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AIM High: Unpicking sales enablement, ABM & ROI · Two in Twenty

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to another episode of Aim High.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry we've been absent for a couple of weeks, but we have lots of great podcasts in the planning.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: And soon we've got really great insight around building a brand business in ESG.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: But more of that another day.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're talking about sales enablement, ABM, and ROI.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Increasingly, markets in our industry are being asked to put together ABM strategies, really bringing a very focused lens to some target accounts, very personalized experience for specific clients.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we thought we would take the time to really explore what this means.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm delighted to say that we've got James Smee from Bridge talking to us today, the founder of that marketing agency that specialises specifically in sales enablement and ABM.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right, so brilliant to have you here with us today, James.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think the best way to kick this off would be if you could introduce yourself and your background, and then we will get into the meat of this around sales enablement and ABM.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Great, okay, thank you.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Twink.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, Mike, my background, uh I started out live client side, um working in the tech sector, did that for three, four years, uh, kind of cut my teeth around B2B marketing from a sort of a generalist perspective.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then digital marketing was just really starting to take off.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: We were starting to see some of the uh early uh early roads around uh email marketing starting to kind of be built.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of took a bit of a leap of faith, uh, set up an agency called Pure Stone.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and myself and one other guy, we we ran that for the best part of 14 years.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Worked with lots and lots of different types of um B2B brands across uh a whole host of different vertical markets.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was largely built around digital marketing, email marketing, uh latterly into web CMS projects.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um exited out of that agency, uh, and we were bought by uh Lewis, um, which is a global PR agency, um, and spent a couple of years uh earning out of that situation.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then uh again went client side again for for uh a couple of years um and uh started to get itchy, itchy feet, um, and the the kind of the challenge of running an agency um started to manifest itself again in my head.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um I was getting really interested in this emerging space called sales enablement.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd I've done a number of projects with with different clients around that um area.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the the kind of the brain child of bridge was born, and um yeah, and a couple of years ago that that started up.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're still you know early days, but um yeah, bridge bridges formed and we're we're running uh we're running now.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And um I guess to to talk to the sales enablement and the emergence of that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, increasingly in our industry, kind of markets have been asked to have and take a much more strategic approach to sort of target accounts and key accounts.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so so it'd be great to hear how you're talking to clients, how you've evolved uh your proposition um to talk around sales enablement.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess my question would be: has this really evolved to be something sort of different, more technical and more structured than that of you know the traditional role of marketing and to to align and empower sales?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's uh it's a really um in interesting and uh sometimes it can be quite a controversial um kind of area to talk around because uh sales enablement um has been born for me, so this is my personal take on the definition around sales enablement, it's been born uh out of uh kind of in response to the fact we've seen B2B marketing um over probably a decade or more uh try to get to grips with a uh a changing kind of buying behaviors.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we've seen the rise of the educated B2B buyer and everything that goes around that and the way that the the funnel, the traditional funnel has been disrupted.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think it's taken quite quite a long time for B2B marketing departments to get their head around that and then come up with the right type of approaches and strategies to do a better job at engaging B2B buyers.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, on the other side of things, sales teams, B2B sales teams, I think have been laggards to an extent.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and sales enablement is a reaction to that.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sales enablement for me is um a response that says, okay, well, the marketing departments are serving B2B buyers far better.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: What are sales doing?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so so it kind of shone a big light on uh the practice of sales and how that's supported by marketing, or you know, not supported by marketing, um, more to the point.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so sales enablement is uh is a response to that to say, right, okay, well, how do we get better content into sales teams?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get better tools that can then give them a better platform to speak in a more relevant way to buyers in a way that B2B buyers now want?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's you know, there's huge amounts of stats around the fact that you know B2B buyers were becoming increasingly frustrated by um very sort of antiquated approaches from sales.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting actually, because certainly we've seen a real alignment and strength of partnership between sales and marketing, um, particularly this year, um, kind of working kind of remotely together to sort of deliver that sort of client journey.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so um it feels like such a depressing thing to be talking about anyway, and and that sort of alignment of sales and marketing together.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess um, you know, with with that, marketers are, as I say, being increasingly asked to adopt an ABM approach.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be great to hear from you what you know, what are the fundamentals to know about a successful uh approach such as ABM?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I I think ABM is is the is a perfect discipline for marrying sales and marketing.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, something that's dysfunctional.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the the idea of most ABM campaigns I've been kind of privy to and have worked on, um, and certainly the best ones, sales and marketing sit down from day one and start to draw up the plans for what the ABM approach is going to be.