Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 573 | Why enterprise ABM falls short and how to fix it

Transcript

Ep. 573 | Why enterprise ABM falls short and how to fix it · The Prompt

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This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
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pressing B2B go to market challenges.
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Each week, host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and
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marketing leaders to get you in depth insights and creative
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strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.
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Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to the latest in
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the award-winning on based podcast series.
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I'm your host Paul Gibson, and we always look for different
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topics to discuss. So I'm excited today that I'm
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talking with Tijaal Patel, who is founder at Stanford Bridge
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Partners. And the topic we're discussing
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is a really great one. Why IBM fails at big tech
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lessons in the lining sales, marketing and intent data
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conversations I have day in, day out.
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So I'm really excited for this one.
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Tijaal, thank you very much for joining us today.
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Excited to get you on the show and welcome.
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Thank you so much for having me excited about our conversation
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today. Excellent.
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So it's a really good topic, but before we get into it, I always
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like to get a bit of a background check.
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So you've worked with large tech brands, small companies,
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etcetera over your time. Do you mind just walking us
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through your career and how these experience shaped your
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perspective on on things like IBMGTM and where you are today?
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Yeah, of course. So I think more relevant for
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your listeners today is my most recent experience has been at
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Cisco. I spent eight years there, so
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and that's actually my first B2B company is literally landing
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into a big tech firm like Cisco, but I spent 20 years before that
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in B2CE, commerce and retail, other tech companies like
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Microsoft, Nokia. So a lot, you know, probably 20
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odd years of my career has been in tech.
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A lot of that has been in B2C. And I think that brings and
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gives me a very unique perspective coming into the B2B
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world where, you know, frankly speaking, I think customer
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centricity is a very new, you know, phenomenon in the B2B
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world in my opinion. But getting there and I think
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companies like yours really do help dial up.
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How do you become more customer centric and how do you think
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more about intent ABM getting a bit more specific there.
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My experience has been I think more learnings when I've worked
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at big tech like Cisco. And then now I have been
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consulting and run my own consulting practice for the last
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year. And I work actually have done a
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bit of work with B to C clients as well, but mostly leaning into
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B to B. I've worked with kind of smaller
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enterprises all the way through to the large kind of almost
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Cisco size clients as well that I work with.
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And I'm seeing a lot of interesting trends around how is
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ABM really being executed, What are the pitfalls?
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Where am I seeing it work well? So yeah, looking forward to
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digging into that a little bit today.
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Yeah, that's A, That's a really interesting background as well
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because there's so much that was done in B to say that B to B are
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going right. Oh, we should be doing things
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like that. And I do hear and we'll talk
2:55
about it during the conversation today, I'm sure often B to C
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stuff comes across to B to B that actually isn't relevant.
3:03
And I think some of the measurements that are being used
3:06
are still B to C focused. And like I get a click on an ad,
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great. But from who?
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It doesn't matter in B to C, but in B to B, it really matters.
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Anyway, we'll touch on that as we go through.
3:15
Looking back then, what was the moment from your perspective
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where you realize that A/B MABX, whatever we like to call it
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these days as a standalone strategy often falls short for
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large enterprises think. It's, look, some people, I
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disagree when I say that ABM is a tactic.
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It's part of your portfolio of tools available to an
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organization to go to market and it can't stand alone.
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I don't believe it can stand alone as a strategy.
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You've got to, you know, I don't like to talk about the funnel,
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but everyone still talks about it, right?
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That you've got to have, you've got to have your awareness, you
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know, for coming from a consumer world, if you don't have
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awareness, no one's going to think about your product.
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If they're not thinking about your product, they're not going
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to consider buying from you and they're never going to come back
4:02
and buy again. It's pretty simple.
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Whatever you're buying, whether you, you know, you're buying a
4:06
pair of cool trainers or you're going to buy some expensive tech
4:09
for your company, every human is going to go through that process
4:13
and just honing in on right, I'm going to do ABM and I just want
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to sell to these people. And I think it becomes, it's a
4:20
great opportunity for marketing to align with sales.
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But unless you're doing those other things where you are known
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as a company and as a brand and you're trusted and you stack up
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against your competitor set, then how do you hope to sell
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more? Even if you know you've already
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had one customer buy from you once or one product, that
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doesn't necessarily mean they're going to come back and buy again
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and again or buy other products, right?
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And that's what ABN is trying to do.
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Buy more at the same account more often, broader range of
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your products and keep coming back.
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I know I've simplified it a lot, but that to me is the reason why
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you need to be thinking about your messaging on a regular
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basis. Proverbial only 10%, we've all
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heard it are in the market. So are we actually saying we
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don't care about the 90%? Because you know what, they
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don't hit my quota for this quarter.
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So forget about the 90%. Well, no, you've got to
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constantly be nurturing them. So I talking about things like
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nurturing, what is your nurture strategy?
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What is your brand strategy? What are you doing to build
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those intense signals that will show you actually their
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behaviours and what they're interested in?
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And then you can dial up your ABM strategy because that's
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telling you the accounts you really care about and then
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everything else that goes with ABM.
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So, yeah, I would say that's kind of my opinion around how
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ABM fits in with the rest of your marketing strategy.
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Yeah, it's really interesting because ABM as a as an acronym
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has actually got a bit of bad press over the years because
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it's that, you know, marketing thing for a start.
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I mean, my, my old view on it, it doesn't really matter.
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So what you call it, if you're AB to B and you're spending any
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of your time, budget and resource focusing on companies
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that you can't sell to or you don't want to sell to because
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you can't deliver true value, it doesn't make any sense.
6:12
Everything else is to be marketing or account based
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marketing or and that works for sales.
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It was called ABX for a while at Cisco.
6:20
Exactly. And it's not just the marketing
6:23
play, right, because if if you're focusing on the right
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things, you're delivering the right pipeline to your sales
6:28
team and then the sales team get much better close rates,
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etcetera. So it's very much a sales and
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marketing plan. Again, I'm sure we'll touch on
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that as we go forward. But yeah, I think a vital part
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of, but not the only part of how you should work as a business.
