55):
that your salespeople have with those target accounts through maybe
you know, polls during the webinars or sign up in
a sign up forms, maybe they share some of the information,
et cetera, et cetera. And then once you know this information,
this information is actually validated, then you can use to
(39:17):
create those personalized assets. What are the best assets we found? Essentially,
we call this personalized solution, which is basically explaining how
your product solves the challenges you know they have. So
the challenges that you have validated and know they have.
(39:39):
It can be a simple one pager sharing exactly how
you can help solve the challenges. And then if you
have enough information also and that's usually something that you
collect later in conversation, adding some sort of a business case,
kind of a before and after, showing them how you
can improve, not to only solve the challenges, but how
(40:03):
that food result, how that would translate into business impact
is usually the best kind of asset. Now, why do
I mention this while we're talking about awareness creation? I
think that's also important because usually in the first steps
of awareness creation, you are capturing the attention of your champions, right,
(40:25):
and then champions need to sell your solution internally. To
be able to sell your solution internally, you will also
need to create awareness in the rest of the buying committee.
And the way to do that is to work together
with a champion to then create personalized assets that are
called buyer enablement for that account that will have that
(40:46):
champion actually communicate you know, why did we like essentially
communicate that we have discovered a challenge that is preventing
us from a high priority business objective, that the cost
of inaction is high enough high enough for us to care,
that this is something that we cannot solve internally, and
(41:08):
that if we use solution like youres or your solution,
we can expect such and such return by that time
and kind of the before and after business case, that
would be a great example of a personalized asset. All right, Yeah,
let's go to the next one. Uh uh, this one,
(41:33):
I think I would like if that if you don't
mind under able to address this people with together with
the alignment, because I don't think you can really make
this shift without also having a cross functional aligned team,
uh to actually do proper to properly influence the buyer
(41:57):
buyers and the buyer journey. That a lot of our
prospects and clients realize that you know a lot of
the marketing programs, and I think there was a very
nice quote they said, uh, we run one of campaigns,
(42:19):
a random acts of marketing. Right, That's what I meant
by transactional right here when I said shifting from transactional
isolated activities or random acts of marketing one of campaigns
to basically an evergreen process where you're influencing complex B
(42:40):
to B buyer journeys with multiple buyers and long sales cycles.
So can you share some of some of the observations
that you see underdy in the market and we can
maybe dive into some solutions here. But I would like,
I said, a very very important part of the solution
(43:02):
will be also the alignments. I'd like to address that
the same time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Absolutely. If we'll come back to the question that Aaron
asked in the beginning, Right, we have a large list
of like these accounts, like seven hundred accounts that are
prioritized by sales. I think here's the real problem. Right,
So all of these accounts might belong to different articles,
(43:27):
all of these accounts might have completely different needs and challenges, right,
and all of these accounts might be on different stages
of the buyer journey. We often say that the fact
that sales prioritize the list doesn't mean that these accounts
are going to buy from you now, right, Depite, even
if you'll create the best possible one on one playbook
(43:50):
with personalized offer, it might not help at all. Now,
what's happening usually with companies that still try to find
a universal solution to engage with these companies? Right, As
I said, they all might have different needs, They all
might be from different verticals, they might belong to different clusters,
(44:14):
basically having different use cases or challenges.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
What happens next?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
You need to come up with a universal plan, right,
or something that we call one size fits all. Then
you don't have a lot of let's say, opportunities to
come up with the real personalization. You'll come up with
some generic content as simple as that, and you need
(44:39):
in most cases you have limited resources, but you are
challenged to engage these seven hundred accounts. What can you
do realistically?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
You can run ads, You maybe can create some generic
content and in the best case scenario, host a generic
field event or a webinar as simple as that. Generic
I mean that it would be like you try to
create something that is universal and as appearing to everybody.
The reality is that in most cases it won't be.
(45:10):
It will be just inefficient, right, and it won't drive,
and it won't move the needle, and what is going
to happen next? Right, You'll just be challenging because sometimes,
like let's say, senior leadership will be challenging you to
do something about this, and you are likely to have
(45:32):
this let's say random acts of marketing.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Right, So somebody.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Will say, oh, yeah, so this doesn't work, this doesn't work.
Let's try whatever. Let's host the webinar. You do it
without any playbook in place, and without any proper segmentation.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
We now there's from practice.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
I'm not saying obviously, I'm not referring to anybody who
is listening to us life, but we have seen this
multiple times as clients. They try to do it, maybe
a couple of times they in the best case scenario,
they get like five, seven, ten, maybe show ups. I'm
not saying the sign ups, but show ups on that webinar.
It's a huge frustration for everybody. No pipeline, no opportunities.
(46:13):
People question it when you do it in a systematic way.
If you shift to the approach that we share it
with the same client a year after they did the
last webinar, and despite all of the skepticism from the
sales leaders, we got one hundred and forty plus sign
ups around The show operate was sixty six percent. It's
(46:37):
beaten a full final two times. So our normal show
operate is like thirty five percent. They had sixty almost
sixty six was sixty five percential uprate. Fantastic engagement. And
obviously it's not the one time activity because they were
like a lot of cluster activities happened beforehand, and that
(46:58):
transition into six opportunity unites with accounts that were in
the initial cluster right. So that's the key. But a
lot of companies they don't stick to that process. They
do exactly what they did in the past. They just oh,
let's do the webinar, no strategy in place, no alignment
between marketing and sells, no playbox. It fails, right, and
(47:20):
it happens was almost ever since. Let's create a market research,
let's create gated content, let's start norchry, let's do something.
Let's let's go to that trade show, let's go and
sponsor the conference. But if there is no strategy in place,
and if this strategy is not aligned with the buyer journey,
it's not likely to generate any results.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
So the key point where we're ahead on with this.
Let's mentioned a couple of times, and I think this
is one of the most important things. You need to have,
not only clear understanding of ideal customer profile and that
ICP will be always suggested to the ABM, like demand
generation doesn't really matter to the cluster program that you're
(48:04):
focusing on this quoter. That's the first thing and the
second one you always need to run deal analysis to
understand how your customers are buying and what influences it.
This would be the key. Aside from this, we always
recommend to talk to your subject matter experts, and the
ideal candidate for that interview would be a person who
(48:27):
used to work as your buyer persona in the past,
a person who understands from the first hand, what are
the jobs to be done, what are the daily challenges,
what are the potential strategic initiatives, What are the conversations
that are happening in these accounts? What might be a blocker?
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Why these people might not be able, might not engage
with you, or might not be able to sell your
product internally. So a lot of these things. And also
we always recommend to ask a couple of questions when
you go in the shoes of our target bar persona.
What content did you consume? Specifically?
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Right?
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Quite often you'll hear about specific jobs to be done.
Where did you do it? You can listen, you can
hear about some maybe conferences, webinars, right, people that are
sharing dis content, communities, et cetera. And this is this.
