Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 580 | Modern ABM strategies: outcomes, AI, and buying groups

Transcript

Ep. 580 | Modern ABM strategies: outcomes, AI, and buying groups · The Prompt

0:01
This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
0:04
pressing B to B go to market challenges each week.
0:07
Host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talked to sales and marketing
0:10
leaders to get you in depth insights and creative strategies
0:13
to set your revenue teams up for success.
0:18
Hello everyone and welcome back to the latest in the
0:21
award-winning on Based podcast series.
0:23
I'm your host, Paul Gibson. And as you know, we always look
0:25
for topics that are hot today and things we're going to
0:28
discuss mean something to everyone and today's no
0:31
exception. I'm excited that I'm talking
0:33
with Declan Mulkeen, CMO at Strategic ABM and he's with us
0:37
today to discuss what I think is something really relevant,
0:40
modern ABM evolving strategies with AI buying groups and
0:45
outcome based models. Declan, really excited to get
0:47
into this with you. Thanks for coming on the show.
0:49
Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.
0:51
So before we get into the topic of today's podcast, I always
0:54
like to start with a simple question.
0:56
Declan, you've built a career at the intersection of brand and go
1:00
to market strategies and you've been at the forefront of ABM
1:04
strategy for many years. I'm sure many of the listeners
1:06
will already be following you on think things like Ring 10, but
1:09
do you mind sharing your journey to where you are today and what
1:12
led you to focus so much on modernising ABM frameworks?
1:16
Well, I, I, I've been involved in sales and marketing for more
1:18
than 30 years. And I think if I actually went
1:21
back in time, even further into my days running a pub in Ireland
1:24
when I was 10, I've always been, you know, listening to customers
1:27
and, and trying to, you know, serve them what they're looking
1:32
to, to actually have, right. So I think I've always been
1:35
involved in that kind of front of house side of the world
1:38
really, whether it's been in sales, whether it's been in
1:39
hospitality in in my youth, I used to run in an Italian
1:43
restaurant in New Jersey for a couple of years way back.
1:45
So that kind of being in front of people, being in front of the
1:48
camera, being in front of an audience has always been
1:50
something very, very easy for me.
1:52
And I think the sales is where I really started actually.
1:56
I started in sales actually before I went into marketing.
1:58
And then I'm based in Spain now, as you know, when I went to
2:01
Business School here many years ago.
2:02
And then, you know, from there moved into marketing, first of
2:05
all within the fashion sector in Barcelona and then moved back
2:09
into the UK, worked in professional services, worked in
2:12
educational technology, running sales teams, running marketing
2:16
teams. And the agency where I work now,
2:19
we're on the CMO, Strategic ABM. They were my agency for 1516
2:23
years at a couple of different companies and just the
2:25
opportunity arose to come and join them to kind of spearhead
2:28
their their marketing and to push forward a little bit our
2:32
agenda and what we think good ABM looks like.
2:34
And that's been about six years now I think.
2:36
So probably a lot of people have seen me probably more active in
2:39
the last five or six years than than my previous lifetimes and
2:43
my previous roles. But I think I kind of coincides
2:46
with how LinkedIn and other social media channels have kind
2:48
of risen to the fore, really. But that's kind of like a bit of
2:52
a short, shortened version of my career.
2:54
Yeah, I think there's a podcast on his own of you running a pub
2:57
at 10. Definitely.
3:00
My, my, my mum and dad used to go to their hometown and
3:03
obviously my auntie had a pub and she'd go for a drink in the
3:06
village in one of the 2225 pubs that that used to in the
3:09
village. And she'd leave me and my, my
3:12
cousin running the pub. And we were only 10.
3:13
But you know, nobody ever asked questions back then in the
3:16
1970s. We just eat loads of crisps and,
3:21
and treat loads of Coca-Cola and stuff.
3:23
And we were very happy. Fantastic and the odd point of
3:26
Guinness, no doubt. Yeah, eventually that came
3:28
along, yeah. Awesome.
3:28
And I think that sales background is really important
3:31
as well because we speak to so many people about that sales and
3:34
marketing alignment. So having a bit of both is
3:36
really important. So what do you think was the
3:38
turning point, I suppose the right way to look at it that
3:40
made you realize traditional ABM models needed to evolve into
3:45
something a bit more maybe outcome focused?
3:48
I mean, ask you a question, I think you know, obviously ABM
3:50
has been around for 2223 years from the days of Unisys and
3:54
Accenture. And obviously Bev Burgess and
3:57
the team over Itsma kind of built the methodology around it
4:00
and that was fine for 20 years. I think those kind of models.
4:04
And I think that kind of whole thing about, you know, is it 1
4:05
to 1? Is it one to few?
4:06
Is it one to many? Those kind of models people got
4:08
very comfortable with. And and that was the kind of the
4:11
the general parlance that people would use to describe them.
4:15
But I think ultimately, when you talk to customers, I did a post
4:17
about this the other day and LinkedIn and it went down really
4:19
well. I have never had a conversation
4:21
with any customer or potential customer.
4:23
And they said, Hey, we want to run A1 to few program or we want
4:26
to run a 1 to 1 program or we want to a blend do one to many,
4:29
but a few. Not once ever has anybody ever
4:32
asked me that. They basically come to me or
4:34
come to us rather as an agency and say we've got this problem.
4:36
And so they describe the problem and it's our job to interpret
4:40
that problem and see whether or not ABMA is the right fit and B
4:44
what does that look like in reality on the ground?
4:46
So we just came to the kind of the dawning realization that
4:49
talking about models wasn't really the way to talk about
4:52
ABM. Trying to apply, you know, that
4:55
kind of methodology into a real business isn't really the way to
4:58
to do it really. So that's that's why we've been
5:00
talking to the market and, and obviously with our customers and
5:03
with the general market just talking about, you know, what
5:06
kind of outcome are you looking to achieve and, and how can we
5:08
deliver, deliver something actually meets the outcome,
5:11
whether it's a go to market challenge around your net new,
5:14
whether it's a go to market challenge around your existing
5:16
customers. We build this whole kind of
5:17
playbook methodology of about 40 different playbooks that we've
5:21
got tried and tested and delivered in the market.
5:23
And each one is, is almost like a complete suite of ABM, but
5:27
just to meet that one outcome. What happens when we're on a
5:30
call with a CFOACEOCOO, you know, when the C-Suite get
5:35
involved, which very often happens now their eyes light up
5:39
because they're thinking, well, thank God there's not talking
5:42
about bloody marketing again, you know, because even though
5:45
they might have a marketing background or at least
5:46
understand marketing, they don't want to hear all this kind of,
5:50
you know, impressions and clicks and Ctas and all this nonsense.
5:54
They're not interested. They want to see how you're
5:55
going to solve my problem, what are you going to do, what does
5:57
it look like, how much is it going to cost, How are you going
5:59
to measure the results and how do we change as the market
6:03
changes. And so I think that's really
6:04
been our message to the market and it seems to be landing very
6:07
well. Yeah.
