Episode 165: ABM Program to Engage and Land Enterprise Sales Opportunities [Live Case Study]

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

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Let's starve. Hello, everyone looks back with the Bull final
life episode they were co hosting this episode was our
partners from Customs for Trade. We invited Joe, who is
I would say that slash WP of marketing at this company,

(00:31):
considering Bowen, who is our main account based sales development rep.
Unfortunately we're missing two more people asked it on the
maternity leave and Trave who is account executive. But I
feel having both worlds marketing and sales will give everyone

(00:53):
a pretty good perspective on ABM program that we did together.
We're going to discuss the setup, the results, the improvements
that ABM p into the organization, and answer all of
your most popular questions. What's the role of sales, what's
the role of most specifically account based sells?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Trapped right?

Speaker 2 (01:15):
What are the key alignment points? How to report and
ABM to the leadership, et cetera. Because you guys create
a really cool report that they were sharing internally. So again,
everybody is very welcome to ask any questions in the
chat or in the Q and A section. We're going
to cover all of them. And that being said, Bowe

(01:38):
and Joe, thanks a lot for joining us. I think
it would be very beneficial to start if you quickly
introduce yourself customs for trade and your target audience, just
to share the use case sure first.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, of course of course is doing part of the
sales team Atristins Trade, where I've been working for about
a year now, where we focus on mainly on companies,
large companies who do a lot of manufacturing in the
food manufacturing industy for example, or like the industrial automotive sector.

(02:19):
We do quite a lot of imports and exports and
come in a lot of in contact with these kinds
of international trade so to speak.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Thanks very yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:29):
My name is Joey Threlfel. I've been with C forty
about three years now. I'm the field and partner marketing manager.
As Andre mentioned that there should be another person with
me here, Astrid, who's on the her maternity leave, and
we make up the marketing team at at C four T.
As my title suggests, I'm to look more after the
field and partner marketing activities that go on, and then

(02:52):
Astrid has been looking after more of the product marketing
as we will get into a little bit later down
the line. We'll then sort of talk about how the
the roles were divided between us in terms of sort
of ABM awesome.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
And I know that before working with us, before starting
to work with us, you ran some programs that, let's say,
some sort of ABM, and then you decided to focus
on it more make you kind of a core framework.
And the question really is what made you, what motivated

(03:26):
you to do that, to focus more on ABM.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
So over the years that I've been with C four
t our team has actually got smaller at the end
of the day, and we had to really kind of
look at what we were doing in the marketing team
or within the go to market team that was most successful.
And we were obviously doing a lot of things. We
were trying a lot of things. We are sort of
quite agile in that respect that we do sort of

(03:51):
try out a lot of stuff as we go through.

Speaker 6 (03:54):
Some of it works, some of it doesn't.

Speaker 5 (03:56):
There hasn't been that sort of one silver magic bullet,
you know, that we found within all the activities. But
we have really kind of focused down on the things
that are producing the most benefit for us, which is
things round like events, webinars, continuing sort of with the
social media things like that. But what actually made us

(04:17):
kind of have a look into ABM is that I
have been following you guys for many, many years, and
you always managed to seem to kind of touch on
the subject that we were kind of facing issues with internally.
I also have my colleague Wrath, who is the other
person that is part of the ABM team, and we
both have been following you guys for ages, and yeah,

(04:38):
it's just a case that we were then looking sort
of internally, we were thinking about our plans what we
are going to be doing for the coming year, and
we really wanted to stop with the sort of like
spray and sort of see what sticks kind of approach
to sort of our marketing. We did exactly what you
just said, sort of have that process that we wanted
to be able to follow to give us kind of

(05:00):
like metrics things to follow, having actual processing in place
that we could actually then use to then help us
with our lead.

Speaker 6 (05:08):
Generation and our brand awareness and things like that.

Speaker 5 (05:10):
So it was RAFF that really kind of kicked off
the actual project with our CEO. They obviously discussed it internally,
thought it was a good idea and that's when we
kind of were able to move forward with you guys.
But it was really just to sort of help us
get a much more structured process in terms of our
outreach that we're doing to our target industries are icps

(05:32):
and things like that.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
And I think what's really interesting here is just a
side note.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
You mentioned a couple of different roles U and market
and raffas and sales, raff as senior account executive, and
we have asked it and r CEO right, And from
the perspective of maltisread and what we always say about
the buying committee engagement, you have mentioned that you were
following us, raff was following us, right, So that was

(06:00):
some sort of account awareness beforehand, right, which kind of
facilitates the decision process. I feel this is also just
making maybe adding five cents here. A lot of ABM
teams they just literally forget this, right. Everybody wants to
reach to the decision makers, and everybody wants to reach
to the decision makers fast, like for example, talking to

(06:22):
your CEO. Right, But a natural if that was only
decision coming back to you and saying hey, I know
this company and I think of I'm thinking about bringing
them to our organization to help you guys, And then
what would be the typical reaction, right, why, like, what's
the intention behind this, etc? I mean, as talking about this,

(06:44):
I feel this is like one of the most common
issues teams are faced, that they simply neglect the fact
of multi spreading and creating awareness among the entire band committees.
So I just wanted to raise that point. Aside from this,
I think what is really interesting right now, with the
high insight you have the results, right, how would you

(07:08):
and I would love to ask both a few because
you have different trials of the organization, right, how would
you highlight a qualitative and quantitative improvements right that ABM
prot to your organization? So would the great to hear
from your job this from the marketing perspective and from

(07:28):
your bow and from sales development perspective.

