Latest / What is Business Development? / Episode 94: BD DOJO...Debating ABM versus CBM with Kristina Jaramillo, CEO of Personal ABM
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: Welcome to the Business Development podcast, brought to you by
- 0:07Speaker 1: the Global Business Development Association, delivering the strategies and tactics
- 0:11Speaker 1: to boost your career and corporate growth.
- 0:21Speaker 2: Hello bd pros, and welcome to the Global Business Development
- 0:25Speaker 2: Association podcast called What is Business Development? Are you wondering
- 0:33Speaker 2: what ABM is? And maybe you don't even know what
- 0:37Speaker 2: ABM is? What it stands for? How about CBM? How
- 0:40Speaker 2: about that acronym? Well, these are marketing terms that business
- 0:43Speaker 2: developers really need to know about in order to succeed
- 0:47Speaker 2: and work as one team with the marketers to achieve
- 0:52Speaker 2: growth and success. And hey, if you want to achieve
- 0:55Speaker 2: growth and success in your own personal business development career,
- 0:59Speaker 2: well get yourself a copy of the Business Development Body
- 1:02Speaker 2: of Knowledge. It's available on Amazon and read it. And
- 1:05Speaker 2: then you can take the BDP exam that is the
- 1:11Speaker 2: Business Development Professional Certification Exam at the GBDA website. You
- 1:17Speaker 2: can find a link to that and register for the
- 1:20Speaker 2: exam and become a certified Business Development Professional. And if
- 1:25Speaker 2: you're listening to the show, you've been a longtime listener,
- 1:28Speaker 2: You've really liked this show. Give us a like, give
- 1:30Speaker 2: us some comments, give us a review on the location
- 1:34Speaker 2: where you like to listen to this and when we
- 1:36Speaker 2: post it on LinkedIn, engage with our content. And today
- 1:40Speaker 2: we're going to talk about a very interesting subject with
- 1:45Speaker 2: someone who engaged with my LinkedIn post. It was a
- 1:48Speaker 2: LinkedIn post about content from the Business Development Body of Knowledge.
- 1:54Speaker 2: And here's the graphic that I used for that LinkedIn post,
- 1:59Speaker 2: and it's describing the difference between account based marketing versus
- 2:05Speaker 2: content based marketing. Now, before we get into what this
- 2:11Speaker 2: LinkedIn post was about, I'd like to introduce our guest today.
- 2:15Speaker 2: And our guest today is Christina Hajramio. And Christina is
- 2:20Speaker 2: the president of Personal ABM. She's helped sales and marketing
- 2:25Speaker 2: drive greater account based revenue growth by changing the interactions
- 2:30Speaker 2: they have with buyers and the account experiences they deliver.
- 2:35Speaker 2: Her clients landed five hundred thousand dollars deals with Tier
- 2:39Speaker 2: one enterprise organizations that have gone silent after initial engagement
- 2:44Speaker 2: with campaigns. They have increased their enterprise win rates by
- 2:48Speaker 2: more than one hundred percent and doubled their ACV by
- 2:52Speaker 2: two x to three x. Wow, those are some impressive enhancements.
- 2:58Speaker 2: And Christina, let's go ahead and bring her to the stage, Christina,
- 3:04Speaker 2: thank you for joining us today.
- 3:06Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- 3:08Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to the conversation.
- 3:10Speaker 2: Yeah, I am too. And so let's say we'll give
- 3:12Speaker 2: folks a little bit of context here. I posted the
- 3:16Speaker 2: LinkedIn post with this visual folks that are just listening
- 3:20Speaker 2: to this and not watching. It's a LinkedIn graphic that
- 3:24Speaker 2: I included with my post. Again, we're describing the difference
- 3:28Speaker 2: between account based marketing and content based marketing. And it
- 3:32Speaker 2: shows the typical pyramid we see for how the market
- 3:37Speaker 2: is represented, and the bottom of the pyramid shows thirty
- 3:41Speaker 2: the bottom thirty percent. These are people that are absolutely
- 3:44Speaker 2: not in market, don't have a care in the world,
- 3:47Speaker 2: and absolutely not interested in your product. And then the
- 3:52Speaker 2: next layer up in the pyramid is the thirty percent
- 3:55Speaker 2: that don't think they are currently is interested in a
- 3:59Speaker 2: solution like yours. And then that's followed by the next
- 4:02Speaker 2: layer up, and that's the thirty percent that aren't thinking
- 4:05Speaker 2: about it right now, followed by the next layer up
- 4:08Speaker 2: that's the seven percent who are in the activation phase.