These are the insights that you need to incorporate into
your strategy. These are the channels did These are the
(49:33):
activities that you need to incorporate because if you'll come
up directly and you'll ask a very straightforward question, Hey, like,
what's the best way to target these people are just
come up with something personalized to them. But this is
what you already tried to do, right, but it doesn't work.
But if you'll start this interview from the from another
(49:54):
angle and you'll start to dig deep and understand this, right,
they might she with you a lot of insights that
hidden and they are not thinking about these insights, right,
but you need to incorporate them, and then this holistic
buyer journey. Right. One of the things that also coming
back to the webinar story that I just shared just
(50:15):
a good anecdot before doing a proper before installing a
proper playbook in place. Right, Everybody was frustrated with this,
but then the playbook worked and suddenly it raised the
expectations of key stakeholders. Oh wow, so we are going
to see like a million pipeline out of it. But
(50:38):
unfortunately webinar itself or any odd activity like even this
live podcast. But don't expect that. You guys immediately will
come to our website and just one by one, book discovery.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Calls was us.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
It's not the key point of this activity, But could
it influence somehow, let's say your decision and futuresolutely Yes,
maybe not at this moment you don't have current need, budget, whatever,
doesn't really matter. You are not in the proper position, right,
Or maybe you'll hear from some of your colleagues who
(51:11):
are facing with the challenges that we face a company,
and you could mention our company, right, this is the
goal of this activity that we are doing. Right, We're
building this community, we create awareness, we generate demands through
that way. And exactly this is the same philosophy that
you need to explain that every activity it influences the
buyer journey, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it pushed
(51:35):
people to buy your product, which means that from this activity,
if you look from the bar journey perspective, and we'll
look at this account prioritization that Blood spoke about, right,
some of accounts, they would be more engaged. They would
be asking questions like for example, you ask the great
questions today in the chat.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
I'm not saying that this is the buying intent, but
from the buar journey perspective, right, what the teams could
do They could follow up and talk more about this. Hey,
you mentioned this specific challenge, right, and we share it all.
Let's say ours and you share this solution. We have
additional resources. Would you like me to share right now?
It could be is it something that you are challenging
(52:15):
right now? Would you be up, for example, if we'll
pick up Aaron's question about these seven hundred accounts, right,
would you be like, would it be helpful if I
will suggest Let's say, if I'm reaching out, if I
will suggest, like such a minute's call was flood to
review your ABM strategy and come up with ideas how
to refine it. Right, just share it with you. And
(52:36):
if you ask why we're not this this a completely
different problem of balance and the demand that we currently have.
But I'm just sharing the ideas. That's how that might
work from the vendor's perspective. Right, So you're not pushing,
but you are suggesting the next logical step that could
(52:56):
influence that buying process. And you can't do it if
you don't involve sales and if you don't involve subject
matter experts and into that process, because SEME would provide
your critical feedback. Is that a good action? Is that
a good let's say next step offer if it's a
good call to action or no? Right, and altogether you
(53:18):
need relistically think about, Okay, how we create a and
if you want to do webinars and feel the events,
how can we attract attention to people so they would
even consider that webinar?
Speaker 1 (53:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (53:29):
How can we make it that engage engaged so they
would be willing to share more information? Come up with questions,
et cetera. How can we install the next engagement with
these accounts if they are not ready to buy our
products for multiple reasons? Right, there could be multiple reasons
why they're not booking dema, So what would be these
no logical next steps?
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Right?
Speaker 2 (53:50):
This is the key and this is what you need
to create as a team.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
I think this is a great trapperp because I'm looking
looking through the different challenges that the companies are sharing
with us, and I see like one the challenge is
that you need to educate first the stakeholders and find
the right moment in time. Global organizations don't challenge every
(54:17):
year their approach processes and tools. It takes time and
you need to find the right moment so they're not
buying all the time. You cannot expect them just because
that they've joined for example of web and R, or
they have engaged with your content, that they're ready to buy.
(54:38):
But you need to align your activity, your next step
with the level of buyer intent. So this is what
I think one way to look at what and There
was explained. If they have shared the challenge with you, you
can offer them a solution. Maybe you can link them
(54:58):
to your internal exp who can help them with that challenge, right,
But if they didn't, that doesn't mean that they're looking
to buy from you just yet. And I think it's
really important. Another set of challenges that we see is
a lot of companies say things like we are aligned
(55:19):
on paper, but in practice, sales and marketing never do
stuff together. You will never be able to influence the
complete buyer journey of the multiple buyers if you don't
have that collaboration, if you don't implement the complete playbook,
as Andrea was explaining on the example of the webinar.
(55:39):
And finally, also I think very important is to align
the internal expectations because what I heard from Andrea is
what I see also very frequently is even when you
implement it and implement it fine, don't expect miracles. This
is just one of the touch points that you're introducing
(56:00):
in the buyer journey. Always expect that the majority of
the buyers, even if they're engaging, even they engaging multiple times,
are not going to convert this time. So I think
also very important to align those expectations.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I think we can wrap it up as it's the
final appsode this year, and then we'll take the Christmas
pouse and come back in January. So let's pick up
that last question from begum if I pronounced the name correctly,
and it's all about that personalization, right, We're actually doing this,
(56:38):
but can sometimes really challenging to know them better than
they know themselves, and personalization and digital can be quite
risky at times. The think it makes sense to use
account names and PPC content instances, and I would say
that here's the tricky part. So first of all, if
you'll target big enterprises, so companies tand key plus employees,
(57:02):
honestly you can use their name, but it's likely that
nobody will care until you are known on the let's say,
until you are associated with the enterprise organizations. Then it's
it's it's not going to help it's just like if
you if you will, it's like trying to if you
are small field micet, you try to you know, to
(57:24):
reach out to elephants. It's it's it's it's it's the
real example. So the second problem is that a lot
of people they as I'm saying, especially if you want
to sell to like mid sized to enterprise organizations, keep
in mind, how many vendors try to reach out to
(57:44):
this barer persona, and all of them use some level
of personalization account names, and nowadays, I mean everybody are smart.
People use tools like clay come up, hey, here here's
the buarer persona. Or let's say they ask AI, pretend
that you are like CEO or VPO it of a
(58:04):
company from let's say I don't know FMC sector and
I am selling this product, tell me like, what's what's
your need? And come up with personalized the mail? Right, So,
I mean the level of what we are observing today,
and I think this would be a huge trend for
twenty twenty five. The barrier for like this fake I
(58:26):
will tell you in the second way, I call it
fake personalization. The barrier, the barrier to create the fake
personalization is really low everybody could do it, and on
almost everybody is doing this. The problem, though, what it
creates that these people start ignoring even more all the mails,
all the outreach, the messages, etc. So if you are
(58:49):
not known as a vendor, and I remember it was
so vividly explained by a cito, remember that when you
spoke to that guy from software development company we invited,
he was an SME because we were selling This company
is selling exactly the citos. And he said, look, guys,
(59:11):
it's like you can come up with the like super
personalized e mail. You can find all the information about
my department's challenges like whatever. I imagine if I will
share it with you and just give you a list
of all of my challenges and you can come up
with personalized offer. The truth is that I'm receiving like
(59:32):
fifty to sixty emails every week that people try to
pitch me and sell something and just simply don't have
time to read all of them, even to open them.
