Latest / Sales Pipeline Radio / Resilience, Culture, and the Case for Contact-Level Targeting

Transcript

Resilience, Culture, and the Case for Contact-Level Targeting · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, we are back on the show floor here at Forrester B2B Summit,
• 0:19
  live on the marketplace floor, day two.
• 0:22
  I don't know, are you guys getting tired?
• 0:24
  I'm getting a little tired.
• 0:25
  It's been a long couple days.
• 0:27
  Yeah, it's been exciting to be here, and just see a lot of the
• 0:32
  innovation happening, a lot of what's going on on the show floor.
• 0:36
  There's only one booth here that has their name in lights, and that's Influ2.
• 0:41
  And very excited to have with us here Dmitri Lisitski.
• 0:44
  He's the co-founder and CEO of Influ2.
• 0:46
  Dmitri, thanks for joining us.
• 0:47
  Dmitri Lisitski: Thank you for having me.
• 0:48
  Matt Heinz: Was the lights your idea?
• 0:50
  Dmitri Lisitski: No, not at all.
• 0:51
  I have much more creative people on my team than I am.
• 0:55
  Matt Heinz: I didn't submit myself 'cause I don't know that I'm a
• 0:57
  qualified lead, but that autographed Star Wars poster's pretty sweet.
• 1:01
  I like that a lot.
• 1:02
  I think that's a pretty smart way you guys are doing it over there.
• 1:05
  All right, so you co-founded Influ2 in 2017 — a little bit of a
• 1:09
  background in consumer media buying, enterprise tech entrepreneurship.
• 1:13
  Why this product?
• 1:15
  Why this business?
• 1:16
  What drew you to this opportunity?
• 1:18
  Dmitri Lisitski: Well, my previous company was called GlobalLogic, and it
• 1:22
  was like a large IT services business.
• 1:24
  And it actually turned out to be a very successful business — 35,000
• 1:29
  people now, part of Hitachi Group.
• 1:33
  There's one problem about that business — our marketing was
• 1:36
  completely useless, to be honest.
• 1:38
  And after we exited, I was thinking what could we do different
• 1:44
  to make marketing work, and specifically for enterprise sales.
• 1:47
  And then I visited Demandbase Conference in 2015, and was really
• 1:56
  inspired by the concept of ABM.
• 1:57
  I think that was the answer to my question that I was looking for.
• 2:02
  So, if you sell to a large enterprise account, say Microsoft, you want your
• 2:09
  marketing team to target Microsoft, right?
• 2:12
  So that was a great answer, but then I quickly realized that the
• 2:15
  technology that is supporting this idea is not good enough.
• 2:19
  And that was an inspiration.
• 2:23
  Matt Heinz: Yeah, I think there's so much opportunity in this space.
• 2:26
  And as it continues to grow, as it continues to get more complex,
• 2:30
  it's exciting to see sort of new players come and raise in that.
• 2:33
  So, 8 million raised in 2021, challenger in the Forrester Wave in 2022 — you
• 2:37
  guys continue to grow and see success.
• 2:40
  A big angle for you guys has been contact-level ABM.
• 2:43
  And a lot of players in the ABM space — a lot of us talk about it foundationally, we
• 2:49
  need to be talking to the right companies.
• 2:51
  But more — just as important — if you don't know who to talk to, if you don't
• 2:54
  know who to talk to about what and when and why… Every good salesperson I know
• 3:00
  just needs the answer to two questions: who do I call next, and what do I talk to?
• 3:04
  And the building won't answer the phone, right?
• 3:06
  So, talk about the importance of that contact-level information to really
• 3:11
  operationalize any good ABM program.
• 3:13
  Dmitri Lisitski: Yeah, well, I guess the biggest challenge that our first customer
• 3:18
  had when they launched Influ2 — initially it was purely an advertising play.
• 3:22
  So we figured out how to do contact-level advertising.
• 3:26
  And the answer to a very simple question is: if you engage someone in the
• 3:31
  account, we know who you engaged, and we can say — the names of people who
• 3:37
  engaged — and this is exactly the people that salespeople want to call, right?
