Episode 154: Four ABM Programs That Drove $7m Pipeline

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel B t B marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start. Hello everyone, it's Wednesdays afternoon here in Spain,
which in s It's a time for a new episode
of full Funnel Life. As promised, today, we're going to
break down the four account based marketing program that executed

(00:33):
with our clients. All these clients we already on our podcast,
so you had a chance to listen to our conversations.
Our goal was, Flad, was to summarize everything and share
with you what made this program successful, right, and also
sharing some nite greeted details that quite often being ignored

(00:58):
when teams to execute the account based marketing program. So
obviously mentioned the kind of the total pipeline generated out
of these programs above seven millions. It's accumulated obviously pipeline
for all of the four companies, and it's the pipeline

(01:19):
that was generated only during the pilot phase, right, So
that's important to keep in mind, just not at a
false expectation that you can I don't know that you
can immediately replicate this and expect the same outcomes. So
what we want to talk about today is Sharon with

(01:41):
you the four core pillars to make the program successful
based on our analysis. Then we want to explain how
to run actually nurturing programs when you have a real
long sales cycle, I mean sales cycles from eighteen months
to two years. And guess what if like you have

(02:01):
this long sale cycle, you can imagine how long is
the buyer journey? Right?

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
And then we want to discuss as well the ideal
team structure versus the realistic resources that you can get
for the pilot program. And it's not about AI agents obviously,
so this this about the real team members you need
to involve into the program and as well basically tackle

(02:30):
a few playbooks give you an overview how to adapt
let's say Central framework to different circumstances when your ICP
changes or when you target conservative markets, people that are
not active on social media for example, and you can't
use linked in for example. So all of this we

(02:52):
are going to cover today. Let us know where you
guys all joining us from. I saw Danila from Alecanta,
our neighbor. Hello from Valencia region. We're broadcasting again from Valence,
a vile. Let us know guys where you all tune
in in? Let us know in the chat and while
you are typing, let me make a very quick announcement.

(03:15):
We've finally announced our six virtual annual Full Final Market
and signed. The link is in the chat and this
year it would be again fantastic event three days. Life
Case startus almost all keynotes the Life Case Status. You
can learn a lot from this, and aside from the keynotes,

(03:38):
we decided to shift a little bit the approach. We
saw that lots of you loved the Life Case Status
well we invited our clients on this live podcast were
so huge engagement, fantastic feedback afterwards, so we decided to
replicate the success and basically arranged two round tables with
our clients. One would be with sales teams and one

(04:01):
would be best marketing teams. And I believe it would
be very beneficial for everybody to learn from senior marketing leaders,
how they run account based marketing programs, how they get
buying from the executives, et cetera. And at the same
time you can learn from the sales teams. I think
this is one of the most beneficial things for everybody here,

(04:22):
right because quite often when he had this cancel, Hey,
but my sales team doesn't want to participate the engage
that they don't buy in the program. So this is
all that we are going to cover during this full
final signed The link is in the chat and for
everybody who will be listening to the record, and the
link will be in the description. That being said, let's

(04:46):
come back to our four programs, and I think what
would be important is to first of all introduce the
programs that we want to review so that you will
add thank you.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
So the four programs are actually very different markets. The
first one was from test Trail, which is targeting engineers
at banks and healthcare companies and other companies where compliance
is very important safety, security, etc.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
And the.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Biggest challenge was how do we build credibility with these
technical buyers. And as you've also learned, we had other
challenges that we had to sold there.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
But finally with a bit of pushing and pulling.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
We did get some good results with twenty two enterprise
deals created and two of them closed the way that Joao,
who was our ABA marketer described these were ultra enterprise
deals for them. The second one is Charles Gates, which
is a very atypical client because it was full agin

(06:00):
and sale service full service real estate agency focusing on
developers and real estate developers and investors in a very
very small region around Boston, United States. It's and next
to this very specific challenge having such an issue audience

(06:21):
also having.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Very long sales cycles two to three years.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
There. Actually the result is the most impressive one three
and a half million revenue from ABM source deals in
the last quarter of the previous serity. This was the
record quarter. So interesting to hear about what they did
and how they had to adapt their program. And two
other programs were targeting more or less let's say HR

(06:48):
or related to HR one certain with background screening of employees.
There we had to help them create awareness, especially because
they wanted to move into a specific market coming from
Canada into the US. And then there we ended up
with eighty four engaged accounts and three enterprise deals and

(07:12):
finally card data where we have to work a lot
on helping them overcome misalignment between marketing and sales and
actually create a program where they're working together. Where we
have created some pipeline with signs and we can't really
discuss a lot of details there, but what we can
definitely say is that it was successful enough for them

(07:33):
to implement two.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Other cycles of ABM.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
So after the successful pilot, you'll also see how these
different teams were thinking about scaling that beyond that initial pilot.
They've involved other people, et cetera, et cetera. We can
dive into that, but these are four We selected this
war because they actually had different challenges and they were
in different markets. As you can see it on very

(07:59):
specific tick issues that we had to solve. So with
that other way, I think, I think there are things
that they share that are in common. I think obviously
we have implemented the same framework ABM framework that we use,
but we had to customize it to each of these projects,

(08:19):
which we can discuss. But one thing that I'd like
to ask out I maybe to highlight, is if I
think you had taken some time to reflect on what
are the kind of key elements that made those programs successful?

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, I think what would the very beneficial fl cover them?
One by one? We have to find four core essential pillars,
and the first one is the committed team. No program
could perform really well if you don't have committed team.
We have observed this in the past. We had also

(08:54):
experienced working with one client where they involved like twelve
or a team different people. A lot of these people,
for no specific reasons, were involved and coming to the
goals absolutely having no idea what's going on, but they
were coming with their opinions or they were questioning, like

(09:14):
why we're running certain playbook, etc. And the more opinions
these people had, the more distracted the team was, and
obviously it wasn't going anywhere. The key goal is having
this team being relatively independent. Obviously, every account based marketing
program should be aligned with revenue targets with pipeline generation right.