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Yeah, targeting is, I think that if I'm honest, when I was at
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Cisco, that is what was happening with ABN.
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It was a target account list that was added to media efforts
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or to advertising efforts, but it wasn't marketing fully in all
7:00
aspects of marketing that it should be.
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So, yeah, I think that term is very loose.
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I don't know what else you call it.
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I'm sure it's time to reinvent it at some point.
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And then ABX as well is, yeah, that was also something that was
7:12
rebranded at Cisco. But you know, in the end it was
7:15
about that. We know there's certain
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customers that we care about, that we want to target that
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sales care about. And we'll talk about this I'm
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sure further. Unless you've got alignment on
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those accounts, the account lists, and I work with clients
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today where there's still none of that alignment being at the
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big company I worked at before where that was really hard to
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get that full alignment on. So, you know, then I've
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questioned, well, why are you bothering with it at all?
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Because if you don't actually have set of accounts that you
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all agreed on, that these are the ones that matter.
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And what's your data to back up why they matter?
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What are your goals to grow those accounts?
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In which areas of your product portfolio do you need to grow
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them? These are the basic fundamentals
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that you've got to get right before you can even start to
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build a plan. Absolutely, Yeah.
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And I'm sure as we go through this, we're going to dig into
8:04
the more detailed, you know, insights on it, but obviously
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you work with smaller companies in the past as well.
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So how was your experience with those that influenced your
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belief in the power of alignment and in intent driven marketing?
8:17
So I think more recently, I mean my smaller company experience as
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an employee was in B2C, so probably not relevant here, but
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I certainly I see a lot more as I do my consulting work now, the
8:29
small and all of the conversations that I have with
8:32
my network as well. The great thing about I'm still
8:36
talking enterprise level companies, but they're at a
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smaller end of the scale versus the likes of Cisco.
8:42
What I know notice is the reason they are successful is frankly
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there's less people in the organization.
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You've got less layers, less silos and you actually move with
8:51
agility, probably less bureaucracy or actually not
8:55
probably 100% less bureaucracy. And so that first fundamental
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thing I mentioned is are you aligned on who those accounts
9:02
are? I know it sounds really basic,
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but that is a really hard thing to get right at the largest Uber
9:08
enterprise companies that I'm talking about.
9:11
They can't get that alignment and they're still trying to
9:13
figure those out and they've already started activating our
9:16
serial examples of that. But with smaller companies, they
9:19
get that alignment. They are able to create content
9:23
on the fly themselves in their teams with which was going to
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align with those accounts that they're trying to target with
9:30
the messaging they're trying to get out with.
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And they're getting it out of the door and executed really
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fast. And sales are seeing an uplift
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in their pipeline as well. So I think, you know, it's much
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closer to the spirit of ABM in smaller companies than I'm
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seeing in the larger ones and the smaller tech.
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So I'm talking tech because that's more most of my
9:50
background. But the smaller kind of
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companies are, it's not perfect. They don't have specialisms,
9:56
they don't have web specialists often.
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I mean, I've come across plenty of companies in recent times,
10:01
they don't have orchestrated customer journeys, Omni channel
10:06
experiences. These were really, really
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important when I was at Cisco and I was part of a digital team
10:12
establishing these journeys when I first joined Cisco.
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This is still like not happening, Omni channel is still
10:18
not happening. But they've got the alignment
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with sales and they're driving pipeline uplift.
10:23
So then you could argue, well then it's not perfect, but
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actually it's working better than the bigger companies who
10:28
have all the skills, all the resources, all the tech frankly
10:32
as well. But do they have as much of the
10:35
success as as maybe the smaller companies are?
10:38
Yeah. I think to your point, there's
10:39
often too many layers to go through to get something done
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and you got to align so many different people.
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Actually, we've seen a big rise in some of the largest
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enterprises. We're dealing almost with silos
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within those businesses. So there'll be a particular
10:54
region or depicted product department where we're helping
10:58
them do really successful campaigns, just focusing on the
11:02
right companies with the right message, finding the ones that
11:05
were didn't think were in market, getting them in market,
11:08
get them engaged with a brand, etcetera.
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And then there's there's other parts of the business that are
11:11
just not doing anything. And it's really interesting
11:14
because you'd think they'd say, oh, that part of the business is
11:17
working really well, we should all be doing the same.
11:19
It doesn't seem to be the case. So we're often in, as I say, at
11:22
some very big enterprises, but in smaller parts of it.
11:25
So yeah, really interesting. So maybe that smaller model is
11:28
is 1 we should look at more often.
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We mentioned alignment, but I think we hear this day in, day
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out, right? The sales and marketing
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alignment is always one of the biggest struggles, especially
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with things like ABM. Do you think there's any
11:39
particular route causes of this misalignment and how do you
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think companies should look to address it?
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Again, I think that speaking from the large scale companies,
11:48
you've got a lot of separation between field marketing and
11:53
global marketing teams like corporate teams.
11:56
Often strategies are driven at a corporate level.
11:58
And especially with US tech firms, it's, you know, US
12:01
centric and you've got all of the nuances of country
12:06
variations, regional variations. And so much gets lost in
12:10
translation between country, you know, France, for example, or
12:14
Germany and what they need and what they know is going to work
12:18
in their country and the accounts they care about and how
12:20
to communicate to them. And then you've got someone on
12:23
the West Coast who is actually driving the biggest strategy and
12:27
even just getting some level of alignment there, you're chewing
12:31
up months of internal like, how do we get on the same page page?
12:35
Oh, you can't go out with this sort of content or no, you've
12:37
created this in US English. That's never going to work in
12:40
German or I'm going to create my own version for Germany.
12:44
But then you've got all the bureaucracy of getting the
12:47
approvals of well, can you go out and say something like that?
12:50
So that's an example every that's real examples of the
12:53
kinds of daily pain points I think that big companies feel.
12:57
And part of that is the sales alignment piece.
