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Prioritizing GTM Orchestration to Drive Revenue Performance Impact · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, we are back on the show floor, live at Forrester B2B Summit.
• 0:20
  Just super excited.
• 0:21
  Thanks so much again to Forrester for making this possible.
• 0:23
  We've been getting some great guests on Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:26
  Just in the last day and a half.
• 0:27
  We've had a bunch of analysts.
• 0:29
  We've had a number of CMOs really on the cutting edge of leading go to
• 0:31
  market teams, and been really excited to feature a number of B2B ROI award
• 0:36
  winners, and excited to have a couple here today from Wolters Kluwer.
• 0:39
  We've got Sara Larsen, the Chief Marketing Officer.
• 0:42
  And Kaylee Haun the ABM manager for Wolters Kluwer.
• 0:45
  So thank you both for being here.
• 0:47
  Sara Larsen: Thank you.
• 0:47
  Kaylee Haun: Thank you for having us.
• 0:48
  Matt Heinz: Sara, you are fresh off this main stage in a room, just two
• 0:52
  doors down talking about the award and highlighting why you were there.
• 0:56
  So first of all, congratulations and maybe kick it off with,
• 0:59
  why are you on stage today?
• 1:00
  Like, what were we promoting and what are the things you guys are doing so well?
• 1:04
  Sara Larsen: Why I was on stage.
• 1:05
  That's a great question.
• 1:06
  So thanks for Forrester.
• 1:07
  They can answer that one, but I can tell you what I was talking about.
• 1:10
  Matt Heinz: There you go.
• 1:10
  Sara Larsen: And we've had a really exciting couple of years within
• 1:13
  marketing at Wolters Kluwer Health.
• 1:16
  So just for context, so Wolters Kluwer Health supports expert solutions that
• 1:20
  help your doctors, your clinicians, your care teams make decisions about
• 1:24
  your health, make sure that you have the right treatment and care plans.
• 1:28
  And those solutions, if you go to the doctor, it's
• 1:32
  probably eight times outta 10.
• 1:33
  They're using one of our solutions to help make sure that you're
• 1:36
  getting the best care possible.
• 1:38
  So one of the challenges that we've had, we've got great products, we have
• 1:42
  incredible customers, wonderful users that's reflected in some really great
• 1:47
  numbers like our NPS, our brand awareness.
• 1:52
  But one of the challenges that we've been having is the healthcare system at large
• 1:56
  has been experiencing a lot of change.
• 1:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:59
  As you may know, for the past five years think where you were five years ago
• 2:03
  today, probably locked down somewhere and.
• 2:07
  That hit health systems really hard.
• 2:08
  Yeah.
• 2:09
  Yep.
• 2:09
  So a lot of financial challenges, staffing challenges care and care coordination, and
• 2:14
  then just the continuous transformation of IT within health organizations
• 2:20
  and the spend levels around IT.
• 2:22
  So for us our solutions are now competing with different dollars.
• 2:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:27
  A different mix of dollars.
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  And so while we're beloved by our users, the buying committee is shifting.
• 2:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:34
  So there's different people on the buying committee and they're
• 2:37
  looking for value in different ways.
• 2:40
  So yes, they're excited that we have the best solutions and content to help
• 2:44
  clinicians, but they're also looking for what does this mean to help me
• 2:47
  solve some of my financial problems?
• 2:49
  Right?
• 2:49
  How does it help me with my staffing shortages?
• 2:51
  How does this fit into my IT stack and make me more of a productive
• 2:54
  and efficient organization?
• 2:56
  Right?
• 2:56
  And so we needed to figure out how to talk to those folks.
• 3:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:01
  We lovingly call them our nonclinical buyers.
• 3:04
  Yeah.
• 3:04
  As opposed to the clinical people.
• 3:07
  But that was a good distinction for us to kind of understand that there were
• 3:10
  different folks that we needed to talk to.
• 3:12
  And so getting that baseline understanding developed a whole set of
• 3:16
  programs that we've been working on.
