Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 546 | How to scale personalized ABM with AI for enterprise success
Transcript
- 0:01This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
- 0:04pressing B2B go to market challenges.
- 0:07Each week, host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and
- 0:09marketing leaders to get you in depth insights and creative
- 0:12strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.
- 0:18Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Based Podcast.
- 0:20I'm your host, Chris Moody, and today I'm very excited to have
- 0:24Vincent de Castro with us to talk about AI and account based
- 0:28marketing, scaling, personalization for enterprise
- 0:31success. Vincent, thanks for joining us
- 0:33today and welcome to the show. Hey, Chris, great to be here.
- 0:36Good to see you again. Appreciate the invite.
- 0:38I'm really, really looking forward to the conversation.
- 0:40Two things that I'm super passionate about, just like you.
- 0:43Yeah, well, I, I'm excited to have you here.
- 0:45We've done workshops together. And for those of you who don't
- 0:49know, which is everyone, you wouldn't know this, this is the
- 0:52second time we've come to record this episode.
- 0:55The last time we were so passionate about AI use cases
- 0:59for account based. We use our entire time talking
- 1:02about it and showing each other examples, which we almost did
- 1:05again today. So this is a very, very
- 1:08important topic. I know you and I are are living
- 1:11this on the daily, but I'd love for you to start a little bit
- 1:14about your journey. What led you to what you're
- 1:16doing today? Yeah, that's a good question.
- 1:18So I've been involved in B2B marketing for over 20 years,
- 1:22really got my start when Google was figuring out how to monetize
- 1:27their traffic. So I've been in search marketing
- 1:30for 2223 years, almost really worked heavily with industrial
- 1:36manufacturing companies and then started the agency in about
- 1:412009, almost 2010. And from there, you know,
- 1:45providing a lot of enterprise organizations, what we would
- 1:49call lead Gen. today. So that was kind of the, the
- 1:51like how did I get into B2B marketing?
- 1:55And then about 8 years ago, maybe almost nine years ago now
- 1:59is when we started to get involved in ABM.
- 2:03And so one of our, our big clients here in Atlanta came to
- 2:08us. We were doing lead Gen. for them
- 2:09and they had asked about ABM. It was something that they were
- 2:12interested in and demand Gen. And so, you know, being the
- 2:15curious bunch of marketers that we are, we were like, yeah,
- 2:19let's, let's check it out, let's see what it's about.
- 2:21And so we, you know, rolled up our sleeves, got involved and
- 2:25you really never look back. And I'd say about a year later
- 2:28is when we decided that's, this is what we want to do.
- 2:31This is who we want to be when we grow up.
- 2:32We want to be heavily involved in ABM.
- 2:35It's my opinion is it's probably the most challenging form of
- 2:39marketing and that you can do. It's very complex, especially
- 2:42the lower funnel stuff that we've talked about 1,000,000 * 1
- 2:46to few and 1:00 to 1:00. It doesn't get any more
- 2:48complicated than that from a marketing perspective in my
- 2:51experience. And so we all as a team just
- 2:54gravitated towards that. And it's still, I mean I'm still
- 2:57super passionate about it today. I love the the way things
- 3:00change, the martech that improves and gets better and
- 3:04better AI that we'll talk about in a little bit.
- 3:07I mean, huge, huge impact on the ABM space.
- 3:10So yeah, almost nine years in ABM specifically.
- 3:15But you know, now I'm really kind of joining that that ABM
- 3:18passion with AI, which is just incredibly exciting.
- 3:22I mean, it's changing every single day.
- 3:24And then there's, like I talked about last time, Mattis, things
- 3:27that just come out of left field that nobody knew about.
- 3:30And then all of a sudden it's the next big thing.
- 3:32And it, it really, you know, the bar is getting raised by these
- 3:36companies that you just don't expect.
- 3:38They're just, you know, they're small, they're scrappy, they're,
- 3:42you know, they're bootstrapped, but they're doing some really,
- 3:44really cool and exciting stuff. So I mean, it's from my
- 3:48perspective, AI is going to be AB2B marketer's best friend, if
- 3:52it isn't already. It should be, but it absolutely
- 3:55would be. Yeah, awesome stuff there.