So today for me to read your email or the
LinkedIn message, I need to know you because I just
simply don't have time to look at all of this
(59:53):
or on the volume of all of these emails and
that's the reality. That's the answer to your question. So
coming back to ever and that we have heard that
we have shared today. If you don't, if your target accounts,
if your ICP accounts are not perceiving you as a
strategic vendor or as a vendor too that is associated
(01:00:15):
with their strategic challenges, this personalization tactics, they won't help it.
Just try. It's like like trying to put a band
aid on a bleeding neck, right more as that would
be my best reply, So think about how to solve
the root reasons and the tactics. They will come later.
So hope that reply helps. And that being said, thank you, I.
(01:00:43):
I'm so happy to see also and the comments that
you guys enjoyed this episode. And for us, it's always
a pleasure to see our community to come in and
asking all these fantastic questions because these questions help us
to come up with the content that is relevant to you,
just not talking about the generic things. All things bit
(01:01:05):
to the market. And that being said, we wish a
fantastic rest of the year, crushing your numbers, hitting your
targets and seeing you guys next year.
Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Take care, Cheers, b I have great holidays.
This is the Full Funnel B to B marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Full Funnel Live,
this time joining from Valencia. My name Led and Andre
will be joining any second now. As always, always curious
to hear where our community is. Joining us from live
and while your guys are typing and sharing, just wanted
(00:37):
to give a quick intro today. We wanted to do
a review of twenty and twenty four what we have
learned kind of the state of full Funnel go to
market strategy, and instead of doing superficial research and looking at,
you know, some survey's admissions and serving a bunch of people,
(01:00):
what we wanted to really dive deeper into all the
conversations that we had this year, or let's say, the
major conversations that we had this year, because every week
we'll be having anywhere between five to ten either discovery
calls or client calls, will be working on clients, implementing
(01:20):
and testing solutions. So this is kind of fresh out
of the press, very recently insights this year. What are
the challenges that we have observed, what are the kind
of trends and shifts that we are observing. How is
B to B marketing involving These are the things that
we want to share today, so kind of behind the
(01:41):
scenes and associating some of the solutions that we tested
to those challenges. So with that out of the whale,
let's dive in and we revisit them one by one.
The first one that we have observed is kind of
a big shift from what you might call acquisition at
(02:04):
all costs. And I think this shift is not new.
It's been happening from you know, twenty twenty three for sure,
where we have seen that it became increasingly difficult to
acquire customers that you know, outbound has kind of started
to decline. But we have also seen changes in VC
(02:30):
land and how you know, capital became more expensive, and
the investors and the board members started to question cost
of acquisition, and you know, it wasn't any more about
growing at all costs, but it was about how do
we grow in a sustainable way at a reasonable cost
(02:52):
of acquisition and not just keep showing kind of top
of funnel acquisition numbers and putting more and more money
into you know, top of funnel into demand capture, et cetera,
et cetera. So we see that big shift and it's
still up to the last calls we have. It's something
(03:14):
that we see as a big pattern. So the way
that our prospects and our clients are expressing that is,
you know, just wanting to share some quotes the opportunistic stuff,
so you know, outside of their ICP, right outside of
those high value clients, those icps that you can actually
(03:40):
share that you can have a reasonable chance of winning
but also then retaining over their long time. This is
what a majority of companies want. They want to focus
on such icps, such redial customers like this. One sales
director mentioned the opportunistic stuff should be twenty to thirty
percent and basically eighty percent seventy percent should be focused
(04:05):
on our ICP. The way that she mentioned this was
on the suite spot accounts that it can close quicker,
deliver value, clicker, quicker and expand quicker Hello Andre.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Hello, everyone got to see everyone again.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
So I was sharing the first set of challenges that
have to do with kind of acquisition at all costs,
going broadly acquiring any kind of customer to really a
lot of our prospects a lot of our clients really
want to double down on those sustainable customers. So if
I win an opportunity, if I generate an opportunity, it's
(04:48):
such an account I know that I have a more
chance to win and retain over a long time. And
this has been like a a big shift and a challenge.
And what we see is that it almost doesn't matter
of the size of the company. So we have been
(05:09):
speaking to huge enterprise companies. We have been speaking to
you know, maybe ten twenty thirty million type B to
B SaaS companies. But this is something that is definitely repeated, Bettern,
What is the main reason I think I already mentioned
companies are looking to focus on this ICP because they
(05:34):
want to increase their average deal size, win rates and retention.
This is what you see, like I said, from twenty
million to three hundred million and above, this is like
a focus for a lot of companies. Now, I wanted
to share not just the challenges that we are seeing
in the shifts, but I also wanted to share kind
(05:57):
of the behind the scenes, behind the scenes how we're
thinking about this, and also some of the solutions that
we have tested, because this year we have tested some
new solutions on how to be more focused on your
ICP with cluster based programs. So maybe that's something that
Andrea you can explain.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think before we'll touch this part,
I saw a question from Aaron which is very relevant
to the challenges that you have shared. So I think
we can just very quickly touch on it. And the
question is which is more specific to account based market
but I feel it really overall APS was what you
(06:42):
have just shared. We have a large ABM priority account
least seven hundred accounts. I struggle to scale programs with
the right level of personalization while also ensued we have
the proper air coverage for all accounts. How they suggest
teams approach it? And I think it's this is where
the problem lies, right, it's by the fault all of
(07:04):
these accounts. And I know I don't know obviously your
target addressable market, but the point is that the question
that you need to ask yourself and your team how
many of these accounts know us as the vendor? And
you need to come up with a tangible criteria right
this via Marketing and Sells Aligned Wiz, what does it
(07:28):
mean to call a specific account being vendor?
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Aware.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
That's the first thing, right, and that's the answer to
your coverage part. Now, the second question is do we
know if this account is in the buying mode? What
is the current buyer journey stage? Most specifically, what is
what do we know they need? Do we understand how
(07:57):
can we help, how our product can help?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Right?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
And lastly, is there anocentce that tells us that these accounts,
that these accounts might be likely to buy our product currently?
So from the perspective of personalization, you'll never be able
to personalize the seven hundred of accounts. It's just realistically
(08:23):
not possible. Or you need to have I mean, you
need to work for a company like IBM or Microsoft, etc.
And have an army of sales reps who can do
you one on one personalization. So the key point is
it's all about segmenting these accounts. But by this level
of relationship, product need evidence signals and likelihood of becoming
(08:50):
sales opportunity. And then you create completely separate playbooks accounts
that don't know you and you don't know their need.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
What should you do first?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You need to create awareness as simple as that, whenever
they hit your engagement threshold, whenever they hit this awareness createria.