- 4:13Speaker 2: And this is where BD really gets involved in our prospecting. Okay,
- 4:16Speaker 2: this is where we're talking to prospects because they think
- 4:20Speaker 2: they have an issue, they have a problem and they're
- 4:23Speaker 2: looking for a solution. And then finally, at the top
- 4:25Speaker 2: of the pyramid is the three percent. These folks are
- 4:29Speaker 2: in the conversion phase. They are actually in the buying cycle.
- 4:33Speaker 2: This is where sales gets involved to help convert them
- 4:37Speaker 2: as efficiently and effectively into customers. So I described all
- 4:42Speaker 2: this in a LinkedIn post, and I have to say
- 4:46Speaker 2: when I wrote the Business Development Body of Knowledge on
- 4:49Speaker 2: page one, I encouraged everybody to read the content with
- 4:54Speaker 2: a discerning mindset and if they ever found anything they
- 4:58Speaker 2: disagreed with PA, please please reach out to me and
- 5:02Speaker 2: let me know, because by disagreeing, this is how we
- 5:05Speaker 2: all learn together. I'm not a subject matter expert. I'm
- 5:09Speaker 2: a subject matter explorer. And it was so great to
- 5:14Speaker 2: see when I posted my LinkedIn post that Christina enthusiastically
- 5:19Speaker 2: disagreed with my position and that it was fantastic. I
- 5:25Speaker 2: loved it. I reached out to her immediately and we
- 5:27Speaker 2: engaged in dialogue in today. This is the first episode.
- 5:30Speaker 2: This is the first time anybody's disagreed with what I've posted.
- 5:33Speaker 2: So Christina, thank you. You win the prize. For being
- 5:36Speaker 2: the first. And so this is my first what I
- 5:39Speaker 2: call a B D Dojoe episode where we can engage
- 5:43Speaker 2: in academic conversation and we can disagree to disagree or
- 5:49Speaker 2: we can agree to disagree. So let's jump right into this. Christina. First,
- 5:56Speaker 2: let's talk about how did you get into the field
- 5:59Speaker 2: of marketing and specifically why account based marketing.
- 6:03Speaker 4: It's interesting it wasn't my direct path after school and everything.
- 6:07Speaker 4: I'd had previous jobs in corporate and I started working
- 6:11Speaker 4: on the side with a content marketer article marketer, so
- 6:15Speaker 4: his he was had a pr background, a communications background,
- 6:19Speaker 4: and at the time he was just writing different pieces
- 6:22Speaker 4: of content and then he started utilizing LinkedIn and realized
- 6:26Speaker 4: how or see how he could leverage the content on LinkedIn,
- 6:30Speaker 4: and it kind of just evolved from there where the
- 6:32Speaker 4: business grew. I left my full time job and just
- 6:35Speaker 4: kind of went with marketing and account based in particular
- 6:39Speaker 4: because we noticed that the more personally you can get,
- 6:42Speaker 4: the more relevant you get, the more success you have.
- 6:45Speaker 4: And then along the way we also adopted the challenger sale,
- 6:48Speaker 4: which you could probably tell from the post on LinkedIn,
- 6:51Speaker 4: you know, for anyone doesn't know teach for differentiation tailor
- 6:54Speaker 4: for relevance. That's a quick synopsis in a giant body
- 6:59Speaker 4: of work. But we kind of use those premises or
- 7:04Speaker 4: those processes and those that kind of mindset in our content,
- 7:08Speaker 4: and we realized it was creating wins for ourselves but
- 7:13Speaker 4: also for our clients. So it kind of just evolved
- 7:16Speaker 4: out of nowhere. It wasn't like something that I set
- 7:18Speaker 4: out to do.
- 7:19Speaker 3: Initially.
- 7:20Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you're an expert in account based marketing, and
- 7:24Speaker 2: so I was really excited to be able to reach
- 7:27Speaker 2: out and communicate with you and share my perspectives and
- 7:31Speaker 2: also hear yours. And I'll just summarize real quickly the
- 7:37Speaker 2: post that I present and then we'll jump right into
- 7:41Speaker 2: your perspective. So what I indicated in the post was
- 7:45Speaker 2: that you have account based marketing and content based marketing,
- 7:49Speaker 2: and the distinction between those two is that account based marketing,
- 7:54Speaker 2: in my understanding, is that ABM sparks engagement markets the
- 8:00Speaker 2: prospects who match your ideal customer profile. They should have
- 8:04Speaker 2: the budget, the need, and the credibility, but you don't
- 8:08Speaker 2: know for sure if they're actively searching for solutions. So
- 8:12Speaker 2: BD identifies the targets in the intent signals. Marketing runs
- 8:16Speaker 2: the personalized ad campaigns to those ICP targets, and that
- 8:20Speaker 2: ABM wedge in the graphic kind of covers don't the
- 8:26Speaker 2: sixty percent of folks in the pyramid that don't think
- 8:29Speaker 2: they're interested or not currently thinking about it. And then
- 8:32Speaker 2: the content based marketing approach focuses on problem aware prospects. Okay,
- 8:38Speaker 2: so these are the folks that are in that seven
- 8:40Speaker 2: percent higher up in the pyramid that are in the
- 8:43Speaker 2: activation phase, and the CBM focuses on, you know, those
- 8:50Speaker 2: prospects that are searching for solutions and engaging with your content,
- 8:54Speaker 2: and marketing tracks the own media intent signals. Okay, these
- 8:57Speaker 2: are signals of the people that you're talking to and
- 9:00Speaker 2: watching them hit your website, watching them engage with your
- 9:03Speaker 2: LinkedIn posts, and then BD confirms the prospect is indeed
- 9:08Speaker 2: in market. We're qualifying them or nurturing them, and then
- 9:12Speaker 2: together we do that nurturing with our marketing teammates. So
- 9:18Speaker 2: the CBM. The bottom line is that CBM is faster
- 9:21Speaker 2: because it prioritizes those warm in market prospects. ABM builds
- 9:25Speaker 2: that bow wave of ideal prospects driving long term growth.
