April 28, 2025 • 60 mins
n this episode of Fullfunnel Live, we discussed with marketing leaders how to run a successful ABM program.
Join to learn:
• How to get buy-in and support for ABM from sales and leadership
• How to set up a pilot ABM program: resources, budget, technology and timeline
• How to report on ABM to avoid internal conflicts
• The most successful ABM playbooks that generated pipeline and revenue
💡 As always, we share real live examples and answer your questions, making this episode a must-watch for marketers and sales professionals alike.
📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights on ABM, content strategy, and B2B marketing!
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
Join to learn:
• How to get buy-in and support for ABM from sales and leadership
• How to set up a pilot ABM program: resources, budget, technology and timeline
• How to report on ABM to avoid internal conflicts
• The most successful ABM playbooks that generated pipeline and revenue
💡 As always, we share real live examples and answer your questions, making this episode a must-watch for marketers and sales professionals alike.
📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights on ABM, content strategy, and B2B marketing!
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
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 t B Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Full Funnel Dot.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start everyone, and welcome to our first roundtable. As
I have an earlier this year was slightly tweck the
agenda of our summate and we want to finish our this. Yeah,
we're still practical discussions with senior marketing leaders and sales leaders.
(00:35):
So the first round table would the most marketing leaders
with people who are in the trenches, who went through
the entire ABM transformation, who had all basically handled all
the challenges that you guys might be daling today, like
get them leadership, sorry, get them buying from your leadership,
(00:57):
achieve in alignment with sales, non practical account based marketing programs.
So this is what this roundtable will be all about.
It would be conversational. Feel free to trop your questions
in the chat. Will make sure to cover all of them.
And first of all, I would love to welcome our
panelists Jo from Customs for Customs Trade, Emmy from Chief
(01:22):
Outsiders so Much from Sibia, and Brianna from bench Bench Prep.
So first of all, I would love to ask you
guys to introduce yourself your company, just to share the
context for everybody and then we'll start with our questions.
Job let's stalk with you absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Thank you so much for being invited. So I'm Joseph
thro the field and partner marketing manager at Customs for
Trade based in Belgium, and we are a company that
a software company that specializes in customs automation.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Emmy Hi, I'm Amy Low. I am a fractional chief
marketing officer. I work for a company called Chief Outsiders,
where that's what we do. We're based in the United States.
I'm personally based in Austin, Texas, but our company is
nationwide and we work with a lot of mid market
companies who are looking to grow and helping them to
(02:18):
build growth strategies both on the marketing and sales side.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thank you, tamas Hi, thank you.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
My name is Tomas NCAA. I'm Head of Marketing for
Europe Region at SIBIA. I'm primarily responsible for growing the
UK Nordis and Center Europe. SIBIA is a global IT
consultancy firm. I live in rotwaf in southwestern Poland and
I've been working in B to B marketing for more
(02:48):
than twenty years now. I'm very happy to be here
with you today.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6 (02:53):
I'm Pana Hi everyone, excited to be here, thanks for
the invite. My name is Brianna Minrico. I'm the head
of Marketing at bench Prep. I am based in Chicago
and bench Prep is also based in Chicago. And bench
Prep is a B to B ed tech organization working
with associations and credentialing organizations to enable them to support
(03:15):
their professional learners as they embark on a professional learning journey,
whether that be obtaining some sort of certification or a license.
We have a platform to help them prepare and to
maintain their continuing education. I've worked here for about seven years,
and prior to that was on the agency side, working
with Fortune five hundred companies and government agencies on communications
(03:38):
plans and content marketing. So really excited to talk about
ABM today with everyone.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You wanted to become a panelist. Jack's aside, Okay, let's
start with the first question. Ut would you like to start.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
The absolutely, thanks so much for joining and this, you know,
just being here and wanted to share your experiences and
I know that all of you have gone through a
successful ABIEN program and you know, as they say, hindsight
is always twenty twenty. It's always you know, good to
(04:21):
look back what having experienced you know the success of ABM.
What what are the top gt and go to market
challenges that you think ABM is a good solution for
if anybody wants to take that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
One first, I can go first.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Of course, that depends on several factors I guess, such
as what kind of company we we represent, what kind
of company it is, the market did operate in, and
how it is organized, also what it offers. Right, So
if you are a company dealing with the IT sector
(05:10):
and you are working with enterprises, it will be different
GTM challenges than for small business company right. But for me,
the main GTM challenge that ABM helps to solve is focus.
I call it focus.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Right.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
When you start implementing this strategic approach to b to
be marketing activities, you need to organize your world. You must,
you know, direct the thinking and energy of sales team
towards the specific area of action, towards a common goal,
the battlefield that.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
We need to be the best.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
Right. And I believe that this is crucial because you
know sales people typically they want to sell anything as
quickly as possible. Whereas you know, ABM helps define what
we do not do, So that's the strategic approach, right.
The second challenge ABM addresses is structuring the offering and
(06:16):
defining the true business value for potential customers because that
might seem like a cliche but reality in reality, it's
neither easy nor evident for me at least right. The
last my major challenge for me is, you know, demonstrating
the impact of marketing on revenue. In my opinion, ABM
(06:38):
activities help demonstrate real attribution of marketing efforts to revenue,
and it is done by focusing on the right metrics
and actually building fostering true collaboration with sales. So for me,
this tree would be the top GM challenges that ABM
(07:02):
helps to solve.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So from I just wanted to say the reflect Like
Thomas said, it's different for different companies. You've been working
for an IT consulting company, for example, the structuring of
the offering like what do we sell and what do
we not sell? I hear a lot of that is
very specifical, so for this kind of product, So I
was wondering about a different perspective from somebody maybe from
(07:27):
more like a product company, maybe Joseph or Brand, if
you wanted to take that.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Yeah, sure, Yeah. So I think the main go to
market challenge that ABM has helped us solve is the
fact that our buying cycles are very long. So what
used to be three to six months is now six
to twelve months or even longer. It involves multiple stakeholders,
there's oftentimes not a very clear buying group depending on
(07:57):
the industry and size of the organization that we're trying
to target, and so this strategy has really helped us
stay relevant in top of mind to each contact in
this organization as that cycle goes on. We've prioritized a
multi threaded and very hyper personalized approach, and it's really
been all about creating relationships and engagement. And so it's
(08:21):
often really hard for us to also understand when somebody
is in a buying cycle, and so we've taken accounts
that we've identified have had no vendor awareness and prioritized
creating awareness for them. So we've again created hyper personalized
content for these specific contexts and accounts. We've created relationships,
(08:41):
so just even connecting with them on LinkedIn and kind
of nurturing those relationships has been a great start to
creating that awareness, and then the goal there is that
hopefully when they do become in a place to buy
or they're thinking about buying, we're going to be top
of mind. We've connected with them, we've built relationships, we've
been in their inbox, they've attended an event, we've seen
(09:04):
them at webinars, and when it's time to pull that trigger,
at least we'll hopefully be on the short list, if
not somebody that they now come directly to us and
we no longer have to hunt for them. So I
think long buying cycles is something that ABM is especially
really helpful for. And it's just all about that nurturing
and creating relationships. And we've also really struggled with pure
(09:27):
cold outbound. I think that's not unique to art organization.
It just doesn't work that well anymore. People again aren't
really going to respond to you. We all receive hundreds
of emails every day, and if I'm not looking to
buy something, I'm likely not going to pay any attention
to your email or I'm not going to answer the
(09:48):
phone call. So I think being on LinkedIn and again
creating those relationships has been really helpful for us.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Thank you, John, what you at I think just as
echo everything that's already been said at this moment, But
I think for us, we're a relatively small go to
market team, and I think what it's really helped us
do is actually come together and collaborate a lot more.
Even though we are a small team. It's actually really
helped us to all have a point of direction and
(10:19):
a point of view, which I think has really helped
with We'd already done a lot of the work behind
the scenes for all the icps and getting all of
that stuff done before we then started with full funnel.
Just to say, we are still going through the pilot's
sort of program at the moments. We haven't come through
to the end at the moment, we're very much in
the thick of it. But yeah, it's going very very well.
(10:40):
And yeah, it's really sort of opened our eyes to
a different way of doing things and sort of making
changes to our processes that we'll only sort of service
going forward. But yeah, it's really been around sort of
the direction and the focus and the collaboration of bringing
us together as an organization, which has really helped with.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And it but what you add, yeah, so so a
chief outsider is. One of the common problems we run
into it a lot of companies is that they do
what we call random acts of marketing, so they don't
really have a strategy behind what they're doing. And what
ABM does, and specifically full Funnel is really puts a
strategy behind what you're trying to achieve, and it forces
(11:22):
you to think about who your customers are, defining your
i cps, who your competitors are, what your differentiators are,
how you're going to go to market with that what
you're offering is right, and then building that strategy based
on the channels that you think that you know are
going to work and introducing new ones, which is really
(11:42):
really interesting on the social selling side of things, I
think a lot of companies aren't doing that right, and
so bringing that into the mix and changing the way
that sales teams think about how to sell and showing
you know the process actually works. It just it's a
game changer, brings a new way, a new strategy towards
bringing in leads and I'd said, echo what everyone else said.
(12:06):
On the collaboration side, another thing that we see often
is that sales and marketing operate in silos. They don't
actually really work together. And what ABM does is brings
sales and marketing together onto one growth related team so
that you're working together to build the process, build the strategy,
and build habits. And you know that habit building is
(12:26):
such a key to the success and driving an ABM
program is that it actually gets you into the daily
process of working through your prospecting and how you're approaching
you know, along the funnel the different deals that you
have in the pipeline. So I think there's just a
lot of benefits to adopting a process to this.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I love it. I guess so I much you guys.
So I will summarize on what you have said, because
that is a perception that ABM is just a new
market and tactic. If you're able, some companies treated as
a strategy and they always think about ABM. Hey, this
is the approach, let's say, an easy approach to build
(13:10):
pipeline right and generate revenue while in reality account based
marketing or experience if you will, right, because it enables
the cross functional collaboration, not only marketing and sales collaboration,
but you involve way more people, subject matter experts, right, revlops,
content design, product, et cetera. And all of these units
(13:31):
collaborate between between each other, right, and that helps to
be aligned on what are our targets, what are our
lowest handing fruits? Where should we focus? How should we
create awareness in our stret among our strategic accounts. How
should we map and engage with our buying committs. Also
(13:52):
accepting the fact that almost all buyers are not in
the market currently, right, how can we ensure that we
will be considered when the business trigger occurs? This is
the case. I thank you so much for sharing your experience,
and let's move to the next one.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
All right. I think a lot of people who want
to implement ABM struggle in getting on the one hand,
leadership buying, but on the other hand, also buying from
sales like actual support, actual involvement. You know, I'm so
common today on LinkedIn. You know, when we talk to sales,
(14:33):
they say they want to have, you know, meetings with
those high value accounts. They want all of this, But
when we ask them to collaborate with us and actually
be part of that team, it's more difficult.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
To get it.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So anybody who had maybe a specific challenge around getting
the leadership buying or sales buying, wants to share their experience.