Speaker 5 (07:32):
Yeah, absolutely, so from the qualitative side of things then, Yeah,
this is more sort of the touchy feely kind of
side of things, isn't it. It's more of the things
around sort of like social media that we were doing
that we can't in sort of one hundred percent say
that kind of that has actually influenced into into the
pipeline of things. But you would then expect that if

(07:52):
we are getting a lot more views on our posts,
we're getting a lot more interaction. They're actually knowing more
about what Boeen does as a role, which then kind
of helps has a knock on effect to C FOURT
and they want to kind of find out what we're
actually doing. So before we had quite low interaction with
our with our posts, we were doing all of the
typical things that companies do on LinkedIn, which is our

(08:15):
main kind of channel that we are reaching our icps
on and yeah, on a post for around a customer
success story or something like that, we'd probably be getting
between like six hundred or eight hundred impressions on there
and things very little interaction with it, so it wasn't
greater at the end of the day.

Speaker 6 (08:36):
We then have.

Speaker 5 (08:36):
Sort of changed our process that we are doing around
sort of social media in terms of what we're actually
putting out into the market. Bowen is our kind of
key channel now to go onto to LinkedIn, which has
really helped boone and I spent a lot of time
on LinkedIn kind of finding out what is going to
be working best on there what's actually happening with that algorithm,

(09:00):
how we can then use sort of the right sort
of images, the right kind of structure of text and
things like that. And yeah, I'm very pleased to say
that kind of we've had Okay, it's not always a
home run at the end of the day, but we've
had some really good success with some of the posts
that we've had. And Bowe has had sort of over
fifty thousand impressions on one post, which is unheard of

(09:22):
for anyone within our organization and also from the C
four T side of things, So that has been a real,
a real great thing to see happen. And the level
of interaction that we've had with people on the post
is really great. Bone All really kind of has has
too much to kind of deal with, you know, we're
sort of going through and dealing with the with the

(09:43):
replies and making sort of connection requests. We've got a
bit of a luxury problem in that respect. But like
I say, it's it's not a home run every time,
but yeah, we've had had a real marked increase in that.
And then looking at the numbers that we then track
for Bone with his with his metrics, we then look
at things like the increase in followers, the replies from

(10:05):
our target accounts, the content impressions from the last thirty days,
his profile viewers, and then obviously the number of meeting books,
and if you then look over the periods where we're
actually sort of taking the snapshots, everything is improving quite
considerably on there. We haven't had a dip in the numbers,
which is which is great. So all those sort of
key indicators are sort of improving month over month. And

(10:28):
then like I mentioned off the back of that, then
ore c Foot followers are also increasing sort of daily
basically because of the work that Bowen is doing and
getting more eyeballs on us.

Speaker 6 (10:40):
Awesome, thankya.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
How that reflected on you, Bowen, because as I have
heard the rumors on some event at London, I consider
it us now as an industry expert, right.

Speaker 6 (10:54):
Internal influencer.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
We've consider myself in the year, but let's hope so
in the future.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
But no, definitely, like Joe mentioned before, we've been getting
so many more interactions compared to before. I believe in
the last month we reach about like two unit k impressions,
which basically translates also to the long term point of
usage of ABM so to speak, because we also see

(11:23):
that we're getting involved and we get a lot more
inbound requests to participate in and RFIs and r QUS,
whereas before some companies have never heard from fort before.
For example, we've also recently started to make a kind
of a tech plan for large account whereas in the

(11:44):
past we also we just reach out to one key
decision maker in organization, but in large and moti national
companies for example, it's of course not one person who
makes the decision.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
So we've recently started.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
To make a kind of a tech plan both tests
wedding within an organization, contacting different people, interviewing different people
in different roles, both like higher ups and lower downs
in different parts of the organizations, as well to gain
as many insights as possible to be really able to

(12:19):
formulate a kind of plan of attecht to yeah, you know,
get CVRT in so to speak.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And when you look at those results in terms of visibility,
more engagement, obviously, like you said, you had a lot
of a lot you see the increase also in inbound
opportunities at a peace being invited to a QUS air
piece you mentioned, I think Joe that you were also

(12:47):
measuring things like, you know, meetings, potentially sales qualified opportunities,
and I know you've just basically implemented a pilot. This
has been like about three months, so I wonder do
you have any other tangible results by now that you
would be able to share.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
I would sort of preface that by saying that this
we are in a niche market. We have always kind
of had difficulty in terms of converting getting sort of
eyeballs on us. We're in quite a like I mentioned,
a niche market in that respect, we have had meetings booked,

(13:29):
and I think Bowen can sort of vouch for this.
There were some accounts that we had been sort of
reaching out to that had never responded via LinkedIn, for example,
and then suddenly kind of they start waking up. They
either kind of want to discuss sort of customers automation
with us and they want to have a discovery call
or if they want to join our market research that

(13:51):
we've been doing with them as well. So yes, always
we always want more, We always want to do more
and get more sort of opportunities created. But it's been
quite interesting to see how this kind of approach the
ABM approach has really sort of woken up some accounts
that were completely silent on us to then actually move

(14:12):
them into the point of wanting to have a meeting
with us and find out what we do.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, maybe to give an example for that, we've been
in contact with this large company for a while. We've
spoken to a director there, but we've never been able
to get through to her boss. And now with the
AVM program, contacting on LinkedIn and doing all this stuff,
we actually managed to book several meetings with him, which
is great.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
So I believe.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Awesome, awesome, thank you. So I think if we'll just summarize, Everson,
that you have shared, right, it gives us a holistic
benefit of creating awareness inside the target accounts, engage in
the entire buying committee, making sure that they're aware of you,
and it also enables us to start meaningful in agement's

(15:00):
right was the key stakeholders inside these organizations. And so,
like you said, it's not that that's home run and
you just start seeing the results from the day one.
But but uh, this is the kind of regular process
or regular operations that you are running, and you start
seeing compounding interest on everything that you are doing. Uh,

(15:24):
if let's say, if I was going to ask you, now,
obviously with the hindsight, right, you have all of these interactions,
you have the metrics, what would you say could complicate uh,
this transition and generating these results when companies tried to

(15:46):
do it on the own without having, like you said,
structured guidance, a structured playbox in place? What what? What
complicates everything?

