May 5, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of Fullfunnel Live, we discussed with sales leader the role of sales in ABM.
Listen to learn:
• The role of AEs and SDRs in the ABM program
• The most successful account-based sales playbooks: key activities and metrics
• How sales should collaborate with marketing in ABM
💡 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
Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Listen to learn:
• The role of AEs and SDRs in the ABM program
• The most successful account-based sales playbooks: key activities and metrics
• How sales should collaborate with marketing in ABM
💡 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
Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel B t B Marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the last sash, or more precisely,
last roundtable from our ful final signate. As promised, we
made a special session for everybody.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
We invited enterprise leaders.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We have them enterprise account executive rough as well as
account executive MPT, VP of sales and for everybody it
would be fantastic compart united to learn from experience sales reps.
What is the role of sales and account based marketing.
We're gonna ask straightforward questions. If you're in marketing, how
(00:54):
you can get sales buying right? So all of these
and I think I will ask micro fund of that
lat Can staff, where is the trust?
Speaker 5 (01:05):
So thank you so much for taking the time and joining.
I would just like to ask everyone to give a
quick intro of yourself, your role and the company, and
we can start with the questions, but I also like
to ask the audience don't be shy. Post your questions
(01:25):
in the QS section will bring them up. We did
prepare a few of our own, but we always prefer
to offer the audience the chance to interact, So let's
start just in the order that you appear here, Sam,
would you like to give a quick intro of yourself
and the company you work for?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Everyone, Sam, I do you here part of the team
called Certain. We do background checks and pre employment screening,
and I am on the enterprise account team here Certain.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Thank you. Rough would you like to give a quick intro?
Speaker 6 (01:59):
Yeah? Sure, My name is Indeed Rough. I'm based in Belgium.
I'm a part of the sales team at Customs for Trade.
We sell software to automate customs processes to enterprise companies.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Right, thank you, Raf.
Speaker 7 (02:14):
Pt my name is pt Weinberg.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Guy.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I'm the founding partner at Charles Gate, which is based
in Boston, Massachusetts in the US.
Speaker 7 (02:23):
We do.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Primarily property management and new development marketing, so leasing up
big apartment buildings or selling out condo projects.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Awesome, thank you. I think it's really good to have
three very different actually cases. We have Sam from Certain,
which is kind of like broad market, a lot of
different companies that need background checks. We have Rough from Customers,
quite a niche market, and then PT even in a
way more niche, being focused done a very specific market
(03:02):
in even like a specific geography where you are, so
I think we'll get a good mix. So let's start
with the first question. I as they say, like hindsight
is twenty twenty, we always know best when we look
at the best. And from the perspective that you have
(03:22):
right now, having been a part of a successful ABM program,
how would you describe the benefits of this kind of
an approach account based marketing approach for sales specifically? And
maybe this time let's start with PT. Well, from your perspective,
what is the advantage of ABM.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
For some I mean, I think the advantage that I
found with ABM is it it really kept you focused,
right like we have such a broad range of prospects
and kind of really peeling it back a layer and saying, okay,
you know, instead of just going for projects, let's look
at who's doing these projects. Let's get a consolidated list
(04:04):
of accounts of the people we want to cultivate relationships with,
and then let's attack them, you know, on an account
based basis versus again just kind of you know, looking
at different news sources and different data sources to identify
projects and really focus on the on the accounts themselves.
And that really helped, you know, narrow scope and and
(04:29):
and again create a level of of focus that that
enabled a better process.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Absolutely, Sandy, you want to time in.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean a lot of what PT said. And
then alignment, honestly, like alignment with marketing was really huge. Press.
We were pretty much silent, as crazy as that sounds,
within our structure. Everyone was doing their own thing on
the marketing side and then the sales side. So it's
good to just connect frequently with each other and understand, like, hey,
what are they actually doing their day to day and
(05:01):
understand and then you actually have like an understanding of oh,
this is why they did things and pivot and it
actually has changed a lot of how we do things today,
and there's more collaboration going on. And then even just
the new tips from types of outreaching and then the
focus on specific industries and being able to specifically track
that in a time theory that really helped.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
To And I wonder just sort of a perspective, how
did that alignment help the sales in terms of results? Process?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, I mean a lot in terms of process. There's
a lot of processes that were like within our CRM
that were actually not even really connected that we thought
they were. So it actually brought things back and really
just like honed down and like, Okay, we weren't even
tracking the specific piece, and there's so much insight out
to it. Especially with some of the other tools that
we had. It helped us like actually use get more
(05:52):
out of the tools that we had by having that
alignment to okay enough.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Do you have some thoughts on the if it's of
ABM from sales perspective.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
Yeah, I think from my point of view, it helped
to get a sort of a new angle to target
sort of the very high level enterprise companies that we're
targeting and also the high level people within those organizations.
So we already had an outbound cadence that we were
doing heavily personalized, but by doing the ABM approach, I
(06:25):
think we realized or we saw actually that we were
able to connect to some very high level people in
the companies that we were targeting who weren't answering to
any of our outreaches before, just because we took it
sort of another angle to it.
Speaker 8 (06:39):
So I think that was very great to see.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
And I think additionally, because you sort of start building
a building an audience. It started compounding and you get
a broader reach, much quicker than you would do when
doing your personalized outreach just person to person.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Than guess so much before we'll actually move farward to
our other questions. I have already seen this fantastic question
from Sally. So when you're a first approach was doing
ABM at your company? Right, it was skeptical and if
saw what changed your mind? Let's start with you, Sam, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
That's a that's a good question. Sally was that skeptical.
Of course as a salesperson, I was skeptical, and I
was like, hey, Rory doing so many things like hey,
when are we going to have time to do this?
But honestly, like I was like, we need to try
something different too, because there's so many things that have
changed in the market, especially like since like in the
(07:42):
last two years, things changed faster than ever. So I
had to be open to it, and I was open
to it. And then the big thing is you have
to find that one person that was actually responsive in
the sales worry, and then that really will help facilitate
everything as a stakeolder. But you do need to find
at least that one person on that sales team and
once you do, just like hang on to them and
(08:03):
that person will reap the rewards of it too.
Speaker 8 (08:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
We were so lucky to have you as that person.
Speaker 8 (08:10):
Thank you, sir, Ralph.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
What what do you say that was the experience?
Speaker 6 (08:18):
Yeah, I think I'm a bit maybe the exception to
the rule here because I was very much involved in
bringing a BM in. I was sort of a from
a sales point of we really pushing for it and
actually trying to, yeah, to bring it in quite quickly
because I realized, of course we we all tried to
find ways to build pipeline on a daily basis, and
(08:40):
we were doing whatever we could, but I think there
were possibilities to do it in a more creative way.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
And I know we're in a very niche industry where
there's a lack of.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
Information available for for potential buyers to get. So if
we would take that angle to to to become to
do these times full posts and then to comment and
really bring value to that community. I saw it as
a way to expand our regional brand awareness and hopefully
get some some meetings, and so yeah, I think I
(09:12):
tried to bring it in from a sales point aview.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I think after you'll apply, lots of people who I
listened in to us life will just pick up your
profileance and to executive saying hey, can we get more
people like RAFF and other organization. But Jacks aside, Pitty,
what was your experience?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, I mean I think a little bit like RAFF,
I wasn't I wasn't overly skeptical. I thought it was
a really good concept and it's something we had talked
about for a while before we you know, teamed up
with full funnel, and as we started to really execute
on it, you know, we were really.
Speaker 7 (09:46):
Lucky that we had pretty immediate results.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And you know, I think Sam mentioned it too, but
it really helped us align marketing and sales, and I
think that that was really critical in our ability to
kind of execute on the A b M and really
again it get quick results, and those results have continued,
you know, through the first quarter of this year too.
So yeah, I was I was all for it, and
(10:13):
you know, it again kind of prove its worth early on.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
All right, So if I'm thinking about ABM, it's even
in the name it says marketing account based marketing, which
is probably unfortunate because it's definitely, like all of us shared,
it is a joint effort between marketing and sales. But
what would you say to folks, what are the actual
(10:39):
activities and responsibilities of a sales person within an ABM,
A b X whatever we call it, within such an
account based program. And I just want to start with
Sam because I know that Sam, you're also involved not
only in doing it yourself, but also involving new colleagues
from your team and kind of like you know, passing
(11:03):
on the knowledge and teaching the others. So I think
you have also that that kind of perspective, So I
would like to hear that from you.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, so glad, From like my perspective, like actually doing
it's like data and data out right, So from ours perspective,
the sales team actually has to be doing the work
of personalized message, of actually dming people of if there
is insights or comments on some of the posts that
we've been doing, engaging with them, starting conversations on LinkedIn,
making sure it bubbles up like that. It's almost to
(11:34):
the point of, hey, we keep on seeing this guy everywhere,
or we keep on seeing certain everye what's happening with that,
so actually putting in the work of commenting on things
like not just saying a nice post, but like insightful,
actually providing like something order some feedback or even sometimes
something controversial, and then putting them into a cadence where
you're actually following up properly and not just asking for
(11:55):
something but also providing just kind of like graphic saying earlier,
just like providing some different type of kind of value
rather than the typical one or a call to action
that you've had in the past. And one thing is
just like data and data out from the sales seem
like actually putting it information and chatting this.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
So when you say data data in, data out, or
is it also about just the effort in the results
you will get as much as result as the effort
you put as a salesperson. Really, how does that look
like from your perspective? PT? So the activity is like
let's say day to day okay, so yeah, practical day
(12:37):
to day sales activities that maybe you didn't go before
ABM that you're doing more of right now.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, I mean I think there's quite a few, but
you know, I think the one thing that has helped
us is again we have a pretty large range of
accounts to attack, and so what we would do is
we would set you know, a number whether it was
ten or fifteen as a goal for the week to
(13:07):
really go after and connect with, and then we would
you know, leave those in the pipe, you know, in
the focus pipeline if you will, for you know, maybe
up to two or three weeks, and then we've either
gotten a successful connection.