See don't share. You're laughing a lot about this?
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Well, yes, I can tell you a lot of stories,
and it would be like a separate event for this.
But at the same time, I don't think there is
a simple answer, right. It depends on many factors, such as,
for example, maturity of the leadership, right, how long they've
(15:25):
been operating in a given market, what is their past
experience with marketing in general, or with the marketing activities
they've been executing for many past years, and the results
right associated with that. I believe what helps is a
(15:48):
small step strategy how I call it right, meaning that
to propose some to test a new approach within a
small team or a specific period of time, like call
it pilot campaign. Right. But it's crucial though, to create
a strong presentation of this proposed new approach upfront, like
(16:12):
I mean, essentially build a business case for the pilot
campaign and present it to the leadership first. Right. To
get there buy in good results or positive changes like
for example, improved collaboration with sales, a more accurate pipeline
forecast or you know that they can help scale this
(16:34):
initiative in the future and develop to a full scale program.
But I believe that what is crucial is to actually
present something in a very business oriented way, build a
business case. Right.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I wonder, Amy, because you work within cheap outsettes obviously
work together on Charles get use case or well in
the project with a company, but I know that you
meet a lot of other companies, So I wonder, like,
from your perspective, did you find any best practice when
(17:15):
you're trying to get that kind of buy in?
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, And I think where it's tough is if you're
working with a company you come from a company that
has a very relationship based sales team, right that most
of your leads have come from the relationships, the referrals,
and that's the way you've built your business. To think
differently about that and pivot to using social selling or
(17:39):
different times, different types of prospecting outreach can be difficult,
right for sales people, that's not in their nature. It's
not what they're used to. So it's really trying to
get them out of their comfort zone to think differently
and to try it. But to know that you're in
it together, right, so you're all working as a team
to make this successful. And it's not just on them
to step out and I think helping them through the process.
(18:03):
And as you know Tom has mentioned, when you start
to see some results happening, well that's that's that's exciting, right,
So it builds momentum behind the sales team to be
able to say, wow, this is different. I haven't tried it.
It's starting to work. I see the momentum. I see
how how we can continue to build upon this, and
it gets them excited and they start start to buy
(18:24):
into it a little bit more. But you've got to
keep as I mentioned before, that that daily habit of
doing it so that they it becomes second nature to them,
so they don't go and kind of revert back to
their You know, there are ways of selling. Before it
has to become the new way. It has to it
has to actually change, you know, for the future. It's
not just while we're doing this pilot program. This is
(18:45):
the new way of how we're going to we're going
to approach selling.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And I would love to ask you both, Sofia, Brianna
and Job maybe let's start off with Priana, how do
you explain the sales that there should be a chain
in the way how they engage? Was the target accounts right?
That it's not any must pray and pray that we're
not going to buy a new software and just whatever.
(19:11):
Use AI based personalization to reach out to all of them,
but it will actually tell lots of manual engagement. Was
the target accounts?
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Yeah, that's a good question and definitely a challenge that
we had to overcome. I think kind of similar to
what TOAMAS was saying. I think what was important for
us was to actually help everyone understand what ABM is not.
I think there was a perception of what it is.
I don't think that the name necessarily helps that perception either,
(19:42):
but there was a perception that it was, you know,
all marketing, marketing, led marketing, owned marketing, executed, and then
they would be on the receiving end of those results
to work deals and you know, convert and so I
think it was really helpful to you know, spend the
time upfront through what ABM is and what it is not,
(20:02):
which was just as important, and then really spending a
lot of time creating that foundation. And I think Amy
also hit the nail on the head it was. I
think a key part of our success was showing those
little winds every single day so that it kind of
built up like, oh, this is working. And it was
(20:22):
definitely uncomfortable at times, like some of the tactics that
we tried, you know, it was definitely a new muscle
for us. It was a little uncomfortable. It was, you know,
a little bit like is this person really going to
reply to this message? Like this is so weird to
send us type of message, And you just have to
do it. And you realize pretty quickly that people are
more than happy to respond to a comment that they
(20:46):
don't feel like you're just trying to sell them something.
So if you position yourself as a helpful resource or
you're trying to you know, get information to help, you know,
create this piece of content, Like people really enjoy flattery,
and so if you position it in a way that
is again you're not selling them something, You're really just
trying to build a relationship. I think that's when we
(21:08):
started to see results in positive responses, and the more
of those that we could add up every single day,
the more buy in we began to have into the strategy.
And the more I think priority it was, it was given.
So I think doing the work upfront is really important
and not to be overlooked. There's a lot of foundation
setting and expectation setting that needs to happen, and then
(21:29):
making sure that you really track those wins, no matter
how big or small, every single day has been really
helpful as well.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I think Jack and elaborate on this as well, because
that was some skepticism from sales and also from leadership
right in the beginning. So what what would you say
helps to get father sales buy in and explain to
(21:57):
sales that all in the process.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I'm just going to go back and sort of answer
the first question a little bit about sort of the
expectations and sort of getting by and from it. I
think we had a change in leadership within the organization,
and that was one kind of help because that new
leader that then came in was more willing to kind
of look at new ways of doing things. And I
(22:20):
had always followed the full funnel guys on LinkedIn and
had always been very amazed by the fact that you
guys were always able to kind of hit the nail
on the head in terms of kind of the struggles
that we were going through within the company and the
marketing team. So I and my colleague had obviously followed
you guys. So when the time came to have a
(22:40):
start looking at other opportunities of different ways of doing things,
then we both knew very well around about a full funnel.
So we were then able to take that to our
new leader, and yeah, he was open to the idea
of looking at it, so we were then able to
kind of take him to him the examples of what
it would then hopefully be able to bring to us
(23:02):
in sort of the new ways of working. So that
kind of went relatively smoothly, if I'm honest. And then
in terms of getting the sales team sort of on
board with things, then yeah, it's sort of changing that
changing that process and like you say, changing from the
spray method out to something a lot more narrow in focus,
(23:25):
and especially with our SDR, he had to change his process.
He was relatively news for the organization, but it'd already
got quite ingrained into the way of doing things and
sort of taking him out of that. Yeah, there was
a little bit of resistance at the beginning, and we
would have our weekly catch ups and you could tell
from his sort of body language and sort of demeanor
(23:46):
and things that he was finding it difficult and sort of.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Hard to do at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
But like the others have said, when you get those
small little wins then happen. You can see his demeanor change,
you can see that it's actually starting to make an
effect on things. And like Brianna said, yeah, we all
had that feeling of thinking, are people really going to
respond to this? And yeah, will they start sort of replying?
And it does. People are very happy to respond and
(24:13):
be willing to join our content collaborations which you've do
with people, which are really nice, kind of non pressurizing
touch points with people and things. And yeah, it's just
the ball has sort of been quite rolling by itself,
and as you're going through then people have been a
lot more sort of easier to come around to the
way of doing things and seeing those wins, and yeah,
(24:35):
it's really kind of like helped people's opinion of the
APM program.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So I'm just like thinking about the different things that
you said at the beginning. You need to have some
sort of a challenge. Your sales cycle is getting longer,
your outbound is not working, your current way of trying
to acquire customer is the in decline or is not working.
So there is a business problem, is sales problem, and
(25:01):
then you are actually introducing a solution and like Tomash explain,
also creating a business case, explaining connecting the dots for
the sales, for the leadership, Hey you know what, this is,
how these activities are going to help us deal with
this challenge, this real business challenge that everybody is aware of.
(25:22):
And then not asking, not having a big ask, like
starting with a pilot something that everybody understands that it's scoped,
having clear expectations for that pilot, not asking everybody to
stop what they're doing, change completely and hope.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
For the best.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
And then once you do start a pilot, doubling down,
like over communicating on all the winds that you have
building and keeping them momentum, and like showing everybody, hey,
you know what, we are now able to get engagement
from whatever you know, easy Jeb from this company, like
this is happening, Like we are we are entering more conversation.
(26:06):
Maybe a Quan Pablo says in the comments, not all
of these conversations immediately sales. But I think that everybody
in the team salespeople understand having conversations is a precursor
to having a meeting, is a precursor to having that opportunity,
even early on. So I love this is kind of
(26:26):
a masterclass, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Also, at one interesting I think the one change in
sort of perception was the ABM was complementary, it was
not additional. And I think that's what my SDR and
our management kind of thought. It was that it would
be taking people away from doing their sort of daily
work in addition to having to do ABM, when really isn't.
(26:52):
It's just sort of changing the process of what they
should be doing on a daily basis anyway, And that
has taken sort of a little bit of time to
get people to come round to you, but we are
there now, so that's been a great help.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah. I would love just to also to ask one
quick question around ever since that we have shared, right,
so we experienced the shift in the way how we
engage right And obviously the early wins helped to get
mobile in from sales. But one point I believe we
didn't touch and I would love to ask all of you,
(27:27):
is how to set up the right expectations. Doesn't matter
if you want to let's say, involve partner or you
want to try it on your own. Still, you have
these internal conversations and different people might expect completely different things. Right,
but I'm always saying ABM is not a silver bullet
and not a magic ones that will trust. Let's say quickly,
(27:49):
so all of your go to market challenges and pass
out solid go to market fundamentals and pass out good
marketing and sales collaborations. These kind of problems one disappear.
How to make sure that there are no especially sales
and leadership that they don't have expectations that, Okay, we
(28:11):
do a b in two weeks. Weeks we see like
multimillion pipeline commony. So let's start Tomas. You have this
experience because yah, average contract value is about one million,
so let's start with you.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Yeah, well that's a difficult one, right. How to set
the right expectations? I believe a lot depends on the
stage we are at. Like, for example, when you run
a pilot campaign, we can focus on identifying which areas
(28:46):
of our collaboration with sales will be improved. For example, right,
what can we define which aspects of the sales team
team's work will be better, better addressed. How can we
determine in how we will improve the efficiency of marketing
budget spending? These are the KPIs that we can try
(29:06):
to define and then promise something. Right if we are
already in the full scale implementation phase of a BM
campaign or a program, is also worth using multiple indicators,
not just this pipeline value or the revenue that this
(29:28):
will bring. The most exciting part of this is that
thanks to this constant, almost workshop like collaboration with sales,
we can adjust our initial assumptions and we can refine
expectations in a near real time. Right because, like you
(29:50):
said before, the success of any program is with this
shift in the paradigm of closer collaboration and shared goal
with sales. Right, so everything what is happening along the
way is just like can be presented and adjusted in
(30:13):
a real time. So in my opinion, we shouldn't set
a very concrete expectations. It must be something tangible. However,
we can focus more on the improving the process and
improving the collaboration than the ultimate end goal like revenue.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Thank you, uh, Briana, but what do you say? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (30:41):
We definitely had some challenges around expectation setting as well.