• 3:41
  So, that's what we tried doing ourselves first — really eating our own dog food.
• 3:47
  And then that worked very well for us.
• 3:50
  We saw, okay, you have twice the conversion rate if you call someone
• 3:54
  who clicked on your ad yesterday.
• 3:56
  And yeah, we just tell our customers — new customers, first
• 4:00
  customers — "Hey, guys, do this and it
• 4:05
  will work for you."
• 4:05
  Matt Heinz: Your data you guys published earlier this year says there's five to
• 4:07
  nine people involved in enterprise deals.
• 4:09
  I think that's low.
• 4:10
  I think there's oftentimes way more than — I saw a company last week say
• 4:14
  on average there's 20 people involved, 13 internally, seven externally.
• 4:18
  So that's hard enough, but your same data said that 60% of buyers say
• 4:22
  their needs change during the process.
• 4:25
  So how they think about outcomes they care about and how they think
• 4:28
  about why they're buying — it shifts for the majority of them.
• 4:31
  How do you manage a sales process, and how do the insights that you have
• 4:37
  help you navigate that while reducing friction in the process as well?
• 4:42
  Dmitri Lisitski: Well, we don't change the sales process.
• 4:44
  Obviously, the sales team knows better what they do.
• 4:47
  We support the marketing team, and I think what the marketing team can
• 4:50
  do for sales to be more successful in their very complicated journey is
• 4:56
  to provide insights in terms of who else is interested, who else could
• 5:01
  be another champion in the deal.
• 5:05
  And, by serving those people, by listening to the intent, you can identify
• 5:12
  who else in this big buying group could be an opportunity to connect,
• 5:16
  and who is really in the market right now — specifically, at the contact
• 5:21
  level, who is looking for a solution.
• 5:24
  And potentially this person might not be visible in the sales conversation, right?
• 5:30
  You're talking to a champion — it looks like it's going well, but still
• 5:35
  slow — and suddenly, okay, there's another guy from another division,
• 5:39
  or from another function, who is actually looking for your product.
• 5:45
  And you can connect this person, and make a difference.
• 5:50
  Matt Heinz: Well, and 72% of marketers think contact-level targeting will
• 5:53
  define ABM's future moving forward, and I think there's no doubt of that.
• 5:57
  There's no doubt that you have to be talking to individuals.
• 5:59
  And I think especially as AI becomes a bigger and bigger part of how we operate,
• 6:04
  we still operate on a trust level.
• 6:06
  We still operate with trust needed between people.
• 6:09
  And what keeps sticking in my mind is the majority of those priorities
• 6:13
  that change in the process.
• 6:14
  And if we are stuck in one place and not listening to people, and not listening
• 6:18
  and observing the behaviors that change, we're still working down a path that is no
• 6:23
  longer a priority for that active buyer.
• 6:26
  And so having that insight is just critical.
• 6:29
  So excited to have with us today Dmitri Lisitski.
• 6:31
  He's the co-founder and CEO of Influ2.
• 6:34
  Do you mind if I ask a question about Ukraine?
• 6:36
  Dmitri Lisitski: Yeah, sure.
• 6:36
  Matt Heinz: So you founded this business in 2017.
• 6:39
  You're a Ukrainian-founded startup, founded in Kyiv.
• 6:43
  And so despite all the success you've had — the funding, the awards, the
• 6:47
  recognition by Forrester — you're building a business globally in the US while
• 6:52
  running a company in the midst of a war.
• 6:55
  I think most of the people listening to this have absolutely
• 6:57
  no idea what that's like.
• 6:59
  Dmitri Lisitski: Well, I think
• 7:03
  — well, obviously
• 7:04
  we have — currently we are not exposed so much, we have quite a significant
• 7:09
  chunk of our team in Ukraine, but also we have a huge part of our
• 7:14
  operations in the US and in Europe.
• 7:16
  I
• 7:18
  think also
• 7:23
  the Ukrainian part of our team showed a very
• 7:28
  strong resilience that no one expected, no one was thinking it
• 7:33
  is possible or needed back in 2022.