The next step for both and marketing and sales would
be installed or creating the playbooks to run account research
and validate the need of this account or understand the
need or figure out if there is a need at all, right,
(09:24):
and your playbook would be all about this. And lastly,
you have accounts which we call active focus. These accounts
hit your engagement threshold or awareness threshold. They know you.
Then this account you have a validated need or you
see the product need evidence signals. Right, something tells you
that these accounts are likely to have a need in
(09:46):
your product. And this is where you've worked on one
on one playbook. This is where you leverage the full personalization.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So from the perspective of marketing and sales, the bigger
the biggest list would be this class to ic the
accounts that don't know you, and altogether you can define
how you can create awareness there.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And this is like what already mentioned the cluster approach.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
You don't try to come up with one size fits
all content or offering, et cetera. Right, you define the cluster,
which is typically your let's say bread and butter use
case or the typical challenge that your accounts UH phase
and you solve it with your product and you start.
You can run ads, you can do a lot of
let's say CUBT leadership content, newsletters, events, webinars, whatever, Right,
(10:34):
the point is to make sure that these accounts become
aware of you. Then the second group is why you
install the most specific processes. And this could be if
we'll use ABM's lend the let's say one of a
few playbooks, right. And the third one would be where
you work on fully personalized account engagement, right. And but
(10:56):
this the last group actually focus accounts, these accounts that
likely to become sales opportunities. And this is why you
invest time of your marketing and sales team. If you
just try to if you just try to cover seven
hundred accounts with one on one ABM, it's never going
(11:17):
to work simply because of not having these resources. And
I doubt that sales reps would be willing to do this.
But at the same time, just pretending that you can
do you know, some sort of personalization, it will also
never work. So this would be the best advice to this,
and that leads us to the next point. That's what
(11:39):
mentioned the alignment on ICP clusters and prioritization criteria.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That's I think Andre explained it very well already, and
that is a lot of the programs that we run
around this year were based on this approach, I think.
Just to wrap up essentially what Andrea explaining, you can
see also for those who join us live they can
see here on the screen. Is first of all, you
(12:08):
figure out what are the typical like under mentioned and
the bread and butter use cases, the reasons why customers
buy from me. So let's say, you know, we observe
that a lot of companies after the merger acquisitions are
doing some unification of their text tech and this is
(12:28):
one of the triggers. Or we observe that I don't know,
like a lot of PLG companies who want to introduce
enterprise sales motion are looking at ABM and ABM solutions
as an example. So this would be like very specific
use case. Now you take that use case and you
(12:50):
try to identify accounts, and that's what we call the cluster.
The cluster of accounts is a group of accounts that
has that use case and then which use case? First
of all, like which use case these select you select
those which with where you have historically the highest sales velocity,
the best deal size, win rates, good sales cycle length. Right,
(13:13):
and then, like Andrey explain, you start you develop a
program for this cluster. Right when you said like for
example air cover and personalization, Well, if your goal is
to create awareness, because these accounts are not aware of
your brand and what you can do for them, well,
(13:34):
then the personalization would be in level of that use case.
So you can talk about very specific challenges that these
accounts who have the use case experience. And then as
we see that these accounts have some sort of awareness
of us, they are you know, engaging with specific content,
They're engaging with our brand, visiting a website or you know,
(13:57):
visiting our events, are engaging with our com and on
social media, we can start more focusing on them. Like
undred invention to define the problems that I have to
validate it essentially, do they have the product need, do
they indeed have the use ky? What is the actual
need that they have? And then you can start personalizing
(14:19):
for those where you have the validated product need, there
is awareness, you start doing the one on one personalization
and that's what you can see here. These three lists.
What you can see under the list or can't see
because it's small, our detailed criteria. So you really want
to turn or define very clear criteria and signals so
(14:44):
that you can basically classify your accounts or prioritize your
accounts and according to their level of or where they
are in their buyer journey. And then obviously what you
want to do and we are not don't have the
time to go into detail, is to also align your
activities with the with the buyer journey, with where they
(15:09):
are in the buyer journey. So like when it was
mentioned in creating awareness with you know, different kinds of
activities here with content and content distribution, nurturing and validating
the need through multiple touch points here and doing one
on one activation playbooks on those that are in the
active pipeline list. All right, So this was all about
(15:33):
this shift of acquisition, going from kind of acquisition at
all costs, any anybody who can who could potentially become
a customer, let's go after them, to a very very
focused high end accounts. Let's look at the next one.
The next one that we see here is all about
(15:56):
awareness creation and it's a bit lengthy it's my fault.
I formulated like that I wanted to capture maybe too
much of this challenge. But there are several things that
we see here. A lot of accounts are struggling to sorry,
a lot of our clients and prospects are struggling to
create awareness in those high value accounts. And also when
(16:21):
it comes to awareness, because a lot of companies might
be doing well when it comes to product marketing, when
it comes to demand capture, very frequently they experience kind
of a commodity perception, like they are perceived as commodity vendor,
(16:41):
in other words, one of many vendors, and they're looking
to shift to more being perceived as more kind of
a strategic partner rather than that kind of commodity commodity vendor.
So I don't know if you wanted to share maybe
a and there is some observations from your experience working
(17:03):
with clients and talking with prospects how these challenges observer,
you want us to jump into the solutions here?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Absolutely, I would summarize everything that is that everything that
everybody could see on the slides. In a conversation that
I had recently with VP of Sales, which actually happened
yesterday in the evening and we were talking about what
(17:31):
led them to launch account based market and program, Right,
was what was the main trigger? And he said two things. Look,
so the first thing, we write a lot of different
activities in the past, and what is happening to our
sales reps? Our outbound emils are not getting any replies
(17:53):
quite because we are selling to they are selling to
big financial associations and institutions. So these people and they're
very reluctant to reply to the outreach of you know,
sales repsy. They have no clue who are these people?
And the second problem that is associated with this that
(18:14):
they are not the only one vendor that tries to
sell their product to the same buyer persona. And I'm
not talking only about their competitors. These are all other
vendors who are selling to financial vertical why because it's
one of the let's say the most like creative verticals.
This is where the money is right and everybody is
trying to sell to the same CEO, to the same
(18:37):
you know, like whatever buyer persona you might have in mind, right,
everybody already tries to sell to them, and everybody is
pitching them and everybody might be using clay, you know,
change to kind of come up with personalize the mails.
But this doesn't help a lot. Now, the second problem,
he says, like they try to send connection requests and
(18:58):
linked and to open the conversation, and people simply don't
accept the connection connection requests.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
So, and one of the reasons, one of the conclusions
was is that these accounts are simply not aware of us.