It was very much like, okay, whenever we're going to
see results, when we're going to see results, And I
too was like, yeah, when are we going to see results?
And so I had to shift that within myself as well.
And then you know, talk with leadership and you know,
kind of them understand that this is a slow burn.
(31:02):
It's a brand new motion for us. Again, we were
starting from the ground up, and so it takes a
lot of time. And I do think ABM truly is
like what you put in is what you'll get out,
and so I think where we struggled was you know,
bandwidth constraints and just making sure that this is a priority,
which I still struggle with every day because there's so
(31:24):
many priorities, which Andrea we've talked about that kind of
goes against the definition of what a priority is. But
I think once again, we kind of built that foundation,
We under helped them understand you know, what ABM is,
what it's not, and we started to see those wins.
I think it was easier for leadership to understand that
it's going to take some time to see impact and
(31:46):
pipeline and revenue, but these positive engagements that we're seeing
every day will help us get there. And so I'll
double down and saying it's really important to highlight those
those wins as you go, whether that's a response to
a LinkedIn message or somebody you know registering for your
webinar or showing up to your in person event. I
think all of those are really crucial wins, and you
(32:07):
hope that you will see that in pipeline and revenue.
But I think it's again just a really important part
of the process. And so it did take some time,
but we got there, and I'm so grateful that we did.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I'm Kia, what do you say?
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Yeah, So I would say it's about in the beginning,
really setting your long term goals right of where you're
trying to get to, and then shorter term as you
start a pilot, where do you want to be at
the end of that pilot and putting some goals there.
And they don't have to necessarily be hey, we're going
to have closed one deal or we're going to have generated,
you know, seventeen new opportunities, but they can be some
(32:47):
quantifiable things like that. But also I think to Tamas's point,
what are some other things that you hope to achieve
out of this that's going to help you in the future,
So that we're going to see like that collaboration now
marketing sales are working together, right, and this is our
new process. Or we've now really strongly developed a value
proposition and created content around that and we have an
(33:07):
engine going that we can build upon, right. Or we've
got weekly tracking metrics on some of the prospecting and
the activities that we're doing that we're now building and
hitting and following against to start building that habit and
that method. So you can see the wheels turning, the
motion building over time, and how you're going to get there,
and then you'll start to see those more quantifiable winds
(33:30):
coming in that maybe your opportunities that you're getting are
now more qualified, right, and your win rate is starting
to go up, or your response rate to your marketing
is getting better, you know, So looking at those like
lower level KPIs rather than thinking so broadly about you know,
closing deals to show the progress and you can see
(33:50):
then how this is going to pay off for you
in the long term.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Thank you, I appreciate that. Joe. Let's wrap atapas you.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, I think when we first started then, yeah, our
main goal was thinking, okay, yes, we want to get
lots of discovery calls out of it, and we want
that pipeline to be generated. And once we then sort
of started the workshops and then saw okay, yes, this
is not going to be something that is going to
provide that pot of goals so immediately, and this is
going to be the slow burn and the long term
(34:20):
kind of campaign or programs that we're working on, which
already within our company, our sale cycles are maybe sort
of twelve to fourteen months anyway. So our management is yes,
quite quite okay with that. They're not expecting us to
be able to generate sort of millions of euros of
pipeline immediately from it, so they're relatively relaxed on that one.
(34:44):
But what we have done just to sort of manage
expectations is that every week now we then pull together
a report, not everything from all of the kPr reports
that we retrack. We did have a meeting a couple
of weeks ago and provided all of them, and everyone
in the room is saying, okay, but what does this
mean for us? We don't need to see all of this.
(35:06):
So we then sort of filter it down a little
bit and we just report on a couple of things.
But then we have a weekly presentation we put together
which really does the qualitative and the quantitative results of it.
And like the others have said, okay, it may well
be that we're getting more responses from people. We keep
a track of the kind of replies that we've had
from people on LinkedIn. We keep an eye on the
(35:29):
amount of LinkedIn followers and responses and things from the SDR,
and that is fortunately kind of going up every week.
So that is some nice indications that things are working. Okay, yeah,
we haven't got massive amount of pipeline generated from it,
yet we have got more discovery calls being booked which
are a result of ABM, and yet as say that
(35:51):
the numbers are kind of going up. But yet it's
not like a silver bullet or a short term fix
for things unless you're very very lucky, that is, and
you find people that are in the right place at
the right time and ready to buy and things.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I think that a lot of the audience is wondering about,
you know, what are the actual things that we're doing
within ABM, you know, beyond the strategy expectations, getting the
buy in, what is the how does the ABM playbook program?
How does it actually look like? What are the essential
(36:28):
elements and parts? And you know, from your experience if
you had to do it again, or or just reflecting
on your experience with the ABM program, what do you
think are the essential parts that you need to have.
And maybe just to make it a little bit more interactive,
I was thinking, like the top thing that you believe,
(36:50):
like share one top thing or one top element that
you believe the ABM book should contain, and then we
can move on to the next in the way you
can build it out together. So yeah, anybody, and maybe
this time I'm just going to start from your Joseph,
(37:11):
not to put you the last one, and then you
have to like pick everything that everybody said and then
come up with something new. So let's give the opportunity
birth view. So essential element of an ab M playbook
that you believe every program needs to have.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
It's really for us. It's been the LinkedIn outreach that
the SDR does. I think that has been so beneficial
in sort of changing minds in the way of doing things.
And getting engagement and just sort of changing the process
to being a lot more thoughtful about what you're actually
doing and how you're sort of promoting the organization and
(37:49):
what you do. So for me, it's really been the
SDR part, because I felt that a lot of the
other things that we're doing within the playbooks we are
already doing, but it was really the SDR part that
sort of been a big good change for us.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
As the SAH just interruption, I wanted to ask the
can laborate a little bit on what has changed in
the SDR approach, just to make it maybe a little
bit more clear for everybody.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
So again, it's really stopped that spraying of of yeah,
contacting people and just seeing what sort of comes back.
We work in many different industries, our software could be
used in many different term situations, but we've really started
to become a lot more focused in terms of the
companies were reaching out to, the people were reaching out to,
(38:40):
and also, like I mentioned before, it's just really giving
us a much clearer point of view about who we're
trying to target and what we're trying to do with
those people. So it's given him a lot of direction
in where to where to focus really and uh makes
better use of his time, so as.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
That efficiency has drastically improved. Yes, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So if we take the SDR involvement and you know,
changing the way from the spray and pray to much
more meaningful engagement relationship building, what is maybe another element
Brianna that you would add as an essential one that
you believe we need to have as part of ABM.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
I think the first thing that comes to mind is
around content. I think there's kind of two thoughts related
to that, but I think one thing that's been really
helpful to us is content we're purposing. So we have
a lot of demand generation content that we've created throughout
the years, and so it's been nice not to have
to totally start from scratch. We've just converted you know,
(39:50):
a blog post into a LinkedIn post. Our strategy is
also primarily LinkedIn led so that's really where we're where
we're publishing our content. So we've been yeah, taking blog
posts or ebook or webinars and turning those into LinkedIn
posts and then having you know, our SDR post them.
But it doesn't just stop there. We can also have
our CEO or head of sales or somebody else repost
(40:11):
the same content a few weeks later, and we don't
have to start from scratch every time. So I think
that's been really helpful. And I also think kind of
as part of that, our SDRs have been reaching out
to some of our key contacts at our target accounts
and asking them for input on our content as well,
or if they'd be willing to share a quote with
(40:32):
us on how to increase learner engagement or whatever it
might be. And again that's creating a relationship. People I
think really enjoy being asked those types of questions to
kind of showcase their expertise, and then it also fuels
our content as well, and so it's kind of a
win win on both sides. And so I think that's
been really helpful, a helpful tactic.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, I think like one thing that I hear most
teams are complaining about is leco awareness within target accounts
when we reach out to them, doesn't matter how well
I personalize my message, then I'm not going to read
it if they don't know me, because they just received
so much right if they don't know me, And like
with content is like the primary tool that we use
(41:14):
to create that awareness to switch from being yet another
sales rep knocking on your door to being kind of
more trusted advisor, consultative partner in this whole journey. And
what I really like about your remark, Randa, is like, Okay,
we're actually not just we don't have to recreate and
reinvent the wheel. We have already a lot of content.
(41:36):
We just have to think about the type of content
that will lend itself to sales interactions, to building that
trust within those target accounts. And sorry to call you
out on this, Amy, but I remember that we're doing
also some smart things with content where you were not
only repurposing and I know you did a lot of
(41:58):
repurposing yourself, but you were also doing very account specific
content and I wonder how you did it and how
that worked.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
Yeah, so I think I'll start with it. You have
to start with the strategy piece, right, So it's like
first really clearly defining your icps, your right fit clients right,
and making sure that marketing and sales are aligned on
who they are and how you're qualifying them, and then
really understanding what their needs and challenges are, right so
(42:30):
you can define that and then and their own buyer journey,
you know, in the process, so really understanding that piece
and then your value propositions and working through that so
that your content team is on the same page with
how you describing what you're doing and the value that
you're adding and making sure then that the needs and
challenges of your icps are lining up with the services
(42:53):
you're offering, right and your value proposition, So then you
can create content drawing on your past wins and experiences
that's very very relevant for the challenges that they are
facing at that time. And I think that is really
the key to it. So you know, in our case,
I work with a real estate company and so they're
looking to find new investors and developers, and so that
(43:17):
we have a lot of projects properties that we've already
worked on that we can draw from that very very
similar experience, those problems that those developers were facing in
the past, how we were able to solve them and
put together unique content that was very very specific to
that specific project that a new investor developer was working on.
And then that resonates right away, like they get me,
(43:39):
they get my business, they understand what I'm going through.
You know, I need to have a conversation.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
That much rich. Let's say peel Off ABM playbook. You're
both at Yeah.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
So for me, god would be accounts activation idea this
you know, this trigger Because everything was set by Joe,
Brianna and Amy. It's more like the preparation part, the
relationship building part, the educational part of the whole story.