Speaker 4 (16:02):
Believe the struggles that we've been kind of having is
that if you're not really into the program, or you
don't see like the results immediately, or you don't receive
like the market feedback on LinkedIn or from Pritic from
people that you're reaching out to, it's kind of difficult
to quantify or kind of feel like how and what

(16:25):
it's doing exactly, And especially translating that to to higher
level executives, I'd say that's that's a big difficulty in AB.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
So basically it means that if you don't have structural
process right, you don't know when to expect the results.
Until the results are not coming immediately, everybody starts questioning
what you are the right, which a leads that, uh,
the company or the team is likely to move back

(16:55):
to the command. Let's say, lead generation playbooks, DAR and
right fair Ye.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
And it's also not moredern logical.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
If you don't see if you especially if you're a
C level for example, you don't see results after cople
of months, it's logical that you start questioning it. But
it's it's of course a long term strategy, which doesn't
you know, it's not a magical home run like you
mentioned before. It's it takes sign it takes compounding, and yeah,

(17:26):
you just need to keep on working on it.

Speaker 6 (17:28):
M h.

Speaker 5 (17:29):
It's not something that is going to happen by magic.
You know, you have to put in the work for
this kind of program. You need to have the sort
of the resources, but behind you from an FT kind
of point of view, you need to have the content
and the generation kind of going behind it as well.

Speaker 6 (17:46):
So yeah, it will not happen by magic.

Speaker 5 (17:49):
There is work that you need to put into to this,
but you need to sort of keep plugging away at
it because you will then start to see those those
green shoots as as we did, and once we kind
of got that first reaction to a love letter that
we did, you know, right back at the very beginning
of the actual pilot program that was kind of one

(18:10):
of those nice small wins that we had then see, Okay, yeah,
people do take notice of this kind of thing, and yeah,
you kind of grew from there.

Speaker 6 (18:17):
Really, what I.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Really find amazing is that you are in a very
niche market, in the market that you don't really associate
with LinkedIn. You don't really associate you know, people in
charge of customs in big manufacturing companies hanging out on
LinkedIn every day and chat with salespeople and marketers. You
shared some amazing statistics that, if I'm honest, being on

(18:45):
LinkedIn posting almost daily for a long time, we don't
see that or even on our posts we used to
see that in the past, that things have changed. So
I think, like, just from the perspective, you're in that
niche market where you don't expect these kind of buyers
to be acted, and yet you're seeing these results. So
I find that just personally amazing. And then you mentioned
something that I think it is potentially worth having into

(19:08):
a little bit more so, you mentioned, okay, without having
this structure, support and structured approach, one of the the
biggest difficulties is Okay, you can start doing something, it
might not give the immediate results, and then the leadership
might lose patience and push you back into the all ways.

(19:28):
So that makes me wonder, how did you then report
to leadership to show the progress from the start where
you knew, like like you mentioned, like, okay, you won't
get you won't hit the home run from the start.
You won't see immediate sales coming out of those. It's

(19:49):
a long term programming. You will need to invest in
content creation, you'll need to have the people, all these things.
So I wonder how did you handle that reporting to
your leadership team from the beginning, with the early and
up to now. I'm really curious to dive into them.

Speaker 5 (20:06):
Yeah, so we were then using the reports that you
guys provide us as part of the pilot program, and
that has again the metrics that we're using to track
what Bowen is doing on a weekly basis in terms
of his outreach via LinkedIn. Then obviously all the other
qualitative stuff that we're chasing as well.

Speaker 6 (20:29):
But yeah, it's it's a difficult one.

Speaker 5 (20:31):
We have to manage expectations, you know, we are having
we work at that time. At the end of every week,
I would then provide a update to the rest of
our go to market team about what was actually happening
that week within ABM, where we'd then share some of
the again the kind of wins that we've actually had

(20:52):
during the course of the week. So we would try
and keep people as up to date as possible with
what we were doing, because not everyone within the go
to market team has been involved in the in the
ABM process either, so I think they are then seeing that, yes,
there's a lot of resources and a lot of effort
going into it, and they want to know what that
is actually kind of generating. So we would do that

(21:14):
on a weekly basis. We now internally have something called
a Pipeline Battalion meeting, which is every kind of every
few weeks, and then Bowen and I then report in
that Pipeline Battalion meeting on kind of what has actually happened.
So there's a longer period of time in between those
reports that we're putting together, but that is our way

(21:35):
of them being able to kind of bring everyone up
to speed, and we again look at the qualitative and
the quantitative results, so that kind of keeps our CEO
in the loop of what's happening. And then it's just
always a topic of conversation when I have my one
on ones.

Speaker 6 (21:49):
With the CEO, then ABM is always part of that.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
So sort of we're trying to keep people as up
to date as possible with what.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
Is actually happening. But yes, it is a long term thing.

Speaker 5 (22:02):
I just had a meeting with my CEO yesterday about
sort of how we are going to start measuring whether
we can say that ABM program has been a success,
and that we need to kind of give it longer,
a longer period of time before we can then really
say that we're going to do that until the end
of the end of the year. But we are all
on the same page that yes, it's not going to

(22:24):
be a silver bullet, you know, it's a long term
process that we then have to really kind of put
the effort into.