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whereas historically in other areas of marketing, yeah, that that rarely happens.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it tends to be your marketing will cook up the kind of the creative ideas of the campaigns, and then that will get executed, and then you know the resulting leads then get passed to sales.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas yeah, ABM has to have both sales and marketing in the room from the outset because sales are a fundamental part of how you execute that ABM strategy.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, from the the best, the best way I I've heard it explained, or certainly the most simplistic way, is it's it's reversing the funnel.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So whereas, yeah, in a traditional sense, we'd go for the mass markets at the top of the funnel, put out brand content, thought leadership content, whatever that might be, that then goes down through the various phases and we get leads out the bottom end.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know who those leads are going to be.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're going to target a sector or an audience, but we still don't really know who they're going to be.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas ABM takes the reverse approach and it starts with the pointy end, which is who are exactly the companies that we want to get into, and then you work backwards from there, and then you develop a uh kind of a broader base type approach at the bottom of that whole ABM approach, but it starts with yeah, who exactly do we want to get into in the next six, 12 months or or longer, uh, and you kind of build it out from there.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, we we we've chatted about this previously.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you could argue, and many people do, and it's too cynical about this, but yeah, that that it's not rocket science, it's it's an approach that's been around for a long time.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: No one's kind of had a Eureka moment and gone, ah, ABM, uh it's the underlying principles of just sound marketing.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: For me, we've just now sort of slapped a uh a name on it.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um marketers just being really focused cloud segmentation, couldn't it?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and yeah, I think it it is really.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it is.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I just think it's been given, yeah, and I I'm not talking, uh, I don't want to kind of dumb down the whole ABM industry because it's now developed into its its own kind of micro industry within within B2B marketing now.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it and it has given through through giving it a name and giving it uh a proper home within a marketing strategy, it has given it far more structure and discipline, and there's you know more budget now dedicated to it.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas before it was a bit more of a side tactic to run with sales, where you go, right, okay, well, we're gonna do a a breakoff lead gen campaign and we're gonna try and you know crack this vertical market in these 20 customers.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was a bit of uh it was a bit of a side hustle, whereas now ABM is now a you know, I think it's like 30, 40% of B2B marketing budgets on it on the on the whole now have a dedicated, you know, that's how much is dedicated to ABM.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's become a going concern uh from a budgetary point of view, and therefore it's getting you know a lot more focus and attention, um, which is which is all good because I think you know the the the end results of what ABM delivers uh can be sort of transformational for organizations.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um it makes sense it's now got a home, a name, a title, and that that level of focus and budget.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I you know it's not, it's nothing um new, new.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You sort of mean it's not like an awesome piece of tech that suddenly come out of the woodwork and has been a game changer.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, but I guess it is it is um a approach that means that the business you know takes a very deliberate step to resource a few key accounts that they feel that they can unlock, that they want to have long-term value uh from in terms of that relationship, that they want to be front of mind as a partner.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can kind of see how that can sort of drive some of the thinking and the resource and alignment um behind some of those target accounts, really.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you can kind of see where the uh the passion for ABM comes from in that regard.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and and I think it it definitely helps in the overall relationship and the harmony between marketing and sales because sales feel like they're they've got a voice and they're being listened to.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not here you go, here's 200 leads that we created from this thought leadership campaign, and they're like, Well, okay, I don't know who any of these companies are, or I didn't ask for this.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a genuine kind of marriage from the outset where you say, right, we are going to do this together, we're gonna collaborate and we're gonna you know run this campaign.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so therefore it kind of takes the legs away from sales and their ability to say, I'm not, you know, I'm not touching that, I'm not interested, it has nothing to do with me in the first instance.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it I think it definitely ticks the relationship box between between sales and marketing, and and the other side to it is you know, and probably the most important aspect of this is from the buyer's point of view.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the people who are being targeted by these ABM strategies, they're getting far more relevant, personalized approaches.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that means they'd have to spend less time researching, they have to spend less time sort of wading through the more broad brush approaches to try and understand what a product or service might do for them or solution.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're having things far more catered to their needs and requirements or their vertical industry and it's nuanced accordingly.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think it's win from the buyer's perspective as well, um, which is obviously really important.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so for for listeners thinking about adopting a strategy of this kind, what what what are the sort of key tips you'd have around sort of best practice and what are the variable variables rather that make it more or less likely to succeed?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Are there kind of key key thoughts to take into their planning?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think the the level of understanding of uh an account base um is is critical.