(44:14):
But you need to have a moment. You need to
have a trigger. You need to have something to really
prove that everything what you did as a homework at
the beginning, the market analyzes the value proposition creation that
this all makes sense and it is interesting for your
target audience. Right, So without a strong idea here, it
(44:36):
will be extremely difficult to prove that our program is
actually working and is effective. So account activation means, you know,
engaging in direct, personalized interactions with the right people from
the buying committee of selected target accounts. Right for me,
and these ideas must you know, stand out, They must
(44:59):
be different, must be surprising. They need to provide a
sense of personalized approach.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Right.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
It's crucial, especially if you deal with a very large
deals when the when the cycle is very long and
the decisions and the whole buying committee is very big.
You need to have something that will stand out, right
this activation part. Then you you pull the trigger and say, yeah,
(45:27):
now test is it really working or not?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
What do you like to mention? Sorry of interrupting me,
I just wanted to ask you, would you like to
mention any specific tactic. That's what's the activation tactic that's
ready together a sales well.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
So for us, the podcast playbook was great, right, and
everything what was you know, combined and connected to the
podcast after we recorded episodes. Also the specific event when
we created a market report report and then it was
(46:04):
a launch event, right, that was also the reason why
people could join us and have more in personal in
person you know, meeting or interaction. So there are several
other things as well, and we are still trying to
(46:25):
come up with a new ideas, which is not easy. Right.
It can be like you can use the digital channels,
but we also have the entire you know, very old
fashioned offline activities at our disposal as well, like you're
sending some gifts or physical packages with something very intriguing, right,
(46:52):
So there is a lot of lot of ideas and
it all depends on the context and the target market.
Which people do you really want to get it, get
on board right.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
And remember some of those gifts and letters, Uh, they
were genius. The way that you did it together with
sales that was very very nice. So to summarize, like
from the playbook, like what are the key elements that
I heard from you? A obviously need a strateg you
need to narrow down on a specific ICP, and not
(47:29):
just like a ICP, but a very specific you know,
business triggers, use cases, situations, the example that you gave Amy,
I love it the kid. It's not just developers, it's
specifics type of developers starting a project, so very very
specific moment there. And then based on that you can
(47:53):
because you have done many of those in the past,
you know what their challenges are and you know what
their priorities are. Then you can are creating content that
you can use to create awareness, because without awareness, what
can we even you know they're not going to They're
going to ignore us. We use that working with the
SDRs to change the perception from the yet another SDR
(48:18):
to more trusted advisors to do more meaningful engagement and interactions.
So basically working together to use the content and other
marketing touch points within the SDR activity to have more
meaningful touch points, but then also not leaving the money
on the table, knowing when the accounts are engaged where
(48:39):
we have collected some insight, maybe through things like Brian
mentioned kind of inviting them to some sort of content
co creation or too much in the podcast, but now
having collected that insight, knowing that these accounts have the priority,
have the problem that we can help them solve doing
(48:59):
some sort of activation is you call it toomash where
we can now say hey, you know what you know,
thanks for sharing the challenges. We understand this. Okay, here
is exactly how we could help. But in a way
like you said, that stands out. That's not yet another pitch.
So I think this is a beautiful crowdsourced ABM playbook.
(49:24):
Thank you very much. Maybe we could we could switch
also to some of the audiences questions, because we did
get a few. Andrew, would you like to be quite.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Absolutely absolutely, let's start. Was this one from part of
sorry if I didn't pronounce your name correctly? So, as
Briana mentioned at the start, can you provide a few
elements or aspects as examples which you shouldn't include in
ABM programs? So maybe also reflecting on what the typical
(49:54):
mistakes when it comes to ABM lounge.
Speaker 5 (49:59):
Yeah, I think.
Speaker 6 (50:02):
That comment came from a place again where the assumption
was that ABM is a marketing strategy or even like
a one off marketing campaign. I think there was like
a misunderstanding around that what ABM actually is and what
it means and what it looks like in practice. And
so again I think it was helping leadership and the
(50:24):
sales team understand that it's a collaborative effort between our teams.
It's not something that the marketing team leads and owns
and executes, which is something that we had tried in
the past and ultimately failed, was you know, marketing only
ABM campaigns, and again, sales team would kind of just
wait to receive those leads on the other side, and
that wasn't successful. And so I think that was helpful
(50:48):
for everyone to kind of understand is that in order
for us to see success, we all need to be
bought in. We all need to be pitching in and
collaborating and executing together through multiple channels of well it's
not just one channel, it's you know, LinkedIn and doing
social selling and creating content and email marketing, We've got webinars,
we've got conferences, it's it's everything, and creating an omni
(51:11):
channel approach. And then I think the other thing there
is also a lot of what we were doing previously
wasn't personalized enough.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
We thought it was.
Speaker 6 (51:21):
We thought we were doing a really great job, and
then you know, it comes comes to be that we
weren't at all being personalized in our efforts and so
really understanding the accounts. I forget who said it, but yeah,
understanding and being very specific about the ICP so it's
not just you know, healthcare industry, but it's a specific
persona or it's a specific use case was really helpful
(51:45):
and creating personalized content for that contact and account. So
that's going to differ account by account. And we were
still kind of, you know, doing it more high level,
like you know, something for all healthcare and hoping that
that would be, you know what, what worked. And so
I think that's where we spend a lot of time
was just getting really personalized in our outreach and in
(52:08):
our contact content and in our approach.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Joh, what what do you say? Said? I just wanted
to ask. I'll say what about the job. What what
do you say kind of the typical mistakes I mean,
was the high insight of last left right and a
BM what shouldn't be a part of an ABM program?
Speaker 3 (52:29):
Oh, good question. I'm still sort of going through at
the moment, so yeah, I haven't had that sort of
time for reflection really on there. I think the thing
that kind of springs my mind is again it's coming
back to the expectations really and what it is, what
it's going to provide, and just making sure that everyone
is kind of on the same page with this one.
(52:51):
So yeah, unfortunately it's not a super long answer there,
but that's kind of what comes to my mind really.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Absolutely, And let's call maybe let me ask you, Tamas,
what's one common ABM mistake that's even experienced marketers make
em Let's start with you.
Speaker 4 (53:11):
Yeah, so I think it's along the lines of what
Brianna was talking about with you know, creating content or messaging.
That's very very broad, right that that. I mean, there's
there's one thing about building awareness messaging, but as you're
doing a b M, you really are thinking about who
is that ICP and making sure that your content and
your messaging really speaks specifically to their needs and challenges,
(53:33):
and I think that still, you know, a lot of
marketers don't do that. They'll put out, you know, just
a more value prop generic, you know, pieces of content
about what they do that's not really honing in on
what those specific pain points are for the icps. So
I think that is really the critical piece of ABM
(53:53):
that that you know, makes it stand out beyond you know,
other just types of campaigns, awareness building.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Market awesome Sankia TOAMAS, what would you say.
Speaker 5 (54:04):
Yeah, so I would totally agree with Amy. But also
one of the biggest mistake is just taking shortcuts. If
you take short shortcuts and if you let influence the
whole program by people who are not one hundred percent
(54:25):
involved and they are just taking the direction and trying
to force something to get something quicker faster. This is
the really wrong approach, right and it happens in companies
because people would like to see better results and they
are not understand that all these activities and the whole
(54:53):
program is sometimes very complicated and it requires some time.
So at least you have to be patient, and you
have to have at least six months for example, in
my opinion, for the pilot program to see some of
the good results. And if you will take shortcuts along
(55:13):
the way, you will not get the right results. Right,
So do not let other people influence your program.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Thank you so much, and the follel moved to the
last question for today's roundtable. Just a very quick announcement.
After this roundtable, we'll have a final round table. We
have invited sales leaders that would be any scaleague that
would be just colleague and one more enterprise account executive.
(55:43):
And you guys have a fantastic opportunity to ask directly
sales how to get the buy in, how to what's
the role of sales and that process? How to explain
it to sales? Stay tuned and the pubble wrap up.
Let's pick up this last question Marchina and a lot
of companies that is a sub process process. That's uh
(56:06):
that as a light a BM or want of fuel
slash one to many a b M. In your opinion,
is there is there such a thing as light a
BM or does or should the company go with a
fully structured ABM program. So let's start with you, Emma,
what they think?
Speaker 4 (56:24):
Oh, I say you have to go with the fully
structured ABM program. I mean that it's it's like, this
is your new way of working together, sales and marketing
coming together to you know, create the right messaging and
get out there with the right content. Uh, whatever your
sales prospecting activities are, you you know, combining social and
(56:44):
and offline together, it all works together. So I don't
think there's any shortcuts. I think Thoms might have said that.
Somebody said there's no shortcuts there. There isn't. You need
to be committed to doing this. The entire team need
to be committed. And it's very much as I said
earlier about building a habit around this. And once you
get the muscles going, you know, it really works. And
(57:06):
I think seeing some of those quick wins, you know,
keeps that motivation going in the momentum going. But as
it starts working, it just becomes your process.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
So and here, joh, what what do you add? Exactly?
Speaker 3 (57:21):
Reiterate that as well, that yeah, you need to really
jump in with both feet. You could potentially sort of
take little elements, you know, from the whole sort of
ABM program, but I really think that you'd kind of
want that sort of multi threading. You want those different
channels all to be kind of working together. So yeah,
(57:41):
don't think about doing the light version. Really sort of
jump in and really go for the whole thing. I
think you'll really get a lot more benefit out of
out of doing it.
Speaker 2 (57:50):
Thank you that much, say well, I fully agree.
Speaker 5 (57:55):
You cannot just pick some items from the menu. You
need to go like with a fully well established strategy
and program. However, if I understand it right, it can
be a light ABM program. If we call it like
the pilot campaign light ABM, I mean you have just
(58:18):
one sector of the market, very tiny team just to
prove the concept right, you can then I think call
it light ABM.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
Makes perfect sound. Branant, what do you say, I have.
Speaker 4 (58:32):
A group consensus.
Speaker 6 (58:33):
I think you have to really go all in. I've
tried it both ways and did not see success from
a more light or one to few or definitely not
one to many. To me, one to many is just
like a demand generation campaign. So we've seen the most
results from a fully structured campaign, and even through our
pilot which is still running. We're coming to the end
of it now, but I can see when we kind
(58:56):
of lean out of it a little bit do to
bandwidth or other priorities, we don't see those results, and
then when we lean back in we see results. And
so I think putting your best foot forward the juice
will be worth to squeeze if you, you know, really
jump in with both fit.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
As Jeffrey said, absolutely, Thank you so much, guys. That
was brilliant conversation and just a summit up. Obviously, canvas
marketing is not a silver bullet, right, and Bryanna nailed
it down exactly what you put in that would be
your output. So if you just think about that there's
(59:33):
one too many light approach, you will get very light.