Speaker 6 (22:31):
But yeah, that's sort of satisfying him at the moment.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
Yeah, And also maybe to add on that as well,
I think we looked at it at the beginning of
the year.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
But the average sales circle here complete takes maybe two years.
Very true, How can you expect immediate results from ABM
if the average sales circle stakes at least two years, Like,
you can't expect it to you know, give immediate returns
based on the statistical alone SORR.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, but that's why important to have intermediate metrics right
as leading indicators, so you can measure success by having
these discovery calls with the buying committee, which kind of
triggered the sales process. Right, it's early beginning of it,
and it's not the revenue, but it's it's just where
it all starts from. So which I feel is the

(23:27):
keyn for many companies. I would say that there is
a bigger problem not even having an opportunity to create
awareness in site the target accounts and they're not even
having these discovery calls at all. Right, that's for many companies.
This is like a much much bigger problem to deal with.

(23:49):
One of the things that I would love to ask you,
Joe highlighted the key report, but if you don't mind bowing,
I would love to ask you, as you you are
sales wrapp what do you highlight the key kind of
the key KPIs or the key metrics that you are tracking,
let's say on a daily or weekly basis as a

(24:09):
part of the ABM reportingt.

Speaker 4 (24:13):
So some of the ke KPIs that I'm tracking on
a daily basis, is like the interactions and the outbound
efforts that I'm doing, of course is if you don't
track that, you can't really expect the desired results. But
some of the metrics that we're using to report as
well is like the meetings booked of course, the conversations

(24:36):
that we started with with ICP companies where we've never
had you know, conversations with before. We recently started with
doing interviews to get a sort of soft touch point
to see what's going on in the market, and also
as a kind of a foot in the door because
you're building brand awareness as well. You're getting to understand

(24:58):
like the pain points of the and you can immediately
you know, playing on that, so to speak. Those are
some of the metrics we're trekking. I don't know if
you have any to edge you.

Speaker 6 (25:14):
I'm just looking at your report here.

Speaker 5 (25:15):
Actually that we look at on a weekly basis, So
it's around things like leaving meaningful comments to target buyers
or on leader posts, personalized messages or connection requests, adding
target buyers to the cadence that the bone will then
follow for when we want to do sort of content.

Speaker 6 (25:34):
Collabse or events or seminars.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
Yeah, getting a buy signed up for the event if
we're having one, running the meeting's books or the conversation started,
discovery calls and then sales opportunities generated, and that's what
we then track on a weekly basis.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
I think quite some part on the highlight if you
don't mind, just one of the things that I mean,
it's not obvious to track, but I feel that last
very beneficial for us to track the progress is the
number of accounts in this different list that we have
for the focus and perspective. Right class the ICP completely
called the accounts that fit our let's say ICP qualification criteria,

(26:16):
but have no idea who and what we do, and
we have no idea if there in the market, et cetera. Right,
then the future pipeline accounts accounts that hit our engagement threshold,
but we have no idea about the actual needs and
the actual focus. Those that were the accounts that know us.
We have some level of relationship and we work on

(26:39):
opportunity creation. And from that perspective, I always highlight what's
beneficial to look here right where it's maybe a good
comparison of if you know, from the guys who are
selling these you know, diets of training plans, fitness guys
right before after pictures. So what we your starts before

(27:00):
the pilot and what were your starts after the pilot
because it's essential to see as a part when you
have extremely long sale cycles, right, how many accounts were
moved from one list to another?

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Right?

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Because the truth is like if they even don't aware
of you, no personalization, no technology will help you to
get a meeting with these accounts, right, that's the sad reality.
So before able to sell to them, you need to
create awareness and just checking that account velocity and changes
in the list, right, That's that's one of the things
that always helps to see the progress.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yeah, that's a good question.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
Don't quote me on this, but I believe in the
beginning the active pipeline we had around like ten accounts
of ASTA. I think less might be the less indeed,
but currently it has really really shifted our attention to
focus on accounts in the active pipeline, which is currently

(28:05):
like twenty five if I'm not mistake around that dirty
where we can really focus on we know there's engagement,
we know they are the show sum of kind of
interest in our content. So, yeah, it really gives us
a kind of focus to which accounts we really should
be stargeting, multi treading, contacting different buying members in a

(28:31):
buying committee, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (28:32):
Yeah, we still continue the weekly calls to discuss this
type of thing. We have another document that we're working
in where we kind of track the opportunities that we're
working on kind of any of the wins that we've
had during the course of the week. And then on
a Friday afternoon, we as a team come together to

(28:53):
then focus purely on the active pipeline as well and
then get those accounts, then decide what is actually happening
in those accounts, ideally what the next steps are going.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
To be, what we need to be able to do.

Speaker 5 (29:04):
So it gives us all kind of our next step
and we know what we need to do for the
next week or the next weeks or months, you know.

Speaker 6 (29:10):
For each of those.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
We see the accounts moved through the different pipelines, right
because I'd say, at the moment we're a little understaffed,
so our our ICP pipeline is growing quite big at
the moment that it's it's really nice to see them,
you know, go through getting them, making them more aware
of fort in our contents and what we offer, and

(29:37):
being able to really focus on those accounts.

Speaker 5 (29:42):
And then just a little celebration when we can actually
move them out of the A B M pipeline.

Speaker 6 (29:46):
We've got a meeting that has been booked, or there's
a yeah, there's an.