13:00
And you know, we know often sales have a very different set
13:04
of prior priorities to what marketing is trying to do.
13:07
They have a different higher level of urgency.
13:10
They want to see impact. Now they are measured quarterly.
13:14
And then especially in B2B, we are dealing with really long
13:19
cycles, buying cycles, large buying groups.
13:22
I think there is also a level of education we need to have
13:26
between marketing and sales of the complexity of reaching these
13:31
accounts, the time required to reach these accounts.
13:34
And I loved what Robert Norman was saying on a on a previous
13:37
podcast of yours. What are your measures of
13:40
success around ABM? Because it can't just be
13:43
pipeline. Of course, we all want that.
13:46
I don't. And again, I'll give real
13:47
examples. I've been at Cisco where we've
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had accounts we cared about, but we only had one or two key
13:54
contacts at that account. So we set goals.
13:56
I remember running a pilot with the UK team at the time when I
13:59
was in a in a global role and we were trying to bring much more
14:02
LinkedIn, leveraging LinkedIn more in sales Navigator and just
14:06
increasing. We doubled the contacts at some
14:09
of the biggest key accounts in the UK through that sales
14:13
marketing, alignment, orchestration, working with
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sales Navigator as part of the ABM strategy.
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And that was, hey, that's success.
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We had two before on average. Now we've got two more.
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That's great. We've got more people in the
14:25
account we can go and talk to. We've got a higher deal size
14:29
value with the velocity of it. We've speeded it up because of
14:32
some of the messaging and making sure all those touch points are
14:35
connected. These are all measures of
14:37
success, which I think unless you're having those
14:39
conversations with sales on, OK, how are we going to measure
14:43
success? So the first step is you, we've
14:46
got your accounts and we've got an agreed list, agreed list of
14:49
priorities. Then it's like measures of
14:51
success and what are those indicators and those KPIs as
14:55
well as the pipeline you're going to generate and getting
14:58
everyone on the same page. And I've seen the smaller
15:00
companies do all of that a lot better and hence why they are
15:04
more successful, whereas you are well into your fiscal year in
15:08
the big, big companies and half of that has still not been
15:11
agreed. Yeah, absolutely.
15:12
There's some great points in there and I think that alignment
15:15
in sales and marketing, one of the key ones that you mentioned
15:18
is what they're measured on. It's the frustration of I've sat
15:22
in meetings with customer sites where sales and marketing are in
15:26
there and you still get the old conversations around, well, I
15:29
gave you 1000 leads last quarter.
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That's what I was targeted by doing.
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And sales say, yeah, but 950 of them were rubbish, you know.
15:37
And it's that we don't want more leads, we want better quality
15:41
leads. And I know it's an old adage,
15:43
but it's that quality versus quantity thing.
15:45
It's still massive, so we haven't solved it yet, but I
15:48
certainly think if you've got sales and marketing being
15:50
measured on different things, you're going to really struggle
15:53
for either of them to be successful.
15:55
Chair, just I need to jump in on that bit because you've reminded
15:57
me. Speaking about quality, I can't
16:00
emphasize enough data quality. I've seen so many examples where
16:04
one company big you're and it is an 8.
16:07
This is a big account we care about.
16:09
It appears in like 5 or 6 different versions of that
16:12
company name, not only because they operate in many different,
16:15
different countries, but they're labeled in different ways in
16:19
different countries. So data quality is a big
16:22
problem. Big problem.
16:24
We get given I've had times that this is a Cisco as well where an
16:28
account list gets given. Upload this to LinkedIn.
16:31
We want to do, you know, a talk more about LinkedIn and social.
16:34
That was one of the areas that I used to lead.
16:36
We want to run a campaign for these accounts.
16:38
Let's just say it was 100 accounts, but by the time you've
16:41
done your cleanup, probably about 50 or 60 accounts that you
16:44
can actually do anything with. So that again is back to the,
16:48
you know, I love the term fix the basics.
16:50
Is your data clear? Is it clear?
16:52
Have you got a single CRM system?
16:54
If you don't have some of that, if those signals aren't being
16:57
passed smoothly into sales, then how do you expect sales to then
17:01
act on those and respond on those?
17:03
And have you agreed what's quality, by the way?
17:05
So you know, back to your point about we gave you those leads,
17:08
but did you even agree on your lead scoring?
17:11
At what point should it go to sales and that smaller companies
17:16
are doing a lot better job on. They've got less people to work
17:19
with. They're going away in the field
17:21
talking to their sales leaders and agreeing together what the
17:24
lead scoring strategy is going to be.
17:25
So all of that upfront work is done.
17:28
It takes the noise away when it comes to execution and passing
17:31
leads into into sales. Yeah, absolutely.
17:33
And again, I will probably touch on it a bit later on, but I've
17:36
turned the praise AI without the Y because there's lots of lovely
17:41
technologies out there that you can utilize to say, right sales,
17:44
you must go and do this now because we tell you to.
17:47
There's no reasoning behind it. And to your point, there's
17:49
because you've got no insight. You don't know why you're going
17:51
after them. You don't know what messaging to
17:53
use. You don't even know if that
17:54
company's aware of you. Are they even engage with your
17:57
brand? There's there any trust?
17:58
So it's way too early for sales to go after it.
18:01
But again, we're going off topic and I'm consciously, we've only
18:04
got 4 hours for this podcast. So what we'll maybe these are
18:09
other things we can dig into on on future podcasts.
18:12
You've mentioned earlier on that ABM is a tactic within a broader
18:16
marketing strategy and I think most people will go with that.
18:19
How do you see ABM fitting into the bigger picture of, you know,
18:22
a go to market brand strategy? I.
18:24
Think it's pretty simple. With ABM you are trying to drive
18:28
immediate. I think a lot of companies are
18:30
trying to drive immediate pipeline.
18:32
That's a core metric. But unless you are giving those
18:37
accounts the opportunity to engage with you, to know about
18:41
your products, where do you get your awareness from?
