Episode 164: How to Use Signals in ABM: From Cold Outreach to Real Engagement with Andrei & Vladimir

Most ABM programs rely on 3rd party intent data and personalized outreach—but if your buyers don’t know you, no amount of personalization will move the needle.

In this episode of Full-Funnel Live, Vlad and Andrei break down what top ABM programs get right:

•⁠ ⁠Why 1st party signals are the real ABM gold—and how to generate them
•⁠ ⁠How to build a sequence of value-added activities that move target accounts from cold to connected
•⁠ ⁠What high-performing ABM programs actually do: from LinkedIn “account love letters” to expert roundups and content hubs
•⁠ ⁠The mix of 1:Many, 1:Few, and fully personalized content that keeps you top of mind with buying committees
•⁠ ⁠Why 3rd party data is only as valuable as your existing account engagement

You’ll walk away with actionable strategies for creating holistic account awareness, driving account penetration, and generating 1st party insights that make your touchpoints impossible to ignore.


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/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel B t B Marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io. Let's start.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey everyone, and welcome to the new episode a Full
Final Life. While we are waiting for my co host
and my co founder of what, I would love to
share briefly with you, what's another agenda for today? As
we promised, we're going to talk about using signals in

(00:35):
account based marketing programs, sharing different examples of how to
leverage these signals properly. And to set up the agenda,
we want to kind of logically move you from what
types of signals we need to track to how to
leverage them. So a couple of things that we would

(00:57):
love to cover. First of all, why you should prioritize
first party of signals over short party of signals Because
there's a huge obsession we have seen about sort party
of signals and I know there are a couple of
tools that you can basically segment either to sales tack

(01:18):
or marketing tack that promise teams to get access to
more than one hundred different signals, right, but obviously short
party of signals, why it's not the best investment for
your team if you don't have first party of signals.
Then we're going to talk about value added activities that

(01:45):
are aligned with the type of the signal and the
level of intent that signal demonstrates, right, because the most
common mistake here is treated every signal as the buying intent,
which is absolutely not true. And lastly, uh why short
part of the data is only as valuable as your

(02:06):
existing account engagement. That being said, I'm again broadcasting from
sunny Spain. Let me know, guys where you all join
us from in the chat. I saw Alan Adrian Barry
create a CEO again. Thanks a lot for jinin us.

(02:26):
Hopefully you have a good weather in the UK and
let us back type type guys where all join us
from and we can pick it off as always. Feel
free to ask your questions in the chat or better
in the Q and A section. Make sure that we're

(02:48):
going to cover all of them. Martin, Hello, whatever you prefer.
Derek Nashville, good good, Well, you're behind the scenes. Just
made the quick intro about the session, and I think
we can immediately move to the part where we're going
to discuss the difference between first parts of signals and

(03:10):
start of signals and also why first part of signals
are way more important than.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
The short point signals.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
I will share my screen and then we basically can
have a discussion around it. Let me know, guys, if
you can see If you can see my screen, I.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Will try to pull in the image.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Let me know in the chat if you can see
the screen please uh. I think the first difference here
is that the first part of signals are the signals
that are coming from the director, game target accounts.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
This would be the website and conversations your sales team
is having with the when commun members. This could be whatever,
not the tactic that's kind of got a bad light
in the marketing space with download and the gated content,

(04:10):
which is not always a bad idea. What is actually
what is rotten about this is the further processes. But anyhow,
content download events, sign ups, sign ups for your new sweat,
engagement with the content, uh, engagement with the content that
you publish on social platforms, engagement with the ads right

(04:33):
everywhere where you can see the direct engagement from target
accouncile from the buying committee members is actually the first
party signals and on contrary, a lot maybe you can
share the difference sorry, I will need to pick up
another screenshot. What's the difference was the sub patch of signals.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Absolutely, So essentially, when you look at the first party
signals is engagement between your brand. Third party signals is
information that you get from other sources, whether that's signal
providers such as Bmbora, demand Base and others will tell

(05:18):
you things about you know, search intent, things like excuse me,
search intent. So what are the buyers from the target
accounts currently searching searching for if they're searching for let's
say you're selling some sort of Let's say you're selling
a b M software and your buyers are searching for

(05:42):
ABM software for example. So that's a relevant keybord that
you're monitoring, and there is suddenly a search in this
searching behavior in the buyer searching for that keyword. Well,
that is a third party signal, a classical one where
you will see the most information about. However, obviously, using

(06:06):
pure account research, using public information or some industry websites
and industry databases, you can get additional information from company
news about and will share more examples. But you know,
some investments they're making, maybe mergers, acquisitions, whatever, will share

(06:28):
more examples. Maybe this is a relevant signal for you.
So very frequently, if you're sending some sort of HR software,
for example, that could be a good signal for you.
If they're hiring, but even again selling ABM software. They're
hiring ABM let's say manager ABM leader. While that could

(06:48):
also be a signal for you, changes in management could
be another signal. We'll share more examples below, but essentially,
let's say again somebody has joined the function as a
new ABM lead let's say three months ago. Well, that
could be a signal if we know that usually a

(07:12):
new leader is going to review their tech stack as
one of the things that they will do. Right, So
then it becomes interesting to know that money raised. Checking
their annual reports where they announced maybe initiatives where you
can see financial information, new projects that they're investing in.