(09:37):
Doesn't matter what the goal is, expansion, I plan, acceleration,
new logo generation, doesn't really matter what's the goal of
the program. In NATCHELL, the key point is generating new
sales opportunities and generating revenue, right, and what makes what?
Just to achieve these goals, you need to have team

(09:59):
that can move relatively fast and being independent in the
decisions that they are taken. We have absorbed quite often
when let's say team was initiated specific event for a
certain set of accounts, right for a certain group of accounts,
and then suddenly everybody in the organization started to have

(10:20):
an opinions about the topic or the bullet points or
the way how the event should look like. So the
format has been changed from let's say educational slash nurture
inside of saying to fireside chat, et cetera. And obviously
these things impact a lot the program.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's that's one drawback. The second, let's say the second
the opposite angle of the let's say non committed team
is when team. When the ABM team expects like let's say,
a light version of ABM, which they believe that it
could be done or executed via you know, automated cadencies

(11:01):
like Profile Enrichment slash Clay for example, and then a
bunch of semi personalized e mails and ads, et cetera.
So in reality, they treat account based market and as
a fancy replacement for all school lead generation. Right. So,
and this team doesn't really pay attention to account based

(11:26):
marketing strategy. But I'm always saying, if if you were
able to generate enterprise deals seven figure contracts with automated
you know, cadencies and en reached like change to pity
created personalized emails, then we would we all living among
unicorns and Obviously a company called full funnel will never existing, right,

(11:49):
So that's that's the entire point. Unfortunately, the reality is
harsh and a lot of teams they learn the uh
the lesson the hard way invest and also into expense
away IBM software without having robust fundamentals, without developing these
skills in their team. Right. So that's that's that's the
tht problem. And the last one is when the pilot team,

(12:13):
or let's say the ABM team consists of multiple people
who have tons of different responsibilities. The team that runs
multiple activities and parallel and ABM is just one more
thing to their plate. Their plate is already full of
other tasks and things that are moving forward, and ABM

(12:35):
becomes a burden, which means that everybody, Okay, so they
want to do me ABM. I will do this, but
let's try to sabotage it as as as possible.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
This is the mindset more or less. So when it
comes to creating pilot team, you need to have let's
say we're split it into two parts. There is a
core team that should dedicate in ideal world one hundred
percent of that. In real world, it's never possible. But
we always say that the bare minimum is sixty percent.

(13:06):
And if you'll ask me why sixty percent? I remember
that was a fantastic book about it was written by
some of the investors, and when they ask like, how
do you decide what's shared to buy? The company has said,
I need to have this control package of shares so
I could really basically impact the process. The same is here.

(13:29):
If the team spends more than fifty percent of the time,
it means that this is the highest priority. Right, this
is the key for them. So what are these rolls?
These rolls are account based marketing program lead, the person
who orchestrates the program, the person who organ basically splits
the responsibilities, creates the timeline and manages the rest of

(13:54):
the team. Right, then, we definitely need to help one
sales resource, either a sales development representative or it could
be account executive depending on the playbook. That being said,
quite often we have observed the more you involve account
executives into unproven program, the more likely the more likely

(14:16):
it would be ignored by them. They're not going to
spend that time to do the necessary engagement. So the
best friend for account based marketing team would be SDR
who is questioning the obsolete playbook, who understands that the
more called calls send and more called the mails actually

(14:37):
will want help, right and the person who is willing
to collaborate with marketing and then content market are in
essence what we have seen in the past the majority
of aside from let's say revenue perspective, another goal for
the majority of account based marketing programs that we have

(14:57):
executed with clients is challenging the status quo of the
existing accounts. What does that mean? That means that there
are companies that have executed certain operations for years. Maybe
they're not the most convenient processes. Maybe this is not
the most efficient jobs to be done, but nobody questions this.

(15:18):
This is the mandsett is. This is how we executed
these programs for years, right, so why even consider it
yet another product? So you need to do a lot
of change management, You need to educate a lot the
target accounts and explaining the inefficiencies in their processes, and
you can do it only with super personalized content. We

(15:39):
already recorded an episode about comet based marketing strategy, so
content strategy, So if you didn't watch it, I highly
recommend toy watch, so we won't spend a lot of time.
But that means that dedicated content marketer is essential for
this program. And then you have the let's say the
operational support that would the two roles that you need

(16:01):
to involve. You need to involve subject matter expert. In
case if in your let's say core team, you don't
have the main knowledge. So for example you mentioned test
trail the assailant to quality Assurance engineers right and other
ABM team, they're not from it. They have no idea
about the challenges and jobs to be done on the

(16:22):
processes of Let's say I have a target barer persona.
So the only one millionful way to engage these people
is involve in subject matter expert. And another case it
was a senior solution architect right and stell revops. So
a person who tracks all the signals, who sets up
the reports for example, the events in case if you're

(16:43):
running them, the land and pages, all of that stuff,
and the person that collects all of the engagement and
intend signals and presents them to the ABM team. So
sometimes these rolls could be mixed. Obviously, right, your ABM
lead could be your subject matter expert and at the
same time be a lead for the REVOPS manager. So
it's not black and white, right, Sometimes there also would

(17:05):
be merchant. Actually we have experienced this, so maybe a
lot you can share the story where the five are
also actually merged into two people.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, I mean the problem in some cases is, like
you described, if you don't have sales development presentative, you
have to work with an account executive. They have very
high revenue pressure, they have very high targets, and when
people are under pressure, they kind of tend to revert

(17:40):
to activities that are proven. Like you said, like people
tend to go back to what they know. And so
in some cases, when you don't have people like BDR
or SDR kind of a role and you have to
work with account executive, this may or may not work,
depending on the kind of program and that person and
how you structure the collaboration. Actually, one of these programs
we have somehow pulled it off, although the time was

(18:03):
very limited from that person, but somehow we have managed
to pull it off. But in one of these programs,
we weren't able to get the engagement from that person.
So we had a choice stop the program or pivot
and add unfortunately some of the responsibility to the ABM marketer.