- 3:57I love that. I completely agree with you too.
- 3:59And you were hitting on small Scrappy and some of the
- 4:01disruption that's happening in AI while also talking about the
- 4:05complexity of enterprise, which I think is interesting because
- 4:08it is very challenging. You head on one to Few and 1:00
- 4:11to 1:00 ABM too. I'd love to know what
- 4:15experiences stand out for you that help to shape how you think
- 4:19about the difficulties of 1 to few and 1:00 to 1:00.
- 4:22Yeah, I, you know, really one to one is the place where I am most
- 4:28excited to be on a daily basis just because it's it's that
- 4:32point in time where you're talking with marketing, you're
- 4:35talking with the sellers and then you're really trying to
- 4:39extract like what's the nugget? What's the exciting piece of
- 4:43interesting information? And so I think you know the
- 4:45first time I really did an in depth strategy session with a
- 4:50marketing team and the sellers that they represent and doing
- 4:54that kind of process where we're looking for that.
- 4:56What's that spark? What's that one really, really
- 4:58cool piece of information that we're going to make the whole
- 5:02campaign around that's going to and it's going to drive whatever
- 5:05that KPI is. Is it a perception change?
- 5:08Is it, you know, increased engagement from the C level?
- 5:11Is it helping the sellers to open doors?
- 5:14Any number of different things that that one to one can do.
- 5:17So really, you know, and I won't mention the name of the client,
- 5:20but you know, we were talking about their target account and
- 5:23the sellers were super engaged, which as you know as well as I
- 5:27do, it's the most important part of ABN.
- 5:30Like if you don't have that sales engagement, you are going
- 5:32to have a real uphill battle. And as we were talking through
- 5:37like the account and the the key people who needed to be
- 5:41influenced, they were talking about a whole other initiative
- 5:44with their, their innovation department within the target
- 5:48account and what they were doing with them.
- 5:50And we latched on to that. We dug into it and came up with
- 5:54this, what they agreed with an awesome idea, which was, hey,
- 5:57let's do a joint event. Let's do a joint event with you
- 6:00and this client that you're trying to build a new
- 6:02relationship with the CEO. And I mean, it just evolved from
- 6:07there. And I mean it, it was amazing
- 6:09from there. It led to a super close
- 6:12relationship that culminated with the CEO actually joining
- 6:16them, their executive team at the Super Bowl for like 4 days.
- 6:19And so just to see those actual results though, like to me,
- 6:24that's what's super awesome. You go from this like interview
- 6:26process, you come up with that big idea, right?
- 6:30And that's what the content and the channels and the design all
- 6:35feed off of. And then you execute it.
- 6:37And to see that come to fruition and exceed everyone's
- 6:39expectations is that's what it's all about to me.
- 6:42That's what I love about this. And seeing the Super Bowl is
- 6:46pretty cool. That's always a good thing.
- 6:48Yeah, nice perk there. Well, look for those who aren't
- 6:51in enterprise, this is obvious, but sometimes we're talking
- 6:55years for the sales cycle, not days, Years for some companies.
- 7:00I'm curious Vincent, what are your biggest learnings or
- 7:04takeaways from working with the high value long sell cycle
- 7:08accounts? Yeah, that's a great question.
- 7:10I think that the first thing is making sure that you have
- 7:14alignment inside of the organization because what I have
- 7:18seen be a big challenge for you know mid market startup
- 7:22companies. Obviously they're they're
- 7:24operating often times with smaller budgets, but having the
- 7:27ability to go from the starting point to the finish line is
- 7:32absolutely critical. And so not getting, you know,
- 7:35sidetracked, not seeing other shiny thing and going off that
- 7:38direction, but being able to really have the discipline to
- 7:42start, create the plan and then see it all the way to fruition.
- 7:45And you know, that saying what is it?
- 7:48Sell fast is I think a big part of this process, especially for
- 7:52the mid market companies that, you know, they're just trying to
- 7:55understand ABM and how does it work in their organization and
- 7:58how they scale it. Just get in there and do it
- 8:00right and see it all the way through.