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you know, this is we're not we're not talking about anything other than 101 really solid marketing principles, you know, know your audience, understand what makes them tick, you know, get into the um the world in which they're operating, you know, what are the things that are impacting that world from a sector perspective, or from you know, even even deeper than that, if you can, what's impacting them as an individual organization, and then message out around that so that exactly as we've just been saying, anything you can serve up to them is going to be yes, stand a far greater chance of being on the money and getting that instant standout and giving them genuine value.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I then think you need to ensure that anyone who's going to touch that campaign, be that marketing or sales or ops or whoever's going to be involved, needs to have that level of understanding as well.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to get into a scenario where, you know, we see this all the time, don't we?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where the the buyer experience fragments the kind of the further along it goes.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you might have marketing engage buyers around a certain topic or or idea or thought, but by the time it actually reaches sales and they're engaging with that buyer, that you know, that there's no continuity and the salesperson might take it off in a completely different tangent.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I yeah, the best ABM strategy should be lived and breathed by everyone who engages across the whole approach so that the the buyer gets that unified experience and view of the world from that brand who's approaching them.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, I think you know, it's it's not it's not rocket science, but it's just about being really well organized and well drilled and not um uh not kind of falling foul of being distracted, and all of a sudden the approach starts to dilute, and then it just becomes a bit of a um a bit of a nothing.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I've seen that again firsthand, seen that happen with lots of ABM campaigns.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: You start off really, really strongly with a very strong approach, but it becomes a bit of a war of attrition because you know people get distracted exactly and the focus starts to go and um it it it yeah invariably doesn't work anywhere near as effectively.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we're thinking of effectiveness.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, are they pretty standard ways in terms of the kind of typical metrics you know where in which you would demonstrate the performance or success of your ABM strategy?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's a good that's a good question.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I suppose there there's different uh milestones or or gates to navigate uh or go through as you work your way through the ABM strategy.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um there's typically that there's that first level of engagement um in which yeah, a piece of content, an event, whatever it is that initial tactic is going to be to um develop that that initial um penetration with the account.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then yeah, I've seen this where the next level of uh the next KPI or metric is how well you then are able to penetrate across that account.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So a key a key part of this is stakeholder mapping.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, if you're going to draw up the um the map of influence for an account, you know, where where do we have uh where do we have understanding and a relationship at the moment, where don't we?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you can then start to then focus on the areas where you have no traction or no visibility with with certain members of that stakeholder group.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've got that, then that's a key milestone that you've gone through.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um so in theory, once you've you've got that level of visibility, you know that you're in a very strong position to then go, right?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're going to move to the next level and look to close this down into something that's a bit more of a tangible or qualified opportunity.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you might look to do, I've seen this work well, a one-to-one style workshop or webinar where you bring together those stakeholders.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've got that relationship, you can leverage it and bring those stakeholders together.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So you're already starting to build that consensus, which kind of, as we know, is always a nightmare to try and achieve in complex B2B sales, is get that consensus.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're starting to build on that already.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um presumably in that stage, they tell you very specifically what their needs are, and so that you can be increasingly relevant to their world.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is it's interesting because this is where sales enablement starts to kind of become woven into what ABM is doing.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, how do you, once sales are are very much in the room and actively working with that target's account, how do you arm them with the right tools and the right content to deliver the best possible experience for that that customer that they're targeting?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where, exactly as you've just said, yeah, how do you how do you get you know the most uh rewarding experience to that group of individuals or those stakeholders so you can really listen to them, capture those insights that they fit into you in a workshop scenario, for example, and then be able to play that back to them in subsequent um stages of that sales cycle.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, the the ABM and sales enablement, if you spoke to a self-appointed ABMer um uh and you spoke to someone from sales enablement, they'd probably say, well, I they probably don't know really that the two exist.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because quite a lot of sales enablement people come from sales training or sales ops backgrounds, um, or uh they come from a content marketing uh angle.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and quite a few of the ABM is a kind of more pure blood sort of mark B2B marketers.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I I think you'd probably you you'd not get get an agreement between the two camps, but they definitely this is how I see it, the two will will start to come far more closely linked uh and working alongside each other.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um I completely agree with that, and it slightly startles me or sort of confuses me as to why why they wouldn't sort of meet in the middle there and sort of recognize, I guess, the sort of the the approach being so aligned to the same endpoint.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and and I think the the end point is um is it is and has to be around the the buyer, the the you know the the customer.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and again, I feel like we've we've we're kind of going over so many basic principles of marketing here, but the the the challenge that I think we've seen as an industry over the last you know 10, 20 years is all the complexity that tech brings, and digital has exploded out the space.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: That that level of complexity I think clouds our judgment a lot of the time.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we we find ourselves down rabbit warrens of complexity and methodologies and names and conventions and acronyms.