6:08
And it's really nice to hear because I don't think any of the
6:11
team over here talk APM. We do APM, but we never talk to
6:16
your point, it's all around, well, what we're trying to
6:18
solve, OK, this is how we can help you solve it.
6:21
So that's always good to hear and, and in your time at
6:24
Strategic APM and has that shaped your perspective on
6:27
everyone talks about it now, right, AI, but also buying
6:30
groups, which is becoming a big topic in IBM.
6:33
With regards to AI post, I mean, AI is currently it's fully
6:35
isn't. It's been around for about two
6:37
years in the current guise with obviously the launch of chat GDP
6:39
and all the rest of them. And it feels like it's been
6:41
around forever. I read this study the day saying
6:43
it's actually affecting the way we think.
6:45
Actually it's actually it's actually detrimental to our own
6:47
creativity over use of AI tools. So I think that we'll eventually
6:51
have to kind of get some kind of pill to to take to kind of get
6:55
ourselves back to where we were before.
6:56
But I think AI in ABM we've well, we did a LinkedIn live
7:00
actually the day on this very subject.
7:01
We were showing how we have infused or enabled the whole ABM
7:06
journey to actually allow AI to accelerate many of the elements
7:10
that people would maybe traditionally do with other
7:14
platforms, with other programs manually mixing, etcetera.
7:17
So I think we always talk about human first AI fast and I think
7:23
because ABM is all about the customer and about being
7:25
customer centric, you can't ever lose lose track of that.
7:28
That's your North star is what are you doing to be customer
7:32
centric? What are you doing to be account
7:33
centric? What are you doing to actually
7:35
deliver on that outcome you're looking to achieve?
7:37
And then the AI element is, well, OK, fine.
7:40
How can that actually help you do that a better job, but not
7:44
necessarily just a quicker job. It's not always about being
7:47
quicker. It's actually about delivering
7:49
the right message into the customer, into the market.
7:51
And I think with regards to buying groups, I saw something
7:53
the other day that somebody said ABM is dead.
7:55
It's now called time to call it account based buying groups or
7:59
something. And I just had to blow them out
8:01
the water and say come on, come on guys.
8:02
If you haven't been doing buying groups with ABM, then you
8:05
haven't been doing ABM right. The cat buying groups is an
8:08
integral part of your whole stakeholder mapping at the whole
8:11
beginning of the process. If you don't get that right, you
8:13
haven't got ABM right and your foundations will will crumble as
8:16
you start to build out the program.
8:17
So I think there's a whole movement now and it's like
8:19
everything, everything you know comes along and some flavor of
8:22
the month and then it goes away. So a lot of people talk about
8:24
buying groups, but it's just been an integral part of every
8:27
single APM program I've ever seen really, to be honest.
8:30
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the really
8:31
interesting one because to your point, buying groups is the way
8:34
you should always have been doing it, right?
8:35
Because focus on anyone else doesn't make any sense.
8:38
I think what I'm seeing or what we're seeing in the market is
8:41
lots of people jumping on that bandwagon saying, Hey, we can
8:44
identify the buying group. Great.
8:46
And then that's how they act on it, right?
8:49
It's one thing knowing that buying group, but all you're
8:52
going to do then is just say, here's the buying group.
8:54
They our sales go after it. You're missing the point.
8:57
The point is you're supposed to understand why that buying
9:00
group's so important. Their the relationship with your
9:02
brand is today don't even know who you are.
9:05
If you identify a buying group, that's not as simple as saying
9:07
Passover, the sales, lots of intricacies and I think that
9:10
will come out in the wash. There'll be a lot of people
9:12
who'll go, yeah, OK, great, you can identify a buying group, but
9:14
that's not that's not what we're trying to do here anyway.
9:18
Again, buying groups is another topic we can do for another day.
9:21
I'm convinced. So if you think about the
9:23
traditional ABM models, they often focus on frameworks,
9:27
processes. So in your view, when you talk
9:29
about modern outcome based ABM strategies, what does that look
9:33
like and how is it different from the traditional framework?
9:37
We're supposed to, in simple terms, kind of working backwards
9:41
as opposed to working forwards. So rather than applying A
9:43
framework to a situation or a problem, you actually work
9:46
backwards and say, well, what is the problem?
9:48
Let's work backwards to build the answer that will meet that
9:50
problems with the 40 odd to playbooks that we developed.
9:54
If you think about a map which goes from everything from net
9:56
new awareness all the way across to customer growth advocacy,
10:01
we've basically built about 40 odd playbooks that answer
10:04
individual outcomes through it's, you know, raising, raising
10:08
awareness at the very beginning of the journey.
10:10
Whether it's defending against competitors, whether it's
10:12
building advocacy, whether it's kind of cross selling into an
10:16
existing account or up selling to an account.
10:18
We basically, you know, I see a lot of sales calls because I
10:21
think it's the way that I can learn the most about what's
10:24
actually happening and then that can frame a lot of the marketing
10:26
that I like to do. But and you know, just be on two
10:28
or three calls this week even it's only Tuesday morning and
10:31
each call is the same. You know what they explained to
10:34
me the problem they're facing Yesterday we had one about a
10:38
company that was looking to try to go back to its roots,
10:42
somewhat of its key account management roots, where it was
10:44
actually creating great relationships, large accounts,
10:48
high value, strong relationships, customers for
10:51
life. And they'd found that over time
10:53
by applying marketing, they were actually becoming too, too
10:56
transactional and they were actually on boarding too many
10:59
customers. And it turned out that they
11:00
weren't the right kind of customers.
11:01
So they were saying to us, well, look, we need to go back to our
11:03
roots. How can we use ABM to actually
11:06
win companies that look like our our key accounts.
11:10
So that was the challenge that they set us is OK, we need to
11:13
win these customers in this sector, in this industry.
11:16
We know who they are, they know us more or less.
11:20
But our challenge is to get in there, talk to the right people,
11:23
don't go just surface level, which is going back to your
11:25
point about the buying groups and trying to build a story
11:29
within there with a value proposition that actually lands
11:31
with impact. So in that example, there it was
11:33
how can we win new key accounts is the outcome.
11:38
And then we work backwards from there to apply our models and
11:41
our commercial models to that. That can be everything from what
11:45
you know, the basics that you know very well, Paul.
11:47
And obviously the foundational work, which obviously is a given
11:49
for everybody doing ABM, whether it's the ICP, the council
11:52
election, the privatization, the tie ring, etcetera, etcetera.
11:55
But then obviously we spend an awful lot of work on the value
11:57
proposition. That's probably one of the the
11:59
sweet spots of our agencies is building compelling value
12:02
propositions that actually land and then they get rolled into
12:05
the whole campaign, the digital experience, the physical
12:08
experience, the online experience, the offline
12:09
experience. And then that gets played into
12:12
the into the account, into the key people.
12:14
And we always like to talk about ABMI would say that ABM is not
12:17
about personas, it's about people.
12:19
And I always say that if you can't name me the people in the
12:21
account that you're not doing ABM.