• 3:18
  I call it sort of the pieces to the puzzle over the past couple years.
• 3:23
  Matt Heinz: Love it.
• 3:23
  And I love a mature organization where we can talk about not just net new
• 3:27
  acquisition, but really putting a focus on turning that buying committee into
• 3:31
  really a user and customer committee where you have some people where you're
• 3:34
  trying to reinforce the why and earn renewals and earn repeat business, but
• 3:38
  there's always that land and expand motion where that committee gets more complex.
• 3:43
  And yet I think a lot of companies they focus on the opportunity, they
• 3:46
  focus on the account, they continue to single thread those deals.
• 3:49
  So Kaylee, I would love to have you talk about the change management
• 3:52
  required to bring that to your programs, to bring that buying committee
• 3:57
  mentality to this Pipeline production.
• 4:01
  Kaylee Haun: Yes, of course.
• 4:02
  As far as our ABM program goes it was really important that
• 4:06
  we were aligned with sales.
• 4:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:07
  And we were focusing on those sales plays that were gonna drive
• 4:10
  the needle to make sure that our campaigns had the proper segmentation.
• 4:15
  And after that was done really making sure that all of our data was very clean in
• 4:19
  the system before starting any programs from the account and the contact level.
• 4:23
  Matt Heinz: Yep.
• 4:23
  Yeah and the data is such an important part of this, right?
• 4:26
  I think a lot of companies that have good intentions that don't manage
• 4:29
  the data, that don't have a great ops foundation behind that really fall down.
• 4:34
  Talk about some of the things that went well.
• 4:36
  As you work through this program, and then let's talk about some
• 4:38
  things that didn't go well.
• 4:39
  I think sometimes we learn as much from the dumpster fires, and I'm not
• 4:41
  saying whatever you're gonna share as a dumpster fire, but, I feel like
• 4:44
  in most cases, like the things that didn't go well sometimes teach us more.
• 4:48
  And I appreciate you being open with some of those things.
• 4:49
  So just what give us some on both sides.
• 4:51
  Kaylee Haun: Of course.
• 4:52
  First of all, I think the thing that went really well is that
• 4:55
  we don't do ABM in a silo.
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  We make sure that it is part of our overall demand program and fits in with
• 5:01
  our other campaigns and that we're using our messaging and our persona research and
• 5:04
  our buying group research and all of our core content pieces are integrated into
• 5:09
  our ABM programs which really helps just make sure that our message is consistent
• 5:14
  across, all of our marketing that we do.
• 5:16
  Matt Heinz: And when you think about an account-based program I think for
• 5:20
  the companies that do this well, it's not a campaign, it's a culture change.
• 5:23
  So talk about the origin of this and maybe Sara, talk about the conversations
• 5:27
  you had to have at the peer level with your leaders and especially your sales
• 5:31
  and CS, and go to market counterparts to make sure they didn't see this
• 5:34
  as just another quarterly campaign.
• 5:36
  This is a new way we are going to market.
• 5:38
  For the foreseeable future.
• 5:40
  Sara Larsen: Yeah, it was definitely a mind shift, right?
• 5:42
  So once we got understanding and buy-in around the buying committee the type
• 5:48
  of messaging that needed to really get in front of those folks, there was a
• 5:53
  question of how do we do that best?
• 5:55
  And so a couple of things were happening.
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  One, we're transitioning from product campaigns to buyer campaigns.
• 6:01
  And that distinction was pretty profound because if you think about
• 6:05
  who's the buyer, the next question is what account are they with and what's
• 6:08
  our objective around that account?
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  And so a big piece of the culture and Kaylee talked to this around
• 6:14
  the segmentations or understanding the objectives of the segments and
• 6:18
  the accounts within those segments.
• 6:20
  So we've got a big renewal base.
• 6:22
  But even within that, there's different objectives around the renewal.
• 6:25
  It can be a big complex customer, it can be a smaller health system.