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: We lose sight of the fact that actually this is about you know a human connection and how do you create something meaningful and valuable between you know the the the brand and the customer you're trying to kind of speak to.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we're after that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and I and I I think you know what we we we often get yeah, we we we get bamboozled by by all of that, and sales enablement, ABM, you know, are very much guilty of of doing that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the best way of ever thinking about it, whenever I get involved in, you know, what is sales enablement, James, or you know, how do we how how do we come up with the right tactics here?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: The right tactics always have to be aligned to what the the buyer experience is going to be.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So from that first initial engagement point via an email, they look at a piece of social advertising, whatever that might be, at each stage of that buyer's journey, not the sales cycle, not the marketing funnel, but that individual's journey, what are the key masters and jobs that person needs to perform to buy something?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you can stay true to that and you understand what that journey.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Looks like, yeah, that simplifies things so much because that you keeps you on the straight and arrow effectively.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you can then go, right, okay, we've got these pivotal milestones.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do we, as a brand, as a sales team, as a marketing team, give that buyer the best possible experience, the best possible content, best possible tools to enable them to tick those boxes to move through to the next phase and have a good experience?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that gets lost a lot of the time.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: It gets caught up in a huge amount of complexity that isn't necessarily needed.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that I try not to sound like some sort of cynical old fool here.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, but I I I I yeah, well, and I it's I I agree.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and I guess to sort of if you do get um distracted off that that focus, it impacts the effectiveness, of course, because you're sort of you're sort of moving away from the client need.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so when we think about effectiveness and the sort of measurement of this, and you know what what are the challenges there in terms of the ROI on on this kind of approach, you know, given how singular it can be, how very focused, what how do you advise clients in terms of the kind of ROI they're looking for or the measurement they're putting around it?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um I know you've got quite strong views on ROI, so do do vent your spleen.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I I think yeah, we we've become obsessed as a community, certainly in the B2B marketing space, we we've become obsessed with with ROI as a as a metric.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think for so many years, you know, pre-digital, where quantifying the effectiveness of marketing was, you know, was really, really difficult, you know, slash nigh on impossible.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: That when all of a sudden we got exposed to, well, we've got now analytics, we can understand far more about how effective our marketing is because of you know digital and the technology driving it.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden ROI became the metric that you know, marketing were you know, everyone's feet was being held to the coals around ROI, ROI, ROI.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's clearly an important metric.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it the the underlying reason for understanding ROI is is you know it's obviously money-based and it's profit-based.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, you want to understand that if I spend one pound, how much am I going to be getting back on that?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and how much of that's going to be profit?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Great, that's an important thing to do.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it stops, it definitely stops vanity projects from happening.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, before we had much better analytics, you'd seem far more uh fanciful, you know, vanity projects happening that you know, clearly people were just uh pandering to the egos of the brands or just getting away.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think there's a lot less of that because people have got that level of measurement now and can understand a bit more about ROI.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, going back to my point on profit, you know, if if someone, if some uh some campaign, tool, platform, website, whatever it is, develops a really positive ROI, that's great.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it has to be contextualized by okay, what's the scale of that ROI?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you look at more broad brush marketing strategies that engage a far larger audience, the value of that engagement across thousands of people and maybe not just 20 people on an ABM campaign, yeah, how do you quantify the true value of that?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can't build an ROI calculation around it because there's so many different variables in there, it's impossible to track.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, the the net result of engaging 4,000 people from a brand point of view, from an awareness perspective, potentially that ROI or that value spans across many, many years.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you you you can't you can't be like around, well, if it doesn't develop, if we if we can't demonstrate an ROI, then we're not gonna do that.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not part of our strategy or our our approach.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, you will you will come across uh as a result of doing that if you ignore some of the the broader marketing campaigns or brand-driven campaigns that you're putting out there, you you can't have you in my view, you can't just do ROI.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh although you know there's gonna be exceptions to that based on you know the market you might be working with in.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I yeah, I do think I we we become obsessed about ROI.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, it's it's a metric of many, and it's an important one, but it's not the be all and end all in kind of my my view, certainly.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, sure.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and so how would you recommend that marketers then uh sort of show effectiveness uh in their approach for their in their sales enablement and ABM strategies?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the key metrics in in sales enablement, certainly at the moment, are around um, so there's the obvious one which is conversion rates.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, if if we can help sales teams improve close rates through giving them better tools, through giving them uh better content um when they're engaging with with their customers during certainly the latter stages of the sales cycle, um, then that's a key metric.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how how can we help to shorten those engagement cycles and sales cycles again is another really key one for sales enablement.