(07:38):
Sometimes they will announce that new projects that I want
or new let's say initiatives. Again, let's take an example,
I'm selling to manufacturing companies. They are opening a new
site manufacturing site. Well, okay, that could be an interesting
signal and also very important is also just interviews of

(08:00):
the buyers or their executives where they are sharing some
information about the plan's priorities, challenges, et cetera. Now, I
just wanted to take a step back from going into
these examples that I shared here of the third party
signals and kind of like, just like, what is the
difference between the first and the third party signals? Why

(08:21):
should we care? And by the way, we didn't mention this,
But there are also second party signals, which is to say,
companies such as for example, G two will offer you
so G two is the directory of the different solutions,
and they also sell inten data. So why is that

(08:43):
quote unquote second party is just to say that, okay,
you might have your own listing on G two, and
you know, you might get signals about accounts visiting your listing,
visiting competitors, listing, et cetera, et cetera, just to give
you a full picture. So first party, second party, and

(09:04):
third party. What is the problem with only looking at
the third party signals, which is what a lot of
companies will do. The problem is that these third party signals,
usually this information is available to everyone. Well, first of all, everybody,

(09:25):
all your competitors may be direct competitors, but also other
companies who are selling to the same buyers might be
looking at similar signals, not all the same will use
these signals. And you know, basically anybody who let's say,
has an account of demandais or other providers ABM providers

(09:47):
like that will be looking at those signals and will
be reaching out based on those signals. And unfortunately, the
way that the majority of people will be reaching out
will be, Hey, I saw you raised, can we have
a meeting about out my product? Right? And when the
buyer receives a lot of outreach messages like that, again,

(10:11):
it doesn't really change much from the usual way that
buyers receive outreach. So again many many of the similar
messages and they start to ignore this. Right. And the
first party signals are your own, and they indicate brand
awareness usually and indicate potentially also some interest right and

(10:36):
are unique to you. Right, So your competitors don't have those.
So I think the two key points are your competitors
don't have access to your first party signals, and they
can be stronger because one thing is somebody searching for
some information about your category versus somebody visiting your website

(11:01):
checking out high intent pages, et cetera. It's just they
are already checking you out and considering to include you
whether they will include you in the consideration set, the
signal is much stronger. So that's the overview of the
different levels of signal. Would you like to add something
to that or move on to the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
I would just love to summarize everything and maybe make
a first point on the leverage and first party and
short part signals. Right, if you look realistically then un
sort everthon what we have just discussed means in practical
that short signals could be used as initial account qualification

(11:44):
criteria when you select accounts raised money high and for
specific positions, purchased a specific technology, whatever right that could
be used as initial account qualification. Next, these signals don't
tell you anything about the current stage of the buyer journey.

(12:05):
Alver spoke, there is a false assumption that every signal
means to buy an intent. It's absolutely not true. They
just tell you that this account could be a good
fit for you, right, But it doesn't mean that the
account has an active project that you can basically sell to.
And the second leverage of third parties signals is basically

(12:27):
using them as timely outreach for the connected and engaged accounts. Right,
when you have an existing relationship with these accounts, that
could be that that could be an additional value while
the first party intent demonstrates you're the stronger intent. And
indeed this is these are the signals that you can

(12:49):
use to separate let's say ICP fit accounts to ICP
feed engaged accounts. Right, you define the engagement threshold, which
in natural means that you can call these accounts when
they're aware they know about you, your product, et cetera.

(13:09):
And that means that these companies are likely to engage
with your ABM message and with your ABM playbox. Right,
they are likely to engage with either sales out to
each market and collutter all that you put.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
So this is the key.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Now we mentioned that the signals don't necessarily mean the
buyd intent. Maybe we have a very strong opinion here
because from my perspective, the only way that you find
basically the only blind intent that I know is when
your prospect tells you or send me an invoice please.

(13:48):
This is the only then that I know. But maybe
everybody has difference. Take on this anyhow, jokes aside, If
this signals don't mean the buying intent, what do they mean,
and how can we build the playbox aside from the
already in famous I saw I. Actually, it's so funny

(14:12):
because quite often I see posts about, you know, different
outreach and engagement tactics on linked then, and almost every
script starts starts with I saw. If you'll go to
Clay or other you know, let's say, tools that will
enable you to write kind of semi personalized the mails

(14:35):
based on the collect collected input. You'll see that the
first input AI will give you I saw you, right,
And then we have a kidding about this. I said, okay,
you probably you have pretty good eyes, right if you
spotted this. But jock aside this, this became kind that
this became a ucliche. So everybody literally uses this in

(14:59):
the out each And what's happening right now is like
years ago, we saw the decline in outbound replies and
the performance of like fully automated mass outbound based on
these insights, right, that's I'm not saying that outbound doesn't work,
but let's say generic outbound doesn't work. And what's what's

(15:21):
making it even worse is that this, uh, these buyers
when receiving more and more the same types of messages.
What said, they are likely ignored at all. So in
the second part, basically what we want to discuss has
given you a few examples on how to understand the

(15:44):
level of intent. These signals demonstrate a couple of playbooks
and then how to build a holistic playbook for marketing
and sales.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
So let's switch to that part. I will show maybe the.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Overview or the dashboard was the signals and you can yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
So a problem, a big problem is a lot of
companies is that there exists an account blindness, and that
is to say, there is information about the accounts is
siloed in different systems. It's not integrated. So you may