- 8:02Obviously create the KPIs, but you know, you want to be able to
- 8:05get the mistakes out of the way as quickly as you can.
- 8:08And then really dedicate the next 2-3, six months to actually
- 8:12learning what's working, what's going to be, you know, the best
- 8:16fit for the the clients that you're going or the target
- 8:18accounts are going after. So I would say, you know, don't
- 8:21spend too much time trying to make it great.
- 8:24Start with good, get into market, run the campaigns all
- 8:27the way through the finish line and then learn.
- 8:30That's to me the the essence of like truly getting ABM under
- 8:34your belt and scaling inside of an organization.
- 8:37All right, Yeah, Scaling. There's my Segway.
- 8:39You gave it to me. I'm going to ask you the the
- 8:41most difficult question, Vincent.
- 8:44So we've failed fast. We've gathered our learnings,
- 8:49we've had some successes and we've had the communication
- 8:52around it. We're aligned and now an
- 8:55executive comes to us and says, hey, that's great, you did this
- 9:00for 20 accounts. I need you to do that for 200 or
- 9:04500. And it's the the classic problem
- 9:08of how we scale one to few and 1 to 1 strategies in an enterprise
- 9:13level account. What are some of the biggest
- 9:16challenges that you see there and then how do you work to
- 9:19offset those? Those are good.
- 9:21They are tough questions and they're good questions, and
- 9:24that's the kind of thinking that you need to apply to this stuff
- 9:27because you want to have an idea of where your challenge they're
- 9:30going to lie as you're setting at your road map.
- 9:33We have our own proprietary road map for AVM maturity that takes
- 9:37these things into account. But the biggest challenges, and
- 9:40this is the crazy part, they haven't changed since we've been
- 9:43doing ABM here at the agency is really the ability to, you know,
- 9:48number one, get the assets as personalized as they need to be
- 9:52depending on the stage of the the funnel.
- 9:54So if it's one to few, it's not super hard, right?
- 9:58It's not a huge lift, but when you get into one to one and it's
- 10:01a big, big like you're going after enterprise targets, 2 year
- 10:06sales cycle, you know, 10 million, hundred million, $1
- 10:09billion contract values. You are sending a lot of stuff,
- 10:14you're personalizing a lot of stuff.
- 10:16And that's the the place where people run into roadblocks, they
- 10:20hit the wall. I wouldn't say it's easy to do
- 10:2220 strategic accounts over the course of a year doing 1 to one.
- 10:25It's not easy. But if you talk about really,
- 10:28you know, turning that up, that volume up, that's where you run
- 10:31into how am I going to get my value propositions, my team
- 10:36cards, my, you know, proposals, let alone all of the other
- 10:40traditional stuff like emails and white papers and and case
- 10:44studies, Hyper personalized, not just personalized.
- 10:46Like we've got to look beyond personalization to hyper
- 10:49personalization. But that is, and there's
- 10:52probably two key pieces. There's the e-mail.
- 10:55So how do you scale the e-mail if now you're trying to
- 10:58influence decision makers across the executive level and then the
- 11:04influencers that will also be feeding up to them.
- 11:06How do you like learn what they care about?
- 11:09How do you learn what their challenges are and then
- 11:12incorporate what your solutions are in the right sales framework
- 11:15that speaks to them based on their personality?
- 11:18How do you do that at scale? And that's where AI comes in,
- 11:20right? Like that's the the part that is
- 11:23so exciting to me and to the agency in general is like you
- 11:26now have the ability to scale and remove those factors and do
- 11:32better. Like that's the crazy part to
- 11:35me, Chris is like you're not just like I John Smith at, you
- 11:39know, company XYZI know, as a CTO you wrestle with like that's
- 11:44so lame, right? You see those emails and you
- 11:47just hit the delete button. We're talking about like truly
- 11:50hyper personalized stuff. And so doing that at scale
- 11:53absolutely requires either 100 person team or AI.
- 11:58That's part of a, a process, an AI automation process.
- 12:01So connecting, you know, the ChatGPT piece, creating your
- 12:05custom agents, having that, you know, connected with N8N or with
- 12:09make.com so that it actually completes tasks.