12:23
So whenever I hear people talk about, you know, this is a
12:25
persona we're after or that one or the other one, I thought
12:28
that's demand Gen. If you want to do ABM, tell me
12:31
their names. And an old guest on one on my
12:33
show, Danny Nail, who's one of the kind of gurus for me of ABM,
12:37
he he used to say, if you don't know their names, you're not
12:39
doing ABM. And I think that's for me is a
12:41
little mantra that's I've always got in my head is know your
12:44
customer, know your prospect, know them by their first and
12:47
surname and then you do proper ABM.
12:49
Yeah, absolutely makes a lot of sense.
12:50
And going back to that key account point, I think that's
12:53
that's so important and it's not just because it helps you to win
12:57
the right field. You think about the Ripper
13:00
effect, if you're in marketing and you're targeting and chasing
13:04
and engaging with companies that aren't a great probably means
13:09
you might even get some good results.
13:10
As in you're getting some of those companies into pipeline
13:13
and sales will close some of them whether they're a good fit
13:15
or not, but they'll miss a load and that will affect your close
13:18
rates. But then down the line, you're
13:20
actually giving the post sales team an account that isn't a
13:22
great fit. The chances of delivering true
13:25
value is very little and therefore they're likely to
13:27
churn. We're all, you know, anyone in
13:29
business. If you can't keep a customer
13:31
beyond the 1st 1224 months, you're going to lose money on
13:34
it. So it's a whole ripple effect.
13:36
I think you're right that focus on the right account is more
13:40
important than people give it credibility for.
13:42
And again that account based approach the key part of it.
13:44
Yeah, just had one points out, Paul, I just I always remember
13:47
things that tell people tell me and I can say really forever.
13:50
And an old chairman of an old company I used to work for, he
13:53
said, Declan, anybody can be a busy fool.
13:56
And this guy was a multi millionaire.
13:58
He'd ran, you know, some serious companies in his time.
14:01
And he just said, look, you've got to focus on what's important
14:03
for your company and just everything, all these kind of
14:06
small transactional stuff is of no importance whatsoever.
14:09
And you need to forget about those and focus on the large
14:11
accounts and get more of them. And I think I might be answering
14:15
a potential question you might want to answer later.
14:16
But with regards to ROI, we always say after we've been,
14:21
you're applying the three hours methodology which many people
14:23
have been using over the years, you know, reputation,
14:25
relationship and revenue. But the one that we see is
14:28
coming more to the fore now is about lifetime value LTV.
14:31
That's a reflection of the fact that, you know, boards of
14:35
companies, shareholders, C-Suite, they're all focused on
14:38
the lifetime value because that is actually what's going to
14:40
drive the most profitable businesses is having customers
14:43
that stay with you forever. I was interviewing, I think it's
14:47
Andrew Watkins over IBM who runs the right part of their ABM
14:50
program in the UK. And I think he was saying on the
14:52
program that I think American Express has been a client of IBM
14:56
for over 100 years. That's an example of a customer
14:59
for life. So if you can imagine the
15:00
relationship between American Express and IBM over the course
15:03
of of 100 years, that just shows you that if you do a good job
15:07
for a company and as their vault, imagine what American
15:09
Express was like 100 years ago and imagine what IBM was like
15:11
100 years ago. And now what each company is
15:14
like now, they've been able to partner over that period.
15:17
So that's really important for me.
15:19
Yeah, it really is. And I think similar to you speak
15:22
to people all the time around on these subjects and it's amazing
15:25
how many people spend a lot of time and effort identifying
15:29
those key accounts. Who are we going to go after and
15:31
then do advertising campaigns that like spray and pray and
15:35
advertise to anyone and everyone and hope that some of those key
15:38
accounts actually see the ads. To me, it's just like, you don't
15:41
need to do it that way anymore. But anyway, again, diversifying
15:44
off a topic. But I think if you're going to
15:46
take that effort and focus on those key accounts, do it across
15:49
the entire entire go to market motion.
15:52
Agreed. Yeah, we touched on AI and I
15:55
think it's a subject that is is so valid.
15:58
And I agree with you that we've got to be careful that we do it
16:01
in the right way, but it seems to be transforming marketing.
16:04
So from your perspective, how do you see AI and all this
16:08
discussion around AI agents reshaping these ABM strategies
16:12
we're talking about, especially when you think about things like
16:14
personalisation and scalability? That's a big question.
16:17
Therefore a lot of focus have been a lot of people have been
16:20
thinking about the whole kind of agent of the agentic route.
16:23
And I think even one thing I've definitely found we did a, we've
16:27
run the kind of a quarterly event for our customers and
16:30
where we kind of present to them the latest thinking on AABM or
16:33
AI. And we did a session on AI not
16:36
too long ago and it was really interesting.
16:37
You know, these are super interesting companies, all of
16:40
all shapes and sizes from the biggest, you know, High Street
16:43
names down to kind of more bespoke, you know, technology
16:46
brands. And what was interesting was
16:48
that everyone is trying it, but no one really knows what to do
16:51
necessarily. You know, it's a little bit like
16:53
that kind of old and, you know, that old kind of expression
16:56
about, you know, teenage sex, right?
16:58
Everyone's talking about it, but nobody knows how to do it.
17:00
And AI is very similar. And it's also, there's a
17:03
limitation there with regards to the tools and the governance and
17:08
the compliance and the legalities in each company.
17:10
And we, we, we were very surprised to hear that because
17:13
Microsoft is so embedded in so many companies that most
17:16
companies that we were talking to were unable to actually
17:18
access Co pilots, which is up to the Microsoft.
17:21
So there's a limit. I'm definitely seeing there's a
17:23
limitation. There's almost like there's a
17:25
bit of a pressure, you know, pressure cooker sense is that
17:29
the, the demand is there. There's a lot of pressure, but
17:31
people are feeling they're kind of constrained somewhere either
17:33
by their companies, by their CTOS, by the legal side of
17:37
things that they're very worried about what to do and how to do
17:39
it and what information you can put in there and how's the
17:42
information controlled when you put in company proprietary
17:45
information or customer proprietary information.
17:48
So I think there's definitely, that's something that we've been
17:50
talking to a lot of our customers about is how to think
17:52
about that and how to think about some of the issues that
17:55
surround that. So you can actually benefit from
17:57
AI. So that's just an aside and
17:58
observation that I've seen in the market.
18:01
But I think in terms of what we are, how we're training, and
18:04
we've just recently launched a whole suite of AI training
18:06
courses that kind of the ABM mastery, they're kind of linked
18:10
to the whole ABM journey. So there's one course for each
18:14
step of our six step approach, whether it's the ICP, account
18:18
selection, value proposition, the creative side, etcetera, the
18:21
personalisation side, as you said.
18:23
And I think what we're trying to show there is the art of the
18:25
possible. We're trying to show you're
18:27
doing this today and you're doing a good job at doing your
18:30
ICP or your account selection or you're adding new accounts to
18:33
your, to your ABM program or you're promoting demoting
18:37
accounts based on insights, first party or third party.