18:44
Even those accounts are not in the constant buying mode.
18:48
Even from if the only thing your company does is ABM, only 10% of
18:53
them are going to be buying in this moment.
18:55
And the rest of them are, you know, if you're looking at an 18
18:58
month or a year long buying cycle, the account you care
19:02
about today is thinking about buying for next year.
19:06
Let's just think about that for one moment.
19:08
So what are they seeing from you today?
19:10
And will continuously see from you over the next nine months,
19:14
six months, that by the time they're ready to buy, you've got
19:19
all of the signals, you've given them all of the right
19:21
information and you've made it possible for that sell to occur
19:25
in 18 months time or in 12 months time.
19:27
I think that's really an important point to raise.
19:30
And it's not just brand. I think I don't know, again, I
19:32
feel like in B2B brand gets a bad Rep as well because it's
19:36
like, oh, you know, that's the fluffy stuff or that's just, you
19:39
know, we don't need that. We you to everything has to be
19:42
demand Gen. demand Gen. right? Every job role you see out
19:44
there, it's demand Gen. director or demand Gen.
19:47
This or this team is all about demand Gen.
19:49
I mean, you've got CR OS now who run the demand part and then
19:53
you've got a separate brand team, which by the way, another
19:55
topic for another conversation, but why are you splitting up
19:59
marketing? I'm going to take you back to my
20:00
retail and B2C days. If you've got a shop, how are
20:04
you even going to get someone, you know, got a boutique, highly
20:07
branded exclusive store on Bond Street in London?
20:11
Unless people know about you and you've created some sort of
20:15
impression about that brand, Why would they come into your store
20:20
when they might know more about another, you know, your Gucci or
20:24
your Burberry down the road and they're going to go in there and
20:27
they. Haven't heard about your brand,
20:29
Brian said. The first thing is you're going
20:31
to get them into your boutique store and they're not going to
20:33
do that if they don't know about you.
20:35
And then once they're in there, I'm sorry to use this analogy,
20:38
but I think it really is that simple.
20:40
And this is where all of those intense signals can come in.
20:43
Where are they at within your store?
20:45
If they're looking at, you know, shirts and you're walking up to
20:49
them and saying, Hey, I've got to buy one, get one free on
20:51
ties. Why don't you get one of those?
20:53
It's like, well, hang on my all of my behaviour and my, my body
20:57
language is showing you and physically I'm in your shirt
21:00
section and you're coming here and talking to me about your
21:03
ties because hey, I've got a target to hit on ties.
21:06
So let's try and push the ties. Do you know what I mean?
21:08
So I think all of this take you down to that simple level.
21:12
How are you getting people in? Are you paying attention to what
21:15
their behaviour is showing them? And that I think is the beauty
21:18
now with AI, you know, platforms like Demand Base, you've got
21:22
capabilities now that really show you all of those signals in
21:26
B to B that we haven't had before that you have in the
21:29
physical world. Back to the retail, you know
21:31
that a good salesperson knows, are they looking to buy?
21:34
Are they looking at the price tag on that whatever shirt
21:37
they're looking at, They definitely want some help.
21:39
I'm going to help them out on that.
21:40
That's exactly what this technology is enabling you to
21:43
do. But you've got to do the other
21:45
work to get them to that point where they're ready to buy even
21:48
a specific item from you. Yeah, yeah, great points again.
21:51
And it's interesting, I had a podcast a while ago where we had
21:54
a whole discussion on brand and the importance of brand.
21:58
Because if you haven't got trust, if you haven't got
22:00
awareness, doesn't matter how good your salespeople are,
22:03
they're not even going to get in the door.
22:05
But then the whole discussion was around brand for brand sake
22:08
or brand to the right people. What I mean by that is, let's
22:11
assume I sell into financial institutions and I get French
22:15
Connection to click on my advert.
22:17
Great that I got French Connection clicking on it, but
22:20
it's a false positive because I can't ever sell to French
22:22
Connect Connection, but it might drive them to the website.
22:25
So again, the website traffic goes up.
22:27
That's great, but it's a false positive because they're never
22:29
going to buy from you. And then that ends up in
22:31
pipeline and sales get excited because that really big brand
22:34
name French Connections there, I'm going to go and sell to it.
22:38
99.9% of the time they can't sell to it.
22:40
So that's wasted time and effort.
22:42
But probably even worse if they do manage to close French
22:45
Connection. You sell a product that works in
22:47
financial institutions, so you can't get value when it will
22:49
churn. So there was a whole discussion
22:51
around brand for brand sake. You know, you want to get your
22:55
brand aware, but surely only in those companies that you can
22:57
sell to. And you waste a lot of time and
22:59
effort on marketing and brand awareness to companies that at
23:03
the end of the day, I'm interested in you anyway.
23:06
Yeah. And that is a real problem,
23:08
right? Because then you've got the flip
23:10
side that if you are very narrow in your brand strategy, you have
23:13
a very small universe you're targeting and then it gets very
23:18
expensive and impossible to retarget people who've shown
23:22
that interest if you've already started with a very, very small
23:26
audience size. So there is a balance to be had
23:29
there. What is going to be most cost
23:30
effective? I think it's expensive and very
23:33
difficult to scale if you're going to be really, really niche
23:37
in only going to go after this particular, you know, I only
23:41
want to talk to French Connection, but actually how do
23:44
you go out and say actually I'm interested in the entire
23:48
financial services or entire retail brands and I'm my
23:53
personalization. That's another thing I'm sure
23:56
we'll touch on personalization strategy doesn't need to be to
24:00
Barclays Bank. You know, your personalization
24:02
can be to all of the financial services institutions and the
24:07
similarities they may have in their pain points or whatever is
24:11
going on in that industry that you're offering and your
24:15
solution can connect with. So I think it's back to being
24:18
customer centric, but the question is, do you need to go
24:21
down to this is the only customer I care about or
24:24
actually can we at least take it up and say, look, we can do
24:27
something great for this whole industry.
24:29
They all have common pain points.