So we generate we have a high success when referrals
recommend us or some I mean some of the existing customers,
they tell the story and they love our I mean,
then people love our product, they like pre buy in
(19:29):
the entire philosophy, and the conversation goes well. But to
start from scratch, start with the called account, it's just
really not possible. And this is this is why we
want to do account based marketing.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
We want to be sure that we're not perceived as
just a commodity product that wants to sell, that wants
to charge the enterprise price for it. Right, that's the
first thing. And the second one we want to make
sure that our emotion is efficient that whenever our sales
reps are reaching out to these people, then there is
(20:02):
a high chance that these people will reply back. And
also to give you an idea what's essential why it's
essential the sales cycle. Typical sales cycle is around twelve
months and average contract value arise from one hundred k
to five hundred k or less annual cost.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
So obviously from that perspective, you need to have consulted
your sales approach.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
But if you if you want to implement it, but
your product is considered oh yeah, just like one more
as we have seen on the market, you're not going
to solve this challenge.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
So creating awareness among target accounts, as you can guess,
is very tight to being perceived as a strategic vendor.
So this is in a nutural the conversations that we
have heard this year, right, and account based marketing in
this case is one of the best ways to solve
(21:02):
the misalignment between marketing and sales and to proceed to
this specific activity if you'll come back to everything that
we have shared, right, and if you'll follow the same
philosophy of dividing accounts by the likelihood of creating opportunity
and their current status. Now us don't know us we
(21:23):
have a relationship. We don't have relationship we know the need,
we don't know that need. Right, you can easily adjust
your playbooks. And despite of this, if you'll take the
class approach right, you will be always as one team.
You'll be always focused on, first of all, creating awareness
among these target accounts, right, and reposition yourself as a
(21:47):
strategic vendor tool. I think one I would like also
to call you what I think what would be also
important here to share is how to come up with
this strategic narrative right, how to be how even to
create a plan to be too? Activities that could help
(22:08):
you to be as I say that as a strategic vendor.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
For all of these activities, we need to involve senior leadership.
Recently you have had this engagement, was one of the clients.
So I think it would be beneficial if you'll just
share the outline of this conversation and what is essential
to get from senior leadership to be able to implement
it now.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Absolutely. I think it's also interesting to mention why is
that important, the reason why this is so important, to
another reason why this is so important to be perceived
as a kind of strategic vendor and to talk about
srech challenges because if you look at enterprise buyers especially,
(22:53):
they are kind of risk overs and they prefer to
work with brands that they trust, that they know. And
there was actually this year there was a study, big
study done by Trusted is Pavilion, and one of the
conclusions was that eighty six percent of enterprise buyers will
buy or shortlisted least vendors that have already known, so
(23:15):
vendors that have discovered before starting their buying process. What
does it mean. It means that if you want to
be in that consideration set, it means that you need
to market and communicate two buyers who are not buying. Right,
So why is that related to the strategic position in narrative?
(23:39):
Because if your buyers are not buying and your product
addresses like one specific part of their like let's say they're,
you know, leading the marketing function for example, they're a CMO,
and you know, they have to do various things, and
one of the things that their team needs to do,
(24:01):
for example, is run these large events. And they might
be at a certain moment looking for a tool like
golf cast, which is a tool to run large events,
but it's not the top of their mind. It is
part of their job, right. So if gold Casts would
want to be positioned as a strategic partner, they can't
(24:23):
just be talking about the best tool for running online
events or running massive online events, or whatever the way
that they're positioning themselves. They need to be talking about
bigger topics, right, topics that are top of mind of
your buyers, even if they're not buying. So coming back
(24:47):
to Andreas prompt right about strategic narrative. That's why this
is so important because you need to understand if you
want to be perceived as a strategy strategic partner, the
first thing you need to understand is what are those
strategic challenges that are on top of your buyer's mind? Right,
Because you're usually your product is a piece of the puzzle.
(25:09):
It is a solution, a solution or a or a
part of the solution of a bigger challenge that is
hopefully like top of mind of your buyers and is
important enough for them to care. Right. So if you
want to come up with content and messaging that is
(25:29):
going to position as a strategic channel, the first thing
you want to understand what are those strategic challenges that
are top of their mind. The next the next thing
you want to know, you want to understand is how
would our buyers like to be perceived? And what I
mean by that is, let's say you're selling into HR,
(25:53):
and you know that HR is kind of actually very
similar to marketing, very freely, not perceived as a strategic function.
It's perceived as an order taker. It's perceived as a
very operational function. And we know that for example, hrs
and marketers have this desire desire to be perceived as
(26:15):
kind of a strategic They have strategic importance within the
organizations they have, They deserve a seat at an executive table,
et cetera, et cetera. Now that you understand that, to
become relevant and to be able to create that awareness,
the strategic narrative that will create awareness at the right
(26:37):
at the right level, you also want to understand, Okay,
how can what is the best way to talk about it?
Should I be talking about just events? Well, probably doesn't
make sense if they are not looking to run an
event now, if they're not looking for the tool right now,
how can I be that one of the let's say,
(27:00):
shortlisted products even though they're not thinking about it. So
you need to be thinking about. Okay, if the strategic
challenge of my buyers is let's say my buyers are
let's say hyde of market or head of demand for example. Right,
so there's strategic challenges are we are discussing them today.
(27:24):
So how do we create demand and awareness in those
target accounts? So this is one of the one of
the strategic challenges that you know, for example, goldcasts could
be you know, creating content about But then also like
the next question you can ask your leadership is okay,
and you can also involve salespeople, is like, what are
(27:46):
the things that are happening right now, maybe trends in
the industry or changes or shifts in the market that
are happening right now that are making kind of the
the urgency to change or our creator, let's say, creating
them making the usual practices that to deal with. So
(28:11):
our prospects have always a solution to their challenge. They
are doing it in some way, They have a solution
in place, right, they are running their events in one
way or another for example, But is there something that
is happening right now that is making those practices obsolete,
(28:32):
that is making those practices and in other words, that
is creating an urgency to change. Right. So, for example,
we might say that we do observe a big shift
in the way that the buyers are buying and discovering solutions. Right,
So if you want to create a demand, you need
(28:54):
to adapt your marketing to the way that they are
discovering solutions. Thought leadership becomes very important because this is
how your buyers and discovering solutions today. They are not
you know, looking at the ads or googling. They're actually
discovering by consuming podcasts and content or attending events we
(29:16):
thought leaders and other experts that I follow. Okay, so
you need to adopt the way that you market to
those So let's say I have a solution executive for that,
and goodcast is an excellent product. We do use it
as well for our thought leadership programs. Now I could
start to talk about those things, right, So instead of
(29:38):
basically talking about, oh, we have the best features, we
have the best product to buyers who are actually not
even looking to the product, They're not comparing us to anybody,
we start talking about their strategic challenges. We position our
our brand as a strategic partner who can help you
achieve you know, can help you be perceived in the
(30:02):
way that you want to be. We also link to
some of the changes that our bidges are also aware
of the changes that are happening that are driving this
urgency to change. Right, And this is how you start
creating a strategic narrative. You could think of it, I think,
(30:22):
and you're askin talks about the old and the new game,
this is how you could be thinking about it. The
old game the absolute way of doing let's say, demand generation,
and the new way of doing demand generation? Right, what
is the new game? Right? So, this is how you
can be thinking about it and the questions that you
want to answer. And then once you understand that, you
(30:44):
can start creating content around these strategic challenges, you know,
basically communicating these messages in your market to positioning yourself
as a strategic partner. And I think another to wrap
it up as well, another important thing to understand there
is also who do your who do your buyers aspire to?