18:40
But here are some ways to actually infuse that process
18:44
with AI. So the LinkedIn Live that I
18:46
mentioned, Paul, we did the other day, we get 3 case studies
18:49
and we, we kind of demonstrated the three live on the LinkedIn
18:52
Live. And one was regarding account
18:54
selection and how you can get kind of that raw metadata of all
18:58
the accounts that you're either working with or you'd like to
19:00
work with or whatever. And then you can use AI to
19:04
actually do a lot of scoring. And a lot of the heavy lifting
19:07
that you were talking about before can now be done with AI.
19:10
So it kind of gives you the 80%. And a lot of what we talk about
19:13
when we talk about API made AI rather is give us the 80%, but
19:18
the 20% is going to be me because that's that's what makes
19:21
a difference. That's what the customer is
19:22
paying for. They're not paying for an AI.
19:24
They're paying for your expertise, your knowledge, your
19:27
ability to do great ABM to accelerate what they're trying
19:31
to do. So I think that's the part from
19:32
us. So the the account selection and
19:34
the insights, which obviously is something that a lot of
19:36
companies sometimes skip over the use case we showed it's
19:41
worth if you drop it into the call notes for this podcast.
19:43
But my colleague Josh showed how you could build very
19:46
sophisticated insights on one company by combining different
19:50
AI tools together and giving you something that you can then
19:54
human validate, but gives you a massive, massive head start and
19:57
actually gives you angles that perhaps I think that's what you
20:01
think about insights, what it's all about.
20:02
It's trying to give you angles that you wouldn't necessarily
20:05
see. So it's almost like looking
20:06
looking over the horizon. Because the horizon, we can't
20:09
see what's behind the horizon, but sometimes with insight, you
20:11
can see what's behind the horizon.
20:13
So it's getting those insights that then become part of the
20:16
value proposition that then become part of the campaign,
20:18
part of the messaging that then make the customer or the
20:21
prospect actually, you know, sit up, stop, read, act.
20:26
And I think that's that's for me where AI is going to help is
20:29
actually helping us, helping our clients is just to accelerate
20:32
some of that work and then get into that 80%.
20:35
Yeah, great points again. And I think that insight is a
20:39
critical thing we're we're actually starting to hear when
20:42
we speak marketing. But a lot of this is, is from
20:44
the sales side of of people we speak to losing a little bit of
20:48
confidence in AI, which we're actually saying I'm only a
20:50
couple of years in, that's a bit dangerous.
20:52
But a lot of it is around this black box approach to AI, like
20:56
saying AI is telling you to do this or do it, but there's no
20:59
insight, There's no giving an understanding of of why.
21:03
And I always call it AI without the why.
21:05
And it's like, hey, salesperson, go after this account because I
21:09
say so. Well, I'll go after it.
21:11
And then you realize that 50% of the time it's irrelevant.
21:14
You start losing faith in that, that what you want to know is,
21:17
OK, I'll go after that account, but why should I go after it?
21:20
What messaging are they showing? Are they engaging with our
21:23
brand? Where are they on our Biogen?
21:25
Is it actually a sales play or should I be raising awareness?
21:28
Is this a searcher to let them know who we are?
21:31
Because they're searching, but they're they're not looking at
21:33
us. So I think AI massively has a
21:36
future, right? And I can see AI being OK, I
21:39
need to do this really manual time consuming task.
21:42
AI do it for me so I can focus on what I do, which is the
21:46
creative or the selling or whatever.
21:48
And that I think has a huge future.
21:51
And I think that's where AI will take us, all those manually
21:53
intensive tasks, but we have to be careful that we're not just
21:57
throwing AI stuff out there and then switching off the people
22:01
who are using it because then they'll lose confidence and and
22:03
that really effects a IS approach in the future, I think.
22:07
Yeah, I think it's interesting. A lot of people say that, you
22:09
know, AI is amazing and looking at the past, but it can't look
22:12
at the present to look at the future.
22:15
And although I, I saw a podcast yesterday with Sam Altman and a
22:18
whole bunch of his nerdy, nerdy teams and they were talking
22:23
about how they are getting it to look at the future and predict
22:25
the future, which is a bit kind of scary.
22:27
So that if they've made that public, it suggests they're
22:29
going to actually do something about it.
22:31
But that's an interesting point. But I think go back to your
22:33
point, Paul, about, you know, how do you use AI within the ABM
22:36
world? I think one thing that we're
22:38
looking at is, and go back to your your point around what does
22:42
the new, what does that new ABM model look like?
22:44
And what we're definitely saying to the market is previously you
22:48
went to an agency and obviously I've used agency for 20 or 25
22:51
years and I'm working with an agency now.
22:53
So I've been on, I've been on the dark side and I've been on
22:56
the bright side, so to speak, of the two other two things, right?
22:58
So I know what it looks like to hire an agency to manage them.
23:01
And obviously now I'm under the side trying to convince people
23:03
to use an agency. But I've definitely seen a
23:05
movement in the kind of whole ABM agency world where people
23:09
are saying, well, you know, AI is helping us do certain parts
23:12
of this, so perhaps you need to do other parts of it.
23:14
So we're definitely seeing a kind of a, I request my
23:18
customers to kind of go a little bit up market, so to speak, a
23:21
little bit upscale, going deeper and deeper into the kind of the
23:24
value proposition, into the insights into the campaign
23:27
messaging, into the strategy, because I think ultimately AI
23:33
can't replace a great ABM strategist.
23:36
Another thing that we've been working on a lot of the two
23:38
things I've mentioned about the training, which we, we think is
23:40
really important to get. We've, we've trained so many
23:42
people over the last decade without actually having a
23:44
formalized training program in place.
23:46
And we've been delivering training all the time.
23:47
And then suddenly people said to us, what can you, could you
23:49
formalize it? So we, that's why we've, we've
23:51
launched a training suite and equally people are saying to us,
23:54
we'd love to have, you know, your expertise, but could we
23:57
subscribe to it? And so we've been working on
23:59
that as well in kind of a model to say, well, actually there is
24:02
a way with AI now where you can get access to this kind of
24:07
decades of marketing expertise, etcetera.
24:10
And we can make that available. That's something that we're kind
24:12
of cooking up at the moment is to make our kind of expertise
24:15
available to the market in a way that help people rather than
24:18
just as you said, just go to a black box and just talking to a
24:20
black box that you don't know where the information is coming
24:22
from. You don't know whether it's
24:23
right or in, you know, I've done so many experiments and type
24:27
things into various platforms and, and see, you know, the
24:31
stuff that comes back and some of it's OK and some of it is
24:33
very dodgy because it's looking for these citations.
24:36
And the worst thing now is everyone's trying to gain the
24:38
citations and everyone's trying to do this GGEO right, which is
24:41
obviously the AI version of SEO. So now you've got, it's like
24:45
going back to the 1990s when people were doing keyword
24:47
stuffing and, you know, putting the word, you know, whatever B2B
24:51
marketing 50 times on the page. And you got away with that for a
24:54
couple of years. Now people are doing the same
24:56
thing and they're trying to, you know, spend half their day on
24:59
Reddit and the other half day on Wikipedia to make sure that the
25:02
AI's pick up those citations. So, you know, pinch of salt
25:06
really is what I say when you put a question into AI at the
25:09
moment, because you just got to be very clear on the citation
25:12
and where they're getting their data from really.