(16:27):
have let's say your account you mentioned like first party signals,
they have followed the webinar and I've seen cases where
this even just doesn't even come to HubSpot or whatever
marketing system you're using. It just remains in the Zoom
whatever registration database. Obviously you want you want to have

(16:48):
the information next to the account. Very frequently we might have,
like based on how a lot of these tools work,
especially like marketo and hops, et cetera. They will collect
these engagement signals or these activities that your buyers have
engaged with as contact level information and will not bring

(17:10):
it under your account. You definitely want to see all
of that information merged into one view, so like three
hundred and sixty view of the account, if you will right,
so where you are actually able to see all of
this information. Because if you see one piece of information,

(17:34):
let's say there is a search, a searge in ABM,
there's looking for ABM solutions for example. That is one
piece of the puzzle. If you don't know anything else
about that account, you know, you can start making your
assumptions and there are some sort of likely you know,
you know you there is always a chance of making

(17:55):
a wrong assumption there. But if you also know that, okay,
they are there is a search in that search. Oh,
by the way, they are looking to hire somebody, or
they've just recently hired somebody to lead their ABM initiative.
Oh and they're also checking out our let's say ABM
case studies. Now the picture becomes maybe what let's say

(18:18):
this happens to our brand. So we see that a
target account is engaging with us as visited maybe some
of our webinars about ABM, or is reading our case studies.
We know that there is a searge. Maybe they're looking
for ABM software and we have the information and we

(18:42):
have like I said, maybe a new person has joined
to lead the ABM initiative. Now, piecing all these pieces
of information together, now we might start to reason, Hey,
you know what, they definitely want to invest It seems
like they want to invest in ABM them and maybe
they are considering alternatives. Maybe they are considering working with

(19:06):
an agency or consulting company versus investing in software and
doing in house. This could be one way to look
at it. If you only had the information about that
ABM software surgery would have made a different conclusion, right,
So obviously you don't want to miss this information, which
happens in a lot of companies. I remember once I

(19:28):
was working with a client and we were looking at
the target account and this target account was disqualified. But
the reason we looked at them and check them out
was that we saw that a leader CTO was visiting
a webinar about a topic from a competitor. We saw

(19:51):
it on LinkedIn because you can see like who is
visiting their events was registering for the events on the
relevant topics. So this was like one signal, if you will.
Then we checked out that account and we saw two
more signals. Well, first of all, we saw that this
was an account that had a closed lost deal. So

(20:13):
we had a conversation with that account like a year
ago or approximately something like that, maybe less than a
year ago. This conversation went nowhere. They decided to close
to mark that deal as closed lost. So nobody was
looking at that account in other words, like oh, we
know they're not looking. But when you combine that with
the signal of uh, you know that cito visiting webinar,

(20:37):
and then looking also at first party signals such as
you know, visits to the website, which is what we did,
we discovered actually several people from the company were checking
out our product pages. Now, when you combine all these
pieces of information together, you can see that at the
time that we spoke to them, it wasn't the right time,

(20:58):
it was too early in the process. But now there
is like this surge of intent, terms of interest. They're
even checking us so and we actually even have that
previous relationship with somebody in that account. But because of thiscount,
exactly because of this account blindness, we we didn't see all.

(21:18):
I mean, our clients wouldn't see that. We only say
it because we were basically looking and looking at it,
all right, So how do you avoid this blindness? It
can be as simple as you know, depending on whether
you have access to solutions such as demand Base, which
you see here on the screen, where you can create

(21:39):
a really holistic dashboard with different information. Maybe ANDREI because
it's a little bit difficult for me to read, you can.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
I know, I can.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
I can navigate everybody the key points and thanks a
lot for bring on this. We just use demand Base
as an example because they have but this as well
as so it's not sponsored out. Let's put it like this.
So this is the only solution that we saw so
fine the market that gives a holistic overview, because here's

(22:14):
the problem. Most of the signals they are sitting in
different systems on different platforms, right and quite often then
the sales notes, maybe even in the spreadsheets.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Et cetera.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
We try and we're not. Our company is not ideal
here as well. So currently we have them who I
suppose in the chat, who is helping us out trying
to set up the system to capture this from all
different places in our case, we have simplified process of
collecting and aggregating these insights. But again we're a small company.

(22:50):
Right for all companies, but don't have an ambition to
become a unicorn.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
But coming back to all technology companies, obviously there's the
revenue pressure and there are always sales targets and uh.
That means that the teams they must create these holistic dashboards.
If we look at it, what is the most important, right,
So these dashboards should include the basic information I will

(23:16):
try to scroll it. The basic information about the company, right,
and why this company is a good fit. Next, overview
of the former graphics createria. Right, why this company is
even qualified? And this kind of made the third part
of signals like hiring, raising, mine or whatever. Right, the

(23:36):
information that tells you that this account is the perfect feed. Also,
it's good to keep somewhere a note about when these
records were created, right, just to keep the freshness of this. Next,
what's important is to have an overview on the contact level,
because I think sometimes what companies I mean and they
are either tracking signals on account level or on the

(23:59):
person level. But in naturall, what we know when these
signals are happening on the contact level, and especially if
teams are used to use HubSpot for example, they just
mark these contacts as mqls. They're not matching the signals
to the account signals, right, and then the teams A

(24:20):
isn't the whole story?