- 12:12And that's the part I think where marketers have to start to
- 12:15look at like you're trying to go from, I'm into chat TPT and I'm
- 12:19prompting and you know, it's taking me two hours to get the
- 12:22output I want. But you still haven't gotten the
- 12:24thing done. You still haven't completed the
- 12:26PDF document or the emails at scale.
- 12:29You need a automation that can actually take the a lot of the
- 12:33human stuff out of the way, keep the human in the loop, but then
- 12:37do the tasks for you. And so, you know, giving you
- 12:40that time to be able to do the stuff we both like to do.
- 12:43Every marketer likes to do the thinking, the strategizing, the
- 12:47what's next? How do I get better?
- 12:49How do we get, you know, more out of what we are doing
- 12:52currently? So that to me is the biggest
- 12:55challenge in lower funnel ABM. But the exciting part is, is AI
- 13:00is going to play a giant role in removing a roadblock.
- 13:03Yeah, great stuff there. You actually answered the
- 13:06question I was going to ask you next, which is phenomenal.
- 13:09My brain was going to the the VH1 pop music.
- 13:12Remember the little bubbles that would come up to be like, check
- 13:15this out, check this out. A few things are coming to mind
- 13:18there. One, you know, in demand base,
- 13:20we have account summaries now that's an agent to go and try to
- 13:23help with this. So I I do love how you're
- 13:26thinking about AI there. There was also another podcast
- 13:29episode we did with Sam McKenna, which was about show me, you
- 13:33know me. So some of the combination of AI
- 13:36and human elements. I do think this is where it can
- 13:39get really interesting because it may not be me doing research
- 13:45myself for 50 accounts. I could use AI to get me 90% of
- 13:49the way there and then even if I don't have an agent to tell me,
- 13:53hey, Chris is a Duke fan, this is Sam's example.
- 13:58Sam was a Kentucky fan. Unfortunately, I do have a.
- 14:02Duke. Mr. Yeah, with Christian Leitner
- 14:04right there, that the most hated person in the sports world to be
- 14:08heard. So she said, look, if I'm
- 14:10sending you an e-mail, it's going to say Duke plus Christian
- 14:14Leitner, plus I hate you plus go to market challenges.
- 14:17And she said that will take me 10 seconds because I know you
- 14:21and then I'm showing you, I know you.
- 14:22And then you could have some AI to assist you on that.
- 14:26But I'm curious if you're seeing with AI personalization, some of
- 14:30the combination of those human elements, because I do think
- 14:33there's an opportunity to really stand out even at scale.
- 14:36Oh, there's no doubt. And and that's what I mean by
- 14:39hyper personalization is to show that you actually know the
- 14:43person. Now, I didn't personally do the
- 14:45research, but using AI to to shortcut that process because
- 14:50that's just, I don't want to make it sound like anyone could
- 14:53do the research, but, you know, often times these are the tasks
- 14:56that take up a lot of bandwidth that that could be done by, you
- 15:01know, a manual process. And so using tools like humantic
- 15:05AII love Manus, that's my own personal favorite.
- 15:09So really letting the tools do the research on the LinkedIn
- 15:12profile and finding additional information about that person
- 15:16online, you know, via their their social media channels and
- 15:19posts, and then incorporating that into the framework of the
- 15:23messaging is where we're at right now.
- 15:25So we're taking storytelling framework books.
- 15:29So like magic words, if you're familiar with that, which then
- 15:33matches that personality type with the appropriate sales
- 15:37framework so that you're starting out with the idea of
- 15:40like, you know, maybe that headline appeals to you, but
- 15:44maybe it wouldn't appeal to me. Like I'm not a huge watching
- 15:47sports fan. I'm I'd like to go, you know,
- 15:49ride my bike in the mountains or compete at bike races, that kind
- 15:52of stuff. I don't watch a lot of like
- 15:54sports on television, but if you were to come at me with a story
- 15:58or, or a headline about mountain biking and Moab, which is one of
- 16:01my personal favorite rides, you're going to get me 100%, no
- 16:05doubt about that. And that's the kind of stuff you
- 16:07talk about hyper personalization that AI can bring to the table
- 16:10is just that kind of thing. And it's the scalability, like
- 16:13you mentioned, how do you scale that?