- 9:29Speaker 2: So Christina. I think the first topic that we wanted
- 9:34Speaker 2: to address is you know that that there is this
- 9:39Speaker 2: difference between ABM and CBM. CBMs focusing on that top
- 9:44Speaker 2: ten percent folks in market, ABMs focusing on that sixty
- 9:49Speaker 2: percent that aren't in market. Yet would you agree with that?
- 9:53Speaker 4: So the way the reason I challenge you is because
- 9:56Speaker 4: what you describe as CBM sounds a lot to me
- 9:59Speaker 4: like a ten based marketing. So that's the reason I
- 10:03Speaker 4: thought that it was a little different, because I feel
- 10:04Speaker 4: like content should be tied to all levels of your
- 10:08Speaker 4: account based approach on both sides of the aisle. So
- 10:14Speaker 4: intent based marketing focuses on that small percentage of accounts
- 10:17Speaker 4: that are supposedly in market. But ABM is not meant
- 10:21Speaker 4: to source the pipeline that's account based demand GEN. So
- 10:24Speaker 4: when you focus, so what you really should be focusing
- 10:28Speaker 4: on is your total relevant market and your ICP. But
- 10:31Speaker 4: most people are putting like demand gen into the one
- 10:35Speaker 4: to many category because if we think about it in
- 10:37Speaker 4: your pyramid type of way, it's the one to many
- 10:40Speaker 4: on the bottom, one to few in the middle, and
- 10:42Speaker 4: then one to one at the very top. So if
- 10:46Speaker 4: you are focusing on accounts or accounts are going dark
- 10:51Speaker 4: because teams are focusing on getting as many accounts as
- 10:53Speaker 4: possible into that pipeline versus accounts that are aligned with you.
- 10:56Speaker 4: So are these accounts aligned with you? Are they strategically
- 10:59Speaker 4: ready for your solution? Do they have a strategic priority
- 11:02Speaker 4: in place? So teams that are focused on pipeline numbers
- 11:06Speaker 4: rather than accounts that are strategically ready for your solution,
- 11:10Speaker 4: you know, it's harder to get that the revenue results
- 11:13Speaker 4: you're looking for. So for me, demand gen should really
- 11:17Speaker 4: focus on creating building that engagement with the ICP accounts
- 11:21Speaker 4: that should be in market rather than the ones that are.
- 11:26Speaker 3: They should be in market, but they aren't.
- 11:27Speaker 4: And ABM is about getting those accounts to revenue, not
- 11:30Speaker 4: accounts to pipeline. So that's why that's the little distinction
- 11:33Speaker 4: that I see. But again, everything should be related to
- 11:36Speaker 4: content because content is what's going to move everyone forward,
- 11:40Speaker 4: and it's just the level of content that you give
- 11:42Speaker 4: depending on where they are in their journey to kind
- 11:45Speaker 4: of move them, whether they're on the customer side and
- 11:47Speaker 4: you're trying to expand, whether you're trying to open a
- 11:50Speaker 4: new relationship, or whether you're trying to save an account
- 11:53Speaker 4: or even compete with, you know, an existing solution or
- 11:59Speaker 4: maybe software that's in place and you're trying to displace them.
- 12:02Speaker 4: So content should really be that hub that moves all
- 12:05Speaker 4: these pieces.
- 12:07Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so I got it. Content should really be
- 12:11Speaker 2: the foundation here, and I agree with you now in
- 12:15Speaker 2: my defense, okay, marketers love to create new words for
- 12:21Speaker 2: existing concepts that already have words identified with them.
- 12:25Speaker 3: Tell me about it.