25:14
Yeah, absolutely. And I did have an example from a
25:17
client who said that they were given a buying signals from AI
25:20
and when they dug into it with the client, the client had
25:22
unsubscribed from an e-mail and that was seen as a buying
25:26
signal. Wow.
25:27
OK, we need, we need to be. Careful, right?
25:29
Well, I always give the anecdote that, you know, I've got two
25:32
kids and a dog downstairs and so I've got a toe toe versa, which
25:36
is A7 seater and it's, you know, it's as dirty as you can imagine
25:40
inside. You know, I've just gone beyond
25:42
the kind of trying to clean the thing.
25:44
It's just it's gone beyond the people.
25:45
I say it's just people to clean and they just say I'm not
25:47
cleaning that anymore. But I always, I always, I'm
25:49
always on the website Volvo because I just love Volvos and
25:52
I'm always looking at the XC60 and XC90.
25:54
So if people look at my interest, they think I'm
25:56
actually really interested in buying a Volvo.
25:58
But I haven't got €80,000 or dollars or whatever they cost to
26:02
buy. But I've got a lot of interest,
26:03
but I've got 0 intent. And I mentioned Danny Nail
26:07
before who's was running things at Microsoft and Salesforce, the
26:11
ABM and he, that's another thing that always stays in my head.
26:14
He says, you've got to be very clear, there's a huge difference
26:16
between interest and intent. And that's why my involver
26:20
anecdotes, why I tell everyone now to remember that I've got a
26:22
Toyota downstairs. It's going to stay there because
26:26
it was 2 reasons. One, because it does the job.
26:28
And two, I'd probably cry if I had a brand new Evolver and I
26:31
had my two kids and the dog in the back.
26:33
I'd probably have a, you know, an attack of like, you know, of,
26:37
of nerves with knowing what they're going to do to the car.
26:39
But anyway, so that's that's an example.
26:42
Yeah, very good example as well. And I know we've touched on the
26:45
buying groups and we all we both agree that it's something that
26:49
should have been done from day one, but it is the big topic at
26:52
the moment alongside our how do you think anyone looking at ABM
26:55
strategy should adapt their thinking to to make sure if
26:59
they're not, they're effectively engaging with these groups?
27:02
Well, it goes back down to the what we call the foundational
27:04
work. So with every customer, we kind
27:05
of audit where they are on the journey with from their ICP to
27:09
their account selection to their audiences within those accounts.
27:14
And we peel out, peel away rather from them everything they
27:18
know about those customers or those prospects.
27:21
And just thinking about a conversation with another
27:22
prospect that we were talking to the other day and they were
27:25
saying to me, we've got these huge accounts and they're
27:26
spending more than $1,000,000 with us, but we don't really
27:29
know anybody. It's completely surface level.
27:32
And so on the one hand, you look at the revenue, you think we're
27:35
doing a really good job. But on the other hand, if
27:37
anything happens to that account or that person, we are suddenly
27:40
looking at $1,000,000 potentially being at risk.
27:44
So the whole conversation we had with them was about you have to
27:46
go deep into the account and you've got to build those that
27:49
those relationships and build that influence within the
27:51
account. So that kind of stakeholder
27:53
mapping. And if we were doing a screen
27:55
share, I'd show you some examples of how we do
27:57
stakeholder mapping. But we go to to a lot of a lot
28:00
of effort and a lot of expense to kind of map out who we
28:03
believe is the talking to sales, talking to account management,
28:06
talking to the C-Suite, who are the people in that account that
28:11
actually matter whether procurement are involved,
28:13
whether the CFO is involved because he, he or she has to
28:16
sign off the budget, whether they're involved early, mid or
28:19
late in the decision making process.
28:22
So I think just going to town and really building that map and
28:26
then working out where you are with each one.
28:28
Who does, does Paul know them? Does Declan know them?
28:32
Does your CEO know the CEO? Where can you see those bridges?
28:36
Because I think ultimately the more that you can listen and
28:39
obviously it's interesting because there's no technology
28:41
that can do this kind of multi threading, right?
28:43
And you can at least from a technology point of view, you
28:45
can try to serve up your content from a multi threading point of
28:48
view. And I think that's an
28:49
interesting innovation, at least from a technology digital point
28:53
of view that allows you to do some of that.
28:54
But ultimately it's going to come down to great strategy,
28:57
great messaging getting into those.
28:59
We very often with a lot of our ABM programs, we run a
29:03
peer-to-peer model. So yes, sales do a marvelous
29:06
job, but ACFO can sometimes do a better job or a CTO can do a
29:11
better job or a CIO can do a better job and they can build
29:14
trust far quicker than your head of sales.
29:17
So we run a lot of these peer-to-peer, whether it's
29:19
through engagement, through these executive lunches or
29:22
dinners, whether it's through when we run events or we Piggy
29:25
Bank piggyback rather often events that they're running a
29:28
customers running or whether we're running social selling or
29:32
what we call executive engagement programs into the
29:34
account. And so, you know, we're running
29:36
one more Ron one rather we're one of our customers and he's
29:40
kind of like the chief financial lead within the customer.
29:43
And so he's part of the social selling program to build trust
29:47
within the target accounts. They're talking to you about.
29:49
Well, actually this guy knows what he's talking about.
29:52
He's got deep accountancy background.
29:54
They're selling a financial services software.
29:56
So therefore there's much more reputation trust building going
29:59
on there. So I think that's really key is
30:01
actually just going to the expense of building those, those
30:04
maps and then building out from there really.
30:06
Yeah, absolutely. And the fact is we speak to
30:10
sales leaders all the time that they've lost a deal because
30:13
someone they never heard of came out of the woodwork and killed
30:15
the deal because they didn't understand something about it.
30:18
And so that multi threading is so important, regardless of who
30:21
you're talking to and who you know, there's other people on
30:24
that buying group that you're never going to engage with,
30:26
you're never going to get to speak to.
30:28
You need to be able to make sure that they're getting the same
30:31
messaging. If they're doing stuff like
30:33
anonymously looking at your website or researching stuff,
30:36
make sure they're getting the same message.
30:37
So yeah, I think again, we're on the same page there.
30:40
Buying groups is something we should always have done.
30:42
But now more than ever, I think people are starting to sit up
30:45
and go, oh, I didn't do that right.
30:47
I really need to do it. And it's the people you know,
30:49
you don't know is isn't important as the people you do
30:52
in that group. I think, Yeah, you mentioned ROI
30:54
earlier and that's something that comes up every time we have
30:57
a conversation. The one of the things we hear is
30:59
that many of the businesses speak to actually struggle to
31:02
measure the success of their ABM efforts.
31:05
Do you have any tips or metrics or outcomes you think these
31:10
people should really be focusing on for that modern ABM approach?
31:13
Well. It depends.
31:13
If you asked me the question maybe a year or so ago, I might
31:15
give you a different answer. But today with, with what we're
31:19
going to the market with in terms of outcome approach, it's
31:22
a lot easier because we're delivering on the outcome.