• 6:30
  We could have a set of customers that used to be customers and they didn't
• 6:33
  renew and are trying to win them back.
• 6:35
  And so taking more of that customer view of where they are in their relationship
• 6:41
  with us was really foundational to setting that culture around ABM.
• 6:46
  So getting out of the let's pump another product campaign out there
• 6:51
  and who's opening the email to, let's look at our accounts that we need
• 6:56
  to renew two quarters out, and who's engaging in the buying committee around
• 7:00
  what types of content and are they seeing the value that our sales folks
• 7:04
  won't need to come in and talk about at the point of time and renewal so
• 7:07
  that we're moving that deal along?
• 7:08
  That's a big mental model shift.
• 7:11
  Matt Heinz: I have found that getting sales and marketing together
• 7:14
  aligned on programs like this is hard enough, but we've made progress.
• 7:17
  I feel like, as go-to-market leaders there.
• 7:19
  I think that we are further behind on getting CS and account management
• 7:22
  teams to come along on that as well.
• 7:24
  And you can build programs, you can build playbooks, but unless those are executed
• 7:29
  and reinforced and done consistently, these programs tend to fall down.
• 7:32
  Talk about that alignment internally.
• 7:34
  And it's one thing to do jazz hands at a board meeting or jazz
• 7:37
  hands at a kickoff, but then you gotta make that work on Tuesday.
• 7:40
  So help me understand like what was the path to try to get there?
• 7:43
  And I'm not assuming it's perfect, but what are the stages and the
• 7:46
  things that you found to be most helpful to make progress on that?
• 7:50
  Kaylee Haun: Yes.
• 7:50
  So I think the amount of data that we get from account-based marketing and being
• 7:55
  able to see the insights of the activity that the accounts are doing and the types
• 7:59
  of content that they're engaging with has been really vital to our CX team.
• 8:03
  Yeah.
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  And being able to help them prepare for their conversations with the customer
• 8:07
  and understand their customers better.
• 8:10
  Kind of hand feeding that data, sharing what does it mean?
• 8:13
  What are we seeing really got them on board for the program.
• 8:17
  And the ABM as a whole,
• 8:19
  Matt Heinz: Was there pushback, was there a time when they said, because
• 8:21
  what I've heard from other companies is, especially with CS, they're
• 8:23
  like, we don't need marketing's help.
• 8:25
  We're good on this.
• 8:25
  Right.
• 8:26
  And those things we used to hear on the sales side saying
• 8:29
  like, I don't touch my accounts.
• 8:30
  I'm good.
• 8:31
  Was there friction?
• 8:32
  Was there resistance early on?
• 8:36
  Kaylee Haun: Maybe, um, I think, I think it's always, you
• 8:39
  Matt Heinz: don't, it's always on the dirty laundry here.
• 8:40
  The answer's almost always Yes.
• 8:41
  Right.
• 8:42
  Sara Larsen: I don't think it was resistance, like,
• 8:43
  oh, ABM's a really bad idea.
• 8:45
  Right, right.
• 8:45
  I think it was more along the lines of, okay, but what's the value?
• 8:50
  If I'm a sales leader or director salesperson, what's the value
• 8:54
  of spending my time on this?
• 8:55
  Yeah.
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  What's in it for me?
• 8:57
  What am I gonna get out of this?
• 8:58
  And so we've worked really hard to take as Kaylee talked about, that data
• 9:03
  and, those insights and get them into really targeted discrete programs that
• 9:07
  a salesperson or a CX person can use.
• 9:09
  For example, doing account dossier, right?
• 9:10
  Right.
• 9:11
  Breaking it down into, here are your top renewals next quarter.
• 9:15
  Here are your top white space accounts.
• 9:17
  Here's information that is useful to you in your meetings.
• 9:22
  Competitive insight.
• 9:24
  That was great.
• 9:25
  They love, that's like gold, right?
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  Like they're looking at the competitor.
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  You better get in there.
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  They love that.