(18:24):
So the ABM marketer, the person who was kind of
the mean person running the program, said, you know what,
let me just roll up my sleeves and do some
of these activities. We had to, of course, just that
they were not a sales personal. They didn't have the
background that They also didn't get the commissioned, which which
I found a pity because they did a great job

(18:45):
at the end, but they basically did some of that engagement.
Like I said, we had to adopt it. I think
in that case also, the collaboration with the subject matter
expert was so important because if he did have that,
I think without the subject matter expert and without sales

(19:05):
that would be too difficult.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
So what we did in this case is truth to
be told.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Also, there was no content dedicated content resource, so we
had to figure out, okay, how are we going to
create content, how are we going to engage having basically
one person having to do most of the work and
then having the help of the subject matter expert. So
in terms of the content, we engage the subject matter
expert through online events, virtual events, running two webinars.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
I believe we ran.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
We were also interviewing and sharing content from these interviews,
so a lot of the content was quote unquote produced
by the subject matter experts by just leveraging let's say,
their expertise in a webinar.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
I think.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
All the work around that was done by the ABM marketer.
So basically they rolled up their sleeves and in age
with the target audience. Now, actually there was a kind
of an advantage I think as well, because they didn't
have the usual sales mindset, which sometimes tends to be
short term looking at transactional, short term, looking at generating

(20:15):
the results, immediate results, pipeline right and booking meetings. They
had a more longer term view. Okay, I'm not in sales.
My goal is to first create awareness and engagement with
those accounts before I can even start a conversation.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
But what it.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Turned out to be is that they were not only
able to create awareness and engagement by leveraging that subject
matter expert, but actually start a lot of conversation and
in conversations, excuse me, ending up in you know, more
than twenty thirty I believe calls with icps and some

(20:56):
of that converted to pipeline. Actually won deals. Think what
they had to do was leverage the subject matter expert
through the events, but also just kind of curating because
they couldn't create content themselves. They were curating content that
was either created by the subject matter expert or other

(21:19):
people in the market who our audience was following. So
that worked really well, featuring basically people who were their peers,
who were there, who our audience was turning to learn from.
And then also because which sometimes is actually a challenge

(21:39):
to make sales and marketing work together, and we always
want to see almost any marketing touch point can be
leveraged by sales. So I said, as an example, we
had this webinar. So what our market or the ABA
marketer was doing instead of sales was connecting to the

(22:01):
people who were registering for the webinar, collecting their challenges
to present to their subject matter expert to make their
webinar moralment, which subject matter experts said like he was amazed,
He said, like, okay, I have never had such insight
into my audience. He really appreciated that, and he could
really focus on adding a real value because he knew

(22:25):
what the challenges were and he could address exactly what
the audience was expecting to learn from from him, and
at the same time, of course, I mean, you're collecting
the challenges for the webinar, but it's actually a conversation
that you're starting, right, So this helped the marketer again
have multiple touch points, do it before the webinar, during

(22:48):
the webear after the webinar. In this case, also there
was some content that he was sharing actually from his
own LinkedIn profile.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
On LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
There was some promotion of the content we paid, but
a lot of that because he was not connected even
to the target audience, but a lot was even just
through organic reach, and that also helped start additional conversations.
But I think the most effective way was connect using

(23:22):
the marketing touch points to connect. And also I would
say one more thing, what worked really well in collaboration
with the subject matter expert who agreed to offer strategicals
or expert sessions as a follow up of the webinar.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
And why was that important Because one.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Of the biggest mistakes that we see teams make, especially
like salespeople can make again looking at it very transactional
and always trying to book a call, let's say a
sales call always basically pitching their solution.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
But what is really important, especially.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
When you don't have a buying signal when they didn't
like essentially say hey, I want to learn more about
your solution yet, is to come up with some sort
of bridge activity. We call this a bridge activity, and
in this case, the bridge activity was.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
These expert sessions.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
So we could follow up with people who were engaged,
who share that they have a specific challenge, who had
engaged several times, attended the webinar, maybe engaged with content,
had a conversation that chat with our marketer, and offered
them those expert sessions with our subject matter experts.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
So this was one of.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
The main let's say leverage leverage points that we could
use to book those meetings. So, if you take a
step back, what the marketer was doing really well was
not only leveraging these expertise and content, but also aligning
the call to action or aligning this next activity with

(25:00):
the level of intent. Right the account is completely called.
You can create awareness, You can offer them some content,
invite them to the webinar, share share some content. Potentially
by content collaboration, they are engaged, they maybe share your
challenge that they are actively working on. Well, at that moment,

(25:23):
you can offer help with that challenge without necessary yet
pitching that product. So this was a way he aligned
the level of intent with the next action and to
basically wrap it up. Unfortunately, if you can't get this

(25:44):
collaboration from sales and you still want to run that
run that program, there is only one solution, and that
is to roll up your sleeves and take on some
of those activities on yourself.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
That was a perfect summary. The first pillar we just
covered it committed pilot ABM team, we share the rules.
The second pillar is account lest building. In Natchell, what
makes successful ABM program successful is when you focus on
accounts with high probability to become sales opportunity. We always

(26:22):
share this litmus test as ABM teams. If you were
going to bet your compensation on specific accounts, what characteristics
these accounts should match. And whenever we shared this question,
the approach and the answers suddenly start changing. Nobody starts saying, hey,

(26:46):
we are targeting banks in North America, you know, or
we are targeting this like Fortune five hundred companies. We
want to generate them you know, as our clients because
these are great logos to have another website. How teams
are challenged to answer this question, Suddenly they start naming
specific characteristics. Everybody mentions that it's important to have some

(27:10):
level of awareness inside the buying committee. Obviously. Everybody mentions
that it's good enough to have some relationship with the
buying committee members. That it's not the called account that
is magically was converted from call the mail or cold call. Right,
and all of them mentioned different product need evidence signals.