31:24
So rather than just being a more generic ABM program, hey, let's
31:28
run a one too many campaign into a set of 100 accounts or let's,
31:32
let's run a 1 to one campaign into 6 accounts.
31:35
Yes, you can have metrics in terms of what you're looking to
31:37
achieve, but ultimately they can be a little bit fuzzy.
31:40
But with our outcomes approach, we're definitely saying, well,
31:42
look, you know, we're going to cross sell into this account,
31:44
but who do you know, which division divisions are you
31:46
working with at the moment? What solutions are you selling
31:49
into that account? So let's, let's build an outcome
31:51
based approach around cross setting and up selling.
31:53
And then that's perfectly measurable because then you can
31:56
say, right, this is what we were selling before, this is who we
31:59
were selling to before. Let's look back six months and
32:02
say what changed. So I think that going back to
32:04
what I'm saying about talking the language of business as
32:07
opposed to talking the language of marketing, that makes it a
32:09
lot easier for everyone. And I think the second thing
32:11
that I always say to people about ABM and ROI, and I just
32:15
always think about my guests and what they shared with me, that
32:17
Amber Bogey, who I interviewed and she's a great ABM over in
32:21
the States, she said to me, well, look, everyone's, if
32:24
you're doing ABM well, everyone's rowing in the same
32:26
direction. Whether it's sales, whether it's
32:28
customer success, whether it's the ABM team, whether it's B2B
32:31
marketing, whether it's the C-Suite, everyone's agreed that
32:34
these are the accounts we have to go after.
32:36
So it can be quite hard for you to peel off and say, well,
32:39
that's ABM, that's the ABM team's work.
32:42
But ultimately, if those accounts are are spending more,
32:45
delivering more, you've got higher conversion rates, higher
32:49
bigger deal values, you're seeing less churn, you've got
32:53
higher scores in terms of, you know, how they're scoring you
32:56
for their satisfaction. If you're seeing all that across
32:59
those accounts that you're doing ABM into as a compared to maybe
33:03
a test group that you're not doing ABM into, that means that
33:06
ABM is working. How do you then say it's you
33:08
rather than the sales team, rather than the C-Suite rather
33:11
than the customer success? That can be tough.
33:13
So, but sometimes it's actually better, yes, build your metrics,
33:17
build your dashboard as you would probably say, Paul, you
33:20
know, look at the average, all the value, the sales velocity,
33:23
the win rates, the customer retention, customer churn.
33:26
Look at all that, build that, absolutely.
33:28
But then look at the whole thing as a more holistic model and
33:31
say, well, are we all making this happen?
33:34
Because then if you're all making it happen, then that's a
33:36
perfect business because you're all, you know, it's almost like,
33:40
you know, a family all focused on, on the well-being of the
33:43
family and making sure that everyone is looked after.
33:45
And whether the, you know, the the youngest kid gets fed by the
33:49
oldest son and then the mother is busy in the kitchen and the
33:52
father's, you know, trying to make sure one of the other
33:54
children doesn't fall off the chair and kill himself.
33:56
You know, if you can make sure that everyone's pushing and
33:58
rowing in the same direction, that's, that's actually a good
34:00
thing. So I think there are two parts
34:02
to this. One is obviously of three parts.
34:04
Rather, one is obviously the outcome focus that we talk
34:06
about, which is much more tangible, much more measurable.
34:09
The second one is looking at building that ABM dashboard,
34:12
which has to be a little bit manual.
34:14
There's no perfect tool out there.
34:16
There's some great tools, but you have to do a little bit of
34:19
bringing stuff together because not everything is in one place.
34:22
And then it's just trying to say to the whole business, well,
34:25
these these are the accounts. Do we all agree that these are
34:27
the accounts we do sales, are you on them?
34:29
Yes, customer success, are you on them?
34:31
Yes, ABM, are you on them? Yes, great.
34:33
Well, let's look what happens and then you will all celebrate
34:35
together and go back to your point about kind of sales and
34:38
marketing alignment earlier on. That's what brings alignment
34:41
when everyone's together and everyone says, well, Jesus, look
34:43
at this, we've actually made it made it work.
34:45
Then all those barriers come down and people aren't saying
34:48
you know ABM is from Mars and sales is from Venus or whichever
34:51
planet you know. Yeah, I sat, I sat in with a
34:54
prospect, I won't name them about a month ago and it was a
34:57
monthly meeting and it was the CMO, the CRO, the CEO, the CFO
35:02
and I think the other one was called head of customer success,
35:05
whatever. All in A room.
35:06
And they're all defending their corners and the CMO was saying
35:09
how brilliant that they hit all their numbers, got in the right
35:12
amount of leads. The people still talk about that
35:15
it that they needed, they hit all their goals.
35:17
And then sales were sat at the, the sales leader was saying,
35:20
yeah, but most of the stuff you gave me was rubbish.
35:22
My sales team can't close that. You're focused on the wrong
35:25
things. But we did manage to close
35:26
enough to hit our number. And then customer success
35:29
manager was saying, yeah, but you gave me a lot of rubbish.
35:31
These are going to turn. These aren't customers who are.
35:34
And you could see the CEO and the CFO head in hands.
35:37
And that is the opposite of what we're trying to achieve, right.
35:40
We want them all to be marketing.
35:42
We didn't give you as many leads this quarter, but every one of
35:44
them was relevant. Yeah, we closed loads of them.
35:46
Yeah, they're brilliant. We're going to renew them.
35:48
That's the idea. All right, that's what we're all
35:50
aiming for. And and these these approaches
35:52
will definitely help that. There's there's probably going
35:54
to be lots of listeners, Declan who are still doing things a
35:58
traditional way, the old traditional ABM frameworks.
36:01
And I'm thinking, well, maybe I should look at a more modern
36:05
approach. What is the first step you think
36:08
they should take? You know, as they try to
36:09
transition to this more outcomes based approach.
36:13
Well, I think be very clear what outcome you're looking to
36:15
achieve. So almost the more that you are
36:18
aligned with the business. And if I think about the most
36:21
successful ABM programs, the most successful ABM teams, they
36:25
are the ones that are most aligned with the business, not
36:28
just marketing, not just sales, but actually with the C-Suite.
36:31
And therefore I'm just thinking of one that I was wanted talking
36:34
to the other day and this is, you know, we're looking to do an
36:37
ABM program with us. And they were saying, well,
36:39
look, this is coming straight from the CEO.
36:41
The CEO wants to deploy an account centric approach to the
36:44
business and he wants it to be rolled out across the entire
36:46
business because he understands from his previous companies the
36:49
value of becoming account customer centric.
36:53
So that's almost like, you know, the best gift any ABM can
36:57
receive is that message from the CEO that you he wants the whole
37:01
company to be account centric. So ultimately, if you want to
37:04
flip everything, you think, well, what is the outcome?