If you think about light ABM, you'll get light by playing.
Let's put it like this, so there are no shortcuts.
It's a strategic motion for marketing and sales, and hopefully
our panelists gave you a lot of golden nuggets that
(59:54):
you can take away and implement. Thank you so much
guys for joining us.
Speaker 6 (01:00:01):
Thank you, Thanks Andre, Thanks Joseph, Abe Thomas, thank
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
You, thank you and see you guys in a moment
on the next Thank you, bye bye.
This is the Full Funnel B t B Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Full Funnel Dot.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start everyone, and welcome to our first roundtable. As
I have an earlier this year was slightly tweck the
agenda of our summate and we want to finish our this. Yeah,
we're still practical discussions with senior marketing leaders and sales leaders.
(00:35):
So the first round table would the most marketing leaders
with people who are in the trenches, who went through
the entire ABM transformation, who had all basically handled all
the challenges that you guys might be daling today, like
get them leadership, sorry, get them buying from your leadership,
(00:57):
achieve in alignment with sales, non practical account based marketing programs.
So this is what this roundtable will be all about.
It would be conversational. Feel free to trop your questions
in the chat. Will make sure to cover all of them.
And first of all, I would love to welcome our
panelists Jo from Customs for Customs Trade, Emmy from Chief
(01:22):
Outsiders so Much from Sibia, and Brianna from bench Bench Prep.
So first of all, I would love to ask you
guys to introduce yourself your company, just to share the
context for everybody and then we'll start with our questions.
Job let's stalk with you absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Thank you so much for being invited. So I'm Joseph
thro the field and partner marketing manager at Customs for
Trade based in Belgium, and we are a company that
a software company that specializes in customs automation.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Emmy Hi, I'm Amy Low. I am a fractional chief
marketing officer. I work for a company called Chief Outsiders,
where that's what we do. We're based in the United States.
I'm personally based in Austin, Texas, but our company is
nationwide and we work with a lot of mid market
companies who are looking to grow and helping them to
(02:18):
build growth strategies both on the marketing and sales side.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thank you, tamas Hi, thank you.
Speaker 5 (02:25):
My name is Tomas NCAA. I'm Head of Marketing for
Europe Region at SIBIA. I'm primarily responsible for growing the
UK Nordis and Center Europe. SIBIA is a global IT
consultancy firm. I live in rotwaf in southwestern Poland and
I've been working in B to B marketing for more
(02:48):
than twenty years now. I'm very happy to be here
with you today.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6 (02:53):
I'm Pana Hi everyone, excited to be here, thanks for
the invite. My name is Brianna Minrico. I'm the head
of Marketing at bench Prep. I am based in Chicago
and bench Prep is also based in Chicago. And bench
Prep is a B to B ed tech organization working
with associations and credentialing organizations to enable them to support
(03:15):
their professional learners as they embark on a professional learning journey,
whether that be obtaining some sort of certification or a license.
We have a platform to help them prepare and to
maintain their continuing education. I've worked here for about seven years,
and prior to that was on the agency side, working
with Fortune five hundred companies and government agencies on communications
(03:38):
plans and content marketing. So really excited to talk about
ABM today with everyone.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You wanted to become a panelist. Jack's aside, Okay, let's
start with the first question. Ut would you like to start.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
The absolutely, thanks so much for joining and this, you know,
just being here and wanted to share your experiences and
I know that all of you have gone through a
successful ABIEN program and you know, as they say, hindsight
is always twenty twenty. It's always you know, good to
(04:21):
look back what having experienced you know the success of ABM.
What what are the top gt and go to market
challenges that you think ABM is a good solution for
if anybody wants to take that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
One first, I can go first.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Of course, that depends on several factors I guess, such
as what kind of company we we represent, what kind
of company it is, the market did operate in, and
how it is organized, also what it offers. Right, So
if you are a company dealing with the IT sector
(05:10):
and you are working with enterprises, it will be different
GTM challenges than for small business company right. But for me,
the main GTM challenge that ABM helps to solve is focus.
I call it focus.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Right.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
When you start implementing this strategic approach to b to
be marketing activities, you need to organize your world. You must,
you know, direct the thinking and energy of sales team
towards the specific area of action, towards a common goal,
the battlefield that.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
We need to be the best.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
Right. And I believe that this is crucial because you
know sales people typically they want to sell anything as
quickly as possible. Whereas you know, ABM helps define what
we do not do, So that's the strategic approach, right.
The second challenge ABM addresses is structuring the offering and
(06:16):
defining the true business value for potential customers because that
might seem like a cliche but reality in reality, it's
neither easy nor evident for me at least right. The
last my major challenge for me is, you know, demonstrating
the impact of marketing on revenue. In my opinion, ABM
(06:38):
activities help demonstrate real attribution of marketing efforts to revenue,
and it is done by focusing on the right metrics
and actually building fostering true collaboration with sales. So for me,
this tree would be the top GM challenges that ABM
(07:02):
helps to solve.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So from I just wanted to say the reflect Like
Thomas said, it's different for different companies. You've been working
for an IT consulting company, for example, the structuring of
the offering like what do we sell and what do
we not sell? I hear a lot of that is
very specifical, so for this kind of product, So I
was wondering about a different perspective from somebody maybe from
(07:27):
more like a product company, maybe Joseph or Brand, if
you wanted to take that.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Yeah, sure, Yeah. So I think the main go to
market challenge that ABM has helped us solve is the
fact that our buying cycles are very long. So what
used to be three to six months is now six
to twelve months or even longer. It involves multiple stakeholders,
there's oftentimes not a very clear buying group depending on
(07:57):
the industry and size of the organization that we're trying
to target, and so this strategy has really helped us
stay relevant in top of mind to each contact in
this organization as that cycle goes on. We've prioritized a
multi threaded and very hyper personalized approach, and it's really
been all about creating relationships and engagement. And so it's
(08:21):
often really hard for us to also understand when somebody
is in a buying cycle, and so we've taken accounts
that we've identified have had no vendor awareness and prioritized
creating awareness for them. So we've again created hyper personalized
content for these specific contexts and accounts. We've created relationships,
(08:41):
so just even connecting with them on LinkedIn and kind
of nurturing those relationships has been a great start to
creating that awareness, and then the goal there is that
hopefully when they do become in a place to buy
or they're thinking about buying, we're going to be top
of mind. We've connected with them, we've built relationships, we've
been in their inbox, they've attended an event, we've seen
(09:04):
them at webinars, and when it's time to pull that trigger,
at least we'll hopefully be on the short list, if
not somebody that they now come directly to us and
we no longer have to hunt for them. So I
think long buying cycles is something that ABM is especially
really helpful for. And it's just all about that nurturing
and creating relationships. And we've also really struggled with pure
(09:27):
cold outbound. I think that's not unique to art organization.
It just doesn't work that well anymore. People again aren't
really going to respond to you. We all receive hundreds
of emails every day, and if I'm not looking to
buy something, I'm likely not going to pay any attention
to your email or I'm not going to answer the
(09:48):
phone call. So I think being on LinkedIn and again
creating those relationships has been really helpful for us.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Thank you, John, what you at I think just as
echo everything that's already been said at this moment, But
I think for us, we're a relatively small go to
market team, and I think what it's really helped us
do is actually come together and collaborate a lot more.
Even though we are a small team. It's actually really
helped us to all have a point of direction and
(10:19):
a point of view, which I think has really helped
with We'd already done a lot of the work behind
the scenes for all the icps and getting all of
that stuff done before we then started with full funnel.
Just to say, we are still going through the pilot's
sort of program at the moments. We haven't come through
to the end at the moment, we're very much in
the thick of it. But yeah, it's going very very well.
(10:40):
And yeah, it's really sort of opened our eyes to
a different way of doing things and sort of making
changes to our processes that we'll only sort of service
going forward. But yeah, it's really been around sort of
the direction and the focus and the collaboration of bringing
us together as an organization, which has really helped with.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
And it but what you add, yeah, so so a
chief outsider is. One of the common problems we run
into it a lot of companies is that they do
what we call random acts of marketing, so they don't
really have a strategy behind what they're doing. And what
ABM does, and specifically full Funnel is really puts a
strategy behind what you're trying to achieve, and it forces
(11:22):
you to think about who your customers are, defining your
i cps, who your competitors are, what your differentiators are,
how you're going to go to market with that what
you're offering is right, and then building that strategy based
on the channels that you think that you know are
going to work and introducing new ones, which is really
(11:42):
really interesting on the social selling side of things, I
think a lot of companies aren't doing that right, and
so bringing that into the mix and changing the way
that sales teams think about how to sell and showing
you know the process actually works. It just it's a
game changer, brings a new way, a new strategy towards
bringing in leads and I'd said, echo what everyone else said.
(12:06):
On the collaboration side, another thing that we see often
is that sales and marketing operate in silos. They don't
actually really work together. And what ABM does is brings
sales and marketing together onto one growth related team so
that you're working together to build the process, build the strategy,
and build habits. And you know that habit building is
(12:26):
such a key to the success and driving an ABM
program is that it actually gets you into the daily
process of working through your prospecting and how you're approaching
you know, along the funnel the different deals that you
have in the pipeline. So I think there's just a
lot of benefits to adopting a process to this.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
I love it. I guess so I much you guys.
So I will summarize on what you have said, because
that is a perception that ABM is just a new
market and tactic. If you're able, some companies treated as
a strategy and they always think about ABM. Hey, this
is the approach, let's say, an easy approach to build
(13:10):
pipeline right and generate revenue while in reality account based
marketing or experience if you will, right, because it enables
the cross functional collaboration, not only marketing and sales collaboration,
but you involve way more people, subject matter experts, right, revlops,
content design, product, et cetera. And all of these units
(13:31):
collaborate between between each other, right, and that helps to
be aligned on what are our targets, what are our
lowest handing fruits? Where should we focus? How should we
create awareness in our stret among our strategic accounts. How
should we map and engage with our buying committs. Also
(13:52):
accepting the fact that almost all buyers are not in
the market currently, right, how can we ensure that we
will be considered when the business trigger occurs? This is
the case. I thank you so much for sharing your experience,
and let's move to the next one.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
All right. I think a lot of people who want
to implement ABM struggle in getting on the one hand,
leadership buying, but on the other hand, also buying from
sales like actual support, actual involvement. You know, I'm so
common today on LinkedIn. You know, when we talk to sales,
(14:33):
they say they want to have, you know, meetings with
those high value accounts. They want all of this, But
when we ask them to collaborate with us and actually
be part of that team, it's more difficult.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
To get it.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So anybody who had maybe a specific challenge around getting
the leadership buying or sales buying, wants to share their experience.
See don't share. You're laughing a lot about this?