Speaker 3 (24:22):
What's next?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
The first party intents the website visits right, what pages
they were visiting when they were visiting these pages?

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Right?

Speaker 2 (24:32):
For how long they spend this time, et cetera. Next
in ten keywords, it's optional. I'm not a big fan
of track and this, but that being said, in some
projects we have seen that when companies were searching for
specific keywords, that's meant that these companies are actually in

(24:53):
market and they have kind of an urgent need. So
sometimes it makes sense to track this as well. Companies
use all the relevant information that you need to track,
which means that it helps you to accumulate the knowledge
about the accounts, the technology if that's needed, and then
you have the challenges, trends, etc. You can create multiple

(25:14):
tabs based on what's needed for you.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Ultimately you can potentially replicate that dashboard and has in HubSpot,
and what we personally like to do, we create just
a simple account node which we ask both marketing and
seals to keep regularly updated, right alongside some static fields. Right,
But that's the key. The point is that you need

(25:40):
to set up one unified place where you'll be sourcing
only the most important signals. You don't need to track
all one hundred potential short signals, just define a few
of them that are important for you, and then set
up the systems that will help you to populate it. Yeah,
I know, I'm sorry, that's uh. These are the screenshots

(26:05):
for the tool is demand based. The platform is demand based,
so we just made these screenshots of different players, right,
but in Natchell, this is kind of the long screen
of that you need to scroll. I'm just trying to
show that these are kind of the key pages, the
engagement on the account level page views, right, the engagement
from uh sorry, the band, Committa, structure, top and ten keyboards,

(26:29):
News industry, and then kind of all all of the overviews.
So this is an example maybe of an ideal dashboard
that accumulates ever and but again we're pretty conscious about
that demand Base is an enterprise platform and for many
companies it's hard to get the budget to purchase these platforms, right,

(26:51):
So then you need to make a few workarounds and
based on this dashboard, what I'm sharing is that what
makes sense. So you is just to define the key points,
that the key signals that you want to collect and
define what should be your central basically, what should be
your center of truth right where all these signals are

(27:13):
stored and qualified. That's that's the key. And then yeah,
the demand based market and that you share it and
the chat exactly. So when you have this in the
place and when these insights are constantly updated, then the
teams can make the timely decisions on how to use it, right,
because if you have if you have just a signal

(27:35):
outside of the context, you can miss the market, or
you can reach out to the wrong people, et cetera.
And this is what most companies do at scale, right.
But that's that's going opposite to account based market and needs.
Using the example that has share it now, I think
if yeah, also feel free they have experience with DIF front,

(27:57):
maybe let's quickly pick up that question. Have experience built
a DIFFERNT signal tool called target I think I'm looking
into these days. I mean, we use inside deal front,
we use lead feeder for the intend data. This has
our tool, right, but call target. I have no idea
whether we didn't use it. To be honest, again, I

(28:21):
think that from the technology perspective, the market now is
evolved and you have even like if you look, for example,
at common room, common room promises you to get access
to one hundred plus signals.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
But the question that you need to ask as a team,
do we have capacity to track all of the signals
and engage and create basically value added engagement based on them.
That's the problem a lot of teams. We often see
that a lot of teams are struggling to make sense

(28:57):
of like let's say seven eight signals, to be honest,
and it's a big challenge to combine them and make
a holistic overview. But what was sharing in the example?

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Right? So even streamlining this would be a huge success.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
My best recommendation would be just defined and maybe four
to five core first party signals and then three to
five short party of signals and then start sinking in
terms of systems, what dashboard and whether this let's say
dashboard or source of information should we have?

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Right?

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Should it live in the Google in the spreadsheet?

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Right? Should it live in accounts, corecard, in HubSpot, or
in Salesforce or somewhere else. I think this is the
most critical question that you need to answer as a team.
And then how to make sure that both marketing and
sales are saving the critical insights they are collected. Because
we mentioned already that the most essential first party of

(29:59):
signals are the conversations that selles are having with the
target accounts, and quite often this information is just living
in the heads of sales reps unfortunately. So that's the key.
That's the key. Now, the second part of today's presentation
would be how to make sense of these signals? Right, So,

(30:20):
I think what we can do is just uh share this.
I can probably zoom in so you can.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's the picture I think.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
No, no, no, it's not Yeah, sorry, yeah I can.
It's a picture should be should be good for everybody, right.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Now, you go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
What I just wanted to say is what we would
love to share with you guys is how to make
sense of these signals, and first of all, how to
understand what is the level of intent the signal demonstraights
and what could be the right actions for both marketing
and sales.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
That's that's the key. Sorry, given your mic back, what.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, thank you. So basically, if you look at this
table without looking at the details for the moment, there's
like three things to observers. Like. The first thing is
what Andre mentioned, there is different levels of intent. We
all know that when you have a gated content download
and when you send that MQL to sales, we all

(31:34):
know by now that this doesn't work. So why doesn't
it work? Because there is a mismatch between the level
of intent and your activity and your action your next step, right,
and so in other words, the first thing we need
to do is we need to align the level of
intent with the activity, with the action that we are

(31:55):
taking or asking the buyer to take. So that's what
you see here in the buying intent column, we see
law medium, et cetera. The second thing I'd like you
to observe is that this is actually kind of a
documented playbook. You have specific actions that need to be
taken depending on the signals. So, and I think this

(32:20):
is probably missing ninety percent of companies. Is just a
very simple documented playbook when a happens when somebody downloads
a piece of content, when somebody gets is engaged with
content on social when somebody, let's say, is you know
there is a new management, there's a management change zone.