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and certainly in the kind of pandemic era um where we're actually seeing an increase in the amount of uh meetings that salespeople are able to have because they're not traveling around from place to place, so therefore they can actually fit in more meetings.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: The customers they're targeting or the prospects they're targeting have got more time to sit in meetings because you're losing that travel or the kind of the office time that you know bloats your diary through things that you can't predict or or foresee.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're seeing more meetings, but we're also seeing that customer attention spans are shortening.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So in that remote meeting, that Zoom meeting, the teams meeting, you you where where you would be given the luxury of a bit more of an exploratory or a bit more of a chemistry type conversation, and you're chatting around different things and it's a bit more loose.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's more precision now needed in these meetings for sales teams.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: They need they need more structure and they need it to be more of an actual exercise, a prescribed exercise.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about the business case for this solution today, or we're gonna run a needs analysis exercise, or we're gonna do X, Y, or Z.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's that focus, I guess.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: It absolutely is.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and for sales enablement departments, teams, uh, that's their opportunity to uh to give the sales guys interactive apps, tools, content that's gonna really help them deliver uh that level of precision in those remote meetings.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the net result of that is shorter sales cycles.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're already starting to see now that bizarrely, one of the few positives to come out of the pandemic situation is it is uh streamlining sales cycles.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not necessarily the close rates, but how quickly someone will get to a decision stage.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, decisions are, as you kind of expect, are stagnating because you know people are in a bit of a state of paralysis.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, we're certainly seeing that that that is a metric that enablement can focus on is how can we help salespeople um to shorten those sales cycles.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you sort of come up a bit more into the marketing, content marketing space of what sales enablement do, um, then it's how well you can socialize that content uh isn't it is another metric.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: So um a key element of enablement now is how do you create good marketing content, but importantly marketing content that can be then chunked down into something that's mobilized for sales teams.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not here's a a Harvard-backed research paper that's 60 pages of a PDF, give that to your sales team and say, right, you know, get go set the world alight.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh because yeah, that that that that won't work.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do you take that that content, break it into something that salespeople can utilize on LinkedIn, use it to build their own kind of personal brand within the customers they're trying to influence and open up?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: This ties into ABM.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, that that social engagement around content and sales teams um is has become an increasingly important one as well for sort of enablement efforts.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Loads of useful thoughts and tips in there.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm just uh I'm conscious of time, James, and just thinking as we let to sort of wrap up this sort of far-side chat, um, whether you have any other sort of final thoughts really for sort of our listeners um who are, I guess, aligning their sales and marketing approach now, particularly kind of thinking about their 2021 strategies and budgets, and whether you had any other thoughts for them um as they're going through that process.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'll just reiterate what what I said a moment ago around the you know the importance of understanding the customer experience.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, customer experience as a as a discipline, you know, CX, it's gets abbreviated to a lot, uh, another acronym.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, the the people have been talking around that, and uh it's been an active part of uh marketing strategy for a while, but it it's it still needs to be, in my opinion, absolutely front and center when you sit down, you start to think about what are we going to do in 2021, for example?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: The backbone to that strategy should be what does that customer experience need to be?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where are the behaviors, where are the um level of education, understanding, the needs, the pains of those individuals that we're looking to engage with, and how can we build out from around those um kind of human qualities to create a really compelling marketing strategy for the year and marketing and sales sales strategy.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that whole experience is um you know, statistically has not been good for lots and lots of B2B sectors and the buyers that operate within them for many, many years.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the frustrating thing is we've got more tools and technology and approaches than we've ever had to give those people a better experience.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: We just haven't been applying the uh the kind of core solid marketing principles.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's been, you know, it's kind of like marketing automation was probably three or four years ago, where everyone got bamboozled by the uh the ability that you could do you know triggered campaigns and have 50 different permutations of uh you know next best actions and everything like that.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone came up with these really, really complicated, incredibly sophisticated user journeys, but no one ever got past the first post on it because the content that went into it wasn't very good.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think I hope people have learned some of the lessons from implementing that type of technology, and we're now starting to see a genuine good balance between, right, we've got some great tech, we're gonna use our understanding of these people and what makes them tick and what they need and what they want, and you're bringing those two things together.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that's where you get the best ABM strategies, that's where you get the best view and approach and sales enablement, um, and very much I think the direction of travel for you know B2B marketing in general.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's absolutely fantastic.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of finishing on a real sort of power power pack punch.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh thank you again for your time today, James.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: I really, really appreciate it.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh pleasure, thank you for having me.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's been good to talk to you.