37:06
What are the outcomes? What is the business looking to
37:08
achieve, whether it's from a net new point of view or from a
37:11
customer growth point of view, what are they looking to
37:13
achieve? How can I align my ABM strategy
37:17
with those outcomes? So talking to sales about
37:20
existing, depending how the business is structured, but
37:23
let's say sales are working much more on on net new.
37:26
So talking to sales about what they're trying to achieve,
37:29
what's coming in from the the VP of sales and above on that,
37:32
talking to customer success or account management or account
37:35
account directors about what looking to achieve with accounts
37:39
and try to try to mold that together, say, right, OK, well,
37:41
here's how I'm going to help you this year.
37:43
You've got some targets this year around retention.
37:46
Well, let's build, let's build a strategy around retention.
37:49
And you know, if the price is big enough, which is normally
37:51
where ABM sits in terms of I was just thinking about to the
37:55
customer folks last week and their, you know, their clients
37:58
spend with them between 1:00 and $25 million, between $1 million
38:01
and $25 million. So the prize is that big that,
38:04
you know, unless you've actually got the team aligned around this
38:07
and you, there's an awful lot of risk built into your model that
38:11
if you lose a 1 to $25 million client, that's going to hurt you
38:14
because it's going to be much harder to win another one.
38:16
So I think just working backwards from, we always talk
38:19
about working backwards from revenue.
38:21
So work backwards from revenue in terms of what you're trying
38:23
to achieve, build the program around that, build everything
38:26
around that. And then once you've got that,
38:27
then then it's just a case of of iterating because then you once
38:31
you've done one, let's say it's around account retention,
38:34
customer retention, then you can roll out another one, another
38:37
playbook around perhaps Lee perhaps rather cross sell upsell
38:41
or defending from a competitor or displacing A competitor,
38:44
etcetera. So that would be my advice to
38:46
anybody. Yeah, good advice.
38:49
And you're right, so many people look at this as a buying new
38:52
prospects approach. It's not, it's defending your
38:55
existing customers as well and and making sure that hey, you're
38:59
getting the most value out of them you can, but also you're
39:01
you're protecting them from the competition.
39:03
So yeah, really good points on that.
39:05
Do you have an example that you're able to share around the
39:08
company that successfully even adopted that module and the
39:12
outcomes I achieved? Well, the one that we presented
39:15
a couple of years ago now at the ABN conference in London was
39:18
with a company called Aviva AVEVA, which is a an industrial
39:24
software company. I think they tend over about a
39:26
billion pounds or whatever that is in dollars these days, $1.2
39:30
billion or much of exchange rate at the moment.
39:33
And that's occasionally that the head of ABM there, Andrew Reed
39:36
presented in London. And I think that's a great story
39:38
because so that was a story of, of how do you run a playbook to
39:42
change the perception of your brand.
39:44
And this company, Aviva, which is not really a High Street name
39:47
in spite of the fact that it's got over a billion dollars in
39:50
turnover, had kind of acquired. This is a typical problem of
39:54
many large companies, large enterprises.
39:57
They'd acquired lots of companies and each company came
39:59
with a brand. So their existing customers knew
40:02
each one of these brands, but didn't know, didn't know rather
40:04
the the holding company didn't know the story, didn't know that
40:08
the trajectory, didn't know the kind of the modern, the modern
40:11
story of this company. And that was the challenge they
40:14
said to us is, hey, we're going to give you one account, GSK,
40:18
Galaxy S Klein, a well known pharma company.
40:21
And we need to run up an ABM campaign into them to change
40:25
perceptions, to get them to understand who Aviva is as
40:28
opposed to the legacy brand that they were working with.
40:31
What it is that we can do for them the whole suite of products
40:34
and solutions that we've got, because they're just buying one
40:37
at the moment and how we can actually kind of go hand in hand
40:40
with them for the future. A little bit what I mentioned
40:42
about IBM and and American Express.
40:45
And so the results are on our website and everything and, and
40:49
you can Google it, it's on YouTube as well.
40:51
But the net result was that they, they built about full go
40:55
back to relationships and buying groups.
40:56
They built about 45 relationships with key people
40:59
that they never knew before within GSK within one account,
41:02
45 key people that could actually be part of their their,
41:05
that buying committee that they need to talk to.
41:07
And obviously GSK is obviously operates IN150180 countries
41:13
across the globe and they generated about $9 million in
41:18
pipeline off the back of that one campaign, one strategy into
41:22
one company and then that being translated into into revenue
41:25
thereafter. But I think the story was a
41:28
story of transition. And I think going back to the
41:30
outcome that they were looking for, they were looking for that
41:32
transition. They were looking for that
41:34
change of perception. They were looking for that
41:36
customer to look at them in a different light.
41:38
They were looking for that customer to see them as a as a
41:40
modern company with multiple solutions to solve all their
41:43
problems. When I see those transition
41:45
stories, for me, they're great ones because it's not just
41:47
about, oh, you know, we won this amount of business or whatever,
41:49
but you actually helped me to transform my business.
41:52
Those are really compelling ABM stories.
41:54
Yeah, it's a brilliant story And and and Aviva are continuing on
41:57
leaps and bounds. They're also a demand based
41:59
client. So we work, we both work with
42:01
them, which is good. They last week they just won the
42:03
Forester B to B campaign of the year, which is pretty impressive
42:06
stuff as well. So yeah.
42:08
It's good timing, actually good timing because obviously we saw
42:11
that and after your your key to that success as well really.
42:14
So that's great to hear. Yeah, it's great.
42:15
Well, partnerships, look, it works.
42:17
It works. So looking ahead, do you see any
42:20
particular, I know we've talked AI and buying groups, but any
42:24
particular trend you see that are going to shape the future of
42:28
ABM on what we do and any advice to companies so they can prepare
42:33
to stay ahead of that? Well, I think I mentioned it a
42:35
little bit earlier, but I think it's what does it mean to you?
42:38
Everyone who's done ABM knows what it meant to them or means
42:42
to them now, but what does ABM mean to you in the future?
42:44
How is that going to be aligning with where your company's going
42:47
to head? And that goes back to my point
42:49
about, you know, the companies are changing, you know, scary
42:52
how you look at all these very, you know, large enterprises and
42:55
how they're evolving very quickly with the use of AI and,
42:59
and various computing technologies that are allowing
43:01
them to transform their businesses.
43:03
You know, they're not even recognizable compared to what
43:05
they were like five years ago. So how can you remain relevant?
43:08
And I think relevancy is probably one of the most
43:10
important words that we use at our agencies, us remaining
43:14
relevant for our customers in terms of how we can help them
43:17
and actually our customers remaining relevant in the
43:20
market. So I think the kind of trending
43:22
topic for me is this conversational relevance.
43:24
And I think another guest, I'm always talking about guests, but
43:26
another guest I was I had was a Christian vice who's over at
43:31
Autodesk in Germany. He's another skier like you put
43:35
he's down in Bavaria. So he's got access to some good
43:37
slopes down there. And the way that he talks about
43:40
ABM, he says, well, ABM is the overall the customer rather is
43:44
the Formula One car jobs. And in ABM, you and the whole
43:48
company are everyone who is around that car trying to make
43:52
it win. So when it comes into the
43:53
paddock and there's somebody cleaning the windows, there's
43:56
somebody changing the tires, there's somebody putting oil in
43:58
the car or gas as the Americans call it.