24:31
We have a great solution that we can address those pain points.
24:35
Let's start with our strategy there.
24:37
You know, so I think I'm talking there you're kind of 1 to few
24:40
versus going down the one to one path, which I think is very,
24:44
very hard to scale. Yeah.
24:46
And I think that that was always the big ABM discussion.
24:49
You know, is it 1 to one or actually is it something that
24:52
you can scale while remaining relevant and personalized?
24:56
And that's where I'm going to blow me.
24:57
I'm trumpet technologies like Demand Base really came into
25:00
their own because take that philosophy of ABM and then scale
25:04
across a larger set of accounts. And that's a really good topic
25:07
actually to to focus on that. If we think about large
25:10
enterprises, you know, they will invariably be targeting a bigger
25:14
set of accounts. What do you think the biggest
25:16
challenges are in maintaining their focus and delivering that
25:19
personalized experience when you do that?
25:21
Think it's messaging is important.
25:24
For an example, a smaller companies I know for a fact are
25:27
really strong in their product portfolio.
25:30
They are the leaders, but they don't have clearer ways is of
25:34
highlighting the USPS and so they're kind of missing out on
25:38
that strength of their messaging.
25:40
So I think that consistency is really, really important dialing
25:44
up what is the uniqueness of what you have to offer.
25:47
And then on the focus side is that clarity of your strategy of
25:52
what are the pros and cons of going one to one, one too few,
25:57
one too many. I think one too many is where
25:59
more and more of the companies are operating.
26:02
It's more scalable back to are you constantly being customer
26:05
centric? Is your messaging in some way
26:08
relevant? Are you segmenting it?
26:10
I was having a conversation yesterday with one of my clients
26:13
about and they use demand base is at least segment your
26:17
audience by where they are on their journey.
26:20
You know, what are they? Can you pull them together based
26:23
on what you know about their intent.
26:25
That's a great way to do it. So if you can't do it by
26:28
industry, you know, financial services, for example, where are
26:32
they at in their buying journey? Because what they need is very
26:35
different at each stage. Back to my store, You know, if
26:39
they've only just walked in, we don't even know what they're
26:41
looking for yet. And you're going to walk up to
26:43
them with your offer of something.
26:45
It's not going to help them. They might just actually exit
26:48
immediately because you've just put them off.
26:51
So I think that thinking about how you segment, are you going
26:54
after one too few, one too many? You can do both 1 to 1.
26:58
I mean, I will give an example if you don't mind here.
27:00
What where I think I've seen it work really well with one to one
27:04
is your kind of CXO engagement at your biggest accounts and
27:08
things like sponsorship. Again, not every company can
27:11
afford this or I'm talking probably more at the bigger end
27:14
of the scale of enterprises who are doing the sponsorships,
27:17
inviting them to. If you are sponsoring a a sports
27:21
event or whatever it might be, how are you targeting the CXO
27:27
and the C-Suite? And really been very specific
27:30
about that audience and how you leverage your sponsorships that
27:34
you have. So they are the only people who
27:36
you invite into those sponsorship events where they're
27:39
going to be with their peers, other C-Suite.
27:41
It builds the trust, you know, talking about that.
27:44
It builds all of that peer-to-peer reassurance
27:47
potentially of, hey, yeah, we work with company A and we've
27:51
done this with them. And you're doing all your other
27:54
activity that's kind of making sure the rest of the buying
27:57
committee is already going in the direction of considering you
28:01
and wanting to buy from you. But you go down the 1:00 to 1:00
28:04
for a very specific audience. All of this requires a lot of
28:07
planning, a lot of alignment with sales.
28:10
Everyone's got to be on the same page here.
28:12
And your measures of success are different at each stage.
28:15
And then do you have the content and your messaging strategy to
28:18
back you up at each stage? Yeah, absolutely.
28:20
And going after those C-Suite with relevant personalized
28:24
messaging is so important that BGM I group marketing is another
28:27
another one that comes up quite a lot.
28:29
I've been hearing about that. But if you think about it, if
28:32
you if there will be what, 581012 people making that
28:37
decision when you're working with the bigger companies, even
28:40
in their best effort, sales will probably only ever speak to
28:43
three or four of them. And they can do a really good
28:45
job with messaging around those 3 or 4.
28:47
But what about the other eight that you're crossing your
28:49
fingers and hoping that they agree?
28:51
But whatever decision they make, this is where that ability to
28:55
reach out to them and make sure that even if they're staying
28:58
anonymous, they're getting the same messaging as those people
29:01
that sales are talking to. So you don't suddenly get
29:04
someone come out of the blue and kill the deal, which used to be
29:06
the case. So I think that that ability to
29:09
be personalized on a one to one basis with the rest of the
29:12
buying group is so critical for sure.
29:15
Yeah, I did. I think this was LinkedIn who
29:16
came in with some of those insights, right?
29:19
I remember being at an event where they were talking about
29:21
this. Where procurement, the hidden
29:24
buyers and procurement are one of the hidden buyers and they
29:28
have some data to back up that actually in the end, when
29:31
procurement are part of the final agreement of onboarding or
29:36
approving of a new vendor, if they haven't heard of you, they
29:39
could be a major blocker in that deal going through.
29:42
So that's pretty scary because you know how often are
29:45
procurement in any of your audience targeting strategies.
29:50
So yeah, I think that upfront homework as as you go after
29:53
these accounts, what does that buying group comes to cheat of
29:57
you're not necessarily going to be able to target all of them.
30:00
But you know, that's how you end up with broader messaging then
30:03
and having to go broader out. But you've got to do that
30:06
homework upfront and and create potentially the right messaging
30:09
for those different buyers and what their needs might be.
30:12
That awareness is your broader awareness.
30:14
Messaging is so important. Yeah.
30:16
And some of it's subliminal rights.
30:18
So if I'm a procurement person and I go on to particular
30:21
business sites and I see a message coming up every now and
30:24
I might not click on it or whatever.