• 7:37
  So, 2022 was the year when the war started, but also this was the year we
• 7:45
  actually completely rebuilt our product and launched a new product in fall 2022.
• 7:51
  Matt Heinz: That's incredible.
• 7:52
  Dmitri Lisitski: So the guys actually were building this product while
• 7:54
  — Matt Heinz: That's
• 7:55
  incredible.
• 7:55
  — Dmitri Lisitski: facing this situation when you actually need to move,
• 7:59
  being bombed and all this stuff.
• 8:00
  So I think that's incredible, and it's just like — it's very hard
• 8:07
  to tell how much I appreciate each — my team member contribution to this.
• 8:13
  Matt Heinz: I mean, that's like an unthinkable level of
• 8:15
  resiliency and commitment.
• 8:16
  Yeah.
• 8:16
  You know, to be going through that — that's not just personal… There's so
• 8:20
  many levels of impact that has, and to still be focused on building something
• 8:24
  and growing something at the same time.
• 8:27
  I mean, I think we all face levels of resilience, but that's something
• 8:29
  I think most people just can't relate to, and it's very impressive.
• 8:33
  Yeah.
• 8:36
  Yeah.
• 8:36
  You've spent a lot of time in your career running consumer advertising
• 8:41
  campaigns, and oftentimes we think differently about B2C versus B2B.
• 8:47
  And as I mentioned before, the buildings aren't gonna take your call,
• 8:49
  the buildings don't write checks.
• 8:50
  We're still talking to people.
• 8:51
  What has the work you've done in consumer advertising taught you about what
• 8:55
  works or should work in B2B as well?
• 8:58
  Dmitri Lisitski: Well, I think — that was early in my career, and
• 9:03
  the biggest, I think, inspiration I had — I love marketing since — since
• 9:08
  that was the moment we started doing econometric modeling, and I actually
• 9:16
  witnessed how TV campaigns that we ran impacted brand awareness,
• 9:20
  impacted revenues for our customers.
• 9:23
  And again, that was pre-digital — it
• 9:27
  was like TV campaigns.
• 9:27
  Still, you could actually measure the impact.
• 9:31
  And since that, it was like I was looking for the same kind of opportunity to
• 9:36
  prove this impact in the reality of B2B.
• 9:40
  But the reason why I was looking for this — I witnessed how it
• 9:42
  works so well for consumer brands.
• 9:47
  Matt Heinz: The one thing that
• 9:49
  impressed me about GlobalLogic and Influ2 is these were not really
• 9:53
  mature categories when you got in.
• 9:55
  These were new categories that you got into.
• 9:59
  That's a whole new level of challenge for an entrepreneur.
• 10:01
  What draws you to that specific challenge of starting in a place
• 10:05
  where a buyer may or may not know the problem that they have?
• 10:11
  Dmitri Lisitski: Well, I think — I don't know, actually.
• 10:13
  I don't have a good answer to this question.
• 10:15
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 10:16
  Dmitri Lisitski: I think what happened with Influ2
• 10:18
  was actually — the category was present.
• 10:21
  There was, like, Demandbase was there, 6sense was there.
• 10:25
  And our take was very contrarian.
• 10:27
  We said — forget ABM.
• 10:29
  That was, if you go to Web Archive and look at the Influ2 website dated
• 10:35
  in 2017, you would see, "Forget ABM
• 10:37
  — Matt Heinz: Yeah
• 10:38
  — Dmitri Lisitski: switch to person-based marketing."
• 10:39
  Matt Heinz: Yep.
• 10:40
  Dmitri Lisitski: And
• 10:42
  we changed our mind, actually.
• 10:44
  We realized, okay, this is a very good concept, but there's
• 10:48
  a lot of great ideas about ABM.
• 10:52
  It's more about technologies than the strategy.
• 10:54
  Matt Heinz: Yep.
• 10:55
  Dmitri Lisitski: So we kind of merged into a broader stream of
• 10:59
  ideas, which were kind of good ideas.
• 11:02
  So, but yeah.