Speaker 5 (29:51):
Actual opportunity that's been created, and once that happens, we
then move them out of the pipeline and there's a
we can celebrate that a little.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Bit absolutely, which I believe brings us to two other
qualitative improvements that everybody wants to see. First of all,
the pipeline coverage, right, and I mean this is one
of the typical metrics lots of companies introduced and as
the sales reps to focus on. And the second one

(30:18):
is SDR productivity because instead of kind of target and
hundreds of thousands of accounts, you know where you're going
to spend your time, right because these accounts already engaging
with you. You have invested time into build and meaningful relationships.
You have invested time to run an in depth account

(30:40):
research to understand the needs of these accounts, the needs
of different buying committee groups, understand the KPIs and challenges
and the status quo of these accounts. Right, so you
can come up with valuable nurture and facilitate the opportunity generation. Right, So,
which is the key that and if any cells Trapp

(31:00):
would be asked like why I spend it all this
time and prepare them there's documentation or reaching out to
the multiple stakeholders instead of like spending other thousands of accounts. Right,
you always have a got to reply and the reason why?
So I sang this kind of the things that that's
what was mentioned and and how happy that he had that?

Speaker 6 (31:20):
Yeah, observing this?

Speaker 2 (31:22):
What do you want that something?

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Lad? No? Just want remarkable? I was thinking about how
a typical SDR or a sales development rep might go
about targeting and the lists and how this would actually
look out a look in their day to day life.
You know, let me just create more accounts or more
buyers then put them in my sequence, et cetera. It's

(31:45):
so so so different to the approach that Voming was sharing,
where it's like kaep, we have these accounts. These accounts
are not more likely to respond, they're already responding. You
already have some relationship with them. I don't have to
like figure out how to personalize our messaging out of
product because we know exactly what their challenges are because

(32:08):
that was part of the process, and now we can
really really focus and we know that our effectiveness out
of that list that you mentioned twenty five accounts right
now is going to be much much higher than in
a normal approach. And another thing that I found remarkable
as you were sharing that is these weekly meetings and

(32:29):
how you were describing that you're all coming together as
a team to look at those accounts and to plan
what you're going to do next, so it's not like
a lonely job of Bowen. It's actually like all of
you working on it, which I think is a really
good segue for people to also understand when we're speaking
about a team, who is part of the team, because

(32:51):
it's not just the sales reps. We know that because
you're here as well, Jill, but I'm just like highlight
for or maybe down for everybody so that they really
understand how that cross functional team looks.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Like, Yeah, this is one thing that I've really kind
of touched on at the full funnel summit that you
had as well, and that's been one of the greatest
things of the of ABM actually is really getting us
coming together as a team to then work on this together.
We're a small team anyway, so it's not like we
were really siloed anyway. We all knew kind of what

(33:26):
was actually kind of happening in there, but now having
this sort of ABM approach, it then has the buy
in from multiple people in the team and it feels
great that we're actually doing something that we're all agreeing together,
you know, as a way forward on it. But for
our ABM team, then there's myself that is obviously doing
more of the coordination with everything, Astrid was doing more

(33:48):
of the product and the content side of things. Raf
was there really as a bit of a sales kind
of back up and sort of providing advice and direction
as well. And then you've got Bowen that's kind of
doing a lot of the grunt work with the whole
sort of ABM process. But then since Astroid has gone
on maternity, then I've taken a lot of responsibilities for

(34:10):
the content as well, So the roles have sort of
changed a little bit in there, but that is a
really a really core kind of team and if you
can have those individual kind of people in there that
are focused on those parts, then things move quite smoothly,
whereas at the moment kind of I can be a
little bit of a bottleneck in terms of getting the

(34:30):
content that Bowen needs, you know, on a on a
weekly basis and things.

Speaker 6 (34:34):
But it's just the nature of kind of how we
are at the moment.

Speaker 5 (34:37):
But yeah, having that sort of core core team of
four or so people has been good for us.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Your mentioned you are touched upon the responsibilities and the
team set up, and I feel this as really important
as you highlight that, and Boran already just said that
you are a bit understuffed, which is again I hope
will change considered and the results that you are seeing
and how everything is going. But what is remarkable here

(35:06):
is that indeed it's not about having a big team
or a big budget, because that was another question about technology,
which I would ask you a little bit later about
your technologist tech, right, So it's not about this, but
it's really about cross functional collaboration, alignment on the direction
and playbooks right, and ownership of the processes. I think

(35:27):
the biggest problem is like just you know, finger point
and saying, hey, it's not my responsibility. It's not my responsibility.
It's not my responsibility. It's just okay, it is what
it is. This is our current setup, these are our resources.
That'spletely these responsibilities between us. I will take even if
it's revops function or it's content functional, whatever, I'm going

(35:50):
to be in charge of this. Sales is going to
be in charge of this and other sales rep works
as in this case rough as a subject matter expert
and also in some sort I mean considering this ABM
program maybe operating a bit like a VP of sales,
guidance on the use case, providing insights on the account

(36:11):
qualification criteria, et cetera, and matchall. Like you can launch it.
As you said in the beginning, was just four people
now like the pilot team is three people. And the
key goal now is just operationalizing and scaling it to
the rest of the organization, right, which is the key idea,

(36:31):
and ideally get some additional resources to maintain more activities,
right and the more meaningful execute on more meaningful playbooks.
So that was great. This is the most common question.
The second question, I think it's it's the right time
to ask because three people already voted for this question

(36:51):
from Emma. How many accounts are part of your ABM
program at any given time. I think it's good that
I have mentioned that have three different lists right that
give a focus for the team. But that would be
good if you can just give the ballpark number of
the account, Lise, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (37:12):
I can give you the exact numbers if you like.