(32:43):
Now leader is hired, for example, what should happen? So
there is a very useful exercise that you can always
do is look list all these signals, have a meeting
together with sales, go through them and ask yourself what
is the actual demand here? Are they looking for a solution?

(33:04):
Are they just interested in your content and they're interested
to learn? And what is that? Is that like low, medium,
high demand, we don't need to complicate it and then
think about what is appropriate. And the third thing that
stands out here is that you will see two columns
on the right hand side, the marketing actions and sales actions.

(33:26):
So you will see that there is a number of
thing that things that marketing can do versus sales can do,
and they should work in concert. And the only way
this can happen is again if you have obviously you
need to be aligned or the same target accounts and
qualification criteria. You need to have also the shared agreement

(33:49):
of the signals that you're tracking, and basically this kind
of playbook the agreement on who needs to do what,
but also you need to have somebody who is in
charge of tracking those signals. Even if those signals come
into the same even if you have this like ideal dashboard,
somebody still needs to basically go there and say, hey,

(34:12):
we have we are seeing this new signal coming in.
We know that this is what needs to be done,
and so we either have let's say a weekly pipeline
review meetings, which is what we love to have with
our sales and marketing teams when we work within an
n ABM pilot and helping companies implement ab IN programs, but

(34:33):
or in another way basically sharing, hey, this is the signal.
These are the activities that marketing or you know, the
specific person should do, and this is these are the
activities a salesperson too. So let's look at some of
the examples. So I'll share a couple and maybe and
there you can share a couple. So I'll pick one

(34:55):
here at the beginning the second line. It's the first
part arty signal. So let's say somebody has downloaded research, right,
so what we know at this piece of research. So
what we know at this point is that this is
essentially when somebody downloads content that they have demand for
content and the buying intent is low, right, and what

(35:20):
should marketing do in this case? Well, let's first make
sure that this account, the or the person in this
case because it's contact based information, but the account for
this person works at is actually qualified, like do they
meet our target segment creditia ICP criteria? And okay, we

(35:43):
had different podcasts where we zoomed into this criteria. But essentially,
what you want to make sure is that your only
targeting accounts that you have a reasonable chance of winning
retaining over a long time. And the way that you
can track those signals, sorry, the way that you can

(36:05):
research whether they meet those qualification criteria. I think Andrew
mentioned this already earlier today. You can use some of
those third party signals to do that, but essentially you're
checking do they actually fit our ICP criteria? Then what
else can we do? We can actually take our because
remember it's low intent, Our goal is to nurture that

(36:30):
account to basically create opportunities for sales to engage, start
conversations and start profiling that account. So to start nurturing
that account, we can add into our retargeting lists. We
can make sure that they start receiving both let's say

(36:51):
thought leadership content expertise content, but also you know, maybe
a social proof case studies, maybe even some kind of
problem solution kind of product marketing as as well. If
that's what you're running, and maybe you're going to enroll
them in your maybe you have some sort of nurture

(37:13):
sequence that is designed for that specific job role that
you have identified a buyer who is engaged and that
use case. What should the sales do? So basically marketing
what they're doing first helping qualify, second, including in ongoing

(37:34):
nurturing sequences, whether that's through ads and retargeting, whether that's
through email. What should now sales do? Sales is basically
the goal of sales is to start building relationships with
those buyers and start asking them profiling questions. What do
we mean by profiling questions? What we mean is trying

(37:54):
to get that inside information about the challenges, priorities and
needs of that attarget account so that we can basically
basically qualify do they actually have an active need right? Uh?
And what are those challenges and priorities of the target account?
Because only then you can you can really personalize your pitch,

(38:21):
your outreach beyond hey, first name, Hey, role. I saw
that you're in that role, and things silly things like that, Oh,
I saw that you downloaded this piece of content. Can
we have a meeting product anyhow? Again, so we so
we both breathe and breathe air an exactly. So what

(38:46):
should they do? They should enrich the buyer. So basically
they should understand who their buyer is, what the role
is in the target account, who what their KPI is,
our goals are like basically based on the search, they
should also research the account, start understanding are they displaying
some other signals? Can we essentially like find out something

(39:10):
more based on just desk research and starting to understand
what could be starting to maybe hypothesize what could be
the challenges of the target account. They can connect to
the buyer. Now remember we want to align our action

(39:32):
with the level of intent. So in this case, the
downloadle piece of content, well, very aligned action could be hey,
you know so that piece of content? Down that piece
of content? Ask ask them for the feedback about it, right,
and connect and answer feedback. That's much more aligned than pitching.
And then as the conversation starts progressing, they can start

(39:55):
asking the profiling questions. As I said, about challenges about
their priorities, et cetera, and potentially also depending on how
that conversation is going, whether they're finding something in through
their count research or through the conversation. Another example activity