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Well, yes, I can tell you a lot of stories,
and it would be like a separate event for this.
But at the same time, I don't think there is
a simple answer, right. It depends on many factors, such as,
for example, maturity of the leadership, right, how long they've
(15:25):
been operating in a given market, what is their past
experience with marketing in general, or with the marketing activities
they've been executing for many past years, and the results
right associated with that. I believe what helps is a
(15:48):
small step strategy how I call it right, meaning that
to propose some to test a new approach within a
small team or a specific period of time, like call
it pilot campaign. Right. But it's crucial though, to create
a strong presentation of this proposed new approach upfront, like
(16:12):
I mean, essentially build a business case for the pilot
campaign and present it to the leadership first. Right. To
get there buy in good results or positive changes like
for example, improved collaboration with sales, a more accurate pipeline
forecast or you know that they can help scale this
(16:34):
initiative in the future and develop to a full scale program.
But I believe that what is crucial is to actually
present something in a very business oriented way, build a
business case. Right.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I wonder, Amy, because you work within cheap outsettes obviously
work together on Charles get use case or well in
the project with a company, but I know that you
meet a lot of other companies, So I wonder, like,
from your perspective, did you find any best practice when
(17:15):
you're trying to get that kind of buy in?
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, And I think where it's tough is if you're
working with a company you come from a company that
has a very relationship based sales team, right that most
of your leads have come from the relationships, the referrals,
and that's the way you've built your business. To think
differently about that and pivot to using social selling or
(17:39):
different times, different types of prospecting outreach can be difficult,
right for sales people, that's not in their nature. It's
not what they're used to. So it's really trying to
get them out of their comfort zone to think differently
and to try it. But to know that you're in
it together, right, so you're all working as a team
to make this successful. And it's not just on them
to step out and I think helping them through the process.
(18:03):
And as you know Tom has mentioned, when you start
to see some results happening, well that's that's that's exciting, right,
So it builds momentum behind the sales team to be
able to say, wow, this is different. I haven't tried it.
It's starting to work. I see the momentum. I see
how how we can continue to build upon this, and
it gets them excited and they start start to buy
(18:24):
into it a little bit more. But you've got to
keep as I mentioned before, that that daily habit of
doing it so that they it becomes second nature to them,
so they don't go and kind of revert back to
their You know, there are ways of selling. Before it
has to become the new way. It has to it
has to actually change, you know, for the future. It's
not just while we're doing this pilot program. This is
(18:45):
the new way of how we're going to we're going
to approach selling.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
And I would love to ask you both, Sofia, Brianna
and Job maybe let's start off with Priana, how do
you explain the sales that there should be a chain
in the way how they engage? Was the target accounts right?
That it's not any must pray and pray that we're
not going to buy a new software and just whatever.
(19:11):
Use AI based personalization to reach out to all of them,
but it will actually tell lots of manual engagement. Was
the target accounts?
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Yeah, that's a good question and definitely a challenge that
we had to overcome. I think kind of similar to
what TOAMAS was saying. I think what was important for
us was to actually help everyone understand what ABM is not.
I think there was a perception of what it is.
I don't think that the name necessarily helps that perception either,
(19:42):
but there was a perception that it was, you know,
all marketing, marketing, led marketing, owned marketing, executed, and then
they would be on the receiving end of those results
to work deals and you know, convert and so I
think it was really helpful to you know, spend the
time upfront through what ABM is and what it is not,
(20:02):
which was just as important, and then really spending a
lot of time creating that foundation. And I think Amy
also hit the nail on the head it was. I
think a key part of our success was showing those
little winds every single day so that it kind of
built up like, oh, this is working. And it was
(20:22):
definitely uncomfortable at times, like some of the tactics that
we tried, you know, it was definitely a new muscle
for us. It was a little uncomfortable. It was, you know,
a little bit like is this person really going to
reply to this message? Like this is so weird to
send us type of message, And you just have to
do it. And you realize pretty quickly that people are
more than happy to respond to a comment that they
(20:46):
don't feel like you're just trying to sell them something.
So if you position yourself as a helpful resource or
you're trying to you know, get information to help, you know,
create this piece of content, Like people really enjoy flattery,
and so if you position it in a way that
is again you're not selling them something, You're really just
trying to build a relationship. I think that's when we
(21:08):
started to see results in positive responses, and the more
of those that we could add up every single day,
the more buy in we began to have into the strategy.
And the more I think priority it was, it was given.
So I think doing the work upfront is really important
and not to be overlooked. There's a lot of foundation
setting and expectation setting that needs to happen, and then
(21:29):
making sure that you really track those wins, no matter
how big or small, every single day has been really
helpful as well.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I think Jack and elaborate on this as well, because
that was some skepticism from sales and also from leadership
right in the beginning. So what what would you say
helps to get father sales buy in and explain to
(21:57):
sales that all in the process.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I'm just going to go back and sort of answer
the first question a little bit about sort of the
expectations and sort of getting by and from it. I
think we had a change in leadership within the organization,
and that was one kind of help because that new
leader that then came in was more willing to kind
of look at new ways of doing things. And I
(22:20):
had always followed the full funnel guys on LinkedIn and
had always been very amazed by the fact that you
guys were always able to kind of hit the nail
on the head in terms of kind of the struggles
that we were going through within the company and the
marketing team. So I and my colleague had obviously followed
you guys. So when the time came to have a
(22:40):
start looking at other opportunities of different ways of doing things,
then we both knew very well around about a full funnel.
So we were then able to take that to our
new leader, and yeah, he was open to the idea
of looking at it, so we were then able to
kind of take him to him the examples of what
it would then hopefully be able to bring to us
(23:02):
in sort of the new ways of working. So that
kind of went relatively smoothly, if I'm honest. And then
in terms of getting the sales team sort of on
board with things, then yeah, it's sort of changing that
changing that process and like you say, changing from the
spray method out to something a lot more narrow in focus,
(23:25):
and especially with our SDR, he had to change his process.
He was relatively news for the organization, but it'd already
got quite ingrained into the way of doing things and
sort of taking him out of that. Yeah, there was
a little bit of resistance at the beginning, and we
would have our weekly catch ups and you could tell
from his sort of body language and sort of demeanor
(23:46):
and things that he was finding it difficult and sort of.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Hard to do at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
But like the others have said, when you get those
small little wins then happen. You can see his demeanor change,
you can see that it's actually starting to make an
effect on things. And like Brianna said, yeah, we all
had that feeling of thinking, are people really going to
respond to this? And yeah, will they start sort of replying?
And it does. People are very happy to respond and
(24:13):
be willing to join our content collaborations which you've do
with people, which are really nice, kind of non pressurizing
touch points with people and things. And yeah, it's just
the ball has sort of been quite rolling by itself,
and as you're going through then people have been a
lot more sort of easier to come around to the
way of doing things and seeing those wins, and yeah,
(24:35):
it's really kind of like helped people's opinion of the
APM program.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So I'm just like thinking about the different things that
you said at the beginning. You need to have some
sort of a challenge. Your sales cycle is getting longer,
your outbound is not working, your current way of trying
to acquire customer is the in decline or is not working.
So there is a business problem, is sales problem, and
(25:01):
then you are actually introducing a solution and like Tomash explain,
also creating a business case, explaining connecting the dots for
the sales, for the leadership, Hey you know what, this is,
how these activities are going to help us deal with
this challenge, this real business challenge that everybody is aware of.
(25:22):
And then not asking, not having a big ask, like
starting with a pilot something that everybody understands that it's scoped,
having clear expectations for that pilot, not asking everybody to
stop what they're doing, change completely and hope.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
For the best.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
And then once you do start a pilot, doubling down,
like over communicating on all the winds that you have
building and keeping them momentum, and like showing everybody, hey,
you know what, we are now able to get engagement
from whatever you know, easy Jeb from this company, like
this is happening, Like we are we are entering more conversation.
(26:06):
Maybe a Quan Pablo says in the comments, not all
of these conversations immediately sales. But I think that everybody
in the team salespeople understand having conversations is a precursor
to having a meeting, is a precursor to having that opportunity,
even early on. So I love this is kind of
(26:26):
a masterclass, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Also, at one interesting I think the one change in
sort of perception was the ABM was complementary, it was
not additional. And I think that's what my SDR and
our management kind of thought. It was that it would
be taking people away from doing their sort of daily
work in addition to having to do ABM, when really isn't.
(26:52):
It's just sort of changing the process of what they
should be doing on a daily basis anyway, And that
has taken sort of a little bit of time to
get people to come round to you, but we are
there now, so that's been a great help.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah. I would love just to also to ask one
quick question around ever since that we have shared, right,
so we experienced the shift in the way how we
engage right And obviously the early wins helped to get
mobile in from sales. But one point I believe we
didn't touch and I would love to ask all of you,
(27:27):
is how to set up the right expectations. Doesn't matter
if you want to let's say, involve partner or you
want to try it on your own. Still, you have
these internal conversations and different people might expect completely different things. Right,
but I'm always saying ABM is not a silver bullet
and not a magic ones that will trust. Let's say quickly,
(27:49):
so all of your go to market challenges and pass
out solid go to market fundamentals and pass out good
marketing and sales collaborations. These kind of problems one disappear.
How to make sure that there are no especially sales
and leadership that they don't have expectations that, Okay, we
(28:11):
do a b in two weeks. Weeks we see like
multimillion pipeline commony. So let's start Tomas. You have this
experience because yah, average contract value is about one million,
so let's start with you.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Yeah, well that's a difficult one, right. How to set
the right expectations? I believe a lot depends on the
stage we are at. Like, for example, when you run
a pilot campaign, we can focus on identifying which areas
(28:46):
of our collaboration with sales will be improved. For example, right,
what can we define which aspects of the sales team
team's work will be better, better addressed. How can we
determine in how we will improve the efficiency of marketing
budget spending? These are the KPIs that we can try
(29:06):
to define and then promise something. Right if we are
already in the full scale implementation phase of a BM
campaign or a program, is also worth using multiple indicators,
not just this pipeline value or the revenue that this
(29:28):
will bring. The most exciting part of this is that
thanks to this constant, almost workshop like collaboration with sales,
we can adjust our initial assumptions and we can refine
expectations in a near real time. Right because, like you
(29:50):
said before, the success of any program is with this
shift in the paradigm of closer collaboration and shared goal
with sales. Right, so everything what is happening along the
way is just like can be presented and adjusted in
(30:13):
a real time. So in my opinion, we shouldn't set
a very concrete expectations. It must be something tangible. However,
we can focus more on the improving the process and
improving the collaboration than the ultimate end goal like revenue.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Thank you, uh, Briana, but what do you say? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (30:41):
We definitely had some challenges around expectation setting as well.