(27:32):
I would love to emphasize on it, but never call
any signal as buy an intent. I think this is
the falla said that has been basically promoted by a
few technology vendors. The only one buy an intent that
exists is when your prospect tells you I'm ready to
buy your product, sent me an invoice. Please. This is

(27:53):
the only buy an intent. All the rest is just engagement, curiosity,
even discovery call. It's not the buying intent. It could
be part of the research process. You'll never know, right, So,
just to make it clear, all the signals that we
capture and the information that we want to identify about

(28:14):
target accounts, these are the product need evidence signals. Something
that tells us that this account has a challenge or
a need or inefficiency that our product can help with,
as simple as that. Right, So, in reality, whenever we
define a list of accounts, we always set up this

(28:36):
like let's say, opportunity likelihood generation, and we pay attention
to this for criteria. The revenue potential will never target
er three accounts and our account based marketing programs. Why
simply because you need to do a lot of manual
engagement with the accounts and you need to do a

(28:56):
lot of personalization. So to make sure that the program
will pay off, you need to have Tier one and
her two accounts. Next, we prioritize on segment accounts by
the level of vendor awareness do they know us? And
then obviously, if you'll open link linked in right now,
you'll hear a lot of advice about prant awareness, invest

(29:18):
into print, invest into awareness, et cetera. But nobody, Actually,
I have never said, maybe blood correct me if I'm around,
maybe you have said, but I have never said that
somebody gave you a clear criteria. What does it mean
to call you know that somebody is aware of us?
Have you ever seen this on linked in?

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Not?

Speaker 1 (29:38):
In so many words and in a way that is
mean thankful for sales especially, right, we can talk about
brand's impressions, we can talk about traffic and other kinds of.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
I don't want to call them.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Anyity metrics, but well, what we really want to know
is or what awareness means in very practical terms from
the sales perspective, is these buyers know that we can
help them with the challenge that they have. So they
have a specific challenge, they have a system priority, and
we are one dom the vendors that can help out

(30:18):
with that. So associating essentially your brand and your solution
with their top of mind strategic challenges. I think that's
the simplest wit to.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Define it exactly. And I always share with everybody, I
mean from our community that you can run a simple
experiment and your company just create you know, survey in
Google forms and ask just send it, you know, share
it with your colleagues and marketing and sales you can
share with your executives as well and ask like what

(30:49):
like how would you call a specific account that this
account is aware of us? And you'll hear completely different opinions,
completely different definitions. Right, And this is the simple reason
why marketing and sales help works with each other instead
of working together. You need to have good definition of
what engagement criteria or what the level of intent account

(31:13):
should demonstrate, so you can agree that this account knows you. Right,
and then this could be I mean I will never
push certain things for different companies. This mean this could
meanion completely different stuff. Right. It could be meeting with
these people on the events. It could be repetitive spikes
in you know, wizards of your hands and pages on

(31:34):
the website, signing up for some critical events, could be
million multiple things right, But the only right answer is
when you sit down with sales, you create a unified
set of this criteria and from that perspective, you'll start
segmenting these accounts. Why because when these accounts are aware
of you, it's way easier for sales to start engagement.

(31:55):
You will likely to. It helps to prioritize the accounts.
Instead of reaching out thousands, you start working on those
that you have some level of awareness. Fast. You can
invest time in depth account research, in turbine committee matt
and in terminient ful engagement. Because these activities are usually
skipped and ignored. Everybody says, oh, but that's a lot.

(32:16):
Can we automate this no, you can't. Unfortunately, you need
to do these things and you need to invest time
to understand the needs of these accounts.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
And if you'll ask a question what to do with
the rest, the answer is simple. If other accounts don't
know you, you have no idea. What are the challenges?
The reality is simple, you are not able to sell
to them. You will now. I mean as there would
be people who kind of would claim that the magic

(32:47):
that was presented in the Wolf from the Wall Street
movie exists, but I have never seen in practice people
who could do cold call and called the mail and
consistently hit the enterprise star. Get right. I'm not talking
about occasional opportunities one say yeah whatever, but that you

(33:07):
build a meaningful process based on this, right. So that's
that's the key. The first thing that you need to
do with the team for accounts that don't know you
but they fit the ICP criteria has created vendor awareness. Right.
Then the rest of the accounts you start prioritizingment. You
start investing in Tobayan committee, mappen and account research. And
there is the last group accounts that hit your engagement thresholds.

(33:31):
They belong to Tier one or Tier two, so there
is a decent revenue potential. Then you have some level
of relationship and based on the account research, both desk
research and one on one conversations with these people, you
have enough signals or enough proof that this account has
a need or has a challenge that you can help with.

(33:53):
So from that perspective, the real one to one account
based market and starts doesn't matter if it's Tier one
or your two account. You start personalizing everything because the
key goal is to generate sales opportunities with these accounts,
and you have a clear vision of what you can
offer to these people, and these people already know your product.