- 12:26Speaker 2: So when I wrote the marketing chapter of the Business
- 12:29Speaker 2: Development Body of Knowledge, it was a tremendous learning experience
- 12:33Speaker 2: for me. Again, I'm a subject matter explorer, not a
- 12:35Speaker 2: subject matter expert. You're the subject matter expert in ABM.
- 12:38Speaker 2: So I'm really glad we can talk today, you know.
- 12:42Speaker 2: And that one actually if you when you look at
- 12:44Speaker 2: the Marketing chapter of the Business Development Body of Knowledge,
- 12:48Speaker 2: it actually walks through each type of business development tactic.
- 12:53Speaker 2: And as I walk through all the different terms, whether
- 12:56Speaker 2: it's ABM, CBM, you name it, I also the other
- 13:01Speaker 2: terms that I found in my research that describe the
- 13:03Speaker 2: exact same thing I think. I think for some tactics
- 13:06Speaker 2: and concepts, I was up to like ten different words,
- 13:09Speaker 2: and I'm like, all right, marketing people, please stop. I
- 13:12Speaker 2: know you're brilliant, I know you can create, like creativity
- 13:16Speaker 2: is your superpower, but please stop creating new words to
- 13:19Speaker 2: describe the exact same thing that other people already established.
- 13:23Speaker 2: And so you know, we talk about ABM versus CBM,
- 13:27Speaker 2: and maybe it's what's important here in this discussion is
- 13:29Speaker 2: not to get wrapped around the actual about what the
- 13:32Speaker 2: actual words are. Is really more important to talk about
- 13:35Speaker 2: the actual concepts. And when I was, you know, putting
- 13:39Speaker 2: this this graphic together so that business developers could understand
- 13:44Speaker 2: what marketing is talking about, I use the CBM terminology
- 13:50Speaker 2: to just draw a distinction that this is the content
- 13:54Speaker 2: engagement level when that prospects enters into the activation phase
- 14:02Speaker 2: of the customer journey. I think we're talking about the
- 14:05Speaker 2: same thing here. I think we both agree that content, yes,
- 14:10Speaker 2: is absolutely critical. Marketing is creating content BD people are
- 14:15Speaker 2: creating content now more and more, we're writing LinkedIn posts.
- 14:18Speaker 2: I just saw I've seen companies recently and this is
- 14:23Speaker 2: a new trend in the job descriptions for new roles
- 14:27Speaker 2: that companies are asking that the people that are candidates
- 14:32Speaker 2: are business developers that are candidates actually have a presence online.
- 14:38Speaker 2: So I think employers now are starting to realize, wow,
- 14:41Speaker 2: this is this can be really powerful to bring on
- 14:44Speaker 2: b D people that actually have a big community, that
- 14:47Speaker 2: have a voice and have a following. And so I
- 14:51Speaker 2: think that's a really exciting trend. So b D people marketing,
- 14:55Speaker 2: we're all creating content together. I think the distinction is
- 14:59Speaker 2: when you're looking at the front layers, the sixty percent,
- 15:03Speaker 2: well let's call it ninety percent, the bottom ninety percent
- 15:06Speaker 2: that supposedly aren't in market yet they haven't identified a
- 15:12Speaker 2: reason to buy yet. This is where marketing is so critical, folks,
- 15:17Speaker 2: and the content that you produce is so critical. And
- 15:19Speaker 2: that's called you know, demand gen It's it's being out there,
- 15:23Speaker 2: it's having a voice, it's being engaged with the community.
- 15:26Speaker 2: So even though somebody is not actually engaging with your content,
- 15:31Speaker 2: they are they you know, it's the it's the dark,
- 15:34Speaker 2: you know, it's the dark funnel. You know that you
- 15:37Speaker 2: can't see any intent signals. But people are out there
- 15:39Speaker 2: and they're engaging with it, they're listening to it, they're
- 15:42Speaker 2: sticking this podcast in their ears right now, and that
- 15:45Speaker 2: is engagement. You just doesn't show up as an intent signal.
- 15:48Speaker 2: And I think what you're saying, Christina is that when
- 15:51Speaker 2: you get that intent signal, when you get that trigger,
- 15:53Speaker 2: whether they reach out to a business developer and go, hey,
- 15:56Speaker 2: I have some questions about your product, or they respond
- 16:01Speaker 2: to some sort of cold outbound. You know, it could
- 16:04Speaker 2: be any any measure. But once there's that trigger that
- 16:08Speaker 2: says okay, they're interested, they want to engage, that's when
- 16:12Speaker 2: the game shifts. You're still producing content, but the content changes, right.
- 16:17Speaker 4: Correct the level of the level, level of relevance and
- 16:20Speaker 4: personalization and tailored to their specific not necessarily use case,
- 16:29Speaker 4: but their organization. That also increases the closer there are
- 16:34Speaker 4: the like where they are in their journey.