44:01
I never understood why they call it gas.
44:02
Well, it's actually a liquid, but gas in the car, we are
44:06
everyone around the car and our job is to help the customer win.
44:09
So that winning now is a lot more about relevancy because ABM
44:14
should be about helping your customer win and that's as an
44:17
agency us to our customers and obviously our customers who are
44:20
delivering ABM into their customers and it's their
44:22
prospects is helping them to remain relevant.
44:26
So I think my message to the market is think about this
44:28
relevancy and how you can make sure that that message gets
44:31
across to your to your customers.
44:33
And to go back to the point around Aviva, they were trying
44:36
to make sure that they were relevant to that customer that
44:39
potentially could have, could have churned because they would
44:42
have, they would have known the old brand and not the new brand.
44:45
So I think that's that's a key message that I'm I'm going to
44:48
the market with at the moment. And it's, it's really
44:50
interesting because that is the word relevant on every
44:54
conversation we have. If it's we're going to develop
44:57
something new in the product, well, is it relevant to the
44:59
market? And I'm going to take this
45:01
activity with this particular prospect.
45:03
Is it relevant? So it's great that you came up
45:05
with that. And again, I'm aligned with you
45:07
on that. I think relevancy is the key to
45:09
everything. I'm going to buy that new piece
45:10
of technology. Is it relevant to our business?
45:13
Will it help solve those issues? Yeah, really, really good points
45:16
there. Now you sound like someone who
45:18
consumed lots of content. And I know you have your own
45:21
blog and things that you do there.
45:22
Is there Are there any books or blogs or podcasts you'd
45:26
recommend to the listeners? That's a tough one, really.
45:29
There are so many great ones out there.
45:30
So many great ones. Books.
45:32
I've got a lot of books behind me and I just grabbed 2 when you
45:35
I just thought you might ask that question.
45:37
So I just grab 2 that are great reads.
45:39
This one is from one of my guests.
45:42
She runs ABM over at Snowflake, which is one of the kind of the
45:46
best companies doing ABM at the moment.
45:48
Hilary Carpio busting silos. She wrote it in conjunction with
45:52
the head of the CRO, Travis Henry.
45:55
So if you want to learn how to build a winning GTM machine of
45:59
sales and marketing, that's a great book.
46:01
And this one is one of my favorites.
46:02
And this is probably the most practical book I've got at home.
46:06
This is a chap called Stu Heinecker, and he wrote this
46:09
book called How to Get a Meeting with Anyone.
46:11
He's a Wall Street cartoonist. As part of his trade, he's been
46:14
involved in advertising. You know, if you think about Mad
46:17
Men, that kind of thing, he's that kind of generation.
46:19
And he basically tells stories about campaigns that he ran to
46:24
get at meetings. And there are so many tangible
46:27
examples about how you can do incredibly innovative, very,
46:31
very cheap campaigns that actually make people react.
46:35
Whether it's sending a written note, whether it's, you know,
46:38
sending something in the post that land, whether it's sending
46:42
a painting. He talks about so many great
46:44
examples that he's done and also about the psychology of what it
46:47
means to receive something. And I think if you think about
46:50
what we try to do in ABMA, large part of what we do is try to get
46:53
a meeting and then from that meeting then obviously sales can
46:56
do their black magic. But that's what I would
46:59
recommend to. And I've got another one here
47:01
from my old friend Sangra and Vajra, but I can't find it at
47:04
the moment. But he's written so many books.
47:06
As you know, Sangram is doing some, you know, interesting
47:09
stuff over at GTM Partners now. So he's he's always a good
47:12
reader as well. Excellent, great, great
47:13
examples. Thank you very much for all of
47:15
those and you've been an awesome guest.
47:17
I I always knew you were going to be.
47:18
I'm sure there's an argument for another follow up.
47:21
So I think we've only really just scratched the surface right
47:23
now. A cheeky question.
47:25
If you have to recommend two or three other inspirational people
47:28
in the space you recommend we bring on the show, who?
47:31
Who would you call out? That's gonna be like asking me
47:34
which one of my children, my favorite children.
47:36
I've interviewed about 85 guests so far, not as many as
47:39
yourselves on your podcast, but about 85, I think.
47:41
And I'd be hard picked to choose one, really.
47:44
I think if you said to me, you know, going into somebody, I
47:47
would probably suggest a couple of people. 1 is a lady called
47:50
Akriti Gupta, who when I interviewed her, she was running
47:53
ABM at Google, that Google Cloud.
47:56
Now she's director of marketing at LinkedIn.
47:59
She's quite a force. So I'd recommend speaking to
48:01
activity. She's she's a real force of
48:04
nature. And I would definitely
48:06
recommend, and it's not fair really, because I'm just going
48:08
to say, this is just in front of me.
48:09
I'm not saying it because, but I would definitely recommend
48:12
talking to Hillary. We haven't talked to Hillary
48:14
because, you know, she's built something very special at
48:16
Snowflake. And I think she's moved on from
48:18
ABM now. I think she's got a wider GTM
48:20
role, but she'd be a great guest.
48:23
But like I said, it's like asking me, my children, that's
48:25
that's, that's very unfair of you, Paul.
48:28
Now that's it's a very fairly fair response and I appreciate
48:31
that and hopefully they could be future guests for us.
48:33
So you've opened up lots of conversations and so there's
48:36
lots of listeners who want to find out more about you and
48:39
strategic ABM etcetera. How would you recommend people
48:43
best get in touch with you after this?
48:45
Well, to get in touch with me, my name is very Gaelic, Declan
48:48
Mulcain. So if you Google that, there's
48:50
two of us. 1 is a very eminent Dr. in the UK, and I'm sure he's
48:54
going to be upset actually, because he was always #1 and now
48:57
I think I might become number one, but he's a very eminent Dr.
48:59
in the UK, so I'm the other one. So I'm the marketer, not the
49:02
doctor. So if you Google my index and
49:04
otherwise look at the agency strategic ABM, all one word, you
49:08
know, as you said, Paul, we're constantly sharing things on
49:12
LinkedIn, those other platforms and we're running, you know,
49:14
lots of events and LinkedIn lives and stuff.
49:16
So just look out for us really. And we'd we'd love to see people
49:19
and answer their questions. Fantastic.
49:21
Well, thank you, Declan. That was a great session.
49:24
I really enjoyed speaking with you.
49:25
I hope you enjoyed it as well and I hope the listeners have
49:27
enjoyed the episode. And don't forget there's nearly
49:30
600 other episodes in the series now, so make sure you check them
49:34
out. Thanks for listening.
49:35
Thanks again, Declan for your time.
49:36
And until next time, Cheerio. Thanks Paul.
49:40
Thanks for joining us for On Base.
49:42
If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share, rate,
49:45
review and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or wherever you
49:49
get your podcasts. This show is brought to you by
49:52
Demand Base, the only account based experience platform built
49:55
for sales and marketing alignment.