Speaker 7 (13:22):
Or we realize that, you know, maybe we.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Need to put some on the back burner and bring
new accounts in to focus on. So we had a
pretty you know set cadence of both number of accounts
and time that we would put them in what we
would call active focus, right. And then you know, again,
I think that that really helped us. Some of the
(13:45):
social selling that we brought into this was you know,
certainly new for me, right, Like my partner's the one
who has the real big LinkedIn presence, and you know,
we were going through this just yesterday. But it really
has enabled us now with consistent social selling to see
what works and what doesn't. And it's really interesting that like,
(14:06):
for one, you know, there's kind of three main guys
at our company that are out there socially and generating business,
so to speak. My posts, when you know, certain types
of posts, we're getting tons of engagement, and we were
able to identify that other types weren't. And you know,
(14:29):
kind of great data because for our third kind of partner,
the posts that he was getting great engagement on were
the same posts, same types of posts that I.
Speaker 7 (14:40):
Was getting no engagement on, right, And so we've.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Been able to identify that, like, hey, for me, the
posts about you know, wins and kind of like humble
brags were the ones that were getting real engagement and
the ones where I was trying to you know, be
more of you know, uh, you know, add value content, right,
they were getting nothing for engagement. But when Todd posts
(15:03):
you know, the sort of value add you know, you know,
conversational inducing posts, he's getting tons of engagement on those,
and then when he posts about like a win or something,
he was getting no engagement. So it's just really interesting
and we've been able to identify that, you know, certain
post work for my profiles, certain post work for his,
and then certain post work for mics. And that's been
(15:25):
a really valuable piece of this because obviously LinkedIn is
is just such a huge source of ab M for us,
right and trying to engage with new new prospects and clients.
And so that's something that I would say is a
derivative of our ab M campaign that really has helped us,
you know, get laser focused on the type of content
(15:45):
that we're pushing out individually within our team.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
This is very interesting, very interesting. I haven't heard that before.
Speaker 7 (15:54):
I just say, yeah, it's funny. You know, we did.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
We have a you know, content director that does a
lot of that posting, you know, you know, on my account,
and we work together and she does the same thing
with with Todd and she was you know, very ingrained
in the ABM campaign as well, even though she's more
behind the scenes team member, and it was it was
really interesting to see how, you know, how the different
(16:21):
posts got different levels of engagement and and you know,
I see someone Sally making a comment there, but it
really does it. It's you know, the authenticity I think
is reflective of your personality and those who know you
within the professional world. And you know, just turns out
that my people are way more interested in the stuff
(16:41):
we're up to, and you know, Todd's people are way
more interested and you know, the the nitty gritty industry insight.
So it's just an interesting juxtaposition that you know, again
we've been able to now identify and we're going to
really focus on having those specific types of posts for
each of us to again just really ramp up engagement,
(17:01):
and you know, we've kind of found what works and
what doesn't.
Speaker 8 (17:04):
Soon as be awesome.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
I just like to point to everybody, like, you're active
in a very specific niche. So you're going after developers
of new projects, right, that's already a niche. And by
the way, you're active in Boston, so developers are not
the people that you would normally expect to be active
on LinkedIn. And then you're not like internationally or even
(17:28):
nationally in your case.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
Right active really quasi regional.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, we're quasi regional right now, and you know, obviously
we have problecasts.
Speaker 9 (17:36):
It is very local. Thing is working for you.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
So I just wanted to make share this with everybody
because a lot of people are saying, you know, you know,
but my buyers are not acting on LinkedIn, which totally
could be the case, and LinkedIn is not the only
place where you should be looking at and I know
that you're doing many other things than just the LinkedIn.
Speaker 9 (17:56):
You have also your local networks and events and all
the other stuff. But still it is in some cases
when you're in a niche and maybe you think that
they won't be active, et cetera, it's actually could be
an opportunity because there's nobody else almost who is doing
that in your niche, I assume, right, So that makes
(18:20):
you stand out immediately that that was just a side comment.
I would like to also hear from roughs on you
from your perspective.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Excuse me, what are kind of the main responsibilities and
activities you see sales should be doing with the AVA.
Speaker 6 (18:35):
Yeah, I actually agree with lots of the things that
have been said already by seven PT. I think India,
I wasn't. I wasn't super involved on not doing in
the operational day to day. It's one of the team here.
But it's clear that of course the sales team needs
to put in the work in in building that audience,
in engaging with with your buyers, with the community, and
(18:57):
being thoughtful in the way they do this, and we
really seeing the positive outcomes of it. Then anecdotes. We
had a conference at the what A Conference like not
not not. Something that we organized was a conference where
our CEO visited and and people in that audience were
really talking about that we had a superstar in the
(19:19):
team who knows so much about about customs and he
was putting great content while he's actually quite a new
joiner in the team, and and so it's it's very
great to see that that it's really spreading within the community.
And I think also I think it's very interesting what
pet was saying. I think one of the tasks that
I think sales has to towards marketing as well is
(19:42):
coming up with with sort of content ideas, understanding what
your community needs and feeding that back to marketing so
that they are able to create relevant posts. And I
think it's very interesting to see so far we have
seen that most posts that work for me also work
for other people in the team. I think as and
next step, we could be looking to diversify and let
(20:02):
our CEO, for example, post different things because he has
a completely different network than we have, which is way
more business focused.
Speaker 8 (20:09):
But it's also our target.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Audience while we maybe have a bigger audience with the
more technical people.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
So they wanted that Eddigrity.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
So I think it's an interesting next step to take
in when we're further developing our ADM strategy.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
I love for learning from each other already and your
point about feeding back the information to marketing. We actually
had Sam's colleague from marketing who is a content marketer
in certain she needed a live podcast with us sharing
her experience and for her it was very new and
(20:44):
very different way of working and creating content. And the
one thing she repeatedly mentioned was how a that constant
interaction week to week with you and getting that feedback
from you, and also like moving from kind of a
long planned, long term planned content calendar to being more
(21:07):
flexible to understanding with what are the accounts that are
engaging right now in the pipeline and how can how
could we adjust our content so that you can basically
use it this week on the on the accounts that
you have. So this back and forth between marketing and sales,
even on the level of content, I found that interesting
(21:29):
invention that actually I'll say call.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
It I think if I can, if I can add
one thing to that, I think we're in a very
regulatory space, so lots of things are regulated and it's technical,
so of course if if you have a new feature
or something, it's it's quite obvious that marketing will will
start drafting opposed almost technical things, while we as a
sales team, of course here on a day to day
(21:52):
from our potential clients or clients real business problems that
we can solve. So you also change a bit the
way you the tonal voice and what you speak about
really about business value and things actual challenges that your
audience is facing, rather than to be on the surface
level on the feature side of things.
Speaker 8 (22:10):
So I think it's a it's a very good alignment
to have.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
I think, and Andre you did you call this out
like litmus tests for good content? Is will you your
sales people actually be happy to share that on their profile?
They're not happy to share that on a profile. Maybe
you're missing the mark.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, absolutely, It's just literally sounds like, will you the
P of sales send this piece of content to the
key account?
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Because now the P of sales will ever send piece
of content that will kind of position himself herself as
an amateur in ice of the prospect, right, That's that's
the key. So you all guys mentioned that first of all,
the way how sales I engagement with the target accounts
(23:04):
is different inside count based marketing programs, right and rough
you had an experience you said that you are not
active part which is I mean depends on how we
look at it, because you are the main subject matter
expert and you're doing the kind of let's say, key
key engagement activities, but at the same time you managed SDR.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
So in this case, we didn't have typical program set
up because usually we have in the pilot either account
executive or SDR.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
In this case we had both account executives and SDRs. Right.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
So I would love to combine two things or basically
two questions and ask you, guys with the high insight
of running on these ABM programs, what would you say
is the bare minimum that sales should allocate to ABM
in percentage or whatever? And the second follow up, lots
(24:02):
of marketers that I know struggle to explain these activities
to the p of sales and get buy in for
that necessary percentage of time. So how would you say, like,
let's say, what is the better minimum time that should
be allocated and how to justify this to the sales
leadership to get that dedicated sales rep let's start with you, Sam.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, in terms of like a minimum time, I would
say as a minimum like an an hour a day,
so like five hours a week at a minimum, And
I think that is like a fairy like story important.
And then it progresses through like the program and how
you feel comfortable and actually at some point maybe you
even become more efficient during it because you like learn
different terms of strategies. But I think, like five hours minimum,
(24:51):
I'm during the week to truly get things out of
it in terms of like the buy and like. So
in my case, I also trying to get buying from
my VP, and a big thing is like this is
part of my job already, So this is a different
facet of outreach and it's just really practical to do
so since no one else on the team was doing
that type of outreach and creating new types of content
(25:13):
with the help of our marketing team, so it was
actually kind of a win win for everyone because I'm
still doing outreach, I'm reaching out to new people and
it's actually more it's more focused with that. And then
I had that specific time block for just an ABM set,
which I think helped you with the buying. And then
you could see specifically what was happening from.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
It, thank him at what you say?
Speaker 7 (25:35):
Sorry and I wanted to mute theirself with no background noise.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
For for you guys, yeah, I mean I would say
it's probably really dependent on your industry, right. I mean,
for me, it's a huge part of my day to day,
you know, prospecting. I would say, I'm on average allocating
a couple hours a day strictly to you know, the
ab M campaign and then hopefully, you know, getting the
(26:02):
results that I want, which leads to meetings with people
via via the campaign. Right, So I would say day
to day it's probably twenty five percent.