30:25
But subliminally I'm saying we work with companies you to solve
30:28
this problem and they're going, oh, that's the problem we've
30:31
got. And then someone comes in, we're
30:32
looking at buying this product, we need your assessment or
30:36
alignment or whatever. And they've got it in their
30:38
head. I know they do that sort of
30:41
thing. So yeah, it's the science as
30:43
they say. It's definitely, definitely
30:45
worthwhile doing so. I think we're obviously we're in
30:48
agreement. A lot of people listening will
30:50
probably be agreement that an account based approach is, is
30:53
the right way to go if they're struggling potentially.
30:55
Any other listeners with actually the execution of this,
30:58
What do you think the first step they should do so they can align
31:02
better that that sales and marketing effectiveness?
31:05
I think the first step is you have an agreed list of accounts
31:09
that sales care about that we have some information about, you
31:13
know, in terms of the fit with your product portfolio with what
31:18
those accounts might be looking for.
31:20
Do we have any contacts already at those accounts?
31:23
Have they already bought from us?
31:25
So you start building a bit of a strategy with sales and then
31:29
your measure of success. And it could be as simple as
31:33
we're going to help you get more contacts at those accounts.
31:35
Let's just start with that. Let's start really simple.
31:38
Let's test that out. We haven't talked enough about
31:40
testing by the way, but that has just the beauty of the way we
31:44
operate in marketing now and how quickly you can get insights is
31:49
start small, start with it. If you only operate in one
31:51
country, start in one part of Europe of the country.
31:55
You know, is it, is it some accounts in the london-based or
31:59
southeast of England that you really want to target that you
32:03
have some insights on already and you want to build from
32:07
there? And then that constant dialogue
32:09
with sales, I think it can't just be right.
32:11
We're going to do some planning and then we don't talk again
32:14
until everything is over and then we're going to do some sort
32:16
of review of it. Can you have a regular, constant
32:19
conversation? Did this work?
32:21
Was this the right quality or should we go back and try it
32:23
again? I think putting marketing on a
32:26
more even footing with sales. We're not just a service
32:30
provider or a, you know, here's a banner ad or here's an event
32:35
that we're doing for you as marketing people.
32:38
We're going to work in partnership.
32:39
We've got access to amazing tools that gives us insights,
32:44
signals, which you know, imagine 1015 years ago even where you
32:48
could say to a salesperson, I've got all of these signals that
32:52
shows how interested this customers that have been crying
32:55
out for that because it makes their job easy.
32:58
So say that we've got access to all of this.
33:00
Let's check actually these signals really correct.
33:03
I think that is where I would say your starting point is, you
33:06
know, it's not the technology, it's not even, I wouldn't even
33:09
say have a pipeline target, don't do any of that.
33:13
Just get aligned on the accounts, have a testing
33:15
strategy and a plan, and talk regularly.
33:18
Sit with sales, talk to them daily.
33:20
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And actually what we're seeing
33:23
working really well with some of our clients is marketing are
33:26
saying to sales, hey, just to let you know, XYZ organization
33:30
has some really good buying signals around that they don't
33:34
know us, they've never come to our website yet.
33:36
So it's too early for you to engage with them.
33:38
But I'm just letting you know that this is what we're doing.
33:41
Hey, they appreciate that. But then a month later they say,
33:43
oh, by the way, with that company's now come to our
33:45
website. I just read that white paper.
33:48
They're going to attend our event next month.
33:50
Get ready because I think there's something coming here.
33:53
And then the next one is, hey, guess what?
33:55
They came to that event. They actually loved it.
33:57
Now's the time for you to reach out.
33:58
And by the way, we're talking to the rest of the buying committee
34:01
at the same time. So I will suddenly think, wow,
34:04
this is a genuine partnership. This isn't just throwing leads
34:07
over the fence and letting us get on with it.
34:09
So 100% aligning there is critical.
34:13
And I think smaller companies do a good job.
34:15
Again, just back to that. But there are examples I've seen
34:18
where big, big campaigns going out and sales haven't really
34:21
been made aware of it. Even if it's awareness activity
34:24
and you think, oh, well, sales aren't really interested in
34:26
this. They need to know about it
34:28
because they just do. It's part of building that trust
34:30
internally. You know, we talk about trust
34:32
with customers and, and in B to B buying motions, how important
34:36
that is. But you've got to start with
34:38
building trust internally. Absolutely.
34:40
So we've talked a little bit about intent data and the
34:43
importance of understanding who's in market, what their
34:46
messaging is, if there's organisations trying to
34:48
integrate that intent data into their DM strategies so that they
34:52
convert that awareness that they're saying into pipeline.
34:55
Any advice? You've got to prioritise first
34:57
party data as much as possible. I think you've got to build out
35:01
those signals and then layering some of the external intent
35:05
signals that you might be getting as well through other
35:07
platforms, other activity map content to those signals.
35:12
Again, can you group your accounts by, by their intent and
35:17
then provide the messaging on that basis.
35:19
But data is super important. First party data, but then back
35:23
to the quality of your data. Really, really, really
35:27
important. I can't emphasize that enough.
35:28
You'd be talked earlier about AI and you said AIYI think it was,
35:32
wasn't it? AI with the Y?
35:34
Yeah. AI with the Y, that's right.
35:36
If you don't have good quality data as your foundation, even if
35:40
you're going to then use AI, you know, if you got put crap in,
35:43
you're going to get crap out. It is literally as simple as
35:46
that. So I think that's why some of
35:48
these kind of foundational things are really important.
35:51
And the data component. Yeah.
35:53
And we know so much about first party data.
35:55
Google's kind of reversed its whole strategy around all of
35:58
that now. So I think people are panicking
35:59
less about it, but you've got the opportunity with all of this
36:03
and I think with the likes of demand base to to build out on
36:06
your first party data. So that has to be prioritized.
36:09
Yeah, agreed. Agreed.