(31:10):
Who do they follow? Who do they respect and trust?
And then also because one way to be perceived as
a strategic partner is to be associated with people and
brands that your buyers respect, aspire to, and trust, right, again,
so if it is like demand gen leaders, we know
(31:32):
like some of the people who are famous in demand
and demand generation, so maybe we should also do some
collaboration with these people to start associating our brand with
those people, because then suddenly we will also create this
perceptional strategic partner. Because the industry or the industry influencers
(31:54):
and the industry leaders are talking about us, we are
associated with them.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
All right, And I actually sack it's common from Karen
that it's created to share with CFOs because they don't
they are not willing to invest in the print awareness.
And like, whenever this happens, we always recommend to do
two things right. First, one, you can collect external stats
(32:24):
like this one that you can see right that can
prove it. But aside from this, we always recommend to
debrief your sales team right, look at the lost deals,
look at the lost deals, and also on the efficiency
of prospecting. This is one of the keys, right, and
(32:46):
then you can just start the conversation, Hey guys, what's
like in ideal world. You need to have the numbers,
but not all sales teams are tracking this, right, so
you can ask, like, what's your average connection request? Acceptance r.
What's your average positive reply rate? I'm not just saying that.
When you send out bound message and people say unsubscribed,
(33:07):
it's also could be counted as a reply rate, but
it's not something that we want to hear. Right, So
what's your positive reply rate to your outbound emails?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
How many of opportunities are booking through your prospective activities?
Collect the initial input and then the second question, why
do you think we have low numbers? Why we are struggling,
Why we're not hearing back from these accounts, why don't
we have more replies?
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:39):
And also the deals that were lost. You can go
through the analysis. Whenever we hear that you lost to
the competitor, and there is no like, there is no
huge differentiation between what competitors suggested to that company, right,
So it means that they just won on the print level.
(34:01):
What were the struggles? Why the sales cycle was so long?
You can hear a lot, and you need to pick
it up and come and present rates to your CFO
or the senior leadership. In most cases you'll hear that
whenever they will be replying back to you, they will
be here and values and the competitor because they like,
this company is more established or is better known than
(34:24):
our product. And whenever you'll start talking about the efficiency
of prospective outbound etc. They would say that it's probably
because these people don't know us, right, And these are
the perfect arguments. It's just like if if we'll formulate
a statement for CFO, if this is not, if this
(34:46):
is one be changed, if this one be changed, we'll
deal with lower response rates with like with less deals
generated through outbound activities. And you know what it also means.
It means that the unit economics will become worse. Right,
So it means that the sales resources become too expensive
(35:09):
and it's likely to lead to the round of layoffs. Unfortunately,
it's just the reality, right, And maybe sales people they
don't think that way, and I mean not usually teams
are not thinking that way. But it's good to communicate
between each other saying hey, guys, look, this is the reality.
And if I'm not going to communicate it well and
(35:30):
present as and this this is also a perfect opportunity
to come up as one unit as a sales and
marketing as one unit and presented the sales leadership. Hey, guys,
if I want, if we're not going to change it,
we'll have well, we'll have a trouble, right, and we
really believe that this is the way. Obviously, then you
need to have a good playbook. You just you can't
(35:52):
come and say, hey, let's create awareness, right, you need
to explain how you're going to do it. But that's
another story. So I just wanted to drop five cents
on it.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, And I think also, like if you're talking to CFO,
you're talking about you needed economics. The one part of
the economics is the cost, like the Andrea was mentioning.
The other part of it is the output or the result.
So if you want to create, if you want to
create customers that are going to spend most money with
(36:24):
you and stay along with you, it's usually we're talking
about larger, typically upper mid market and enterprise customers, you
will need to earn that awareness position yourself not as
a commodity vendor. Right, This is another piece of the puzzle.
I think that that is important studying those best deals
(36:46):
in how they are they are created, how did they
hear about you, and then essentially explaining that usually these
deals are created through previous awareness. So we need to
do more of that. I think it's also so interesting
to answer one question, although it's not really necessarily about awareness,
but I wanted to answer this question from Carlos, what
(37:08):
is the best approach when it comes to creating personal
assets in ABIM campaigns without risking target audience calling you
out for it? And I think I wanted to also
link this to awareness because when we speak about awareness,
we don't often speak about personalized ABM. Right, I wanted
to quickly answer the question, So, create personalized assets without
(37:32):
risking to create something that is actually not relevant for
them is by validating your insights. So when we were
explaining this approach where you go from accounts who don't
know you and you don't know them, to accounts who
might have heard about you but you're not really sure
(37:52):
what their needs are all the way to accounts or
you have actually validated the product need, this is exactly
what we were talking about. You want to understand what
Let's say imagine you come to your sales a sales
colleague and you ask them, if you had to bet
your compensation on a deal on an account, what would
(38:15):
you like to know about them? Like, what are the
what kind of information would you need to know so
that you can create a personalized, one hundred percent personalized,
perfect proposal that you know they cannot say no to. Right,
What are those insights that you need to have? So
(38:35):
your goal is to answer these questions about those accounts,
like maybe what their priorities and challenges are, what are
they're using currently, et cetera, et cetera, through a count research,
but also through a number of touch points in conversations
(38:55):
that your salespeople have with those target accounts through maybe
you know, polls during the webinars or sign up in
a sign up forms, maybe they share some of the information,
et cetera, et cetera. And then once you know this information,
this information is actually validated, then you can use to
(39:17):
create those personalized assets. What are the best assets we found? Essentially,
we call this personalized solution, which is basically explaining how
your product solves the challenges you know they have. So
the challenges that you have validated and know they have.
(39:39):
It can be a simple one pager sharing exactly how
you can help solve the challenges. And then if you
have enough information also and that's usually something that you
collect later in conversation, adding some sort of a business case,
kind of a before and after, showing them how you
can improve, not to only solve the challenges, but how
(40:03):
that food result, how that would translate into business impact
is usually the best kind of asset. Now, why do
I mention this while we're talking about awareness creation? I
think that's also important because usually in the first steps
of awareness creation, you are capturing the attention of your champions, right,
(40:25):
and then champions need to sell your solution internally. To
be able to sell your solution internally, you will also
need to create awareness in the rest of the buying committee.