Speaker 7 (26:12):
Of my time.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
And from the buying perspective, so let's say, if marketing
would come again to you, what can get your buy
into justify this twenty percent or twenty five percent of
time for the sales rep?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Well, I mean I think what for us anyways, what
could justify it is the results we've had, right, I mean,
you know, we've we've landed a bunch of new accounts
through the ABM campaign, and you know we've got a
lot of traction on other accounts. So you know, I
think at least for us, you know, this is something
that we've really only been implementing the past few quarters
(26:54):
that you know, it's very clear that it's working and
that it should be the focal point of of you
know what our sales reps, which right now is really
just myself and you.
Speaker 7 (27:05):
Know, one other one other team member.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And you know, again, I think it's probably somewhelar to
twenty twenty five percent range of time. And to me,
that's totally appropriate based on, you know, the results we've had,
So it's easy to justify to.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
Anyone you know, that that's where we should be focused.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And I'm just wondering what if let's say, what if
you don't if you didn't start the pilot right So,
let's say an ABM lead or marketing director comes to
you and says, hey, we want to do ABM with you.
We have kind of an idea of how that will
help us to generate pipeline, and we'll need like, let's say,
(27:46):
a sales rep dedicate dedicated twenty five percent of here's
ahead time the ABM program. What's what arguments would.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
You like to see that could persuade you?
Speaker 7 (28:01):
I'm sorry it was the last part.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
What arguments what arguments would per se you to give
let's say, twenty five percent of your time to a
b M.
Speaker 7 (28:10):
Yeah, I mean, at least for for me, it was
you know, I really wasn't an argument.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I mean I think it was a pretty it was
pretty easy to see again why that amount of time
is justified based on, you know, the immediacy of the
results we were getting during the pilot and you know
since then, it's just enabled again a level of focus
(28:39):
and you know, narrowing scope for for me to you know,
continue to utilize it, you know, through the fourth quarter
and through what's you know, the first quarter is pretty much.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Over here as well.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
So I mean again I don't think there was that
much persuasion needed, and certainly did that see change and
the results of you know, revenue general ration in Q
four and Q one, that's kind of all the persuasion
I need to keep being motivated to allocate that amount
of time to it.
Speaker 8 (29:09):
A fact.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Thank you, Rafe, you actually involved SDR. Right, So how
what what what's your experience? What what do you say
is the better minimum?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
SDR?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Who became a famous superstar in the custom segment? What's
what's the let's say better minimum sdr shots.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Give to a b M and how how to justify it?
Speaker 6 (29:33):
Yeah, indeed, I think I need to shine a light
on my colleague who did indeed most of the work.
I tried to back it up, but it's not always feasible.
I think in the beginning it was a lot of
his time. In the very beginning, it's still finding your
your footing, how does the cadence work? What are the
jobs that you need to do, and how do you
(29:54):
doing with all your other work combined? But I think
in the end I think you needed was a sort
of one hour and a half two hours a day.
I think I think sort of makes is the time
he used and you compliment you to that. Of course
he did some other outbound work. Yeah, I think that
(30:16):
a half to two hours a day is I think
a good starting point, especially when you know the drill,
you know what to do, you know how it works.
Speaker 8 (30:24):
Then it should be should be enough, I think.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And the father is just again the last question. Let's
say you don't have any metrics, you don't have any result,
and let's say your market and Calleigue comes to you
and says, hey, I want to do this with you.
But I need a sales rep who would be doing
these activities for two hours a day. What's will kind
(30:47):
of change your mind or what will persuade you to
approve it?
Speaker 6 (30:52):
Yeah, I find a littul question as well, because again
didn't also didn't really need the persuasion To be honest,
I think it's the career. If you have a lack
of pipeline and the things that you're doing are soto
working or not completely working, you need to open your
mind and try new things. And I think this concept
look good for me. It's bringing value to your buying,
(31:15):
to your target audience, which in our space, there's not
many companies doing this, so you're you're you're different than
the rest.
Speaker 8 (31:23):
For me, that's a bit, that's a bit what you're
trying to get at.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
If everybody's sending out automated sequences, nobody will like it,
So try to do something different and the other people
do to target to get their attention and to bring value.
So if you don't have any metrics, I think you
need to do something else or you will not get
any business. So that's basically I think enough persuasion that
you need, and I think as an extension to that
it's of course critical that you also report back internally
(31:49):
in the organization with with the wins that you're having,
and if it's not yet a meeting that you need
to look into, what are the other things that you
can report on. Are there sort of signs developing that
it is at working, that you're reaching more people than
you were before, and if those are there, then monitor
them closely and see if anything comes out and then
be agile enough to change if not.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
I think you bring up bring up to actually the
question that we wanted to ask next. So what's very
clear from a sales perspective, you'll have a clear idea
about what's valuable it deals. It's sales obviously quotas right
that you're hitting. But you also mentioned, okay, you know what,
(32:34):
we have long sales cycles. I know that PT you
have sales cycles two sometimes even three years. But even
like sand Rough you have long sales cycles as well.
And you know that, you know, if you're running a
pilot for a quarter, you can't really expect and you
have sales cycles of at least six months and then more,
(32:57):
you can't really expect to see immediately any results. And
you bring up a really good point draft, What are
those metrics kind of intermediate metrics that you think people
should be tracking and sharing, Like you said the wins
that maybe you did collect, track, share or you believe
(33:20):
others should do as well. So maybe you mentioned yourself,
So what are some of these metrics that you consider
valuable as kind of an early signal.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
Yeah, I think from a point of view, we didn't
want to overcomplicate it. We didn't want to track too
many metrics because then it becomes just a bit noise.
So we want to focus as well, what are we
tracking And of course the obvious thing is the meetings
and calls that your book and whatever and the as
come out of there. But in the beginning what we saw,
(33:53):
I think you guys helped us as well to see
this is like what is your status quo? How well
is your outbound working in the different channels that you're doing,
and then.
Speaker 8 (34:02):
Sort of track like how is that changing?
Speaker 6 (34:04):
And from a LinkedIn point of view, it was very
obvious that our SDR was not having that much of
success with reaching out on LinkedIn, and quickly we saw
people that started to react, so we were checking that
from a qualitive point of view, but also from a
qualitive point of qualitative point of view, we had accounts
that never replied to anything and then started to reply
(34:27):
to what we were doing. So it was very quickly
that you could see, Okay, there are good signs. I
think there was one or two weeks where we were like, Okay,
in the very early stages, we're not really seeing any
engagement here, but then quickly started to take off. So
we were really just tracking the amount of positive engagements
that we were having on LinkedIn the impressions on our
posts compartedive before and the engagements on the post that
(34:49):
we were doing, and the level also the quality of
the engagement. Not just are people saying, oh, nice posts
and liking it, but also are we seeing the people
that we are targeting in enterprise companies, key decision makers,
are they really engaging with our posts and really not
over complicated with too many metrics that keeping it simple.
And I think the final thing that we did and
(35:11):
probably the others of you did as well, is sort
of tracking those different pipelines from from the clustter icp
to active focus and see how it progresses and sort
of builds. Is that the compounding effect of course, if
you're building the audience and you're getting more and more
people to engage.
Speaker 8 (35:30):
But yeah, those three are basically I.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Would say, Okay, so you're a believer, and you were
the believer, right, and you were tracking these metrics, so
I'm super super cool that you also realize the value
of that. But Anna, I think she asked a good
question very very much related to that. Okay, so you
were tracking even engagement and the views of the posts,
(35:54):
et cetera. But at what point do you believe sales
management would start to see the value of the program?
And I know you're still at a kind of in
the middle of the pilot, but what would be our
thoughts on this question?
Speaker 8 (36:12):
Uh?
Speaker 6 (36:13):
I think for us it was rather quickly because we
just were booking meetings with with companies that we wanted
to book meetings with, and we have indeed sales cycle,
which sales cycles we can take up to two years, uh,
and and and and even then after a month month,
we already had some meetings booked, which was a great result.
And on top of that, you were really seeing the
(36:34):
quality of the of the collaboration that we had with
some accounts whould never re apply to any of our
patchurees before and suddenly we're very open to speak. So
I think that the hypothesis that we had coming into
this was that we are we are in a and
we have an audience which is underserved in terms of
quality content. Uh and quickly sorted showing itself. So I
(36:58):
don't know if there was a clear point. There was
a combination show of actual meetings of course that always helps,
but together also that the engagement was not just a
vanity metric. It was clearly that it was quality engagement
for quality accounts. And to back that up the quality
with sort of the impressions and so on in engagement
I think really.
Speaker 8 (37:18):
Helped to drive our point home. I think I love it.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
So it was also like the combination of setting the
right expectations from the start and then being able to show, hey,
you know how we talked about this, this is actually
what's happening. And by the way, it helps of course
if you start booking meetings with us, any other metrics
I mean, sam or pt that you wanted to add.
I don't want to put you every time on the
(37:41):
spot if you wanted to add something.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, I mean we looked at you know, obviously meetings.
Like rap said, but what we call qualified oper how
many qualified opportunities do we create?
Speaker 7 (37:55):
Right? So, okay, we we.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Reached out the company X, we got engagement, we got
a discovery call. Is there a real opportunity there?
Speaker 7 (38:06):
Right? You know, a specific building that we have.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
An opportunity to get involved with, whether it was on
the management side or the leasing side or the sales side.
And so that qualified ops was really the next metric
that would come from meetings that we tracked. And again
because similarly to these guys, we have a longer sales cycle,
doesn't necessarily mean we're going to close a qualified opportunity within.
Speaker 7 (38:33):
You know, a week or something like that. But you know,
we were.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Lucky enough where we did get some some things that
closed within the quarter and then some things that spilled
into Q one that have closed, some things that are
going to continue that we thought were high intent for
Q one, but now they're spilling into Q two and
even Q three as far as when we think we
can close them. But that number of qualified opportunities was
a key metric for us to keep an eye on. Obviously,
(39:00):
it's just you know, again the law of averages slash
you know, you got to execute.