- 16:36Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so i'll call round one of this
- 16:38Speaker 2: dojo event a draw. I think we agree in concept,
- 16:43Speaker 2: we probably disagree on the words we used to describe
- 16:45Speaker 2: the concept.
- 16:46Speaker 4: Marketing should just create the sources for everything, because account
- 16:50Speaker 4: based is something that sales has been doing for who
- 16:52Speaker 4: knows how long.
- 16:53Speaker 3: We just kind of made it pretty termed around it.
- 16:56Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, and I call it account based BD
- 16:59Speaker 2: because you know, when I started learning about account based marketing,
- 17:02Speaker 2: I'm like, this is what I've been doing forever as
- 17:04Speaker 2: a BD person. This is this isn't anything new, it's
- 17:08Speaker 2: just the words that are new. Okay, all right, let's
- 17:10Speaker 2: jump into round two here of the BD Dojo event.
- 17:13Speaker 2: And so, you know, you talk about the teams and
- 17:17Speaker 2: how they're working together. Marketing, BD and sales all have
- 17:21Speaker 2: distinctive different functions. Where should those teams be putting their
- 17:25Speaker 2: attention on the accounts that are showing intent or on
- 17:29Speaker 2: the accounts that you just don't see yet and they
- 17:33Speaker 2: probably don't think they have a need for your solution,
- 17:35Speaker 2: or you don't think they have a need for your solution.
- 17:37Speaker 2: So which of those two groups really it's you know,
- 17:40Speaker 2: do you focus on the seven percent here, that seven
- 17:42Speaker 2: to ten percent that's in market, or do you focus
- 17:45Speaker 2: on that other ninety percent that you think, man, I
- 17:47Speaker 2: probably not interested yet? What do you say?
- 17:50Speaker 4: I definitely think that there needs to be a balance
- 17:52Speaker 4: so that you're covering both your long term revenue goals.
- 17:55Speaker 3: And your short term revenue goals.
- 17:57Speaker 4: So focusing just on the ten percent that are supposedly
- 18:01Speaker 4: in market can lead to shorter sales cycles but also
- 18:04Speaker 4: lower deal size is depending if you're competing with you know,
- 18:07Speaker 4: at your an RFP competition, or the prospect comes to
- 18:11Speaker 4: you and they already have pre defined needs, so they're
- 18:13Speaker 4: already gonna they have a smaller deal size. But what
- 18:18Speaker 4: I've seen is that a lot of intent is very
- 18:20Speaker 4: speculative and it gives you maybe a false positive, and there's.
- 18:23Speaker 3: Often a lag in the in the data.
- 18:25Speaker 4: So when a company shows that they're in market with you,
- 18:29Speaker 4: it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to stay with you
- 18:32Speaker 4: or if they're going to sign that deal with you.
- 18:34Speaker 4: So if the goal of ABM or account based strategy
- 18:39Speaker 4: is to drive that longest term revenue growth, so you
- 18:41Speaker 4: want clients that are going to land with you and
- 18:43Speaker 4: expand with you. So that's what I think the level
- 18:46Speaker 4: of relevance in an ABM program, an account based program
- 18:51Speaker 4: is really important. So I want to give you an
- 18:53Speaker 4: example of this. We had a client that was in
- 18:55Speaker 4: the facility management service industry. They had a aggressive growth goals.
- 19:01Speaker 4: They wanted to reach one billion in market share by
- 19:04Speaker 4: twenty thirty and they had an AVM program in place
- 19:07Speaker 4: with another firm, but they were consistently missing month over month, quarter.
- 19:11Speaker 3: Over quarter, and year over year quota and.
- 19:13Speaker 4: Revenue targets and they had invested in zoom infos marketing
- 19:17Speaker 4: operating systems, so they were focusing on accounts with intent,
- 19:21Speaker 4: so they were only using specific keywords, and that reliance
- 19:25Speaker 4: on the intent data kept them from aligning with their
- 19:28Speaker 4: core or their best fit customers. So intent data, if
- 19:33Speaker 4: you don't have any context around it, it's kind of
- 19:35Speaker 4: just noise. You need to get the peel back the
- 19:39Speaker 4: layers and see why is their intent in the first place.
- 19:41Speaker 4: So if we react to signals and engagement data versus
- 19:45Speaker 4: responding with an understanding of why there was intent in
- 19:49Speaker 4: the first place, it's a different conversation. So that why
- 19:53Speaker 4: should really guide your messaging. It should guide your content,
- 19:56Speaker 4: the interactions, and the experiences. And that's from start to finish.
- 20:00Speaker 4: So from I'm talking from initial engagement all the way
- 20:04Speaker 4: through to their customer and staying.
- 20:07Speaker 3: A long term customer, so that all all that has
- 20:09Speaker 3: to be taken into into consideration.