Speaker 5 (37:14):
So what we actually do on a weekly basis is
that we have a piece of software called deal Front.
You know, it's the intent data of people coming through
onto our websites. Obviously there's many different tools out there,
but we had then decided.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
On deal Front.

Speaker 5 (37:30):
So on a Monday, I then look at all of
the companies that have then kind of fallen into our
filters based on what people are actually doing on our website.
That number has really increased lately because we've just had
a webinar, so people are sort of coming through from
the email to the website as well. But we then
look at that and then determine from that list which

(37:52):
ones we're then going to move into our cluster ICP
based on their revenue, the kind of industry that they're in.

Speaker 6 (37:58):
And things like that.

Speaker 5 (38:00):
So that cluster IICP, we've got one hundred and nine
of them in there at the moment. That's sort of
quite a kind of static number always around, sort of
like ninety one hundred or so. There in the future pipeline,
we have sixty three accounts, and then the Active Focus
we've actually got twenty nine.

Speaker 6 (38:16):
And yeah, that's the sort of numbers that we have
at the moment.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
I think there was a related question that Emma asked
when she was signing up, but so I couldn't like
share it like that, so I posted it and want
to share it here. When it comes to those accounts,
you were discussing that there are different lists, and you
were discussing the twenty five that you're focused on. I
think it's interesting to maybe address this practically. So when

(38:45):
you said you're coming every week, you're discussing what to
do with those accounts in Active Focus, can you maybe
share some examples of what marketing does, what the SDR does,
feel account exactly, like, how do you actually map this out?
Maybe just share some examples of concrete actions of different

(39:06):
team members for those accounts that you focus on.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
Yeah, parent, Yeah, So from my point of view, as
the seer. I'm moistly positioning myself of trying to position
myself as a kind of thought leader on LinkedIn, trying
to you know, gain as many impressions as possible to
get you know, build a brand awareness. So what I
mostly do on a daily basis is you know, connect

(39:32):
commenting on people more posts of our ICP of people
who work at our ip companies, trying to create brand awareness,
trying to you know, get them to know for t
as well with with relevant commenting and asking like open
ended questions on certain topics that are living in industry

(39:53):
as a connection requests. I'm also working in interviews right now,
which is another playbook that we we got from Andre
that I also mentioned.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Before, and of course it's it's different channels that we use.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
It's not only LinkedIn but also you know, emailing, calling, etc.
And we're currently also making a kind of attack then
like I mentioned before as well, and in collaboration with
the field account executive, so it's a really tight collaboration
to really deep dive into the accounts, really press on

(40:28):
the pain points, make a kind of business case see
what is relevant for them for which people get angles
like angles from different kinds of profiles, from different kinds
of views and really try to position ourselves against the
current solution. And you know, weah to to make a

(40:50):
best possible kind of business case to speak.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
For marketing, You're probably the better one to to speak
about it.

Speaker 5 (40:58):
So I'm then naturally feeding in a lot of the
content that he is then putting on to LinkedIn. So
again we're kind of agreeing on topics of trying to
find things that are relevant to our icps as well.
And again there's lots of backs and forwards between us
both trying to sort of find the right sort of content.
We're also sort of trying to be smart with what
we already have with our existing kind of content with

(41:20):
our customer stories that we need to be doing more
of this, But as we go forward, then using a
tool called aligne to be able to create some of
those online what's the best way to describe it?

Speaker 6 (41:34):
And online?

Speaker 5 (41:36):
Yeah, what would you kind of describe it as?

Speaker 6 (41:40):
Yeah, content hub? That's it exactly.

Speaker 5 (41:44):
So then yeah, using that more and using those as
a way to be able to kind of track what
people are actually doing with our content and then continue
doing kind of the existing things that we're already doing,
but doing it in a more kind of tied up way.

Speaker 6 (41:57):
So as I mentioned that.

Speaker 5 (41:58):
For a beginning, we are really doubled down on our
webinars and our events and things like that because that
was really providing us with good results. So it's kind
of continuing what you're doing, your current marketing stuff, but
then you're pulling it all together in a more sort
of packaged meaningful way in the sort of ABM process.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
And if you don't mind, I would just would like
to drop five cents because I think a lot of
companies misunderstand account based marketing completely. We have marketing right
as a part of account based market and definition, but
lots of companies saying, okay, that should be something completely different.

Speaker 6 (42:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
It's not the point that it should be necessarily different,
it's the way how you execute on it, right. That
it's not that sales are run on the outbound motion
and silence, and marketing runs their webinars and silence and
completely for completely different accounts, the topics that completely make
no sense for the accounts sales reaching out too, right,

(43:02):
it's aligning on Everson, the collateral, the narrative, the structure.
What we want to say why we want to say
who would be the best person to say this?

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Right?

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Do we want to challenge the status quo of these accounts?
If you ask what right do we want to fix
the knowledge gaps at target accounts? Basically they don't know
what they don't know?

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (43:21):
If you ask how we're going to do it? What
would be the best example? And next, focus on altogether
on bringing these accounts, for example, on webinar because for
sales it's fantastic and bog and you can just maybe
add your slts on it. Right, it's a fantastic opportunity
to have a few additional meaningful touch points with these accounts. Next,

(43:41):
it's an opportunity to engage, collect feedback and again open
the doors or ignite the conversations. Again, fantastic opportunity to
engage some accounts in your pipeline or some lost deals,
right or the context that were the deals that were
stolen for a while. So and then based on this, okay,
thinking together, what would be based on all of this engagement,

(44:02):
what would be the best next meaningful steps?

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Right?