• 9:31
  It was like music to my ears a few weeks ago.
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  I was on one of our priority renewal meetings with our CEO and the head of
• 9:37
  sales started talking about, well, and marketing came and they told us that this
• 9:41
  account is looking at our competitors.
• 9:44
  And that insight was great because we knew where to go and how to position,
• 9:48
  and it was like, whoa, it's working.
• 9:50
  Mm-hmm.
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  You know we've infiltrated the system here and.
• 9:53
  That's because we are using the right data at the right time.
• 9:56
  That was useful to the sales organization.
• 9:58
  Right?
• 9:59
  Matt Heinz: We're live on the marketplace floor here at Forrester,
• 10:01
  B2B Summit with Sara Larsen, Kaylee Haun, both from Wolters Kluwer
• 10:04
  Health B2B ROI award winners in 2025.
• 10:08
  So you get on stage, you get recognized.
• 10:09
  It's a lot of hard work to get there, to be recognized.
• 10:12
  This is not a static place.
• 10:13
  Right.
• 10:14
  So what are some of the challenges you anticipate in terms of continuing to
• 10:18
  build on this success in the year to come?
• 10:21
  Kaylee Haun: Yes.
• 10:22
  So, we did have some learnings mm-hmm.
• 10:23
  When rolling out our ABM program.
• 10:25
  One of the main ones being making sure that your digital platforms are all set
• 10:29
  up and interconnected appropriately.
• 10:32
  And then with ABM I mean, your targeting needs to be so precise because you
• 10:36
  are going after individual buying group members that maybe have a little
• 10:40
  bit different messaging tailored to them and different types of accounts.
• 10:44
  And taking the time to do those setups correctly so that you can
• 10:47
  measure and you can understand impact.
• 10:49
  And as we continue to evolve our tech stack and measurement framework I think
• 10:55
  that is something that we're gonna have a big focus on going forward as well.
• 10:58
  Matt Heinz: I'd be curious to you answer that too, Sara.
• 11:00
  Sara Larsen: Yes.
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  I think if you were to ask me what's the headline of the year for a marketing
• 11:03
  team one is integrated planning mm-hmm.
• 11:05
  And bringing all of the insights that we have around the team into
• 11:11
  one plan for our market segments.
• 11:13
  Mm-hmm.
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  And so that sounds really easy.
• 11:15
  Like, Hey, let's have one plan.
• 11:16
  It's not, it's really hard, right?
• 11:18
  Yeah.
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  And we are using the Forrester framework around that and thinking
• 11:21
  about reputation and demand and customer engagement and sales enablement.
• 11:25
  I'll tell you a little tales from the front.
• 11:27
  I got to the point where we've got this like monster spreadsheet for integrated
• 11:31
  planning and I finally said, okay, program planners are the only people with edit
• 11:35
  access to this because we have to have one control point around our plans.
• 11:40
  Now that won't be ongoing.
• 11:43
  We'll let other people get in the boat, but you need to get a control point
• 11:46
  to get all of the plans, which are all great, but they could get siloed.
• 11:51
  Right.
• 11:52
  And so getting that into one place, so integrated program planning, and then
• 11:55
  that ties so tightly to your ability to then measure and look at ROI.
• 12:01
  So analytics we all have in marketing this year an adoption target around
• 12:05
  using our Power BI platform and using analytics and insight in whatever
• 12:11
  your role is in marketing using that information to make better decisions.
• 12:15
  Matt Heinz: Yeah I feel like especially at this conference, when
• 12:17
  they highlight larger, more complex organizations that have really embraced
• 12:23
  the complexity of doing this well.
• 12:25
  And so you get up on stage and you talk about the examples of success
• 12:27
  and alternate metrics you're getting and behind that is a lot of work.
• 12:30
  It's a lot of change, it's a lot of sort of friction and there's points
• 12:34
  of failure that happen along the way.
• 12:36
  So let's talk to people that are out there that wanna win
• 12:39
  this award next year, right.