- 20:13Speaker 4: So I'm a strong believer that you take intent, but
- 20:18Speaker 4: you also need to figure out what is need, what's
- 20:21Speaker 4: behind that intent. You need some additional insights. You know,
- 20:25Speaker 4: when we're focusing just on the signals or just on
- 20:29Speaker 4: these intent we kind of miss that big big picture
- 20:33Speaker 4: of what's going on behind closed doors that's causing this
- 20:36Speaker 4: intent in the first place. You know, are they looking
- 20:40Speaker 4: for a new vendor or a new solution? Are they
- 20:43Speaker 4: just reading to stay in the know?
- 20:45Speaker 3: You know?
- 20:45Speaker 4: But there is no predictiveness with this intent if they're
- 20:48Speaker 4: going to close with you, or if they're going to
- 20:51Speaker 4: close it a high a c V, or if they're
- 20:53Speaker 4: going to grow with you and be a long term partner.
- 20:56Speaker 4: So that's that's my problem with intent and relying.
- 20:59Speaker 3: Solely on tent. I could go on on that, but
- 21:02Speaker 3: let's leave it at that.
- 21:04Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a lot we can do to drill
- 21:06Speaker 2: down on the topic of intent, but I have to say,
- 21:10Speaker 2: for this round, I'm jumping off the top rope and
- 21:13Speaker 2: giving you a high five on this one, you know,
- 21:15Speaker 2: because I absolutely agree. You know, the first thing you
- 21:18Speaker 2: said was making sure that you've balanced your outbound and
- 21:24Speaker 2: your inbound resources. So if you focus just on that
- 21:29Speaker 2: top ten percent that's supposedly in market, yeah, that's great,
- 21:33Speaker 2: But then you can dry up all those resources really quickly,
- 21:36Speaker 2: and then you have not built that demand gen engine,
- 21:40Speaker 2: that bottom ninety percent that you know you think, oh,
- 21:43Speaker 2: maybe they're not interested they're not in market. Well, it
- 21:46Speaker 2: turns out they're probably listening to the podcast that you've
- 21:48Speaker 2: been publishing. They probably engaging things in the dark funnel
- 21:51Speaker 2: you never even knew about. Or yeah, they're not interested,
- 21:56Speaker 2: but when they do have that challenge, you are top
- 22:00Speaker 2: of mind. You are the brand they have highest trust
- 22:03Speaker 2: in because they've heard your name before. And that's why
- 22:05Speaker 2: marketing is so important. The content that marketing creates is
- 22:08Speaker 2: so critical. But you have to balance the input, you know,
- 22:12Speaker 2: your efforts. And then the other thing I really liked
- 22:14Speaker 2: what you said, Christina, is yeah, intent signals are great. Okay,
- 22:17Speaker 2: so what do you know your ICP? Do you know
- 22:20Speaker 2: your ideal customer profile? Have you validated what that signal meant?
- 22:24Speaker 2: Are they just cut tire kickers? Do they have high intent?
- 22:28Speaker 2: Are they ready to engage right now? And that's where
- 22:31Speaker 2: business development comes in. You know, our role is to
- 22:34Speaker 2: give them a call and say, hey, I see you
- 22:35Speaker 2: attended our webinar, just checking you know, are you just
- 22:39Speaker 2: casually interested? Oh you are interested? Okay, great, you know,
- 22:42Speaker 2: and then we go into the whole qualification process. You know,
- 22:45Speaker 2: do you have a budget, what's your schedule? Do you
- 22:47Speaker 2: have a need of all those things that we do
- 22:50Speaker 2: to help qualify and then we figure out how can
- 22:52Speaker 2: we nurture them and we do that with marketing to say, hey,
- 22:56Speaker 2: let's give them some content on this use case scenario.
- 22:58Speaker 2: I think it's really tailored to their need. And I
- 23:01Speaker 2: really like the example that you gave with the facilities
- 23:04Speaker 2: company Christina. That that's great and congratulations on that that success. Okay,
- 23:09Speaker 2: let's jump into round three of our event here. So
- 23:17Speaker 2: you know, you mentioned that ABM is not for necessarily
- 23:21Speaker 2: sourcing pipeline and you mentioned that what I described was
- 23:25Speaker 2: account based essentially account based demand gen. Can you share
- 23:28Speaker 2: the difference between ABM and demand gen since you're using
- 23:33Speaker 2: those two terms now, and you know and for those
- 23:37Speaker 2: two things, when should they come together and create kind
- 23:41Speaker 2: of an account based go to market strategy?