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Because what I feel is that a lot of companies
saying that it's just like this is some sort of
completely different marketing and we don't need to touch like
what we were doing now. The difference is that it's
still that same marketing, but it's aligned around specific accounts, right.
And then you have a holistic strategy of one to
many of what you guys have described and created an

(44:28):
awareness and on your target accounts what I feel is
beneficial to say right when you mentioned, for example, the
impressions are creating awareness, it doesn't mean that you come
to LinkedIn and post something like bob and doesn't post
something like twenty chips to improve your productivity, right, or
like cry and selfie or whatever, right, not the sort
of things, so we're not we're talking about industry specific content, right,

(44:52):
jobs to be done, content related to the buyer person.
And that's the first thing. The second one, it's one
to few creating these events that highlight on specific jobs
to be done or challenges right or processes that would
be relevant for some group of the accounts, and then
following those fully personalized touch points which we call one
to one for these accounts. This is essential, right, And

(45:15):
it's also just trying another stereotype about a BM that
ABM is all about building the least than doing some
generic personalization and then outreach. But that's not a BM.
This is like the definition of a standard legion. It's
and maybe marketing says, yeah, but we are running nets. Okay,

(45:35):
if that's the definition of account based marketing, then we're done.
We don't need to have this conversation. Right, that's just
the definition of a typical generation that most companies are
doing for years. So I think that that that's important
to highlight and just understand that it's not drastically different
way of doing these things and in some sense, right

(45:57):
that it's not in.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Invent and you.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Activity or activities that's nobody is a well of, but
just do it ever so and that you'll understand what
works and then you double down on this, right, that's
the key and doing it in a real cross functional
way to bring the value for the target accounts. I
think that's that's one of the.

Speaker 5 (46:21):
Things absolutely, And I think that was before we then
joined the that's Your Pilot program, we as a team
were not sure what it was going to entail. You know,
we were then discussing about, yeah, what our role is
going to be, what are we actually going to have
to do? But I think it's it's a really good
point to hammer home on and we had to then
also get people to understand that, yeah, it's not something that.

Speaker 6 (46:44):
Is separate and everything else that is kind.

Speaker 5 (46:46):
Of going on within your go to market marketing team
is really something that is is I wouldn't even say complimentary.
All the things that we're doing as part of ABM
you should be doing anyway, it's just putting it in
a more kind of joy in that process and with
more structure kind of behind it, rather than doing the
spray and see what kind of like sticks type things. So, yeah,

(47:07):
I think that's a really important point to mention that
that it's not separate. It's kind of including everything that
you're already doing.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
We had on the previous episode we had bench prep
team and you guys got apparently went that was done
and Brianna the VP of Market and I think she
gave the best possible definition to it. A b M
is not the revolution. It's an evolution of our existent
goal to market approaches in more structured, more cross functional

(47:36):
way with sales.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
I think that's kind of the best way to describe it.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, Yeah, there are really good questions actually from the
audience that I'd like to maybe take it. I don't.
I know that we have a hard stuff, We don't
have a lot of time. There are a couple that
I would like to share because I just find it
very interesting. One, Katerina Abrel asked, and I would We

(48:06):
cannot answer that without being biased. So I just like
to ask you, while we have you here in your opinion,
in your opinion this ABM approach that we helped to implement,
And I know, like you, Joseph, you mentioned you, yourself
and love have been following us, and I'm sure we
are not the only ones you considered when you were

(48:27):
thinking about implementing a b M. So I just like
wonder from from your perspective, like, does what said this
approach apart? How did you think about it? Why did
you choose to work with us and maybe not with
somebody else? Like how do you look at that? How
would you answer that question?

Speaker 5 (48:44):
I said, we didn't actually look at any other providers
for it to be fair, We saw how you were
approaching it. We both, like I said, been following you
for a long while, and we we thought, fine, okay,
let's let's move forward with it. And I we liked
the content that you've been putting out, were joining the
webinars and things like that. So yeah, that's actually not
the case.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Though, if I don't mind, now Ryan and the pilot program,
do you hear the same from the target accounts you engage?
And maybe I mean it's not converted in revenue right
in that sense, But do you hear something similar when
you have discovery calls maybe or good question to you
that they you attracted the attention and they're willing to

(49:28):
learn more.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
What is exactly the question you're.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, so I mean from the a BM perspective now
as the benefit for your team, right, whenever you have
because you had already quite a few discovery calls with
the target accounts, right, do you hear what? What do
you hear from them?

Speaker 3 (49:48):
Right? So?

Speaker 2 (49:48):
How like how they described the the I mean your
target accounts, how they describe maybe in some way the
benefits of a BM for you, right, so that they
mentioned that they have heard about you and that they
would like to learn. So is that the conversations are
going easier. So basically the tangible impact.

Speaker 4 (50:09):
Well, one of the things I've been noticing is that
ABM kind of gives us a soft touch point at
people like this without like asking for a meeting immediately
or like a discovery call.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
It gives just an open kind of conversation.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
For example, the interview is one way to get like
their opinions on things or how it's currently going, what
they don't like, what they do like, and what they
would like see in a solution. So it gives a
very like open kind of conversation to just talk about
without being very salesy so to speak. And people also,

(50:47):
I think people also like to be included and stuff
like this. For example, one of the people we've talked
to it was really open to share knowledge, etc. But
because he works at such a big more than national propation,
there's kind of a restriction on what he can share,
especially one on one. So one of the things we've
recently also organized is a kind of virtual around people

(51:11):
bringing to experts in the industry so they can actually
share and talk only about what they are doing and
what they you know, what they want to learn from
others and peers in the market. And I just believe
ABM brings a lot of a lot more open open
conversations in general without being to push it through.

Speaker 5 (51:31):
Yeah, there's a lot of a non threatening kind of
touch points, isn't it really?