(40:16):
could be to suggest other relevant resources in a case, studies,
content hubs, or potentially even a consultation with an internal
SEM like somebody who has expertise. Let's say of you know,
spoken about Let's say they've downloaded a piece of content

(40:38):
about let's say getting the buying for ABM, and you
reached out to them, you asked them about what they
thought about that piece of content, and maybe you started
a conversation about the topic which was getting the buying. Oh, well,
is this something that you're looking to get a buying
You're started looking to start, say an ABM program, And

(41:00):
let's say they say, yeah, yeah, we are indeed like
considering revamping our ABM program and we need to get
the buying from our whatever VPEL or just a sales
team whatever, and so at that moment, the salesperson could
either share more resources or suggest the consultation with somebody

(41:21):
who has the expertise, somebody who can share with them
how to get the buying, or who can help them
build a business case for the buying, or whatever other
appropriate activity or other appropriate advice there is to get.
So as you can see, like you can actually do
a lot even with the gated content download in this case,
if it's relevant, if it's good quality, and all these

(41:43):
other things. But again it is aligned with that level
of intent. So that was one example. Maybe you can
take another one.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
What I would love to do because I believe while
we was shared and the screen, everybody already could read
the examples here and understand the sense. What I would
love to do is quickly bring the point that Barrier
made and then would love to run one practical example.
So what Barrier said, which is absolutely truth, that what

(42:17):
a lot of companies are doing right, that they use
these different platforms that give you the signals and just
encourage SDRs to run the pitch slap and of just
generic outbound. And the second problem here right, which I
believe is important to mention that with signals is that,
like the challenge with the signals is that forty percent

(42:40):
of companies are doing research and showing signals, you have
eighty five percent end up and no decision. Right, But
I like the way you're dealing with this in your
playbook was sections type to the level of demand and
then ten I think this is this is critical, right,
which means you need to understand the buyer journey and
you need to make sense of all of it with

(43:00):
your sales team. What signal tell you what right and
how can you apply it? That's that's that's the most
critical part. Now, what I would love to do before
we'll move to Q and A, because we have great
questions there. I would love to answer a couple of
things or give you maybe a practical example. Ashland actually

(43:23):
asked a really good question about search intent. Before we'll
answer that question, let me give you a practical example.
So if I hopefully that's okay, it's you that you'll
be kind of we need pick in that example. So
here's here's an insight. Right, well, now that Ashland is

(43:45):
has signed up for this event and attended this event,
right and more important, uh, he has a senior position
and his organization. Also the fact that he asked the
quies means a lot to us, right, we can uh
treat it as the first party signal. That being said,

(44:07):
being fully transparent, we're not we don't have any official relationship,
right and no prior conversations.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
What would we what? What does that signal means to us?

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Does it mean that we should transfer it, for example,
to somebody from our team. Let's pretend the sales team
and ask to pitch acually and fantastic question. Thanks a
lot or more bad much even more better. I saw
you have signed up for full finals for full final life,
and I saw that you asked that question. By the way,
I don't care about your question, but would you like

(44:38):
to have a teen minutes call with us to discuss
how can we help you with AADM? Right in natural
this is what most of teams are doing, and this
is what Butter was saying. But what could be different? Right?
What we mentioned here? I for a look at this playbox, right,
and now I just want to make sense of it.
That's a fantastic opportunity for us to look at his company,

(45:00):
do their count research, understand what might be the current
state of ABM, and then just having one on one
conversation first of all saying thanks a lot for that
for the fantastic question and sends a lot for coming.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
Are you guys.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Currently running an ABM or plan to run it in
Q three Q four for example, right, Because based on this,
then we can prioritize what should be the next steps.
How should we engage with him and his company?

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Right?

Speaker 3 (45:29):
That's the key.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
So without understanding that intent, all the rest is useless.
Now imagine it's just the hypothetical scenario. Because I told
that we don't have a previous relationship. Imagine for a
second that like if we had a holistic dashboard, right,
and that dashboard we saw that a person who worked

(45:54):
for example and ifim correct you in Canada, right, but
some I'm just thinking about our Canadian client. Imagine somebody
from card Data, for example, or from certain joined your company, right,
And when we have somebody in the buying committee while
engaging with you, right, that makes perfect sense to reach
out to our contact in the company and understand what's

(46:16):
happening there before even sending any type of outreach, right,
and making sense of every single using our common connection there,
that's the key. Next, should we look at other engagement
that is happening on the account level. Did anybody from
Ashlan's company sign up for our newsletter for attended our

(46:38):
previous podcasts or webinars. Right, all of these things make
perfect sense and they give the context. But without it,
if we just look only on one or solidly on signal,
we can make bad steps and bad decisions, right, So
that's the key. Just wanted to make sure for taking
you as an example, but hopefully I just wanted to

(47:00):
demonstrate how to make sense of everything. And yeah, looking
forward to the outreach. We're not going to the but
I just wanted to share these examples. Let us know,
please and the chat if that makes sense, and that
explains how to look at the signals and how to

(47:22):
match them to the level of intent, and how to
think about the playbox. Just what provide a fit quick
feedback and we can take some questions from from Oser.
I'm sorry if I'm not pronouncing your name correctly. What
is a good affordable intent signal tool on the market?