And the way to do that is to work together
with a champion to then create personalized assets that are
called buyer enablement for that account that will have that
(40:46):
champion actually communicate you know, why did we like essentially
communicate that we have discovered a challenge that is preventing
us from a high priority business objective, that the cost
of inaction is high enough high enough for us to care,
that this is something that we cannot solve internally, and
(41:08):
that if we use solution like youres or your solution,
we can expect such and such return by that time
and kind of the before and after business case, that
would be a great example of a personalized asset. All right, Yeah,
let's go to the next one. Uh uh, this one,
(41:33):
I think I would like if that if you don't
mind under able to address this people with together with
the alignment, because I don't think you can really make
this shift without also having a cross functional aligned team,
uh to actually do proper to properly influence the buyer
(41:57):
buyers and the buyer journey. That a lot of our
prospects and clients realize that you know a lot of
the marketing programs, and I think there was a very
nice quote they said, uh, we run one of campaigns,
(42:19):
a random acts of marketing. Right, That's what I meant
by transactional right here when I said shifting from transactional
isolated activities or random acts of marketing one of campaigns
to basically an evergreen process where you're influencing complex B
(42:40):
to B buyer journeys with multiple buyers and long sales cycles.
So can you share some of some of the observations
that you see underdy in the market and we can
maybe dive into some solutions here. But I would like,
I said, a very very important part of the solution
(43:02):
will be also the alignments. I'd like to address that
the same time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Absolutely. If we'll come back to the question that Aaron
asked in the beginning, Right, we have a large list
of like these accounts, like seven hundred accounts that are
prioritized by sales. I think here's the real problem. Right,
So all of these accounts might belong to different articles,
(43:27):
all of these accounts might have completely different needs and challenges, right,
and all of these accounts might be on different stages
of the buyer journey. We often say that the fact
that sales prioritize the list doesn't mean that these accounts
are going to buy from you now, right, Depite, even
if you'll create the best possible one on one playbook
(43:50):
with personalized offer, it might not help at all. Now,
what's happening usually with companies that still try to find
a universal solution to engage with these companies? Right, As
I said, they all might have different needs, They all
might be from different verticals, they might belong to different clusters,
(44:14):
basically having different use cases or challenges.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
What happens next?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
You need to come up with a universal plan, right,
or something that we call one size fits all. Then
you don't have a lot of let's say, opportunities to
come up with the real personalization. You'll come up with
some generic content as simple as that, and you need
(44:39):
in most cases you have limited resources, but you are
challenged to engage these seven hundred accounts. What can you
do realistically?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Right?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
You can run ads, You maybe can create some generic
content and in the best case scenario, host a generic
field event or a webinar as simple as that. Generic
I mean that it would be like you try to
create something that is universal and as appearing to everybody.
The reality is that in most cases it won't be.
(45:10):
It will be just inefficient, right, and it won't drive,
and it won't move the needle, and what is going
to happen next? Right, You'll just be challenging because sometimes,
like let's say, senior leadership will be challenging you to
do something about this, and you are likely to have
(45:32):
this let's say random acts of marketing.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Right, So somebody.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Will say, oh, yeah, so this doesn't work, this doesn't work.
Let's try whatever. Let's host the webinar. You do it
without any playbook in place, and without any proper segmentation.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
We now there's from practice.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
I'm not saying obviously, I'm not referring to anybody who
is listening to us life, but we have seen this
multiple times as clients. They try to do it, maybe
a couple of times they in the best case scenario,
they get like five, seven, ten, maybe show ups. I'm
not saying the sign ups, but show ups on that webinar.
It's a huge frustration for everybody. No pipeline, no opportunities.
(46:13):
People question it when you do it in a systematic way.
If you shift to the approach that we share it
with the same client a year after they did the
last webinar, and despite all of the skepticism from the
sales leaders, we got one hundred and forty plus sign
ups around The show operate was sixty six percent. It's
(46:37):
beaten a full final two times. So our normal show
operate is like thirty five percent. They had sixty almost
sixty six was sixty five percential uprate. Fantastic engagement. And
obviously it's not the one time activity because they were
like a lot of cluster activities happened beforehand, and that
(46:58):
transition into six opportunity unites with accounts that were in
the initial cluster right. So that's the key. But a
lot of companies they don't stick to that process. They
do exactly what they did in the past. They just oh,
let's do the webinar, no strategy in place, no alignment
between marketing and sells, no playbox. It fails, right, and
(47:20):
it happens was almost ever since. Let's create a market research,
let's create gated content, let's start norchry, let's do something.
Let's let's go to that trade show, let's go and
sponsor the conference. But if there is no strategy in place,
and if this strategy is not aligned with the buyer journey,
it's not likely to generate any results.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
So the key point where we're ahead on with this.
Let's mentioned a couple of times, and I think this
is one of the most important things. You need to have,
not only clear understanding of ideal customer profile and that
ICP will be always suggested to the ABM, like demand
generation doesn't really matter to the cluster program that you're
(48:04):
focusing on this quoter. That's the first thing and the
second one you always need to run deal analysis to
understand how your customers are buying and what influences it.
This would be the key. Aside from this, we always
recommend to talk to your subject matter experts, and the
ideal candidate for that interview would be a person who
(48:27):
used to work as your buyer persona in the past,
a person who understands from the first hand, what are
the jobs to be done, what are the daily challenges,
what are the potential strategic initiatives, What are the conversations
that are happening in these accounts? What might be a blocker?
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Why these people might not be able, might not engage
with you, or might not be able to sell your
product internally. So a lot of these things. And also
we always recommend to ask a couple of questions when
you go in the shoes of our target bar persona.
What content did you consume? Specifically?
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Right?
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Quite often you'll hear about specific jobs to be done.
Where did you do it? You can listen, you can
hear about some maybe conferences, webinars, right, people that are
sharing dis content, communities, et cetera. And this is this.
These are the insights that you need to incorporate into
your strategy. These are the channels did These are the
(49:33):
activities that you need to incorporate because if you'll come
up directly and you'll ask a very straightforward question, Hey, like,
what's the best way to target these people are just
come up with something personalized to them. But this is
what you already tried to do, right, but it doesn't work.
But if you'll start this interview from the from another
(49:54):
angle and you'll start to dig deep and understand this, right,
they might she with you a lot of insights that
hidden and they are not thinking about these insights, right,
but you need to incorporate them, and then this holistic
buyer journey. Right. One of the things that also coming
back to the webinar story that I just shared just
(50:15):
a good anecdot before doing a proper before installing a
proper playbook in place. Right, Everybody was frustrated with this,
but then the playbook worked and suddenly it raised the
expectations of key stakeholders. Oh wow, so we are going
to see like a million pipeline out of it. But
(50:38):
unfortunately webinar itself or any odd activity like even this
live podcast. But don't expect that. You guys immediately will
come to our website and just one by one, book discovery.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Calls was us.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
It's not the key point of this activity, But could
it influence somehow, let's say your decision and futuresolutely Yes,
maybe not at this moment you don't have current need, budget, whatever,
doesn't really matter. You are not in the proper position, right,
Or maybe you'll hear from some of your colleagues who
(51:11):
are facing with the challenges that we face a company,
and you could mention our company, right, this is the
goal of this activity that we are doing. Right, We're
building this community, we create awareness, we generate demands through
that way. And exactly this is the same philosophy that
you need to explain that every activity it influences the
buyer journey, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it pushed
(51:35):
people to buy your product, which means that from this activity,
if you look from the bar journey perspective, and we'll
look at this account prioritization that Blood spoke about, right,
some of accounts, they would be more engaged. They would
be asking questions like for example, you ask the great
questions today in the chat.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
I'm not saying that this is the buying intent, but
from the buar journey perspective, right, what the teams could
do They could follow up and talk more about this. Hey,
you mentioned this specific challenge, right, and we share it all.