• 12:40
  That are sitting here somewhere and you wanna win an award, but
• 12:43
  you're talking about really driving change in your organization and
• 12:45
  accelerating the impact of marketing.
• 12:48
  How should they be thinking about that, knowing that change is hard.
• 12:52
  That change is friction, that the status quo inside our
• 12:54
  organizations is incredibly powerful.
• 12:57
  What advice would you give them on how to manage that journey?
• 13:00
  Sara Larsen: Well, I would say have a view of where you want to be.
• 13:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:05
  But don't worry if you don't get there on day one.
• 13:07
  So I kinda use this analogy of a puzzle.
• 13:09
  You know, you open up the thousand piece puzzle and you see like the
• 13:12
  picture that's gonna happen at the end.
• 13:14
  And maybe you start with finding the corners and then maybe you put the edges
• 13:18
  together, and then maybe you do a little piece of this, it's pieces of the puzzle
• 13:22
  and it will eventually come together.
• 13:24
  The key thing is that enough of the people in your organization understand what that
• 13:30
  final picture could look like, or at least believe that it could look like that.
• 13:34
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 13:35
  Sara Larsen: And that you have that buy-in across the team.
• 13:38
  Matt Heinz: I think that vision of where you're going.
• 13:40
  Whether it's an outcome, whether it's a state for the organization, whether
• 13:43
  it's a number of what you think you're gonna achieve, it could be a growth
• 13:46
  number, it could be a savings number.
• 13:48
  I talked earlier with Jim Williams, the firm Uptempo.
• 13:50
  We're talking about connecting marketing and planning together.
• 13:52
  We're talking about a reduction in paperwork, a reduction in time it takes
• 13:55
  for planning and everyone can start to do the value translation of it.
• 13:59
  It used to take us seven months to plan for the year.
• 14:01
  Now it takes us two and a half months.
• 14:03
  Imagine all that reclaimed time and what you could do with that.
• 14:06
  Right, right.
• 14:06
  So, Kaylee, love to hear your answer as well.
• 14:08
  You know, for all the work you've done to make this possible to put Sara
• 14:11
  on stage, what advice would you give for teams that are in the trenches.
• 14:14
  Kaylee Haun: Yeah, I would say track everything.
• 14:15
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 14:16
  Kaylee Haun: All the data points that you have.
• 14:17
  And a lot of those like anecdotal stories too can go a long way
• 14:21
  in gaining momentum and getting something done and getting people on
• 14:24
  board with change or new processes.
• 14:27
  The more data, you can pull together and track the better story
• 14:30
  you have to share with the org.
• 14:31
  Matt Heinz: Absolutely,
• 14:32
  Sara Larsen: And I think that piece on stories is really important.
• 14:35
  We spend a lot of time in marketing talking about Pipeline, Pipeline leads,
• 14:39
  Pipeline, and Pipeline is the key aligning metric between marketing and sales.
• 14:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:42
  So that is the most important thing to be talking about.
• 14:45
  It's the name of your show.
• 14:46
  Matt Heinz: It is,
• 14:46
  Sara Larsen: it's the name of your show.
• 14:48
  However, there are a lot of other data points that you can use.
• 14:51
  To compel, for example I get asked about Pipeline, but I almost get
• 14:55
  asked more often about our reach.
• 14:57
  Yep.
• 14:57
  What's our nonclinical buyer reach?
• 14:59
  What does that look like?
• 15:00
  What's the engagement look like?
• 15:01
  Yep.
• 15:02
  And it's the storytelling behind the Pipeline that helps
• 15:06
  people really see the change.
• 15:07
  Matt Heinz: Awesome.
• 15:08
  Sara Kaylee, thank you so much for taking time.
• 15:10
  Congrats again.
• 15:11
  And we'll see you next time.
• 15:12
  Sara Larsen: All righty.
• 15:12
  Thanks, Matt.
• 15:13
  Kaylee Haun: Thank you.