(47:45):
And also a similar question from Jamie. There seems to
be so many intent data platforms six sans ofm Info
and rich lead Feeder sixth sense is the analyst favorite,
but lead Feeder seems to be highly recommended. What's the
best way to select an intend vendor platform? So I
would sap my personal take flat and feel free to

(48:07):
elaborate on it. First of all, we'll always recommend to go.
And it doesn't matter if you are selecting and on boarding,
can you tool or you are building a new motion
like account based marketing, you need to go through three
stages pilot, operationalization, and scaling. And whenever you do the pilot,

(48:31):
you need to do it without ramping up your budget
and it should the small scope program. Right. That means
from selecting the new software, you need to start with
something that is budget friendly. Why because if you immediately
overinvest into expensive platform and you don't have robust processes,

(48:53):
you don't have good alignment and cross functional collaboration with sales. Literally,
what you're doing is just you motivate your CFO to
take a gun and stay near your head and ask
you during the upcoming months to justify the investment, and
you are very likely to deal with the problem that

(49:16):
Barry mentioned. Just use all of the signal says the
buying intent and do the outbound outreach because you need
to justify it.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
From that perspective, it means that you need to select
something that is budget friendly. Our personal recommendation and obviously
we're a partner and with deal front or lid Feeder.
We're using them for years and we did a lot
of com marketing events in the UK as well, and
the platform is robust. They're doing a lot of progress

(49:46):
and we might be a little bit by ase, but
they always ask our opinion on how to update the
product and their budget friendly right, So from that perspective,
I would look at them. But that being said, the
most important saying here is first of all, which tool
will fit into your existing processes, Which tool will easily

(50:09):
integrate with your existing technology stack right, which tool you
can basically adopt really fast. This would be the most
important questions that I would prioritize, and only when you
have good processes with budget friendly software, and when you

(50:31):
build these playbooks, because what you see here on the
screenshot that should be executed life, right. All the playbooks
that are mapped out and the Google documents are Google
shots without live execution makes no sense, right, So you
need to execute them life. You need to know how
they work. And only from that perspective it makes sense
to invest into more robust and more sophisticated software that

(50:54):
will give you a holistic overview.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
So hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Just wanted to drop very quick two cents. I think
very important to understand that you can actually run that
pilot program without an existing intent data tool. We have
done it many times and you will understand what the
bottlenecks are in your process, in your system or well,

(51:24):
there are two possible outcomes. Either you will implement it
successfully and you will start to you know, notice that
if you had you know, better source of inten data,
that you could have addressed more accounts or that you know,
you could optimize your process if you invest it in

(51:45):
a tool that you know, merges all that integrates all
that information and brings into one dashboard, which is good,
which is then the next step and it's going to
be easier to justify that investment as well. Or you
will discover a number of bottlenecks that will need to
solve before or and probably it's like a mix of
the tool, right so, and what I mean by that
is maybe it's going to be very difficult for you

(52:06):
to get engagement from sales and regardless of you know,
how the well that accounts a research, regardless of identifying
the data, et cetera, regardless of providing the opportunity, maybe
you will have difficulties in engaging them and having them
actually participate in the program and having effective results from that. Right. So,
and that's just one example. There are many different bottleings.

(52:28):
You know, there are many, many different bottonings. I think
we've probably mentioned a lot of them in our other episodes.
And the other one very practical thing, and I mentioned,
like what you should be looking in the tool is
the data does Because like this, each tool is as
good as the data that it has. And some of

(52:50):
these tools, not all of them, will give you some
sort of free trial or will give you the sample
of the data. And I would definitely go and compare
those because different tools use different data sources which are good,
which might be better in some regions than your region,
or might be better for some industries than the industries

(53:11):
that you serve, or vice versa. Right, So, whenever you
have the opportunity, I would always do that. I would
always compare the data we have, compare data from different providers,
and the differences are huge, and in some cases some
of the data is very hard to believe to be honest.
So do that as part of the due diligence. When

(53:34):
selecting intental for sure. Question.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Yeah, actually the question that I promised Ashland to answer,
and I will just pull two questions. How important the
st aligned and tend keyboards to funnel stages and measure
strengths by keyboard crew by final stage. And the second part,
given that ABM outreach should be tailored and in life

(54:00):
for specific contact personas, is it a good idea to
build your keyword at least by decision maker persona function
of the business. So a couple of things that I
have observed, and I would love to give you the
real example. So imagine if you are selling whatever, let's
say cybersecurity solution to enterprise organizations, and then you see

(54:26):
a visit on your website from a company, let's say
Coca Cola, honestley, and obviously you see the ip that
that's coming whatever, let's say from Coca Cola, United States,
and you can see the specific city, let's say Houston

(54:49):
or maybe, just to complicate it a little bit.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
New York.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Now, how can you identify from whom this serve was done? Right?
That's that's the most complicated issue when building when just
relying on intense search, when you are selling to enterprises.
When you are selling to SMBs, that's not a big problem.