(34:13):
That's the key. So we always stop segment All the
accounts that were select into this release never ever fallen
into a follower so that you can pick up, you know,
some random accounts or because sales just finish the territory
planing and it's just fine to target this fortune five
hundred companies the first step that you always do. You
can pick up that list, but then you can say,

(34:35):
hey can be segmented by like how likely we're going
to generate sales opportunities with these account right this far
c and we'll do it was every single client, and
then the sales team actually starts focusing on actual focus
and this let's say second least future pipeline accounts, accounts
that demonstrate the level of awareness. In many cases, when

(34:57):
you'll do this, because quite often we receive the question
many accounts you should have in the ABM program. If
you'll apply the segmentation, you'll see that you won't have
that many accounts. To be honest, that's the reality for
the majority of companies. And this as well, you start
investing your let's say resources, that's as opposed to generate

(35:18):
pipeline the sales opportunity as well with class icp the
rest of the accounts that have no idea who you
are and what you do, you start creating awareness. This
is ABM in natural and the associated problem here is
I believe that we can touch the short point, right,
is what playbox we can deploy because when it comes

(35:40):
to playbox, this is the short pillar that kind of
impacts the performance of your program. It's not programmatic. It's
not like there is no playbook that you can just
simply copy paste, you know, and successfully replicate. You always
need to adjust it to the let's say specific ICP

(36:02):
and specific criteria that you have developed, specific of accounts
that you have selected. And some of these, I mean
some of these people could be absolutely not active on
social like in Charles gate case or test trial case, right,
I key people who are not hanging out on Linked
and even don't have linked and profiles. Right then if

(36:23):
like if you read the playbooks about linked and ads
and Linked and messaging forget not simply because these people
don't exist on that platform, right, So you need to
adjust and this would be our thord pillars. So I
would love to ask you that to share your experience
and also reflection on how to develop the playbook, the
key pillars of any playbook, and then how this playbook

(36:46):
could be adjusted to different ICPS or two different markets.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Absolutely, I think you already gave us the framework in
terms of how we should link think about these playbooks
and align them with the level of or the stage
of the buyer journey that our accounts are in. So
we have, like you mentioned, those accounts that don't know us,
we only know that they're fit our ICP, their Tier one,

(37:12):
Tier two higher avenue potential. The accounts that we want
to focus on and our goal is obviously to create awareness,
and I think you raised a very important point there
is depending on the market, it's not about just like
running you know, display ads or let's say trying to
get SEO or sharing blog posts or whatever, driving maybe mqls.

(37:39):
It's really about understanding that market and adapting, adopting your
excuse me, adapting your awareness playbooks to that market. So,
for example, in the case of Test Trial and Charles Kate,
we had like actually quite conservative markets, very nche in
conservative markets. For example, Q and A engineers, like you said,
they're not active on LinkedIn, but they are very active

(38:03):
in communities. So one of the things that we did
there was focusing on Ministry of Testing and which was
an online community where there was a lot of engagement, right,
so it was much easier to reach those people there
and to engage with them. One very interesting thing thing
there though, what I really need to stress out is

(38:27):
that in both cases Test Trail having twin engineers, you
go on LinkedIn, you look at those people, they don't
even have a profile, or maybe they have a profile,
don't even have a photo that you could see, like
in their history, they have only one later job there,
they have only created the LinkedIn to find their leaders
job basically right, so you would think like they will

(38:48):
never engage on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
And the other example was with Charles Gate where we
were targeting developers in Boston. So you're not going to
go and do broadmin marketing initiatives and hoping that somehow,
for some reason, the people that you target, let's say
from Boston are going to engage.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
So it was a.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Very very niche both you geographically and also so these
were like real estate developers who spend a lot of
time you know, maybe not on site, but you know, negotiations,
et cetera, searching for deals. So the question is how
do you reach them? Well, the surprising thing. The surprising
thing was that in both cases we did try LinkedIn

(39:36):
as awareness creations, so they were sharing content thought leadership
content LinkedIn and in both cases that also worked. Was
not the only play, look, but it worked. And I
won't really stress this because when you have a conservative
market where there is not a lot of activity on
a channel, it doesn't mean think that your buyers are

(40:00):
not listen on that channel. And actually, because there is
not a lot of activities, sometimes this is a great
opportunity to stand out. This turned out to be the
case for both Charles Gate and Test Trial. In case
of Test Trail, we didn't even have that internal expertise,
so our marketer had to kind of pull content together
and curate it by creating content based on what he

(40:25):
found from let's say, other Q and engineers sharing in
communities or on blogs, on events, et cetera. He would
pull that together, he would share it on LinkedIn, and
he was getting and he wasn't even connected to them,
and he was getting great engagement. And what I also
found amazing was that actually was a founder of Charles

(40:47):
Gate who was sharing really good content on LinkedIn, but
a lot of it was about local zoning rules in Boston,
like really really local stuff and really really niched that
that he never see on LinkedIn, and he was getting
really good engagement frontal and people. I just wanted to
stress that, but like I said, it's really important to

(41:07):
look at there, like what can you do? Sometimes it's
an opportunity. I wouldn't discard it just out of because
you don't think people are active on the platform.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
It can be an opportunity.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
But also look at niche communities, look at like, for example,
in the case of Child's gait was really really important
for these local events and local partners obviously, like who
else is working with developers.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
It could be you know, lawyers, it could.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Be you know, maybe CPAs are the kind of partners
who are you know, construction companies in the local market
that could help you, you know, by collaborating with them
to basically get in front of your target buyers. So
I think this is this is an important one when
it comes to awareness. Now, it's interesting to contrast that

(42:01):
with for example, Certain and card Data, which had a
different challenge. They had to create awareness in very crowded
market like we used for example, Certain we use LinkedIn
because obviously HR people are on LinkedIn, they're very active.
But actually, even if you compare it to B to

(42:22):
B marketing or B to B sales, which are extremely
active on LinkedIn, and you have a lot of content
about B to BE marketing B to B sales on LinkedIn,
I think HR is even more like HR is probably
the biggest still be too with marketing. B to B
sales are kind of niche compared to HR, because every
company needs HR. Every company has HR that is bigger
than fifty people, so they're the challenge was how do

(42:47):
you actually tend out right? And the way that we
stood out was that they had to first of all,
make sure that their content was really really relevant to
their target audience. So they were focusing on specific tech companies,

(43:08):
mid sized tech companies in the United States who were
hiring who had to hire roles with some compliancy compliance issues,
So they knew exactly who their target ICP was and
they knew what their biggest challenges were and what's really

(43:29):
important as well. When you're talking about awareness creation, certain
couldn't just start talking about background checks and screening because
it's actually just one of the jobs that their target
audience needs to do, and it's actually probably the last
step in hiring. You know, you've sourced your candidates or

(43:51):
you created, you define what is the role. You've you know,
created the job post, you're promoted it, you're having the
CANDIDCYR interview and candidates, and once you're selected, only at
the last step you're doing this thing that you have
to do, which is background screen So it's not really
top of their mind. However, it is a part of
a bigger picture. You know, you have to make sure

(44:14):
that you're feeling in your hiring pipeline and converting those
into an actual job offers that you're actually winning these
winning or what is hiring these people?