- 23:45Speaker 4: Okay, I know it gets kind of confusing because if
- 23:47Speaker 4: you're not familiar with these terms as a sales leader
- 23:50Speaker 4: or a sales person, it gets a little tricky. So
- 23:54Speaker 4: demand gen is really the the initial like engagement and
- 23:58Speaker 4: learning about the company, learning about solutions and offerings. ABM
- 24:03Speaker 4: I would put as the next step. So this is
- 24:06Speaker 4: where you can get a more relevant take a more
- 24:09Speaker 4: tailored approach to them, and so it's demand gen puts
- 24:15Speaker 4: them into the funnel, or let's say puts them into
- 24:17Speaker 4: the journey, and then ABM would suppose or not supposedly,
- 24:20Speaker 4: should be accelerating them. So once they reach a certain
- 24:24Speaker 4: engagement or intent threshold, or they've shown signs of being
- 24:28Speaker 4: part of your active ICP as they have that strategic
- 24:31Speaker 4: priority in place, or maybe they're being impacted by a
- 24:34Speaker 4: critical or key event, but we need to make sure
- 24:37Speaker 4: that we're putting the right accounts into the pipeline that
- 24:39Speaker 4: sales and marketing teams so they could prioritize their time,
- 24:44Speaker 4: resources and focus on because if we're just filling with
- 24:48Speaker 4: leads just for the sake of filling leads, then there
- 24:50Speaker 4: it's wasting everyone's time. So demand gen campaigns, messaging and
- 24:54Speaker 4: content need to go beyond driving awareness to with a
- 24:59Speaker 4: broader market and kind of focus on the accounts that
- 25:02Speaker 4: you want to see see you and your solution and
- 25:04Speaker 4: offering and your company as a must have versus a
- 25:08Speaker 4: nice to have. So that's almost the next step demand
- 25:10Speaker 4: gen then ABM, and then this goes back to also
- 25:14Speaker 4: defining your ICP beyond demographics technographics, revenue levels, these generic
- 25:20Speaker 4: kind of triggers that we have or generic measurements we have.
- 25:24Speaker 4: We want to align the demand gen to bring in
- 25:27Speaker 4: more accounts that are going to match that ICP, and
- 25:30Speaker 4: then demand gen is think of it this way, So
- 25:33Speaker 4: demand gen cast that wider net, and we want to
- 25:37Speaker 4: cast a wider net that's going to attract more of
- 25:41Speaker 4: the whales quote unquote that we're looking for rather than
- 25:44Speaker 4: just a bunch of minnows and you know, some medium
- 25:46Speaker 4: and larger fish mixed in. So we want to figure
- 25:49Speaker 4: out how we're going to move accounts to revenue faster, high,
- 25:53Speaker 4: higher ACV, which is what ABM essentially really should be about.
- 25:58Speaker 4: It needs to be close to worre to the seller
- 26:01Speaker 4: and the sales team and even the customers depending if
- 26:05Speaker 4: you want to do a customer customer play for expansion.
- 26:09Speaker 4: So I tell clients to focus on where you want
- 26:12Speaker 4: to go with an account and the experiences that you
- 26:14Speaker 4: want to create, and then work backward until you get
- 26:18Speaker 4: to demand gend. I know, sense kind of counterintuitive, but
- 26:22Speaker 4: trust me. So we need to go need to know
- 26:25Speaker 4: where we're going to go before we can kind of
- 26:26Speaker 4: set a direction with demand gen otherwise you do wind
- 26:29Speaker 4: up with the leads for sake of leads, and then
- 26:32Speaker 4: that's why sales might lose their trust in marketing, might
- 26:36Speaker 4: do their own thing, might like totally disconnect for marketing
- 26:39Speaker 4: because we're not delivering on our end so that sales
- 26:43Speaker 4: can be successful.
- 26:45Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that. I really like what you said
- 26:48Speaker 2: about understanding what those intent signals mean and understanding how
- 26:53Speaker 2: the intent signals interact with one another. Right you could
- 26:56Speaker 2: have you could have some some firms have intents signal
- 27:00Speaker 2: scores that show okay, based on those high ACV customers
- 27:06Speaker 2: that we already have, we watched their intent signals, We
- 27:10Speaker 2: watched how they engage with our content as they were
- 27:13Speaker 2: making the journey from the awareness phase into the activation phase,
- 27:16Speaker 2: engaging with business development, and then through the conversion phase.
- 27:20Speaker 2: And then we're even tracking them once they're in the
- 27:23Speaker 2: success phase and growth phases after their clients are they
- 27:27Speaker 2: providing us referrals these and then what we can do
- 27:30Speaker 2: is we can backtrack and look at how those intent
- 27:32Speaker 2: signals presented themselves for those ICP prospects and customers and
- 27:39Speaker 2: then really refine our scoring system that says okay, look
- 27:44Speaker 2: if they went to a webinar and then they asked
- 27:46Speaker 2: for a use case scenario, and then they did this,
- 27:49Speaker 2: and they did this. These are showing intent signals that
- 27:52Speaker 2: forecast that this will be a high ACV customer for
- 27:57Speaker 2: us SO and this is where it's so critical. I
- 28:00Speaker 2: think that bad and marketing come together and we're constantly
- 28:03Speaker 2: communicating back and forth of hey, I saw this intense
- 28:05Speaker 2: signal and it really didn't present itself. What's going on?