(55:13):
And obviously you can highlight that makes perfect sense to
focus on the let's say keyboards that might belong to
the different final stages. That being said, what I have
seen is when you just rely on you know, proder
keywords and you sell to enterprises, it's almost this this

(55:39):
signal gives you almost zero insights, right because you have
no idea from each department of who from who exactly
this is coming from. So that's that's the first associated problem.
The only thing that how could I use that signal?
I would use this signal as a qualification criteria just
to select the account, but it gives you no idea

(56:02):
if this means the buying intent, etc. And that means
that this would be just the first step to qualify
the account. And then in our categorization, if you didn't
have any engagement with this account, we put it in
a cluster ICP which means that they don't know you
and you have no idea if they're.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
In the market. And from that.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Perspective, you need to install the playbox that will help
you to create awareness inside that account. Right, that's the key. Now,
if you sell to S and B. As I mentioned
that that shouldn't be the problem and if you still
want to track, I would only recommend you to focus
on the bottom of the final keyword, something that is

(56:46):
directly related to your product and some good combinations that
we have seen in the past. The keywords that for
example include competitor, alternative, whatever like I know, mhm, Like
let's say we spoke about demand based sixth sense lead

(57:06):
feed or whatever you put demand based, alternative, sixth sense, alternative,
et cetera. Right, that could be a good signal for you.
And yeah, also your branded search and maybe uh again
your brand as an alternative. Some of these companies might
be evolate and you you know, on their own, so

(57:31):
that could be a good intent. But that also makes
sense to track when you have a lot of accounts
in the pipeline, that would be that would be a
pretty good signal for you to to track. And yeah,
most mostly this so that that if if you focus
just on the bottom of the funnel, that would make sense,
because if you go proder then I mean I would

(57:55):
just use it as an opportunity as just one of
the account qualifications and the count source and CREATI otherwise
you can go nowhere, right, And we did this example
once was one of our clients where the sales team
they told, will always track this. I said, okay, show
me your process, and then the sales rep told, okay,

(58:17):
then I would just open this company in sales Navigator
and I'm okay, what's next?

Speaker 3 (58:22):
And I will try.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Because they're selling to eighty teams, I'm saying, okay, what
you do next? Well, I will just pick up the
seniority overus. They want to sell to the decision makers, right.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
And.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
I would try to look for the VP, and basically
they apply all these filters and sales Navigator titles we
pee director, chief, plus et cetera, and then we end
up with like more than one ky potential buyers already
narrowed down by the region. And then I'm saying, okay,

(58:54):
so what's next. Oh well, I will just maybe quickly
scroll and try to define who might be the good person,
who who might demonstrated that intent. But basically the truth is,
and we all know this, if you make the decisions
based on your guid fins, your play and the lottery,

(59:15):
let's let's be completely transparent and honest, right, And then
lottery if you're ere living. I mean, I'm sorry if
I did it, but that's that's the sad reality.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
So I just wanted to share.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Wanted to bring this as a point, right, because if
you are selling SMB is done for you, it would
be relatively easy and if you have pretty niche product
then it would be relatively easier to identify the buying
committee and to reach out.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
To the right decision makers.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
But if you do this for enterprise organizations, uh, then
I would just focus on the bottom of the Finnel keywords.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
All right, I think we have one more question here.
Let me share it out from Ria. How do we
use these signals when running LinkedIn ads? Basically, we have
already shared an example where you have let's say a
low buying intent signal, So you're just deciding to include

(01:00:17):
that target account in your list of target accounts essentially
like based on qualification and maybe maybe based on some
initial signals well as far as as long as you
don't know anything more about that account, you're basically including
a list. It makes sense not over complicate things and

(01:00:38):
simply to include that target account in existing linkeding ads
that you're running. So if you're running let's say thought
leadership ads promoting content, makes sense to include that account
in those ads. If you're running obviously product marketing ads,
other ads that you're running makes sense to include that

(01:01:00):
account as well. If you are kind of further down
the funnel and you have very specific Yeah, you have
insights about the target account. What kind of insights can
you have? Well, what we know is that you typically
when you're selling into especially like larger target accounts, enterprise accounts,

(01:01:20):
et cetera, you will have different use cases. And what
I mean but is different reasons why the customers buy
your solution, you know, and it could be related to
maybe different buying triggers, et cetera. You know, maybe it's
because there was a recent acquisition and they are now

(01:01:43):
looking to let's say integrate the existing so the two
different textacs, and you know that you know, in some
cases this is a good buying trigger for you when
you actually are able to sell your tool, which is
kind of like a more integrated solution than what exists

(01:02:05):
in the market. Just one example, and you may have
other use cases. So if this is your use case
and you have specific ads that show why your solution
is a good solution when you have use case like
that and the related challenges of that use case and
how you solve them. While that would be also then

(01:02:27):
including that target account in those ads as well. I
wouldn't necessarily set up the ads just for that, because
you need to have a sufficient number of accounts there
to be able to even run the ads. But if
you're running, I mean at the beginning, for sure, I
would start just adding accounts to the appropriate ad groups,

(01:02:48):
to the ads and ad groups adding them to the
target list to target them as well. And that's a
very simple way to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
I think we have covered pretty much that we wanted
to cover today. Thanks a lot for the guys. Happy
to hear that you found it valuable, as that's the
goal for this podcast. Next week we're coming back with
a new life case study inviting our another client and

(01:03:22):
reflecting on the pilot ABM program that's was probably the
most successful ABM campaign that we have ever done, so
stay tuned. That would be a sales rep and marketing
director of that company. That would be really cool case
studies selling to the niche audience. We'll make the announcement

(01:03:43):
next Monday and hope to see you, or have a
great rest of the week. Cheers by