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (51:38):
And also just for the fact that, again just going
back to what we said at the beginning, that Bone
was actually getting responses from accounts that were completely ghosting
us beforehand and stuff. So that's the the other sort
of resulting in it, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (51:53):
So in nutshell, get on the applies, Kate and awaareness,
get on more applies, have an in depth conversations to
understand the needs of these accounts and whether they're in
the market and when potentially they could be in the market,
and yeah, if they would be right, So how can
you help so you think about exact solutions for these

(52:14):
company is not just saying hey, you know, we have
a couple of features that could could be helpful for you.
So that's one of the thames. And if you don't
mind what before we'll pick up another question. I just
wanted to ask another most popular stereotype about ABM. We
already ruined the stereotype that you need to have a
big team. You already mentioned how your team structure it right,

(52:38):
and that's what ended up with just now three people
running pilot ABM. Another most common question about technologist tech. Again,
I know where it comes from, but there is a
stereotype that you need to have a big budget to
buy expensive technology to run programmatic ads. Right without it,
it's not possible to run abim So if you don't

(52:58):
mind what your high line at your technologist stack and
maybe just give a ballpark estimate of the cost of
that stack.

Speaker 6 (53:07):
Sure, sure.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
So, like I mentioned at the very beginning of it,
then we're using that deal Front intent data for our
company that we have and the number of accounts that
actually are we're sort of tracking on a monthly basis.
I think in total it's around sort of twenty seven
hundred per year I think for for deal Front, but

(53:30):
that is obviously going to depend on kind of your
your company and things. On that one. We alsoly have
HubSpot that is doing a lot of the behind the
scenes stuff that is helping sort of bow in track
what is actually doing and with some workflows behind the
scenes and things like that. We don't spend any money
on ads. This is one of the things that we
stopped doing a while ago because we were not seeing

(53:52):
the return on the investment from them. So now it's
just really organic social that we're sort of pushing pushing
out via LinkedIn, and I think that's as other than
our time and resources and things, which obviously is a
cost to be factored into it the technology stack that
we have. Yeah, it's not much more than that, if

(54:13):
I can think about it, I think aligned and that's
very Yeah, that's very reasonable. That's per user. It is
only a few hundred euros per year, I think on
that one, and Bowen and I both have a subscription
to that, So we can then kind of keep two
things separate because he was then would need to use

(54:36):
it and create his pages for himself. I then use
it to then create our resources pages after our events
and our webinars and things like that. So it's kind
of good just to have the two separate ones. We
can kind of keep the analytics separate from those.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
The disource we were also using before we started a
so it's not really we needed to.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Purchase or like purchase them to be able to start
ABM god implementing it.

Speaker 5 (55:03):
So yeah, beforehand we were then we were doing a
lot of the resources pages actually within HubSpot, but within
that we were not obviously able to get any of
the analytics that would get from from a line so
we then moved it over to a line field to
get the analytics behind it. But that was the only
new thing that we actually bought as part of the
ab M camp program.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
So I think, like myth busted, another myth busted there.
I think you mentioned something I just like, I think
it's very highlighting and kind of putting and putting it
in perspective or a context for people who are listening
or watching us live. I think when you mentioned it
gives you a lot, Like what's different for you in
a b M is that it gives you a lot

(55:45):
of these meaningful touch points that are not sales z
that allow you to open up these conversations, ceter But
why does that matter? And I think, like everybody who
is in sales understand that this is one of the
most difficult parties getting to that conversation. But also so
I think that and you Joe shared also like, okay,
some of the accounts we tried to get in before,

(56:06):
we couldn't get in before. But there is another thing
if you look at it, like of all your accounts,
we know that the majority of them are not buying,
They're not in the market. They're not aware of you,
like you've shared like the list with ICP accounts are
not aware. It's the biggest and it's just like the
fact for everybody, especially if you're not a category leader, right.

(56:27):
So I mean it's just like it's just a fact.
And I think what we know also from research and
from experience is that these pe to be buyers, especially
buyers in large companies, they prefer to buy a brand
from a brand they know, Like there was a recent study.
You know, they will short list or select a brand

(56:47):
they've discovered before even buying. But then you're with the paradox, right,
So as a sales person, you want to reach out,
you want to create that awareness before they start buying.
But I mean, if you don't have these other non
sales staches, like, they will not respond. So it's kind

(57:07):
of a paradox that a lot of people have faced.
You know, you want to go after those accounts, but
they're not buying, so they're not responding to et cetera.
So I think like just wanting to highlight how important
that is for people for salespeople to have this kind
of toolkit of different ways in which you can engage
those accounts start conversations. And also because maybe it's not

(57:29):
the right time now and maybe they didn't engage. You know,
maybe you initially try to reach out to them via
LinkedIn or you know, you invite them to the interview, right,
but now instead of just like knocking on their door
and say, hey, is the right time now? Is it
the right time? Now you get to maybe invite them
to the webinar or another or another or another. So

(57:50):
just wanted to put up in perspective. But see that
we are coming to the end of the.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, I just wanted to say, as I know, guys,
you have the hard stuff. So I wanted to thank
you for fantastic conversation and for being transparent and open
and joining us. And also would love to thank our
community for fantastic questions and engagement. As always, so if

(58:16):
I didn't cover your question, don't hesitate to reach out
to me or to lot or maybe to join bowing
on LinkedIn. We're happy to answer and provide additional resources.
Thank you so much, and vision you a good luck
with scaling. Accountant Marketer now, thank you, thank thank you.

Speaker 6 (58:38):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Have a good one.

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Episode 165: ABM Program to Engage and Land Enterprise Sales Opportunities [Live Case Study]

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