- 28:08Speaker 2: Or we had the score and we thought the score
- 28:10Speaker 2: was locked in and we thought this would this would
- 28:12Speaker 2: be a high conversion hip win prospect, and it's what happened.
- 28:16Speaker 2: You know, maybe maybe we need to modify our our
- 28:19Speaker 2: marketing content, what we're telling them in the activation phase
- 28:23Speaker 2: and maybe even the awareness phase. So this is you know,
- 28:25Speaker 2: at the end of the day, folks, it constant back
- 28:29Speaker 2: and forth and dialogue between bad marketing sales customer success
- 28:34Speaker 2: is critical. The whole go to market team has to
- 28:37Speaker 2: come together. And Christina, I know I can talk to
- 28:40Speaker 2: you for hours about this topic. You and I could
- 28:44Speaker 2: probably come up with a couple of new labels in
- 28:46Speaker 2: terms to describe these things too.
- 28:49Speaker 4: No, thank you, I have enough. Every time I get
- 28:51Speaker 4: a new one. I'm like, wait, do I know what
- 28:53Speaker 4: this one means? Or is it just a new acronym?
- 28:56Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I bet we could. But I think we
- 28:59Speaker 2: had a great discuss today. You know, we've gone through
- 29:03Speaker 2: three rounds in the first BD Dojo episode. I think
- 29:06Speaker 2: round one we agreed to disagree on what we actually
- 29:10Speaker 2: call these things, but we fundamentally agreed that at the
- 29:14Speaker 2: end of the day, through round two and three of
- 29:17Speaker 2: our discussion that BD marketing we have to be joined
- 29:21Speaker 2: at the hip. We have to understand our ICP, we
- 29:24Speaker 2: have to understand those intent signals and the content that
- 29:27Speaker 2: supports those intent signals, and constantly collaborate back and forth
- 29:31Speaker 2: because the market is constantly changing. What worked yesterday intent signals,
- 29:35Speaker 2: content messaging doesn't work today, and so you have to
- 29:39Speaker 2: be constantly refining. And you can only do that when
- 29:42Speaker 2: you're working together as one common team, and today we
- 29:44Speaker 2: did that. Christina. I appreciate you stepping into the dojo
- 29:49Speaker 2: and going in a little hand to hand academic combat
- 29:52Speaker 2: here as we talk through things. But I think we
- 29:55Speaker 2: walk out of the ring joined at the hip as
- 29:58Speaker 2: one team, one fight. And so Christina, before we end
- 30:03Speaker 2: the episode, can you tell folks a little bit about
- 30:06Speaker 2: the work that you do and how folks can follow
- 30:09Speaker 2: it and how can they connect with you.
- 30:12Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 30:12Speaker 4: Sure, So our organization, personal ABM is all about getting
- 30:17Speaker 4: relevant to the key target accounts. So I'm talking about
- 30:20Speaker 4: the enterprise level accounts, the bigger deals, the ones that
- 30:24Speaker 4: are going to be the stickiest kind of accounts.
- 30:26Speaker 3: And we work with.
- 30:29Speaker 4: Yeah, not mostly we work with B to B companies
- 30:31Speaker 4: in a variety of industries, but tech mostly technology SaaS platform,
- 30:36Speaker 4: supply chain, complex sales is where we fit the best.
- 30:40Speaker 4: And you can reach us at personalabm dot com or
- 30:43Speaker 4: connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there and
- 30:45Speaker 4: you can follow content on that as well.
- 30:49Speaker 2: You are very active on LinkedIn, And thank you so
- 30:52Speaker 2: much for actively engaging with my post. I hope to
- 30:54Speaker 2: hear some more engagement from you, Christina, and folks please
- 30:59Speaker 2: find hello Christina, engage with her, follow her work. It's fascinating.
- 31:04Speaker 2: It's critical for every business developer to learn how to
- 31:08Speaker 2: follow and work with our marketing teammates every step of
- 31:12Speaker 2: the way so we can maximize growth. Christina, thank you
- 31:16Speaker 2: so much for joining us today. Thank you for all
- 31:18Speaker 2: your contributions to the business development profession and helping all
- 31:22Speaker 2: of us grow together.
- 31:29Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Business Development Podcast. Join
- 31:33Speaker 1: our free community of corporate partners and business development professionals
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- 31:42Speaker 1: profession at Gbdassociation dot org.