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Excuse me?

Speaker 1 (44:29):
And one of the important things was providing good candidate experience,
et cetera. So there is always a bigger picture in
which your product is a part of. And if you
want to create awareness, that's also important to talk about
because if your buyers are not actively looking, and that's
the point, like you're creating awareness with the buyers that

(44:49):
are not yet looking for a solution like yours, then
you need to be talking about these top of mind
challenges which are usually broader than.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
Your product, your that fits within those we have used.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
I think this would be the things that I wanted
to highlight about awareness creation.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
I think the other thing.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Is to look at the other stages of the buyer journey.
So what do you do with buyers who are aware
of you, with the target accounts who are aware of you,
but you don't yet necessarily have an ind relationship enough
to have that insider information to know like under the
cause of the product, need evidence to know that they

(45:36):
have a challenge.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
They can solve for them that this is a high priority.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
That they have a product, that they have a need,
basically that you can solve for them. Well, it's clear,
if you don't know that I need your product, you
need to figure it out. If you don't have the relationship,
you need to build this relationship. So that is that
you need to align your playbooks with that goal. And

(46:01):
so this is where sales and marketing had to work
together to introduce these multiple touch points and progressively built
the profile or progressively collect the insights from those target accounts.
I mentioned already some of the tactics that we used.
In all cases, we had these expert webinars. Sales could

(46:24):
connect with people before the webinar collect challenges that they had.
For example, in the case of certain we were doing
a lot of content collaboration where we featured the quotes
of the buyers or a sales person that was participating
in the pilot was reaching out to target buyers and
you know, getting their quote for the next post. For example,

(46:48):
on specific topics. Let's say we wanted to write about
candidate experience. We were asking our connections on linkeding target
buyers to get a quote. This was another way that
it could collect information about it. We used sign up
for a webinar. Maybe when you were signing up for
this event today you had we asked you to share

(47:11):
what are the questions that you would like us to
answer during this podcast? You know, when we run a webinar,
we might ask a question like about the maturity of
your ABM or your experience with ABM. Are you just starting,
are you implementing it but you know want to improve,
or are you like completely satisfied with your ABM program.

(47:33):
That this kind of information of course helps us understand
and who is more likely to have a need for
Let's say you been consulting similarly, our clients use something similar,
so again, sales and marketing they work together. They understand
what is that informa like Andrew said, like if you

(47:53):
had to pat your compensation on the accounts, what is
the information they would like to have and then translate
that into this touch points? Okay, how can I in
a way that's not uh you know, uh creepy or
our sales Z get that get that information, get that
inside and information nation. And obviously a lot of that

(48:16):
is also just doing some legwork, doing research for example, uh,
Charles Gate. What was really really important was to understand
do these developers actually have an active project. And we
knew that if they had the project a project like

(48:36):
a construction project like building a new new investment like
a building, let's say multi family building, we needed to
know this on before they actually had the construction crew there,
that you would know that this project was there. So
what they did, for example, was they were looking at
industry information like I think, what was it, what was

(49:05):
it like planning development filings something like that, I think
to identify the identified developers that were requiring land, because
that was an indication okay, they were acquiring land. There
was a filing in this whatever public public record of that,
so they knew, okay, they were planning to do something.
This was like looking at this kind of information specific

(49:27):
to your buyers. So for example, in case of certain
they knew that there would be a greater need if
they were high erring remote workers or if they were
hiring this like difficult to find roles or roles that
required additional screening, compliance checking, especially if there was like
a big surge of of hiring of recruitment. They had

(49:52):
to be in other words, hire a lot of people,
more people that would be a good signal for them
to check as well. So it it's a mix of
getting this insider information and getting this information that you
can acquire from specific industry sources, specific sources that are
related to your product. And finally, once you do know

(50:17):
them and they know you, so in other words, they're
aware of you. You have some relationship. Maybe your salespeople
had some chats, it was back and forth, and you
have that insight, you know, like the developer has bought
the land they're developing, you maybe had some chats with them.
Now the question is, okay, how do I move into
sales conversation? How do I go from having that engagement,

(50:40):
having that insight into actually talking about my product and
again just pitching on cold it doesn't work as well
as offering. I already mentioned these earlier bridge activities. So
in case of Test Trail, I think we were offering
expert sessions. In case of Charles Gate, for example, we

(51:04):
were offering what they called underwriting, which is kind of
basically building a business case for your customer. They always
have had to build a business case, so we help
them do it. And of course, if you build, if
you help them build a business case. We can show
them the business case with or without the kind of
service that we can provide for them with certain I

(51:27):
think we had this webina about social media screening, and
we could offer them if I'm remembering that well and
maybe correctly, and if I'm wrong, I think like a
free screening, free social screen which was just like of
course one small part of the product as well, which

(51:48):
also helped help as a bridge activity to generate those
goals which some of them ended up as a sales
qualified opportunity. Again, the point here is not to presume
buying intent. Buying intent, as Andre says, is they are
ready to sign a check. They are reaching out to you.
They're smart people, they know how to do that, but

(52:11):
offering something that actually makes sense for the stage that
you're in, right, And we gave like these three examples,
So these are different examples of the different playbooks and
also hopefully also you understand how you can be thinking
about adapting adapting those to your specific situation. You know,
whether that's you're in a niche market on crowded market