It was very much like, okay, whenever we're going to
see results, when we're going to see results, And I
too was like, yeah, when are we going to see results?
And so I had to shift that within myself as well.
And then you know, talk with leadership and you know,
kind of them understand that this is a slow burn.
(31:02):
It's a brand new motion for us. Again, we were
starting from the ground up, and so it takes a
lot of time. And I do think ABM truly is
like what you put in is what you'll get out,
and so I think where we struggled was you know,
bandwidth constraints and just making sure that this is a priority,
which I still struggle with every day because there's so
(31:24):
many priorities, which Andrea we've talked about that kind of
goes against the definition of what a priority is. But
I think once again, we kind of built that foundation,
We under helped them understand you know, what ABM is,
what it's not, and we started to see those wins.
I think it was easier for leadership to understand that
it's going to take some time to see impact and
(31:46):
pipeline and revenue, but these positive engagements that we're seeing
every day will help us get there. And so I'll
double down and saying it's really important to highlight those
those wins as you go, whether that's a response to
a LinkedIn message or somebody you know registering for your
webinar or showing up to your in person event. I
think all of those are really crucial wins, and you
(32:07):
hope that you will see that in pipeline and revenue.
But I think it's again just a really important part
of the process. And so it did take some time,
but we got there, and I'm so grateful that we did.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I'm Kia, what do you say?
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Yeah, So I would say it's about in the beginning,
really setting your long term goals right of where you're
trying to get to, and then shorter term as you
start a pilot, where do you want to be at
the end of that pilot and putting some goals there.
And they don't have to necessarily be hey, we're going
to have closed one deal or we're going to have generated,
you know, seventeen new opportunities, but they can be some
(32:47):
quantifiable things like that. But also I think to Tamas's point,
what are some other things that you hope to achieve
out of this that's going to help you in the future,
So that we're going to see like that collaboration now
marketing sales are working together, right, and this is our
new process. Or we've now really strongly developed a value
proposition and created content around that and we have an
(33:07):
engine going that we can build upon, right. Or we've
got weekly tracking metrics on some of the prospecting and
the activities that we're doing that we're now building and
hitting and following against to start building that habit and
that method. So you can see the wheels turning, the
motion building over time, and how you're going to get there,
and then you'll start to see those more quantifiable winds
(33:30):
coming in that maybe your opportunities that you're getting are
now more qualified, right, and your win rate is starting
to go up, or your response rate to your marketing
is getting better, you know, So looking at those like
lower level KPIs rather than thinking so broadly about you know,
closing deals to show the progress and you can see
(33:50):
then how this is going to pay off for you
in the long term.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Thank you, I appreciate that. Joe. Let's wrap atapas you.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, I think when we first started then, yeah, our
main goal was thinking, okay, yes, we want to get
lots of discovery calls out of it, and we want
that pipeline to be generated. And once we then sort
of started the workshops and then saw okay, yes, this
is not going to be something that is going to
provide that pot of goals so immediately, and this is
going to be the slow burn and the long term
(34:20):
kind of campaign or programs that we're working on, which
already within our company, our sale cycles are maybe sort
of twelve to fourteen months anyway. So our management is yes,
quite quite okay with that. They're not expecting us to
be able to generate sort of millions of euros of
pipeline immediately from it, so they're relatively relaxed on that one.
(34:44):
But what we have done just to sort of manage
expectations is that every week now we then pull together
a report, not everything from all of the kPr reports
that we retrack. We did have a meeting a couple
of weeks ago and provided all of them, and everyone
in the room is saying, okay, but what does this
mean for us? We don't need to see all of this.
(35:06):
So we then sort of filter it down a little
bit and we just report on a couple of things.
But then we have a weekly presentation we put together
which really does the qualitative and the quantitative results of it.
And like the others have said, okay, it may well
be that we're getting more responses from people. We keep
a track of the kind of replies that we've had
from people on LinkedIn. We keep an eye on the
(35:29):
amount of LinkedIn followers and responses and things from the SDR,
and that is fortunately kind of going up every week.
So that is some nice indications that things are working. Okay, yeah,
we haven't got massive amount of pipeline generated from it,
yet we have got more discovery calls being booked which
are a result of ABM, and yet as say that
(35:51):
the numbers are kind of going up. But yet it's
not like a silver bullet or a short term fix
for things unless you're very very lucky, that is, and
you find people that are in the right place at
the right time and ready to buy and things.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I think that a lot of the audience is wondering about,
you know, what are the actual things that we're doing
within ABM, you know, beyond the strategy expectations, getting the
buy in, what is the how does the ABM playbook program?
How does it actually look like? What are the essential
(36:28):
elements and parts? And you know, from your experience if
you had to do it again, or or just reflecting
on your experience with the ABM program, what do you
think are the essential parts that you need to have.
And maybe just to make it a little bit more interactive,
I was thinking, like the top thing that you believe,
(36:50):
like share one top thing or one top element that
you believe the ABM book should contain, and then we
can move on to the next in the way you
can build it out together. So yeah, anybody, and maybe
this time I'm just going to start from your Joseph,
(37:11):
not to put you the last one, and then you
have to like pick everything that everybody said and then
come up with something new. So let's give the opportunity
birth view. So essential element of an ab M playbook
that you believe every program needs to have.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
It's really for us. It's been the LinkedIn outreach that
the SDR does. I think that has been so beneficial
in sort of changing minds in the way of doing things.
And getting engagement and just sort of changing the process
to being a lot more thoughtful about what you're actually
doing and how you're sort of promoting the organization and
(37:49):
what you do. So for me, it's really been the
SDR part, because I felt that a lot of the
other things that we're doing within the playbooks we are
already doing, but it was really the SDR part that
sort of been a big good change for us.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
As the SAH just interruption, I wanted to ask the
can laborate a little bit on what has changed in
the SDR approach, just to make it maybe a little
bit more clear for everybody.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
So again, it's really stopped that spraying of of yeah,
contacting people and just seeing what sort of comes back.
We work in many different industries, our software could be
used in many different term situations, but we've really started
to become a lot more focused in terms of the
companies were reaching out to, the people were reaching out to,
(38:40):
and also, like I mentioned before, it's just really giving
us a much clearer point of view about who we're
trying to target and what we're trying to do with
those people. So it's given him a lot of direction
in where to where to focus really and uh makes
better use of his time, so as.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
That efficiency has drastically improved. Yes, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So if we take the SDR involvement and you know,
changing the way from the spray and pray to much
more meaningful engagement relationship building, what is maybe another element
Brianna that you would add as an essential one that
you believe we need to have as part of ABM.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
I think the first thing that comes to mind is
around content. I think there's kind of two thoughts related
to that, but I think one thing that's been really
helpful to us is content we're purposing. So we have
a lot of demand generation content that we've created throughout
the years, and so it's been nice not to have
to totally start from scratch. We've just converted you know,
(39:50):
a blog post into a LinkedIn post. Our strategy is
also primarily LinkedIn led so that's really where we're where
we're publishing our content. So we've been yeah, taking blog
posts or ebook or webinars and turning those into LinkedIn
posts and then having you know, our SDR post them.
But it doesn't just stop there. We can also have
our CEO or head of sales or somebody else repost
(40:11):
the same content a few weeks later, and we don't
have to start from scratch every time. So I think
that's been really helpful. And I also think kind of
as part of that, our SDRs have been reaching out
to some of our key contacts at our target accounts
and asking them for input on our content as well,
or if they'd be willing to share a quote with
(40:32):
us on how to increase learner engagement or whatever it
might be. And again that's creating a relationship. People I
think really enjoy being asked those types of questions to
kind of showcase their expertise, and then it also fuels
our content as well, and so it's kind of a
win win on both sides. And so I think that's
been really helpful, a helpful tactic.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, I think like one thing that I hear most
teams are complaining about is leco awareness within target accounts
when we reach out to them, doesn't matter how well
I personalize my message, then I'm not going to read
it if they don't know me, because they just received
so much right if they don't know me, And like
with content is like the primary tool that we use
(41:14):
to create that awareness to switch from being yet another
sales rep knocking on your door to being kind of
more trusted advisor, consultative partner in this whole journey. And
what I really like about your remark, Randa, is like, Okay,
we're actually not just we don't have to recreate and
reinvent the wheel. We have already a lot of content.
(41:36):
We just have to think about the type of content
that will lend itself to sales interactions, to building that
trust within those target accounts. And sorry to call you
out on this, Amy, but I remember that we're doing
also some smart things with content where you were not
only repurposing and I know you did a lot of
(41:58):
repurposing yourself, but you were also doing very account specific
content and I wonder how you did it and how
that worked.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
Yeah, so I think I'll start with it. You have
to start with the strategy piece, right, So it's like
first really clearly defining your icps, your right fit clients right,
and making sure that marketing and sales are aligned on
who they are and how you're qualifying them, and then
really understanding what their needs and challenges are, right so
(42:30):
you can define that and then and their own buyer journey,
you know, in the process, so really understanding that piece
and then your value propositions and working through that so
that your content team is on the same page with
how you describing what you're doing and the value that
you're adding and making sure then that the needs and
challenges of your icps are lining up with the services
(42:53):
you're offering, right and your value proposition, So then you
can create content drawing on your past wins and experiences
that's very very relevant for the challenges that they are
facing at that time. And I think that is really
the key to it. So you know, in our case,
I work with a real estate company and so they're
looking to find new investors and developers, and so that
(43:17):
we have a lot of projects properties that we've already
worked on that we can draw from that very very
similar experience, those problems that those developers were facing in
the past, how we were able to solve them and
put together unique content that was very very specific to
that specific project that a new investor developer was working on.
And then that resonates right away, like they get me,
(43:39):
they get my business, they understand what I'm going through.
You know, I need to have a conversation.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
That much rich. Let's say peel Off ABM playbook. You're
both at Yeah.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
So for me, god would be accounts activation idea this
you know, this trigger Because everything was set by Joe,
Brianna and Amy. It's more like the preparation part, the
relationship building part, the educational part of the whole story.
(44:14):
But you need to have a moment. You need to
have a trigger. You need to have something to really
prove that everything what you did as a homework at
the beginning, the market analyzes the value proposition creation that
this all makes sense and it is interesting for your
target audience. Right, So without a strong idea here, it
(44:36):
will be extremely difficult to prove that our program is
actually working and is effective. So account activation means, you know,
engaging in direct, personalized interactions with the right people from
the buying committee of selected target accounts. Right for me,
and these ideas must you know, stand out, They must
(44:59):
be different, must be surprising. They need to provide a
sense of personalized approach.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Right.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
It's crucial, especially if you deal with a very large
deals when the when the cycle is very long and
the decisions and the whole buying committee is very big.