Speaker 7 (39:04):
On your sales program.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
But the more of those you have, the more you're
going to end up closing in, the more revenue that's
going to come in. So that metrics really a big
one on our end.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
And Sam with you onboarding, the onboarding or working with
new colleagues from the sales team, helping show to the
leadership but also maybe to the other sales colleagues that hey,
you know, this action makes sense, it's working. What are
maybe some of the early signals or other kinds of
(39:39):
metrics that you are focused on or communicating to the colleagues.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I think outside of what you like wrapping PT said,
I think something for us that was interesting is we
do background checks like globally, so there's like always gonna
be people looking for background checks, but it's not often
over again, like the bigger companies, like the household names
that you want to see that we wanted to see
and we're targeting. So I found it like pretty quickly, honestly,
(40:05):
and still now we noticed like bigger companies have been
coming to the website and engaging and sometimes even like
putting in like links and maybe they're not reaching out
directly to me, but they've seen enough stuff for myself
or even our company page that it's actually brought them
to the website and they've never been there before, and
they're taking more actions or downloads, and they're getting warmer
and warmer into our funnel and having other people and
(40:28):
our team reach out. And I think that's what our
management saw. They're like, oh, this is like this company
and we've never seen this company ever reached out to
us in the past, where we'ven like have any engagement.
So little things like that that were like, hey, this
is like a direct meeting right away. But things of
like bubbling to the surface to even getting into our
funnel in general were huge for sure.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
And I remember like for you, it was also like
like going up market, but also coming into the US
from the home marketing Canada, right, so, which previously it's
just like proven very difficult obviously for anyone. Yeah, and
so now being able to suddenly see those exact icps
(41:11):
from the US that you were able to start engaging
was a big deal as well, right That helped.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, huge, huge, Like in Canada, it's like we're a
household name bed in the US, there's so many major
players and for us, we just need to get our
brand awareness out there and it's helped like a tenfold
because so many people are like reaching out in different
areas or oh, how do you because I always asked
how did you hear about us? Or I was get
our team to ask how people heard about us, and
a lot of times they said, oh, I think I
(41:38):
saw something on LinkedIn now, which was never the case before,
Like that would never have been a comment. So like
they're at least engaging, maybe not directly with a post
that we sent, but long term, it's just like suddenly
in their head, oh yeah.
Speaker 8 (41:51):
I remember this.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Comping do just that, and it's little things that also
help accumulate over time too.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Basically all your applies lead me to the next question.
And also I saw a lot of asked it, so
I will just pull it in. What type of account
insights would be helpful for marketing to provide you on
ongoing basis?
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Sorry?
Speaker 3 (42:16):
And generally what kind of help the same or basically
what kind of help is expected from marketing?
Speaker 4 (42:24):
So let's start west rough.
Speaker 6 (42:27):
Yeah, I think again, I was I was a bit
less involved in the in the operational side of things,
But I think, uh, I think it's just important that
that you align, of course very well with marketing from
the get go and what type.
Speaker 8 (42:39):
Of insights you need.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
You need to be very aligned on what profiles that
we want to target, on what information we expect to
have in our accounts. So I think it's it's mostly
on alignment, but I don't think it's anything specific I
would like to add.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Here, okay, and from there, let's say market and support perspective,
whether saying kind of key activities how market and can
can support for us.
Speaker 6 (43:08):
It was mainly, of course, focused on on the content
creation part.
Speaker 8 (43:12):
Of the things.
Speaker 6 (43:12):
It really really helped because I think, for example, I
was I was convinced of social setting already for a
long time, but I struggled to start to start with
it myself, to go up with a good tone of
voice with the content itself. It's it's always something that
went on the back burner rather than to really do it.
And I think working together with marketing helped us massively
(43:34):
to start building a content library with with good quality content,
be more flexible on it, and helped everybody to to
join in doing what we are doing in helping helping
us put.
Speaker 8 (43:47):
Out the right content.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Awesome than petty what's what do you say?
Speaker 3 (43:51):
What kind of insights and help from market and they expect.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, So marketing took a real active role in our
I mean, I think to a rafts appoint I mean,
content right is huge. So they would help with everything
from you know, helping with the framework on posts.
Speaker 7 (44:11):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
One other thing I didn't mention earlier, which I think
was important is when you asked about different metrics. We
had specific LinkedIn metrics in our in our A b
M program. So you know, how many new connections and
how many connection requests per day did you send out,
how many comments value add comments did you make each day?
How many new accounts did you find you know in
sales Navigator each day. So that was just a sidebar,
(44:33):
but I think it was important to mention back to marketing,
you know, creating one sheeters that we could send out
as follow up you know, once we did make a
connection and you know, again whether that was content that
we thought would add value to our prospects or just
you know, content touting you know, our track record to
(44:56):
to try to you know again entice more engagement from
those from the A prospects. So you know, marketing worked
very hard and still is on a day to day
basis with our ab M campaign and you know, even
revamping parts of our of our website you know, to
to you know, have case studies readily available and creating
case studies that we could send out two different prospects
(45:19):
too that you know, correlated to what they had going on.
So you know, again, I think that the overall message
here and obviously Sam and Roth being very successful as
well as you really need to integrate marketing with your
sales efforts and it just is an engine that can
really drive, you know, help help help accelerate results.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Thank you, Sam, What what do you add?
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, that, like I had a huge out from our
marketing team. On the content side, We're lucky to have
tons of really useful, insightful blog posts and on our side,
our content persons is really good at like staging like
the pulse of like current state of events, and like
creating and repurposing like some of this content for us.
So that was huge just like make it easy for
(46:06):
us to pose something in our own words, like provide
like the kind of content and then we can put
it in our own words to like say like this
is obviously this is how I would speak towards something
about that I think that was really huge. And then
also talking about like similar topics or hot topics about
the industry at the time. We're really good to roll
on and we'll continue to roll on those. And then
(46:27):
also just like providing some of the step on the
CRM just to make it easy for people to like
actually attack.
Speaker 8 (46:33):
Some of it.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Was also something more marketing can help a lot to
you and.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
And before we'll move to the last question, we still
have a lot of people with us on stand online.
Let us know, guys, how did you like the sign itself?
And they found there, but let us know in the chat.
We'd love to see your feedback. How was the how
was your experience? Why did you learn? Shows us experience
And let's move to the last question.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
What all right, Let's say somebody considering implementing ABM, and
you kind of want to warn them against maybe some mistakes,
maybe some lessons learned, or some mistakes to avoid that.
I'm not saying that you made or experience, but maybe
(47:26):
I have seen in other teams or anticipated people could
be making, especially from sales perspective, what do you believe
maybe are kind of a number one mistake to watch
out or a pitfall to watch out for when executing
within an ABM framework. Anybody wants to share.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, I'll share. I mean I think ultimately you need
to know, you need to trust yourself and your instinct,
you know what works for your business. And you know, again,
all businesses are different, and each individual salesperson is different
in their approach and their.
Speaker 7 (48:09):
You know, just kind of the way they interact with
other people.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And so not to compromise authenticity by trying to you know,
automate too much for lack of a better term, and
then also not to be afraid to challenge and or
tweak a suggestion, right Like you know, STAFFO had been
used to working, you know, in a lot of other industries,
(48:34):
and stuff that may work in those industries just wasn't
going to work for us. And you know, again, we
had really good collaborative conversations where we said, Okay, look,
I get what you're saying in concept that's not.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
Going to work for our audience, but this may.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
And so we're going to take that concept and we're
going to tweak it to something that's going to be effective.
Speaker 7 (48:55):
For our industry. And I think that that's really important.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
And you know, yes, you're teaming up and you're getting help,
and you're getting an awesome platform and framework to to
learn and to implement and go execute to increase your sales.
But don't lose sight of the fact that at the
end of the day, you know your business better than anybody.
And make sure that you know again you're you're not
just blindly following a blueprint that components of which just
(49:23):
may not work for your business or just need to
be done differently for your business.
Speaker 5 (49:27):
Awesome, thank you. It makes a lot of sense. Sam,
you have any thoughts, Yeah, I would just add onto it,
he said.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
It's just like, yeah, there's just understand the nuance in
your business and like knowing that some things are aren't
gonna hit or land as well, and just be cautious
of those types of things and just like double down
on like what you are seeing that is working and
also maybe what you're not seeing a lot of on
LinkedIn that you'd like to see it sometimes things like
that too.
Speaker 8 (49:54):
But that's it.
Speaker 10 (49:57):
Awesome rough, Yeah, I agree with the other two guys
are saying as well, it's indeed really doubling down on
what's working, and don't be afraid to try things out
and if it don't work, fine, and I really know
your business and do what works for you.
Speaker 8 (50:13):
I think from our point of view as well, I think.
Speaker 6 (50:17):
The team who was responsible for the ABM was was
aligned on what to expect and what needed to be done.
But I think in the beginning we could have done
a better job to make sure that the reporting that
we do internally to sales management and the rest of
the aes could have been a bit better, I think
from the get go, because of course it takes a
bit of time to ramp up, and since our reporting
(50:38):
wasn't too clear in the very beginning, it's sort of
kept this kept this is in a bit too long
while it was actually not needed. So I think to
make sure that you really align on what metrics that
are important for your business and on what you want
to report, and start from the beginning to feed that
back into the organization so everybody is feeling the positive
energy that you are feeling from the program.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
That said thank you so much, I appreciate it. I
think it was all of you provided pre lant replies.
Thank you so much guys for coming and sharing sales
perspective about account based marketing. I feel it has often missed,
where as marketers quite often just stay in our marketing bubble,
(51:22):
not looking outside what's happening on the sales.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
And I can reflect a lot on this because.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
I have spent my first five years of my career
in sales and then switched to market and so kind
of know how the things are looking at two sites.
So I appreciate, appreciate all of your takeaways and also
appreciate your feedback. Guys, everybody who has attended our assigned
thanks a lot for the questions, thanks a lot for
(51:52):
the fantastic engagement and for the feedback.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
We appreciate it and happy to hear that you enjoyed
it a lot.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Thank you so much everybody, and hopefully we'll be able
to arrange this event in person and invite all of you.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
Take care very much, have a good day.