Let's say ours and you share this solution. We have
additional resources. Would you like me to share right now?
It could be is it something that you are challenging
(52:15):
right now? Would you be up, for example, if we'll
pick up Aaron's question about these seven hundred accounts, right,
would you be like, would it be helpful if I
will suggest Let's say, if I'm reaching out, if I
will suggest, like such a minute's call was flood to
review your ABM strategy and come up with ideas how
to refine it. Right, just share it with you. And
(52:36):
if you ask why we're not this this a completely
different problem of balance and the demand that we currently have.
But I'm just sharing the ideas. That's how that might
work from the vendor's perspective. Right, So you're not pushing,
but you are suggesting the next logical step that could
(52:56):
influence that buying process. And you can't do it if
you don't involve sales and if you don't involve subject
matter experts and into that process, because SEME would provide
your critical feedback. Is that a good action? Is that
a good let's say next step offer if it's a
good call to action or no? Right, and altogether you
(53:18):
need relistically think about, Okay, how we create a and
if you want to do webinars and feel the events,
how can we attract attention to people so they would
even consider that webinar?
Speaker 1 (53:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (53:29):
How can we make it that engage engaged so they
would be willing to share more information? Come up with questions,
et cetera. How can we install the next engagement with
these accounts if they are not ready to buy our
products for multiple reasons? Right, there could be multiple reasons
why they're not booking dema, So what would be these
no logical next steps?
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Right?
Speaker 2 (53:50):
This is the key and this is what you need
to create as a team.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
I think this is a great trapperp because I'm looking
looking through the different challenges that the companies are sharing
with us, and I see like one the challenge is
that you need to educate first the stakeholders and find
the right moment in time. Global organizations don't challenge every
(54:17):
year their approach processes and tools. It takes time and
you need to find the right moment so they're not
buying all the time. You cannot expect them just because
that they've joined for example of web and R, or
they have engaged with your content, that they're ready to buy.
(54:38):
But you need to align your activity, your next step
with the level of buyer intent. So this is what
I think one way to look at what and There
was explained. If they have shared the challenge with you, you
can offer them a solution. Maybe you can link them
(54:58):
to your internal exp who can help them with that challenge, right,
But if they didn't, that doesn't mean that they're looking
to buy from you just yet. And I think it's
really important. Another set of challenges that we see is
a lot of companies say things like we are aligned
(55:19):
on paper, but in practice, sales and marketing never do
stuff together. You will never be able to influence the
complete buyer journey of the multiple buyers if you don't
have that collaboration, if you don't implement the complete playbook,
as Andrea was explaining on the example of the webinar.
(55:39):
And finally, also I think very important is to align
the internal expectations because what I heard from Andrea is
what I see also very frequently is even when you
implement it and implement it fine, don't expect miracles. This
is just one of the touch points that you're introducing
(56:00):
in the buyer journey. Always expect that the majority of
the buyers, even if they're engaging, even they engaging multiple times,
are not going to convert this time. So I think
also very important to align those expectations.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I think we can wrap it up as it's the
final appsode this year, and then we'll take the Christmas
pouse and come back in January. So let's pick up
that last question from begum if I pronounced the name correctly,
and it's all about that personalization, right, We're actually doing this,
(56:38):
but can sometimes really challenging to know them better than
they know themselves, and personalization and digital can be quite
risky at times. The think it makes sense to use
account names and PPC content instances, and I would say
that here's the tricky part. So first of all, if
you'll target big enterprises, so companies tand key plus employees,
(57:02):
honestly you can use their name, but it's likely that
nobody will care until you are known on the let's say,
until you are associated with the enterprise organizations. Then it's
it's it's not going to help it's just like if
you if you will, it's like trying to if you
are small field micet, you try to you know, to
(57:24):
reach out to elephants. It's it's it's it's it's the
real example. So the second problem is that a lot
of people they as I'm saying, especially if you want
to sell to like mid sized to enterprise organizations, keep
in mind, how many vendors try to reach out to
(57:44):
this barer persona, and all of them use some level
of personalization account names, and nowadays, I mean everybody are smart.
People use tools like clay come up, hey, here here's
the buarer persona. Or let's say they ask AI, pretend
that you are like CEO or VPO it of a
(58:04):
company from let's say I don't know FMC sector and
I am selling this product, tell me like, what's what's
your need? And come up with personalized the mail? Right, So,
I mean the level of what we are observing today,
and I think this would be a huge trend for
twenty twenty five. The barrier for like this fake I
(58:26):
will tell you in the second way, I call it
fake personalization. The barrier, the barrier to create the fake
personalization is really low everybody could do it, and on
almost everybody is doing this. The problem, though, what it
creates that these people start ignoring even more all the mails,
all the outreach, the messages, etc. So if you are
(58:49):
not known as a vendor, and I remember it was
so vividly explained by a cito, remember that when you
spoke to that guy from software development company we invited,
he was an SME because we were selling This company
is selling exactly the citos. And he said, look, guys,
(59:11):
it's like you can come up with the like super
personalized e mail. You can find all the information about
my department's challenges like whatever. I imagine if I will
share it with you and just give you a list
of all of my challenges and you can come up
with personalized offer. The truth is that I'm receiving like
(59:32):
fifty to sixty emails every week that people try to
pitch me and sell something and just simply don't have
time to read all of them, even to open them.
So today for me to read your email or the
LinkedIn message, I need to know you because I just
simply don't have time to look at all of this
(59:53):
or on the volume of all of these emails and
that's the reality. That's the answer to your question. So
coming back to ever and that we have heard that
we have shared today. If you don't, if your target accounts,
if your ICP accounts are not perceiving you as a
strategic vendor or as a vendor too that is associated
(01:00:15):
with their strategic challenges, this personalization tactics, they won't help it.
Just try. It's like like trying to put a band
aid on a bleeding neck, right more as that would
be my best reply, So think about how to solve
the root reasons and the tactics. They will come later.
So hope that reply helps. And that being said, thank you, I.
(01:00:43):
I'm so happy to see also and the comments that
you guys enjoyed this episode. And for us, it's always
a pleasure to see our community to come in and
asking all these fantastic questions because these questions help us
to come up with the content that is relevant to you,
just not talking about the generic things. All things bit
(01:01:05):
to the market. And that being said, we wish a
fantastic rest of the year, crushing your numbers, hitting your
targets and seeing you guys next year.
Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Take care, Cheers, b I have great holidays.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.