36:11
We talked about brand earlier and the importance of brand
36:14
supporting ABM efforts. How would you suggest companies
36:17
can ensure that they get that brand consistency when it's a
36:20
large complex organization, different departments, different
36:23
reasons, etcetera? Well, first of all, brand is
36:26
about that air cover and it's talking potentially to the 90%
36:31
who are not going to be buying yet from you, but they may
36:34
eventually. I don't think it needs to be
36:36
earth shatteringly award-winning creative and content
36:40
necessarily. I think again, we get hung up
36:43
because people think about brand and they think about TV or big
36:47
out of home or something like that.
36:49
It isn't actually. It is broader messaging that
36:53
that's about you and your company.
36:55
It's things like thought leadership.
36:57
It's things like, hey, studies, peer-to-peer kind of content and
37:03
recommendations and everything around trust and credibility and
37:08
your reason to be in this space and what you have to say about
37:11
it and why you're an expert as a company and whatever product or
37:15
service that you're offering And being clear about that.
37:18
And then having that as an always on messaging strategy.
37:22
Doesn't have to, to be big investments, but it's making
37:25
sure wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whether it's at
37:28
events or it's you're hosting A webinar or a podcast or what
37:33
you're showing up in all these different touch points PR, you
37:37
know, that's a big area where a lot of awareness comes in and
37:40
how do you align on comms and, and the marketing efforts there?
37:43
Those carefully thinking about that and having that as
37:47
something that runs in parallel to your demand activity is the
37:51
way to think about it dropping in once in a while.
37:54
If we want to just go and do a new brand campaign, we're only
37:57
going to do it for two weeks. We're only going to do it for a
38:00
month because that's all we can afford.
38:02
I don't think bother with it. So trying to have a parallel
38:05
kind of dual strategy with the 2 is important because what I call
38:10
it is you need to have demand creation, which is your
38:13
awareness and then demand capture and all of those things
38:16
around trust, thought leadership, peer-to-peer.
38:20
Maybe some of it's case study related All of that is you're
38:24
creating demand, you're making people aware of everything
38:27
you're doing and then as the intense signal show you have
38:31
another parallel strategy that is you're capturing that demand
38:35
and it's the two work together, creation capture.
38:38
Yeah, absolutely. And it's amazing how often you
38:40
say whether it's brand related or just marketing stuff that is
38:44
completely different to what salespeople talk to their
38:47
prospects about. And I never understand that.
38:49
So you might get a really good call with a sales leader.
38:51
Yeah, I understand exactly how you can offer values with me
38:54
there. That's brilliant.
38:56
And then they go to look at the website or they see some brand
38:59
related air cover that is completely different and it's
39:01
like it's so confusing. So again, I think the larger the
39:05
organization, the harder that probably is to do.
39:07
But definitely consistency is really important for sure on all
39:11
this. Have you got a specific example?
39:13
And you don't have to mention company names if you don't want
39:15
to, where you've seen someone successfully overcome some of
39:18
the ABM challenges we've talked about and and the measurable
39:22
results they've achieved. I've seen where simplification
39:26
means success and I've seen recent examples where companies
39:30
try to have several hundred small campaigns that they think
39:35
is ABM, but because they think they need to individually have
39:38
separate campaigns with various more spend and very little
39:43
return on it. But the idea is that we're going
39:46
to then have a landing page with the branding of that account
39:49
that we're targeting and then they can talk to their
39:52
salesperson and that that's why we want to do that.
39:55
But no data to prove that that was actually working and that
39:59
was consolidated into fewer campaigns.
40:01
Let's organize them like I was saying earlier by.
40:04
These are all financial services or these are all, you know,
40:07
retail clients, whatever it might be or retail businesses
40:11
accounts and create a bigger pool, but reduce your number of
40:15
campaigns. And I noticed with that that
40:18
they had clearer measurement after that longer engagement
40:22
asked to pipeline and better bang for their buck.
40:25
And that wasn't about tech wasn't really about creative.
40:28
It was about simplifying what they were doing and just
40:31
creating better programs that way.
40:33
So I think the simpler you try and keep it, the better it is.
40:37
Yeah, I think we speak to Anand in my team, simplification is
40:41
front and centre of everything I try and do and get my team to
40:43
do. So 100% agreement with that.
40:46
So we talked about AI and we touched on it hardly, but what
40:49
trends do you see shaping the future of ABM and how it's going
40:53
to help that integration with go to market, brand strategies,
40:56
etcetera? I know we can't not talk about
40:59
AI, right? It would be like crazy to say AI
41:02
is not going to factor in any of that.
41:04
I think everything we've all dreamt about in marketing with
41:08
personalisation, personalisation at scale, one to one
41:12
communication that has always, we know that feels like the
41:15
right thing to do, but it's been frankly almost impossible to see
41:20
that happen in real life. I think AI enables that now.
41:23
The speed of personalisation of content creation is I think
41:28
going to really help teams. And I think, you know, things
41:31
like sales enablement, it will help exactly as we were talking
41:34
earlier with you've got some sort of brand activity or
41:37
awareness activity. And then imagine you've got
41:39
loose connection of that to an e-mail that the salesperson
41:44
sending out or a LinkedIn e-mail, e-mail that's being sent
41:47
out to someone they've never contacted before.
41:49
They don't have as a contact, but we know they've been exposed
41:52
to that messaging, having that alignment in messaging that the
41:56
power of that I think AI is going to really out with.
41:59
But on anything else, you've got to have the data quality.
42:02
Otherwise I don't think you're going to get great outputs.
42:05
I'd love to say and think that as we get more data, more
42:09
insights, more learning more about intent, we become more
42:13
customer centric because I think B to B still really, really
42:17
suffers with not being customer centric.
42:19
It's about being cell centric or pipeline centric.
42:23
But are we really matching those signals the customer care about
42:28
their main points and then matching that with how we
42:31
communicate and speak with those customers in a way that it
42:35
really resonates with them and they really care about it.