Speaker 8 (52:10):
Thanks, thank you,
This is the Full Funnel B t B Marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's start.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the last sash, or more precisely,
last roundtable from our ful final signate. As promised, we
made a special session for everybody.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
We invited enterprise leaders.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We have them enterprise account executive rough as well as
account executive MPT, VP of sales and for everybody it
would be fantastic compart united to learn from experience sales reps.
What is the role of sales and account based marketing.
We're gonna ask straightforward questions. If you're in marketing, how
(00:54):
you can get sales buying right? So all of these
and I think I will ask micro fund of that
lat Can staff, where is the trust?
Speaker 5 (01:05):
So thank you so much for taking the time and joining.
I would just like to ask everyone to give a
quick intro of yourself, your role and the company, and
we can start with the questions, but I also like
to ask the audience don't be shy. Post your questions
(01:25):
in the QS section will bring them up. We did
prepare a few of our own, but we always prefer
to offer the audience the chance to interact, So let's
start just in the order that you appear here, Sam,
would you like to give a quick intro of yourself
and the company you work for?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Everyone, Sam, I do you here part of the team
called Certain. We do background checks and pre employment screening,
and I am on the enterprise account team here Certain.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Thank you. Rough would you like to give a quick intro?
Speaker 6 (01:59):
Yeah? Sure, My name is Indeed Rough. I'm based in Belgium.
I'm a part of the sales team at Customs for Trade.
We sell software to automate customs processes to enterprise companies.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Right, thank you, Raf.
Speaker 7 (02:14):
Pt my name is pt Weinberg.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Guy.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I'm the founding partner at Charles Gate, which is based
in Boston, Massachusetts in the US.
Speaker 7 (02:23):
We do.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Primarily property management and new development marketing, so leasing up
big apartment buildings or selling out condo projects.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Awesome, thank you. I think it's really good to have
three very different actually cases. We have Sam from Certain,
which is kind of like broad market, a lot of
different companies that need background checks. We have Rough from Customers,
quite a niche market, and then PT even in a
way more niche, being focused done a very specific market
(03:02):
in even like a specific geography where you are, so
I think we'll get a good mix. So let's start
with the first question. I as they say, like hindsight
is twenty twenty, we always know best when we look
at the best. And from the perspective that you have
(03:22):
right now, having been a part of a successful ABM program,
how would you describe the benefits of this kind of
an approach account based marketing approach for sales specifically? And
maybe this time let's start with PT. Well, from your perspective,
what is the advantage of ABM.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
For some I mean, I think the advantage that I
found with ABM is it it really kept you focused,
right like we have such a broad range of prospects
and kind of really peeling it back a layer and saying, okay,
you know, instead of just going for projects, let's look
at who's doing these projects. Let's get a consolidated list
(04:04):
of accounts of the people we want to cultivate relationships with,
and then let's attack them, you know, on an account
based basis versus again just kind of you know, looking
at different news sources and different data sources to identify
projects and really focus on the on the accounts themselves.
And that really helped, you know, narrow scope and and
(04:29):
and again create a level of of focus that that
enabled a better process.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Absolutely, Sandy, you want to time in.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I mean a lot of what PT said. And
then alignment, honestly, like alignment with marketing was really huge. Press.
We were pretty much silent, as crazy as that sounds,
within our structure. Everyone was doing their own thing on
the marketing side and then the sales side. So it's
good to just connect frequently with each other and understand, like, hey,
what are they actually doing their day to day and
(05:01):
understand and then you actually have like an understanding of oh,
this is why they did things and pivot and it
actually has changed a lot of how we do things today,
and there's more collaboration going on. And then even just
the new tips from types of outreaching and then the
focus on specific industries and being able to specifically track
that in a time theory that really helped.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
To And I wonder just sort of a perspective, how
did that alignment help the sales in terms of results? Process?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, I mean a lot in terms of process. There's
a lot of processes that were like within our CRM
that were actually not even really connected that we thought
they were. So it actually brought things back and really
just like honed down and like, Okay, we weren't even
tracking the specific piece, and there's so much insight out
to it. Especially with some of the other tools that
we had. It helped us like actually use get more
(05:52):
out of the tools that we had by having that
alignment to okay enough.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
Do you have some thoughts on the if it's of
ABM from sales perspective.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
Yeah, I think from my point of view, it helped
to get a sort of a new angle to target
sort of the very high level enterprise companies that we're
targeting and also the high level people within those organizations.
So we already had an outbound cadence that we were
doing heavily personalized, but by doing the ABM approach, I
(06:25):
think we realized or we saw actually that we were
able to connect to some very high level people in
the companies that we were targeting who weren't answering to
any of our outreaches before, just because we took it
sort of another angle to it.
Speaker 8 (06:39):
So I think that was very great to see.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
And I think additionally, because you sort of start building
a building an audience. It started compounding and you get
a broader reach, much quicker than you would do when
doing your personalized outreach just person to person.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Than guess so much before we'll actually move farward to
our other questions. I have already seen this fantastic question
from Sally. So when you're a first approach was doing
ABM at your company? Right, it was skeptical and if
saw what changed your mind? Let's start with you, Sam, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
That's a that's a good question. Sally was that skeptical.
Of course as a salesperson, I was skeptical, and I
was like, hey, Rory doing so many things like hey,
when are we going to have time to do this?
But honestly, like I was like, we need to try
something different too, because there's so many things that have
changed in the market, especially like since like in the
(07:42):
last two years, things changed faster than ever. So I
had to be open to it, and I was open
to it. And then the big thing is you have
to find that one person that was actually responsive in
the sales worry, and then that really will help facilitate
everything as a stakeolder. But you do need to find
at least that one person on that sales team and
once you do, just like hang on to them and
(08:03):
that person will reap the rewards of it too.
Speaker 8 (08:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
We were so lucky to have you as that person.
Speaker 8 (08:10):
Thank you, sir, Ralph.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
What what do you say that was the experience?
Speaker 6 (08:18):
Yeah, I think I'm a bit maybe the exception to
the rule here because I was very much involved in
bringing a BM in. I was sort of a from
a sales point of we really pushing for it and
actually trying to, yeah, to bring it in quite quickly
because I realized, of course we we all tried to
find ways to build pipeline on a daily basis, and
(08:40):
we were doing whatever we could, but I think there
were possibilities to do it in a more creative way.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
And I know we're in a very niche industry where
there's a lack of.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
Information available for for potential buyers to get. So if
we would take that angle to to to become to
do these times full posts and then to comment and
really bring value to that community. I saw it as
a way to expand our regional brand awareness and hopefully
get some some meetings, and so yeah, I think I
(09:12):
tried to bring it in from a sales point aview.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I think after you'll apply, lots of people who I
listened in to us life will just pick up your
profileance and to executive saying hey, can we get more
people like RAFF and other organization. But Jacks aside, Pitty,
what was your experience?
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, I mean I think a little bit like RAFF,
I wasn't I wasn't overly skeptical. I thought it was
a really good concept and it's something we had talked
about for a while before we you know, teamed up
with full funnel, and as we started to really execute
on it, you know, we were really.
Speaker 7 (09:46):
Lucky that we had pretty immediate results.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And you know, I think Sam mentioned it too, but
it really helped us align marketing and sales, and I
think that that was really critical in our ability to
kind of execute on the A b M and really
again it get quick results, and those results have continued,
you know, through the first quarter of this year too.
So yeah, I was I was all for it, and
(10:13):
you know, it again kind of prove its worth early on.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
All right, So if I'm thinking about ABM, it's even
in the name it says marketing account based marketing, which
is probably unfortunate because it's definitely, like all of us shared,
it is a joint effort between marketing and sales. But
what would you say to folks, what are the actual
(10:39):
activities and responsibilities of a sales person within an ABM,
A b X whatever we call it, within such an
account based program. And I just want to start with
Sam because I know that Sam, you're also involved not
only in doing it yourself, but also involving new colleagues
from your team and kind of like you know, passing
(11:03):
on the knowledge and teaching the others. So I think
you have also that that kind of perspective, So I
would like to hear that from you.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, so glad, From like my perspective, like actually doing
it's like data and data out right, So from ours perspective,
the sales team actually has to be doing the work
of personalized message, of actually dming people of if there
is insights or comments on some of the posts that
we've been doing, engaging with them, starting conversations on LinkedIn,
making sure it bubbles up like that. It's almost to
(11:34):
the point of, hey, we keep on seeing this guy everywhere,
or we keep on seeing certain everye what's happening with that,
so actually putting in the work of commenting on things
like not just saying a nice post, but like insightful,
actually providing like something order some feedback or even sometimes
something controversial, and then putting them into a cadence where
you're actually following up properly and not just asking for
(11:55):
something but also providing just kind of like graphic saying earlier,
just like providing some different type of kind of value
rather than the typical one or a call to action
that you've had in the past. And one thing is
just like data and data out from the sales seem
like actually putting it information and chatting this.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
So when you say data data in, data out, or
is it also about just the effort in the results
you will get as much as result as the effort
you put as a salesperson. Really, how does that look
like from your perspective? PT? So the activity is like
let's say day to day okay, so yeah, practical day
(12:37):
to day sales activities that maybe you didn't go before
ABM that you're doing more of right now.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, I mean I think there's quite a few, but
you know, I think the one thing that has helped
us is again we have a pretty large range of
accounts to attack, and so what we would do is
we would set you know, a number whether it was
ten or fifteen as a goal for the week to
(13:07):
really go after and connect with, and then we would
you know, leave those in the pipe, you know, in
the focus pipeline if you will, for you know, maybe
up to two or three weeks, and then we've either
gotten a successful connection.