(52:33):
where you need to have some specific industry information or
other information that you can use to understand whether your
prospects prospect accounts have a need for your product right now.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
And I's a fantastic question from Danila. I think it's
very relevant to cover it right now before we will
touch the last pillar. So Danila asked, after we have
built as among our accounts and have talked to like
ten of them during podcast or market research interviews, what
are the strategies to move them to a sales call. Well,

(53:09):
love the idea of just building natural human relationship, but
still all of us need sales. And this is this
is the entire point of what what was sharing. So
not all all of the accounts have the buying intent
and it depends on which accounts you have selected, right,
So if you have selected cold accounts, let's say this
cluster ICP least that was just the first step to

(53:30):
build relationship with them, to connect with them. There is
no by just because they fit your ICP. It doesn't
mean that you can generate sales opportunity with them if
they are not in the market. Right, So that's the
reality you need. So when you invest into this right
before even and you need to be very clear if
you want this is the play the playbooks that you

(53:53):
have mentioned like podcast or market research interviews. These are
non sales touch points. This time points help you to
establish the relationship with these people and get more insights
on what's happening in these accounts, right, basically helping you
to validate the needs of these accounts. But it doesn't
mean that if they joined the intery and provided you

(54:17):
insights that they have the buying intent. Right, That's that's
the key. So from that perspective, you need also to
understand after you have this interiw, how likely this account
can move forward? Right. So quite often when we do
this was Blood August. We were kind of switched years
ago for our podcasts. We don't do this anymore, but

(54:39):
in earlier days we were invited let's say our target
bar persona to the podcast. Now it's more the community
and the bigger let's say awareness and demand an activity
for us. But when we had conversations with these accounts,
I think Blood presented what made a great key study
that represented and the recent workshop up in London when

(55:02):
we had the first interview and the opportunity happened eight
or nine years oh sorry years later yeah not yeah, sorry,
And the point was just because we had this child.
Obviously we spoken, we had the beauty of this, right.
We had let's say, behind the scenes conversations about like

(55:28):
what are the challenges they are absorbing, there are reasons
behind these challenges where they ahead and et cetera. And
we were very clearly understanding that there is no immediate
sales opportunity. It's just because these people, I mean, they're
not shifting priorities like this, right, they have something already scheduled,
something already planned. And what we can do at this

(55:51):
point we can only influence an opportunity to get into
the consideration set, right, we can only influence an opportunity
to consider our solution our it doesn't matter in our
case at service for other companies that could be a product, right,
So that's the key point. So for each of the

(56:13):
accounts were sent, for example, the activities that you have mentioned,
right were sent fully personalized, not offers, but ideas how
to how ABM could be launched in these companies like
personalized even took some examples like writing a few posts
for them, giving them an idea how to engage with

(56:33):
the accounts, right, just having some real life examples, and
that helped them. They had clear understanding that these people
know our challenges, understand our problems, and it's worth like
evaluating the solution. And when the time was right, when
they were finishing the existing priorities and they had an

(56:53):
opportunity to focus on this, they were reaching out to us.
So that's the first thing. One. You can have a
lot of engagement, but quite often the teams are not
moving forward right and there is a specific reason. If
the team is not moving forward, there are it's very
likely that the one of the two things is true.

(57:15):
The first one is that they simply don't connect the
dots between the challenge. At your solutions, it's a large
share of the bridge activities. This is one of the
most important things. You can provide the best possible content.
You can write a lot. For example, in our case,
we can talk a lot about account based marketing, but

(57:36):
until they there, you know, let's say our target bar PERSONA.
They could say, yeah, that makes a lot of sense,
but I don't see how that could be helpful in
my situation because my situation is unique. Like every single
company that reached out to us always tells this, my
situation is nig and in some sense that's true, But
in reality, we know that there are a lot of

(57:58):
similarities and patterns and the situations are not that unique
as as the barer persona believes. But how can we
influence this? Was all of with these preache activity as well.
For example, in our case we suggest free ABM strategy sessions.
Or if they run account based market and the program
didn't perform well, so we do the audio times we

(58:19):
highlight specific things that went from the specific things that
they didn't do and give them an overview how to
improve it. And obviously they clearly the expertise and they
understand that we can help with this. If this is
the product company, I think the biggest issue is thinking
about the product features purely oh we have this feature,

(58:42):
Oh we have this feature. But people don't buy software
because they love click buttons, so because they love to
see a huge you know, pdfice a set of features. No,
they buy software to improve their processes. So if they
can't connect the dots, if they don't see how they
like and let's say if they have broken process, no
software will help with this. First of all, you need

(59:03):
to explain how to fix the process right and what
is broken in the process, because if people executed this
process for years and don't see the problem. You can't
sell to them, right. So that's the first thing. There
is no logical breach between your solution and their challenges.
They simply can't connect the dots or the second reason

(59:28):
is that there are other priorities in place. So simply
your product or your solution is not get into the
priority least if it's getten to the top priority, and executives,
i mean, all the key stakeholders aye aligned that this
is the key priority for us to solve that they
will just prioritize your solution. Otherwise it's simply you need

(59:50):
to wait, right, and you need to facilitate relationship with champions.
If people don't, I mean, if the company says, yeah,
that makes sense, but we believe this and this is this,
like this and that has higher priority of us. That's
why simply they don't engage with you, right, that's the point,
and we need just to accept this reality. So the

(01:00:12):
only thing you can do is just maintaining this relationship,
helping them, explaining the things that could be done. And
I highly recommend to read or listen to the webinars
hosted by Nate Nasrela, who is the co founder of Fluent.
He talks a lot about how to engage with champions
when you enter the sales cycle, and our case, we

(01:00:35):
have the company that helps to get into the sales
cycle right, and he is the guy who helps to
facilitate the relationship with champions, basically facilitate the sale cycle.
So I highly recommend to listen to these parts. And
it's not the podcast. His name is Nate Nastralla and
his company is Fluent, not I. Oh, so you can