You need to have something that will stand out, right
this activation part. Then you you pull the trigger and say, yeah,
(45:27):
now test is it really working or not?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
What do you like to mention? Sorry of interrupting me,
I just wanted to ask you, would you like to
mention any specific tactic. That's what's the activation tactic that's
ready together a sales well.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
So for us, the podcast playbook was great, right, and
everything what was you know, combined and connected to the
podcast after we recorded episodes. Also the specific event when
we created a market report report and then it was
(46:04):
a launch event, right, that was also the reason why
people could join us and have more in personal in
person you know, meeting or interaction. So there are several
other things as well, and we are still trying to
(46:25):
come up with a new ideas, which is not easy. Right.
It can be like you can use the digital channels,
but we also have the entire you know, very old
fashioned offline activities at our disposal as well, like you're
sending some gifts or physical packages with something very intriguing, right,
(46:52):
So there is a lot of lot of ideas and
it all depends on the context and the target market.
Which people do you really want to get it, get
on board right.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
And remember some of those gifts and letters, Uh, they
were genius. The way that you did it together with
sales that was very very nice. So to summarize, like
from the playbook, like what are the key elements that
I heard from you? A obviously need a strateg you
need to narrow down on a specific ICP, and not
(47:29):
just like a ICP, but a very specific you know,
business triggers, use cases, situations, the example that you gave Amy,
I love it the kid. It's not just developers, it's
specifics type of developers starting a project, so very very
specific moment there. And then based on that you can
(47:53):
because you have done many of those in the past,
you know what their challenges are and you know what
their priorities are. Then you can are creating content that
you can use to create awareness, because without awareness, what
can we even you know they're not going to They're
going to ignore us. We use that working with the
SDRs to change the perception from the yet another SDR
(48:18):
to more trusted advisors to do more meaningful engagement and interactions.
So basically working together to use the content and other
marketing touch points within the SDR activity to have more
meaningful touch points, but then also not leaving the money
on the table, knowing when the accounts are engaged where
(48:39):
we have collected some insight, maybe through things like Brian
mentioned kind of inviting them to some sort of content
co creation or too much in the podcast, but now
having collected that insight, knowing that these accounts have the priority,
have the problem that we can help them solve doing
(48:59):
some sort of activation is you call it toomash where
we can now say hey, you know what you know,
thanks for sharing the challenges. We understand this. Okay, here
is exactly how we could help. But in a way
like you said, that stands out. That's not yet another pitch.
So I think this is a beautiful crowdsourced ABM playbook.
(49:24):
Thank you very much. Maybe we could we could switch
also to some of the audiences questions, because we did
get a few. Andrew, would you like to be quite.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Absolutely absolutely, let's start. Was this one from part of
sorry if I didn't pronounce your name correctly? So, as
Briana mentioned at the start, can you provide a few
elements or aspects as examples which you shouldn't include in
ABM programs? So maybe also reflecting on what the typical
(49:54):
mistakes when it comes to ABM lounge.
Speaker 5 (49:59):
Yeah, I think.
Speaker 6 (50:02):
That comment came from a place again where the assumption
was that ABM is a marketing strategy or even like
a one off marketing campaign. I think there was like
a misunderstanding around that what ABM actually is and what
it means and what it looks like in practice. And
so again I think it was helping leadership and the
(50:24):
sales team understand that it's a collaborative effort between our teams.
It's not something that the marketing team leads and owns
and executes, which is something that we had tried in
the past and ultimately failed, was you know, marketing only
ABM campaigns, and again, sales team would kind of just
wait to receive those leads on the other side, and
that wasn't successful. And so I think that was helpful
(50:48):
for everyone to kind of understand is that in order
for us to see success, we all need to be
bought in. We all need to be pitching in and
collaborating and executing together through multiple channels of well it's
not just one channel, it's you know, LinkedIn and doing
social selling and creating content and email marketing, We've got webinars,
we've got conferences, it's it's everything, and creating an omni
(51:11):
channel approach. And then I think the other thing there
is also a lot of what we were doing previously
wasn't personalized enough.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
We thought it was.
Speaker 6 (51:21):
We thought we were doing a really great job, and
then you know, it comes comes to be that we
weren't at all being personalized in our efforts and so
really understanding the accounts. I forget who said it, but yeah,
understanding and being very specific about the ICP so it's
not just you know, healthcare industry, but it's a specific
persona or it's a specific use case was really helpful
(51:45):
and creating personalized content for that contact and account. So
that's going to differ account by account. And we were
still kind of, you know, doing it more high level,
like you know, something for all healthcare and hoping that
that would be, you know what, what worked. And so
I think that's where we spend a lot of time
was just getting really personalized in our outreach and in
(52:08):
our contact content and in our approach.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Joh, what what do you say? Said? I just wanted
to ask. I'll say what about the job. What what
do you say kind of the typical mistakes I mean,
was the high insight of last left right and a
BM what shouldn't be a part of an ABM program?
Speaker 3 (52:29):
Oh, good question. I'm still sort of going through at
the moment, so yeah, I haven't had that sort of
time for reflection really on there. I think the thing
that kind of springs my mind is again it's coming
back to the expectations really and what it is, what
it's going to provide, and just making sure that everyone
is kind of on the same page with this one.
(52:51):
So yeah, unfortunately it's not a super long answer there,
but that's kind of what comes to my mind really.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Absolutely, And let's call maybe let me ask you, Tamas,
what's one common ABM mistake that's even experienced marketers make
em Let's start with you.
Speaker 4 (53:11):
Yeah, so I think it's along the lines of what
Brianna was talking about with you know, creating content or messaging.
That's very very broad, right that that. I mean, there's
there's one thing about building awareness messaging, but as you're
doing a b M, you really are thinking about who
is that ICP and making sure that your content and
your messaging really speaks specifically to their needs and challenges,
(53:33):
and I think that still, you know, a lot of
marketers don't do that. They'll put out, you know, just
a more value prop generic, you know, pieces of content
about what they do that's not really honing in on
what those specific pain points are for the icps. So
I think that is really the critical piece of ABM
(53:53):
that that you know, makes it stand out beyond you know,
other just types of campaigns, awareness building.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Market awesome Sankia TOAMAS, what would you say.
Speaker 5 (54:04):
Yeah, so I would totally agree with Amy. But also
one of the biggest mistake is just taking shortcuts. If
you take short shortcuts and if you let influence the
whole program by people who are not one hundred percent
(54:25):
involved and they are just taking the direction and trying
to force something to get something quicker faster. This is
the really wrong approach, right and it happens in companies
because people would like to see better results and they
are not understand that all these activities and the whole
(54:53):
program is sometimes very complicated and it requires some time.
So at least you have to be patient, and you
have to have at least six months for example, in
my opinion, for the pilot program to see some of
the good results. And if you will take shortcuts along
(55:13):
the way, you will not get the right results. Right,
So do not let other people influence your program.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Thank you so much, and the follel moved to the
last question for today's roundtable. Just a very quick announcement.
After this roundtable, we'll have a final round table. We
have invited sales leaders that would be any scaleague that
would be just colleague and one more enterprise account executive.
(55:43):
And you guys have a fantastic opportunity to ask directly
sales how to get the buy in, how to what's
the role of sales and that process? How to explain
it to sales? Stay tuned and the pubble wrap up.
Let's pick up this last question Marchina and a lot
of companies that is a sub process process. That's uh
(56:06):
that as a light a BM or want of fuel
slash one to many a b M. In your opinion,
is there is there such a thing as light a
BM or does or should the company go with a
fully structured ABM program. So let's start with you, Emma,
what they think?
Speaker 4 (56:24):
Oh, I say you have to go with the fully
structured ABM program. I mean that it's it's like, this
is your new way of working together, sales and marketing
coming together to you know, create the right messaging and
get out there with the right content. Uh, whatever your
sales prospecting activities are, you you know, combining social and
(56:44):
and offline together, it all works together. So I don't
think there's any shortcuts. I think Thoms might have said that.
Somebody said there's no shortcuts there. There isn't. You need
to be committed to doing this. The entire team need
to be committed. And it's very much as I said
earlier about building a habit around this. And once you
get the muscles going, you know, it really works. And
(57:06):
I think seeing some of those quick wins, you know,
keeps that motivation going in the momentum going. But as
it starts working, it just becomes your process.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
So and here, joh, what what do you add? Exactly?
Speaker 3 (57:21):
Reiterate that as well, that yeah, you need to really
jump in with both feet. You could potentially sort of
take little elements, you know, from the whole sort of
ABM program, but I really think that you'd kind of
want that sort of multi threading. You want those different
channels all to be kind of working together. So yeah,
(57:41):
don't think about doing the light version. Really sort of
jump in and really go for the whole thing. I
think you'll really get a lot more benefit out of
out of doing it.
Speaker 2 (57:50):
Thank you that much, say well, I fully agree.
Speaker 5 (57:55):
You cannot just pick some items from the menu. You
need to go like with a fully well established strategy
and program. However, if I understand it right, it can
be a light ABM program. If we call it like
the pilot campaign light ABM, I mean you have just
(58:18):
one sector of the market, very tiny team just to
prove the concept right, you can then I think call
it light ABM.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
Makes perfect sound. Branant, what do you say, I have.
Speaker 4 (58:32):
A group consensus.
Speaker 6 (58:33):
I think you have to really go all in. I've
tried it both ways and did not see success from
a more light or one to few or definitely not
one to many. To me, one to many is just
like a demand generation campaign. So we've seen the most
results from a fully structured campaign, and even through our
pilot which is still running. We're coming to the end
of it now, but I can see when we kind
(58:56):
of lean out of it a little bit do to
bandwidth or other priorities, we don't see those results, and
then when we lean back in we see results. And
so I think putting your best foot forward the juice
will be worth to squeeze if you, you know, really
jump in with both fit.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
As Jeffrey said, absolutely, Thank you so much, guys. That
was brilliant conversation and just a summit up. Obviously, canvas
marketing is not a silver bullet, right, and Bryanna nailed
it down exactly what you put in that would be
your output. So if you just think about that there's
(59:33):
one too many light approach, you will get very light.
If you think about light ABM, you'll get light by playing.
Let's put it like this, so there are no shortcuts.
It's a strategic motion for marketing and sales, and hopefully
our panelists gave you a lot of golden nuggets that
(59:54):
you can take away and implement. Thank you so much
guys for joining us.
Speaker 6 (01:00:01):
Thank you, Thanks Andre, Thanks Joseph, Abe Thomas, thank
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
You, thank you and see you guys in a moment
on the next Thank you, bye bye.
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