Speaker 7 (13:22):
Or we realize that, you know, maybe we.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Need to put some on the back burner and bring
new accounts in to focus on. So we had a
pretty you know set cadence of both number of accounts
and time that we would put them in what we
would call active focus, right. And then you know, again,
I think that that really helped us. Some of the
(13:45):
social selling that we brought into this was you know,
certainly new for me, right, Like my partner's the one
who has the real big LinkedIn presence, and you know,
we were going through this just yesterday. But it really
has enabled us now with consistent social selling to see
what works and what doesn't. And it's really interesting that like,
(14:06):
for one, you know, there's kind of three main guys
at our company that are out there socially and generating business,
so to speak. My posts, when you know, certain types
of posts, we're getting tons of engagement, and we were
able to identify that other types weren't. And you know,
(14:29):
kind of great data because for our third kind of partner,
the posts that he was getting great engagement on were
the same posts, same types of posts that I.
Speaker 7 (14:40):
Was getting no engagement on, right, And so we've.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Been able to identify that, like, hey, for me, the
posts about you know, wins and kind of like humble
brags were the ones that were getting real engagement and
the ones where I was trying to you know, be
more of you know, uh, you know, add value content, right,
they were getting nothing for engagement. But when Todd posts
(15:03):
you know, the sort of value add you know, you know,
conversational inducing posts, he's getting tons of engagement on those,
and then when he posts about like a win or something,
he was getting no engagement. So it's just really interesting
and we've been able to identify that, you know, certain
post work for my profiles, certain post work for his,
and then certain post work for mics. And that's been
(15:25):
a really valuable piece of this because obviously LinkedIn is
is just such a huge source of ab M for us,
right and trying to engage with new new prospects and clients.
And so that's something that I would say is a
derivative of our ab M campaign that really has helped us,
you know, get laser focused on the type of content
(15:45):
that we're pushing out individually within our team.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
This is very interesting, very interesting. I haven't heard that before.
Speaker 7 (15:54):
I just say, yeah, it's funny. You know, we did.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
We have a you know, content director that does a
lot of that posting, you know, you know, on my account,
and we work together and she does the same thing
with with Todd and she was you know, very ingrained
in the ABM campaign as well, even though she's more
behind the scenes team member, and it was it was
really interesting to see how, you know, how the different
(16:21):
posts got different levels of engagement and and you know,
I see someone Sally making a comment there, but it
really does it. It's you know, the authenticity I think
is reflective of your personality and those who know you
within the professional world. And you know, just turns out
that my people are way more interested in the stuff
(16:41):
we're up to, and you know, Todd's people are way
more interested and you know, the the nitty gritty industry insight.
So it's just an interesting juxtaposition that you know, again
we've been able to now identify and we're going to
really focus on having those specific types of posts for
each of us to again just really ramp up engagement,
(17:01):
and you know, we've kind of found what works and
what doesn't.
Speaker 8 (17:04):
Soon as be awesome.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
I just like to point to everybody, like, you're active
in a very specific niche. So you're going after developers
of new projects, right, that's already a niche. And by
the way, you're active in Boston, so developers are not
the people that you would normally expect to be active
on LinkedIn. And then you're not like internationally or even
(17:28):
nationally in your case.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
Right active really quasi regional.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, we're quasi regional right now, and you know, obviously
we have problecasts.
Speaker 9 (17:36):
It is very local. Thing is working for you.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
So I just wanted to make share this with everybody
because a lot of people are saying, you know, you know,
but my buyers are not acting on LinkedIn, which totally
could be the case, and LinkedIn is not the only
place where you should be looking at and I know
that you're doing many other things than just the LinkedIn.
Speaker 9 (17:56):
You have also your local networks and events and all
the other stuff. But still it is in some cases
when you're in a niche and maybe you think that
they won't be active, et cetera, it's actually could be
an opportunity because there's nobody else almost who is doing
that in your niche, I assume, right, So that makes
(18:20):
you stand out immediately that that was just a side comment.
I would like to also hear from roughs on you
from your perspective.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Excuse me, what are kind of the main responsibilities and
activities you see sales should be doing with the AVA.
Speaker 6 (18:35):
Yeah, I actually agree with lots of the things that
have been said already by seven PT. I think India,
I wasn't. I wasn't super involved on not doing in
the operational day to day. It's one of the team here.
But it's clear that of course the sales team needs
to put in the work in in building that audience,
in engaging with with your buyers, with the community, and
(18:57):
being thoughtful in the way they do this, and we
really seeing the positive outcomes of it. Then anecdotes. We
had a conference at the what A Conference like not
not not. Something that we organized was a conference where
our CEO visited and and people in that audience were
really talking about that we had a superstar in the
(19:19):
team who knows so much about about customs and he
was putting great content while he's actually quite a new
joiner in the team, and and so it's it's very
great to see that that it's really spreading within the community.
And I think also I think it's very interesting what
pet was saying. I think one of the tasks that
I think sales has to towards marketing as well is
(19:42):
coming up with with sort of content ideas, understanding what
your community needs and feeding that back to marketing so
that they are able to create relevant posts. And I
think it's very interesting to see so far we have
seen that most posts that work for me also work
for other people in the team. I think as and
next step, we could be looking to diversify and let
(20:02):
our CEO, for example, post different things because he has
a completely different network than we have, which is way
more business focused.
Speaker 8 (20:09):
But it's also our target.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Audience while we maybe have a bigger audience with the
more technical people.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
So they wanted that Eddigrity.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
So I think it's an interesting next step to take
in when we're further developing our ADM strategy.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
I love for learning from each other already and your
point about feeding back the information to marketing. We actually
had Sam's colleague from marketing who is a content marketer
in certain she needed a live podcast with us sharing
her experience and for her it was very new and
(20:44):
very different way of working and creating content. And the
one thing she repeatedly mentioned was how a that constant
interaction week to week with you and getting that feedback
from you, and also like moving from kind of a
long planned, long term planned content calendar to being more
(21:07):
flexible to understanding with what are the accounts that are
engaging right now in the pipeline and how can how
could we adjust our content so that you can basically
use it this week on the on the accounts that
you have. So this back and forth between marketing and sales,
even on the level of content, I found that interesting
(21:29):
invention that actually I'll say call.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
It I think if I can, if I can add
one thing to that, I think we're in a very
regulatory space, so lots of things are regulated and it's technical,
so of course if if you have a new feature
or something, it's it's quite obvious that marketing will will
start drafting opposed almost technical things, while we as a
sales team, of course here on a day to day
(21:52):
from our potential clients or clients real business problems that
we can solve. So you also change a bit the
way you the tonal voice and what you speak about
really about business value and things actual challenges that your
audience is facing, rather than to be on the surface
level on the feature side of things.
Speaker 8 (22:10):
So I think it's a it's a very good alignment
to have.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
I think, and Andre you did you call this out
like litmus tests for good content? Is will you your
sales people actually be happy to share that on their profile?
They're not happy to share that on a profile. Maybe
you're missing the mark.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yeah, absolutely, It's just literally sounds like, will you the
P of sales send this piece of content to the
key account?
Speaker 5 (22:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Because now the P of sales will ever send piece
of content that will kind of position himself herself as
an amateur in ice of the prospect, right, That's that's
the key. So you all guys mentioned that first of all,
the way how sales I engagement with the target accounts
(23:04):
is different inside count based marketing programs, right and rough
you had an experience you said that you are not
active part which is I mean depends on how we
look at it, because you are the main subject matter
expert and you're doing the kind of let's say, key
key engagement activities, but at the same time you managed SDR.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
So in this case, we didn't have typical program set
up because usually we have in the pilot either account
executive or SDR.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
In this case we had both account executives and SDRs. Right.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
So I would love to combine two things or basically
two questions and ask you, guys with the high insight
of running on these ABM programs, what would you say
is the bare minimum that sales should allocate to ABM
in percentage or whatever? And the second follow up, lots
(24:02):
of marketers that I know struggle to explain these activities
to the p of sales and get buy in for
that necessary percentage of time. So how would you say, like,
let's say, what is the better minimum time that should
be allocated and how to justify this to the sales
leadership to get that dedicated sales rep let's start with you, Sam.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, in terms of like a minimum time, I would
say as a minimum like an an hour a day,
so like five hours a week at a minimum, And
I think that is like a fairy like story important.
And then it progresses through like the program and how
you feel comfortable and actually at some point maybe you
even become more efficient during it because you like learn
different terms of strategies. But I think, like five hours minimum,
(24:51):
I'm during the week to truly get things out of
it in terms of like the buy and like. So
in my case, I also trying to get buying from
my VP, and a big thing is like this is
part of my job already, So this is a different
facet of outreach and it's just really practical to do
so since no one else on the team was doing
that type of outreach and creating new types of content
(25:13):
with the help of our marketing team, so it was
actually kind of a win win for everyone because I'm
still doing outreach, I'm reaching out to new people and
it's actually more it's more focused with that. And then
I had that specific time block for just an ABM set,
which I think helped you with the buying. And then
you could see specifically what was happening from.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
It, thank him at what you say?
Speaker 7 (25:35):
Sorry and I wanted to mute theirself with no background noise.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
For for you guys, yeah, I mean I would say
it's probably really dependent on your industry, right. I mean,
for me, it's a huge part of my day to day,
you know, prospecting. I would say, I'm on average allocating
a couple hours a day strictly to you know, the
ab M campaign and then hopefully, you know, getting the
(26:02):
results that I want, which leads to meetings with people
via via the campaign. Right, So I would say day
to day it's probably twenty five percent.
Speaker 7 (26:12):
Of my time.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
And from the buying perspective, so let's say, if marketing
would come again to you, what can get your buy
into justify this twenty percent or twenty five percent of
time for the sales rep?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Well, I mean I think what for us anyways, what
could justify it is the results we've had, right, I mean,
you know, we've we've landed a bunch of new accounts
through the ABM campaign, and you know we've got a
lot of traction on other accounts. So you know, I
think at least for us, you know, this is something
that we've really only been implementing the past few quarters
(26:54):
that you know, it's very clear that it's working and
that it should be the focal point of of you
know what our sales reps, which right now is really
just myself and you.