• 11:05
  It's like initially it was very contrarian, and I think for early
• 11:09
  adopters, for innovators who tried — we were our first customers who
• 11:13
  tried our product, I think that was
• 11:15
  resonating.
• 11:15
  But then for the mainstream audience it was like, it's a little too aggressive.
• 11:19
  So we had to kind of pivot.
• 11:21
  Matt Heinz: Well, we're wrapping up here with Dmitri.
• 11:23
  Shout-out to Doug Madey for making this possible and for getting you over here.
• 11:26
  I know you're busy this week.
• 11:27
  I'm always fascinated to talk to leaders and entrepreneurs about
• 11:31
  building not only companies, but building teams and building a culture.
• 11:36
  And when you've got part of your team halfway around the world and part of
• 11:40
  the team just in various geographic locations, building and managing a
• 11:45
  culture is that much more difficult.
• 11:48
  But knowing Doug and knowing other people you've brought in, clearly
• 11:51
  you've built something special.
• 11:52
  How would you define the culture at Influ2, and why
• 11:55
  that's a special place to work?
• 11:57
  Dmitri Lisitski: Yeah.
• 11:58
  We have a joke that we are an adult-only organization, which
• 12:04
  — honestly, I think we learned about this during the pandemic, right?
• 12:09
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 12:09
  Dmitri Lisitski: I think the pandemic had made all of us adults in the way
• 12:14
  that you had to take care of yourself and be proactive, and figure out how
• 12:18
  you operate in this very strange world.
• 12:21
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 12:21
  Dmitri Lisitski: And we embraced it.
• 12:24
  We said, "Okay, this is a very good model for us going forward." And
• 12:30
  the kind of people we are looking for, and the kind of culture we built,
• 12:33
  was about people being able to figure out what's the best contribution
• 12:40
  they can make for the company.
• 12:42
  And I don't think it is for everyone.
• 12:44
  I think some people just need to be told what needs to be done — very
• 12:49
  clear expectations, clear objectives.
• 12:53
  That's not how we operate.
• 12:54
  I think we kind of look for people who love this kind of culture — they
• 12:59
  thrive in this environment.
• 13:01
  People who are self-starters, have their own idea about what they want to
• 13:05
  build — obviously aligning, but still having a lot of freedom about this.
• 13:10
  And it's kind of a special kind of people, and I'm lucky to have
• 13:15
  a lot of great people like that
• 13:17
  — Matt Heinz: That's
• 13:17
  awesome
• 13:17
  — Dmitri Lisitski: in our company.
• 13:18
  Matt Heinz: I love the way you said that, 'cause I would agree with you
• 13:20
  that when you can be specific about the kind of culture that you wanna have or
• 13:24
  the kind of business you wanna build, it's going to attract the people you
• 13:27
  want and repel the people you don't.
• 13:29
  When you can be upfront about, "Here's what it's like to work
• 13:31
  here. Here's what our values are. Here's what's important to us."
• 13:35
  Dmitri Lisitski: Yeah,
• 13:35
  Matt Heinz: yeah.
• 13:35
  'Cause that won't be important to everybody, and let's be
• 13:37
  upfront about it and make sure we bring in the right people.
• 13:38
  Dmitri Lisitski: Yeah, I think I spoiled a lot of recruitment processes when
• 13:43
  I had one of the last interviews, and instead of encouraging a person to join
• 13:49
  our team — and we actually wanted this person — I said, "Hey, I should be honest.
• 13:54
  This is the kind of environment you will get in, and if it doesn't feel right
• 13:58
  for you — think twice." Consider — do you really want to be part of this team?
• 14:03
  And some people really get excited.
• 14:05
  "This is exactly the kind of freedom I'm looking for."
• 14:07
  Matt Heinz: Yeah,
• 14:07
  yeah.
• 14:07
  Dmitri Lisitski: But some people say, "No, it's probably not for me."
• 14:09
  Matt Heinz: That's right.
• 14:10
  Dmitri Lisitski, co-founder, CEO of Influ2, thanks so
• 14:13
  much for joining us today.
• 14:14
  Dmitri Lisitski: Thank you so much.