(01:00:58):
find you can find hun linked in. Yeah, you can
type his company's name, so that that that that would
be helpful. But you just need to realize that when
you do this, I mean the fact that they engage
with you, it doesn't mean that's for sales, right. You
need to understand was what account you are currently engaging

(01:01:21):
and what is the likelihood to generate sales opportunities? What
you actually do with these activities you create the future
pipeline for yourself, you create the awareness, right, and you
build the relationship. So this is the key. And before
we'll switch off, I said, that's kind of a little
bit out of time, but anyhow, we didn't cover the

(01:01:42):
force pillar, which is I mean, all of them are
extremely important, but the last one I believe is the
number one that is undervalued and usually ignored. It's the
weekly pipeline review meetings when the teams basically the ABM team,
each member meets with each other, cross shares the collected insights,

(01:02:05):
cross shares the bottleneckt where the team reviews the signals
the KPIs from the past week, and when the team
plans the next week. Right, this is one of the
most essential things because ABM is not linear, right, and
it's not the static program that you have selected accounts
and you blindly target them for the next ninety days.
You prioritize your actions based on the feedback from the accounts.

(01:02:29):
Whenever I say the engagement, you define how to move
forward with the switch of these accounts. This is one
of the most critical steps. So maybe just to wrap
it up, what you can quickly share how the weekly
mediums are structured, what's the agenda? And I think, well,
dottic job of today.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, I think the first point is to look back
at your account lists and review the engagement signals and
all the other information that you're using. The priorities as
accounts and to see how these lists are evolving. And
this is one of the most important things to realize
in ABM. Lists should not be statics, they should be dynamics.

(01:03:12):
So every week we're going to see some changes. Some
of these accounts are going to become engaged. Some of
the engaged accounts we might actually get some critical insight
and we can move them too the active list. So
this is the first step. Now very much related to
that step is also to plan the next actions. We
all always speak about aligning your next action with the

(01:03:38):
level of intent. This is where it happens. It happens
during that cold during that weekly pipeline revie meeting where
you decide on account by account business you can decide
what are the next activities.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
We did a really interesting like pop.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Because we know one of our clients actually from certain
we had a content market there joining and this was
I think like very insightful to hear from her how
she laveraged those meetings to adapt her content plan even
to the It was very dynamic.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
She was adjusting that from week to week.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
One week, maybe she had to focus on one type
of content, or maybe she had to focus on specific
account to create a so called account, a love letter,
et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
So this is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Actually where the real account is, marketing planning happens. And
then really what you want to understand, Like aner mentioned like,
we want to share our insights and quick wins, So
we want to share about what we learn about those accounts.
For example, Allen who was the content marketer who shared

(01:04:48):
that was always collecting these insights and immediately incorporating those
into her content strategy. We were using those insights to
plan the next steps and also wins even the smallest
twin Oh, we now have you know, Coca Cola being
engaged registering point webinar, pulling that out of thin air.

(01:05:10):
But like a significant account, and why is that important?
Because executives have short memories, you know, we have maybe
when we're launched this pilot, we always try to set
the expectations right and say what will be the one

(01:05:30):
we actually can expect the results. It is a longer
term initiative. It isn't a quick fixed or quick wins.
So sharing these wins along the way and demonstrating, you know,
the early traction engagement, the conversations that you're having. Usually

(01:05:51):
it really really helps because if you can show hey,
you know, our salesperson was able to connect and talk
to these accounts and now we have this insight already
is going to be very very positive and will help
you like maintain that momentum also and enthusiasm, let's say
for this program, because if you don't do that, what

(01:06:15):
will happen is like they might just like sally wake
up and say, hey, that program that you started, whether
the results someone's revenue that degenerates and basically risk to
a risk that they will pull the plug, which is.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Of course not what you want. So I think to summarize, you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Want to track your progress and your KPIs where are
we So we are not waiting for the end of
the program to share the metrics. We are doing this
every week. This also allows us to see what's working,
was not working. Can know just we review the list
of accounts. These are dynamic lists. We plan the next steps,

(01:06:53):
We share the insights we collected from those accounts new insights,
and we plan the next steps for them. We share
the wins and also if there are any bottlenecks, we
bring them up and we try to resolve the bottlenecks.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
To keep the program moving.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Because it is a new program, you will encounter bottlenecks,
and it's really important to surface them as early as
possible and fix them as really possible in order to
be able to actually implement it to get the success
that you're trying to demonstrate, so that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
You can then later on, of course, oppressionalize and scale it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
So I think, like Andre likes to call these our
weekly sprints, think about them as weekly sprints because they
have a very clear set of actions and a plan.
It also helps your team kind of getting not getting
overwhelmed with everything they need to do. Get Also, like
if you're talking about alignment, this is also where alignment happens.

(01:07:54):
Teams are literally aligning every week on the accounts, on
messaging content, on a next activity. So we left it
for the end, but it's definitely not the least. It
was the last, but definitely not the least of the
elements that made those for programs.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Effective and successful.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
So with that said, I just wanted to thank everybody
who joined us live and maybe if you're listening, thanks
for tuning in and listening the big announcement that undermade
at the beginning. I just want to repeat it. We
have just announced our Full Final summit and I hope
to see some of you join that summit. It's going

(01:08:39):
to be amazing. I always fill out my notebook with
so many notes. We have amazing speakers. I think this
year we really really doubled down on getting even more
case studies, things, programs, any sights that work in twenty
twenty five, you know, not ten years ago, but things
the companies are doing. Data is for king the intricacies,

(01:09:04):
the details, uh, you know, the things that you don't
really hear in polished posts and podcasts that stay on
a high level. So if that's what you're into, like
really understanding how to meet things work, then I think
this event is definitely for you. Thank you a lot
for your attention and joining us, and see you next week, See.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
You next big guys Again, thanks a lot for fantastic
questions that help us to set up the narrative and
come up as relevant examples. Stay tuned. The announcement of
the next Full Final Life will be in your inbox
next Monday. Have a great rest of the week. Cheers
here

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