Speaker 7 (27:05):
Know, one other one other team member.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And you know, again, I think it's probably somewhelar to
twenty twenty five percent range of time. And to me,
that's totally appropriate based on, you know, the results we've had,
So it's easy to justify to.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
Anyone you know, that that's where we should be focused.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And I'm just wondering what if let's say, what if
you don't if you didn't start the pilot right So,
let's say an ABM lead or marketing director comes to
you and says, hey, we want to do ABM with you.
We have kind of an idea of how that will
help us to generate pipeline, and we'll need like, let's say,
(27:46):
a sales rep dedicate dedicated twenty five percent of here's
ahead time the ABM program. What's what arguments would.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
You like to see that could persuade you?
Speaker 7 (28:01):
I'm sorry it was the last part.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
What arguments what arguments would per se you to give
let's say, twenty five percent of your time to a
b M.
Speaker 7 (28:10):
Yeah, I mean, at least for for me, it was
you know, I really wasn't an argument.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
I mean I think it was a pretty it was
pretty easy to see again why that amount of time
is justified based on, you know, the immediacy of the
results we were getting during the pilot and you know
since then, it's just enabled again a level of focus
(28:39):
and you know, narrowing scope for for me to you know,
continue to utilize it, you know, through the fourth quarter
and through what's you know, the first quarter is pretty much.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Over here as well.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
So I mean again I don't think there was that
much persuasion needed, and certainly did that see change and
the results of you know, revenue general ration in Q
four and Q one, that's kind of all the persuasion
I need to keep being motivated to allocate that amount
of time to it.
Speaker 8 (29:09):
A fact.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Thank you, Rafe, you actually involved SDR. Right, So how
what what what's your experience? What what do you say
is the better minimum?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
SDR?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Who became a famous superstar in the custom segment? What's
what's the let's say better minimum sdr shots.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Give to a b M and how how to justify it?
Speaker 6 (29:33):
Yeah, indeed, I think I need to shine a light
on my colleague who did indeed most of the work.
I tried to back it up, but it's not always feasible.
I think in the beginning it was a lot of
his time. In the very beginning, it's still finding your
your footing, how does the cadence work? What are the
jobs that you need to do, and how do you
(29:54):
doing with all your other work combined? But I think
in the end I think you needed was a sort
of one hour and a half two hours a day.
I think I think sort of makes is the time
he used and you compliment you to that. Of course
he did some other outbound work. Yeah, I think that
(30:16):
a half to two hours a day is I think
a good starting point, especially when you know the drill,
you know what to do, you know how it works.
Speaker 8 (30:24):
Then it should be should be enough, I think.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And the father is just again the last question. Let's
say you don't have any metrics, you don't have any result,
and let's say your market and Calleigue comes to you
and says, hey, I want to do this with you.
But I need a sales rep who would be doing
these activities for two hours a day. What's will kind
(30:47):
of change your mind or what will persuade you to
approve it?
Speaker 6 (30:52):
Yeah, I find a littul question as well, because again
didn't also didn't really need the persuasion To be honest,
I think it's the career. If you have a lack
of pipeline and the things that you're doing are soto
working or not completely working, you need to open your
mind and try new things. And I think this concept
look good for me. It's bringing value to your buying,
(31:15):
to your target audience, which in our space, there's not
many companies doing this, so you're you're you're different than
the rest.
Speaker 8 (31:23):
For me, that's a bit, that's a bit what you're
trying to get at.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
If everybody's sending out automated sequences, nobody will like it,
So try to do something different and the other people
do to target to get their attention and to bring value.
So if you don't have any metrics, I think you
need to do something else or you will not get
any business. So that's basically I think enough persuasion that
you need, and I think as an extension to that
it's of course critical that you also report back internally
(31:49):
in the organization with with the wins that you're having,
and if it's not yet a meeting that you need
to look into, what are the other things that you
can report on. Are there sort of signs developing that
it is at working, that you're reaching more people than
you were before, and if those are there, then monitor
them closely and see if anything comes out and then
be agile enough to change if not.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
I think you bring up bring up to actually the
question that we wanted to ask next. So what's very
clear from a sales perspective, you'll have a clear idea
about what's valuable it deals. It's sales obviously quotas right
that you're hitting. But you also mentioned, okay, you know what,
(32:34):
we have long sales cycles. I know that PT you
have sales cycles two sometimes even three years. But even
like sand Rough you have long sales cycles as well.
And you know that, you know, if you're running a
pilot for a quarter, you can't really expect and you
have sales cycles of at least six months and then more,
(32:57):
you can't really expect to see immediately any results. And
you bring up a really good point draft, What are
those metrics kind of intermediate metrics that you think people
should be tracking and sharing, Like you said the wins
that maybe you did collect, track, share or you believe
(33:20):
others should do as well. So maybe you mentioned yourself,
So what are some of these metrics that you consider
valuable as kind of an early signal.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
Yeah, I think from a point of view, we didn't
want to overcomplicate it. We didn't want to track too
many metrics because then it becomes just a bit noise.
So we want to focus as well, what are we
tracking And of course the obvious thing is the meetings
and calls that your book and whatever and the as
come out of there. But in the beginning what we saw,
(33:53):
I think you guys helped us as well to see
this is like what is your status quo? How well
is your outbound working in the different channels that you're doing,
and then.
Speaker 8 (34:02):
Sort of track like how is that changing?
Speaker 6 (34:04):
And from a LinkedIn point of view, it was very
obvious that our SDR was not having that much of
success with reaching out on LinkedIn, and quickly we saw
people that started to react, so we were checking that
from a qualitive point of view, but also from a
qualitive point of qualitative point of view, we had accounts
that never replied to anything and then started to reply
(34:27):
to what we were doing. So it was very quickly
that you could see, Okay, there are good signs. I
think there was one or two weeks where we were like, Okay,
in the very early stages, we're not really seeing any
engagement here, but then quickly started to take off. So
we were really just tracking the amount of positive engagements
that we were having on LinkedIn the impressions on our
posts compartedive before and the engagements on the post that
(34:49):
we were doing, and the level also the quality of
the engagement. Not just are people saying, oh, nice posts
and liking it, but also are we seeing the people
that we are targeting in enterprise companies, key decision makers,
are they really engaging with our posts and really not
over complicated with too many metrics that keeping it simple.
And I think the final thing that we did and
(35:11):
probably the others of you did as well, is sort
of tracking those different pipelines from from the clustter icp
to active focus and see how it progresses and sort
of builds. Is that the compounding effect of course, if
you're building the audience and you're getting more and more
people to engage.
Speaker 8 (35:30):
But yeah, those three are basically I.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Would say, Okay, so you're a believer, and you were
the believer, right, and you were tracking these metrics, so
I'm super super cool that you also realize the value
of that. But Anna, I think she asked a good
question very very much related to that. Okay, so you
were tracking even engagement and the views of the posts,
(35:54):
et cetera. But at what point do you believe sales
management would start to see the value of the program?
And I know you're still at a kind of in
the middle of the pilot, but what would be our
thoughts on this question?
Speaker 8 (36:12):
Uh?
Speaker 6 (36:13):
I think for us it was rather quickly because we
just were booking meetings with with companies that we wanted
to book meetings with, and we have indeed sales cycle,
which sales cycles we can take up to two years, uh,
and and and and even then after a month month,
we already had some meetings booked, which was a great result.
And on top of that, you were really seeing the
(36:34):
quality of the of the collaboration that we had with
some accounts whould never re apply to any of our
patchurees before and suddenly we're very open to speak. So
I think that the hypothesis that we had coming into
this was that we are we are in a and
we have an audience which is underserved in terms of
quality content. Uh and quickly sorted showing itself. So I
(36:58):
don't know if there was a clear point. There was
a combination show of actual meetings of course that always helps,
but together also that the engagement was not just a
vanity metric. It was clearly that it was quality engagement
for quality accounts. And to back that up the quality
with sort of the impressions and so on in engagement
I think really.
Speaker 8 (37:18):
Helped to drive our point home. I think I love it.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
So it was also like the combination of setting the
right expectations from the start and then being able to show, hey,
you know how we talked about this, this is actually
what's happening. And by the way, it helps of course
if you start booking meetings with us, any other metrics
I mean, sam or pt that you wanted to add.
I don't want to put you every time on the
(37:41):
spot if you wanted to add something.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, I mean we looked at you know, obviously meetings.
Like rap said, but what we call qualified oper how
many qualified opportunities do we create?
Speaker 7 (37:55):
Right? So, okay, we we.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Reached out the company X, we got engagement, we got
a discovery call. Is there a real opportunity there?
Speaker 7 (38:06):
Right? You know, a specific building that we have.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
An opportunity to get involved with, whether it was on
the management side or the leasing side or the sales side.
And so that qualified ops was really the next metric
that would come from meetings that we tracked. And again
because similarly to these guys, we have a longer sales cycle,
doesn't necessarily mean we're going to close a qualified opportunity within.
Speaker 7 (38:33):
You know, a week or something like that. But you know,
we were.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Lucky enough where we did get some some things that
closed within the quarter and then some things that spilled
into Q one that have closed, some things that are
going to continue that we thought were high intent for
Q one, but now they're spilling into Q two and
even Q three as far as when we think we
can close them. But that number of qualified opportunities was
a key metric for us to keep an eye on. Obviously,
(39:00):
it's just you know, again the law of averages slash
you know, you got to execute.