42:38
Otherwise it's just spam. You know, in my opinion, it's
42:41
just spam. So I think we hopefully entering
42:43
a much more customer centric approach to ABM into marketing
42:48
and then data integration. I would say the other area that
42:51
I see with trends, much more opportunity, better alignment,
42:55
everything more singularly in a place like in a single CRM where
43:00
you've got everything packaged in a way that you know exactly
43:03
where that account is in their journey, what have they
43:07
consumed? What have they interacted with?
43:10
What are they predictive analytics as well, right?
43:12
What are they likely to do next now because we have all this
43:15
other data? I mean, all of that just sounds
43:18
super exciting to me if you can get it right.
43:20
But if you don't have a clear strategy and you don't align
43:24
with sales from day one, then I think you can have all the tech
43:28
in the world world and all of the best AI tools.
43:30
None of them are really going to amount to much without those
43:33
basic things. No, again, great, great points.
43:36
And I think that ability to take all of that stuff, you know,
43:39
about someone from your CRM, market automation, whatever tool
43:42
it may be, combine it with all of that anonymous stuff for the
43:45
people you don't know but you know are equally as important,
43:49
gives you that through 360° view.
43:52
And that's where you're going to have that ability to say, right,
43:55
we're going to go after these people.
43:56
And this is the reason why we're going to go after them.
43:58
This is the messaging. This is when you come in, this
44:01
is when we do our bit. It's critical, right?
44:03
Because if you've got disparate systems in there, you've got
44:06
silos of people doing different things.
44:08
It's never going to be a coordinated approach.
44:10
And to your point, it's not going to be customer centric.
44:13
So that's so important. Yeah.
44:14
And that's the big problem in big companies.
44:17
I think we've got a little like that, haven't we?
44:19
Yeah, carry on. I was just going to say that
44:21
that I've seen in the big companies is where the legacy
44:25
big companies, they've got so many disparate tech, not talking
44:30
to each other, layer on layer, using one piece of tech for one
44:34
thing here, but it could do more, but not quite in the way
44:37
you want it. So you've gone and either bought
44:38
something else, which that first piece of kit could have done for
44:42
you, or I've seen lots of examples.
44:44
Well, actually, no, we think we can build it ourselves.
44:46
So we've got all the tech skills.
44:48
We're going to just go and build our own bespoke version.
44:51
And then you've got all the problems of keeping that updated
44:53
and how does it connect with everything else?
44:55
And that becomes so difficult then because you don't have the
44:59
single view and all of those future things that we just
45:02
talked about and there's future trends and opportunities are
45:04
going to be that much harder. I think that's a problem for the
45:07
really big companies though. And the beauty of the smaller
45:09
companies is they are building out with the right tech to to
45:13
start with. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
45:15
I mean this has this has been a really good session and I'm
45:17
conscious we're we've we said will we have enough talk time?
45:21
Well, we've got plenty of talk time.
45:22
It's so I just a couple of quick things at the end then if I
45:25
might is out. You sound like someone who
45:27
consumes lots of content. So would you recommend a book, A
45:30
blog, newsletter, podcast, etcetera to our listeners?
45:34
I would suggest the Rundown AI is a newsletter that I subscribe
45:39
to. They just drop in every day or
45:41
the latest on AI. It's not marketing related but
45:44
it's what's happening in the AI space are very digestible.
45:47
I find it interesting. I follow a lady called Lisa
45:51
Adams on LinkedIn. He is very forward thinking
45:55
around AI and marketing strategy.
45:57
Go to market, what future teams will look like with AI embedded.
46:02
I find that very educational. And then a third one, a long
46:06
term favorite of mine is Harvard Business Review.
46:09
I think they have some really great insights and I personally
46:13
learn a lot about leadership tips and strategy.
46:17
And, and it's, it's a great, I think, you know, if you're
46:19
interested in, in much work at a business strategic level, not
46:23
just about marketing, then Harvard Business Review is, is
46:26
brilliant as well. So those would be the three, I'm
46:29
not a massive consumer of any of this honestly, but I would say
46:33
these are the three that I would follow.
46:34
Excellent. Definitely worth checking out,
46:36
thank you and I'm sure you've been a great guest.
46:39
So I'm sure that actually we've only scratched the surface and I
46:42
reckon there's definitely an argument for a follow up
46:44
session, so keep an eye out for that.
46:46
But in the meantime, Cheeky asked.
46:48
Anyone you'd recommend we should invite on it for future shows?
46:52
Yes, I actually have got three names of people.
46:55
I think you should. I totally talk to one person is
46:59
a lady called just Kieran Sonde. She's at Riverbed Technologies
47:03
doing some amazing work on ABM. The other person is Suyasha
47:08
Kalay. She works at Teamviewer, a great
47:11
example of how small teams can do amazing work.
47:14
And the third is a person at Palo Alto Networks, Brett
47:18
Riesler, who runs a lot of great media in the Amir region for
47:23
Palo Alto. And there's a lot on AI at the
47:26
company as well. And I know he'd have a lot of
47:28
great opinions to share with you.
47:30
Excellent. Well, thank you for that.
47:31
I'm pretty sure none of those are have been previous guests.
47:34
So watch this space. We're going to try and get them
47:37
in the future. So I appreciate that.
47:38
And you've obviously opened up lots of subjects and I'm sure
47:41
there'd be lots of questions from listeners.
47:43
Is there a good way for them to get in touch with you if you're
47:45
happy for them to? Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the
47:48
best way. Connect with me on LinkedIn if
47:50
you've got any questions. You want another conversation?
47:53
Very happy to. I'm pretty active on from there,
47:55
so that's probably a good starting place.
47:56
Fantastic. All right, well, listen, you've
47:58
been a great guest. I've really enjoyed this.
48:00
And as I say, I think there's room for more to come.
48:03
So thanks very much for your time.
48:04
I hope you enjoyed the episode as well.
48:07
And don't forget, there's nearly 600 others in the series out
48:10
there, so make sure you check them out.
48:11
But for the meantime, thanks to Joe really good session and
48:15
thanks everyone for listening. Until the next time, Cheerio.
48:19
Thanks for joining us for On Base.
48:21
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