Speaker 7 (39:04):
On your sales program.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
But the more of those you have, the more you're
going to end up closing in, the more revenue that's
going to come in. So that metrics really a big
one on our end.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
And Sam with you onboarding, the onboarding or working with
new colleagues from the sales team, helping show to the
leadership but also maybe to the other sales colleagues that hey,
you know, this action makes sense, it's working. What are
maybe some of the early signals or other kinds of
(39:39):
metrics that you are focused on or communicating to the colleagues.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I think outside of what you like wrapping PT said,
I think something for us that was interesting is we
do background checks like globally, so there's like always gonna
be people looking for background checks, but it's not often
over again, like the bigger companies, like the household names
that you want to see that we wanted to see
and we're targeting. So I found it like pretty quickly, honestly,
(40:05):
and still now we noticed like bigger companies have been
coming to the website and engaging and sometimes even like
putting in like links and maybe they're not reaching out
directly to me, but they've seen enough stuff for myself
or even our company page that it's actually brought them
to the website and they've never been there before, and
they're taking more actions or downloads, and they're getting warmer
and warmer into our funnel and having other people and
(40:28):
our team reach out. And I think that's what our
management saw. They're like, oh, this is like this company
and we've never seen this company ever reached out to
us in the past, where we'ven like have any engagement.
So little things like that that were like, hey, this
is like a direct meeting right away. But things of
like bubbling to the surface to even getting into our
funnel in general were huge for sure.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
And I remember like for you, it was also like
like going up market, but also coming into the US
from the home marketing Canada, right, so, which previously it's
just like proven very difficult obviously for anyone. Yeah, and
so now being able to suddenly see those exact icps
(41:11):
from the US that you were able to start engaging
was a big deal as well, right That helped.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, huge, huge, Like in Canada, it's like we're a
household name bed in the US, there's so many major
players and for us, we just need to get our
brand awareness out there and it's helped like a tenfold
because so many people are like reaching out in different
areas or oh, how do you because I always asked
how did you hear about us? Or I was get
our team to ask how people heard about us, and
a lot of times they said, oh, I think I
(41:38):
saw something on LinkedIn now, which was never the case before,
Like that would never have been a comment. So like
they're at least engaging, maybe not directly with a post
that we sent, but long term, it's just like suddenly
in their head, oh yeah.
Speaker 8 (41:51):
I remember this.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Comping do just that, and it's little things that also
help accumulate over time too.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Basically all your applies lead me to the next question.
And also I saw a lot of asked it, so
I will just pull it in. What type of account
insights would be helpful for marketing to provide you on
ongoing basis?
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Sorry?
Speaker 3 (42:16):
And generally what kind of help the same or basically
what kind of help is expected from marketing?
Speaker 4 (42:24):
So let's start west rough.
Speaker 6 (42:27):
Yeah, I think again, I was I was a bit
less involved in the in the operational side of things,
But I think, uh, I think it's just important that
that you align, of course very well with marketing from
the get go and what type.
Speaker 8 (42:39):
Of insights you need.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
You need to be very aligned on what profiles that
we want to target, on what information we expect to
have in our accounts. So I think it's it's mostly
on alignment, but I don't think it's anything specific I
would like to add.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Here, okay, and from there, let's say market and support perspective,
whether saying kind of key activities how market and can
can support for us.
Speaker 6 (43:08):
It was mainly, of course, focused on on the content
creation part.
Speaker 8 (43:12):
Of the things.
Speaker 6 (43:12):
It really really helped because I think, for example, I
was I was convinced of social setting already for a
long time, but I struggled to start to start with
it myself, to go up with a good tone of
voice with the content itself. It's it's always something that
went on the back burner rather than to really do it.
And I think working together with marketing helped us massively
(43:34):
to start building a content library with with good quality content,
be more flexible on it, and helped everybody to to
join in doing what we are doing in helping helping
us put.
Speaker 8 (43:47):
Out the right content.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Awesome than petty what's what do you say?
Speaker 3 (43:51):
What kind of insights and help from market and they expect.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, So marketing took a real active role in our
I mean, I think to a rafts appoint I mean,
content right is huge. So they would help with everything
from you know, helping with the framework on posts.
Speaker 7 (44:11):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
One other thing I didn't mention earlier, which I think
was important is when you asked about different metrics. We
had specific LinkedIn metrics in our in our A b
M program. So you know, how many new connections and
how many connection requests per day did you send out,
how many comments value add comments did you make each day?
How many new accounts did you find you know in
sales Navigator each day. So that was just a sidebar,
(44:33):
but I think it was important to mention back to marketing,
you know, creating one sheeters that we could send out
as follow up you know, once we did make a
connection and you know, again whether that was content that
we thought would add value to our prospects or just
you know, content touting you know, our track record to
(44:56):
to try to you know again entice more engagement from
those from the A prospects. So you know, marketing worked
very hard and still is on a day to day
basis with our ab M campaign and you know, even
revamping parts of our of our website you know, to
to you know, have case studies readily available and creating
case studies that we could send out two different prospects
(45:19):
too that you know, correlated to what they had going on.
So you know, again, I think that the overall message
here and obviously Sam and Roth being very successful as
well as you really need to integrate marketing with your
sales efforts and it just is an engine that can
really drive, you know, help help help accelerate results.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Thank you, Sam, What what do you add?
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, that, like I had a huge out from our
marketing team. On the content side, We're lucky to have
tons of really useful, insightful blog posts and on our side,
our content persons is really good at like staging like
the pulse of like current state of events, and like
creating and repurposing like some of this content for us.
So that was huge just like make it easy for
(46:06):
us to pose something in our own words, like provide
like the kind of content and then we can put
it in our own words to like say like this
is obviously this is how I would speak towards something
about that I think that was really huge. And then
also talking about like similar topics or hot topics about
the industry at the time. We're really good to roll
on and we'll continue to roll on those. And then
(46:27):
also just like providing some of the step on the
CRM just to make it easy for people to like
actually attack.
Speaker 8 (46:33):
Some of it.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Was also something more marketing can help a lot to
you and.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
And before we'll move to the last question, we still
have a lot of people with us on stand online.
Let us know, guys, how did you like the sign itself?
And they found there, but let us know in the chat.
We'd love to see your feedback. How was the how
was your experience? Why did you learn? Shows us experience
And let's move to the last question.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
What all right, Let's say somebody considering implementing ABM, and
you kind of want to warn them against maybe some mistakes,
maybe some lessons learned, or some mistakes to avoid that.
I'm not saying that you made or experience, but maybe
(47:26):
I have seen in other teams or anticipated people could
be making, especially from sales perspective, what do you believe
maybe are kind of a number one mistake to watch
out or a pitfall to watch out for when executing
within an ABM framework. Anybody wants to share.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, I'll share. I mean I think ultimately you need
to know, you need to trust yourself and your instinct,
you know what works for your business. And you know, again,
all businesses are different, and each individual salesperson is different
in their approach and their.
Speaker 7 (48:09):
You know, just kind of the way they interact with
other people.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And so not to compromise authenticity by trying to you know,
automate too much for lack of a better term, and
then also not to be afraid to challenge and or
tweak a suggestion, right Like you know, STAFFO had been
used to working, you know, in a lot of other industries,
(48:34):
and stuff that may work in those industries just wasn't
going to work for us. And you know, again, we
had really good collaborative conversations where we said, Okay, look,
I get what you're saying in concept that's not.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
Going to work for our audience, but this may.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
And so we're going to take that concept and we're
going to tweak it to something that's going to be effective.
Speaker 7 (48:55):
For our industry. And I think that that's really important.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
And you know, yes, you're teaming up and you're getting help,
and you're getting an awesome platform and framework to to
learn and to implement and go execute to increase your sales.
But don't lose sight of the fact that at the
end of the day, you know your business better than anybody.
And make sure that you know again you're you're not
just blindly following a blueprint that components of which just
(49:23):
may not work for your business or just need to
be done differently for your business.
Speaker 5 (49:27):
Awesome, thank you. It makes a lot of sense. Sam,
you have any thoughts, Yeah, I would just add onto it,
he said.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
It's just like, yeah, there's just understand the nuance in
your business and like knowing that some things are aren't
gonna hit or land as well, and just be cautious
of those types of things and just like double down
on like what you are seeing that is working and
also maybe what you're not seeing a lot of on
LinkedIn that you'd like to see it sometimes things like
that too.
Speaker 8 (49:54):
But that's it.
Speaker 10 (49:57):
Awesome rough, Yeah, I agree with the other two guys
are saying as well, it's indeed really doubling down on
what's working, and don't be afraid to try things out
and if it don't work, fine, and I really know
your business and do what works for you.
Speaker 8 (50:13):
I think from our point of view as well, I think.
Speaker 6 (50:17):
The team who was responsible for the ABM was was
aligned on what to expect and what needed to be done.
But I think in the beginning we could have done
a better job to make sure that the reporting that
we do internally to sales management and the rest of
the aes could have been a bit better, I think
from the get go, because of course it takes a
bit of time to ramp up, and since our reporting
(50:38):
wasn't too clear in the very beginning, it's sort of
kept this kept this is in a bit too long
while it was actually not needed. So I think to
make sure that you really align on what metrics that
are important for your business and on what you want
to report, and start from the beginning to feed that
back into the organization so everybody is feeling the positive
energy that you are feeling from the program.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
That said thank you so much, I appreciate it. I
think it was all of you provided pre lant replies.
Thank you so much guys for coming and sharing sales
perspective about account based marketing. I feel it has often missed,
where as marketers quite often just stay in our marketing bubble,
(51:22):
not looking outside what's happening on the sales.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
And I can reflect a lot on this because.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
I have spent my first five years of my career
in sales and then switched to market and so kind
of know how the things are looking at two sites.
So I appreciate, appreciate all of your takeaways and also
appreciate your feedback. Guys, everybody who has attended our assigned
thanks a lot for the questions, thanks a lot for
(51:52):
the fantastic engagement and for the feedback.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
We appreciate it and happy to hear that you enjoyed
it a lot.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Thank you so much everybody, and hopefully we'll be able
to arrange this event in person and invite all of you.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
Take care very much, have a good day.
Speaker 8 (52:10):
Thanks, thank you,
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