- 16:15And it's going to be connecting tools.
- 16:18It isn't one tool. It it, well, eventually it
- 16:20probably will be, but it isn't going to be like ChatGPT doesn't
- 16:23do that on its own. You've got to then connect
- 16:26ChatGPT via, you know, make.com, for instance, which is a webhook
- 16:30tool with the other pieces that are going to be involved.
- 16:33You're going to create custom agents that are going to do a
- 16:36piece. And that's why Manus is cool,
- 16:38right? Because Manus Manus has the
- 16:41wrapper around all of these tools.
- 16:43And so Manus does the task assignment to different agents
- 16:47to go out and you do the research, you create the
- 16:50framework, you do the writing, and then it aggregates
- 16:53everything and it comes back to you with this completed process
- 16:56or a thing, right? So it actually does, which is
- 16:59the, that's the mind boggling part to me is like it actually
- 17:02does the stuff. So I don't have to take it and
- 17:05say, OK, now I'm going to take that file.
- 17:06I'm going to send it to my copywriter and they're going to
- 17:08revise it. And then they're going to send
- 17:10it to the designer and then they're going to send it to the
- 17:12marketing operations person. Like the whole thing can get
- 17:15done essentially from an AI automation process.
- 17:20Yeah. World's changing fast, Vincent.
- 17:22Yeah, man, I don't want to overwhelm people, but that is a
- 17:25tool to definitely check out. I mean, look, check with your
- 17:29privacy team too. You and I have talked about
- 17:31this. Make sure it's something you
- 17:32don't want to put sensitive information into.
- 17:35I'm curious if we come back to the long timeline.
- 17:38So a lot of what we're talking about is that hyper
- 17:40personalization. There's an element of time
- 17:43there. So knowing what is timely when
- 17:46we have 12 to 24 month sales cycles where we may be
- 17:50communicating over a long period of time, how do we make sure
- 17:54that we're effective and recent with any information we're
- 17:58sharing? And that's where the humans, I
- 18:00think, are always going to play a huge part, right?
- 18:02Like that's why my first reaction to Manus was like, Oh
- 18:05my God, you don't need. But the reality is, is that that
- 18:09real strategic, like the situation you're talking about
- 18:12requires a human to think through that.
- 18:15And so the critical piece is 1 to 1's, all about relationships.
- 18:19Like, you know, that at the end of the day is what you aim to do
- 18:23with one to one. I know everyone's got a little
- 18:26bit of a different opinion. I look at ABM.
- 18:28My definition is what your very best account executive would do
- 18:31if they had unlimited time, energy and resources.
- 18:33That's what ABM in my mind should be.
- 18:36It isn't, you know, brand, but it can be top of the funnel, can
- 18:40be brand. I see companies kind of doing
- 18:43brand at 1:00 to 1:00, which is I think in all fairness one form
- 18:46of 1:00 to 1:00. But when I think about strategic
- 18:491 to one ABM, it is about the relationship.
- 18:52And so there should always be that like constant checking in
- 18:56and collaboration. What's saying from the seller's
- 18:59perspective as an executive, you know, moved out and new ones
- 19:03coming in, have we improved that relationship?
- 19:06And that's a key metric that we tracked for KPIs and 1 to 1 is,
- 19:10you know, that that relationship going from red, if that's where
- 19:13it is through yellow into green, which indicates, you know, we're
- 19:17making some significant headway, we're improving that
- 19:19relationship. And at the end of the day, I
- 19:22think that that that is the very best thing that one to one ABM
- 19:25can provide. If you can secure a good close
- 19:29relationship with a meaningful executive at an enterprise
- 19:32organization. That was either, you know, brand
- 19:36new to the organization when you started, or they had a negative
- 19:39perception about what you do. And you've moved that to a place
- 19:42where now, you know, they'll text you back or they'll answer
- 19:45your phone call. If you call, that's that's huge,
- 19:47right? That's in terms of making deals
- 19:49like AI isn't going to replace that I don't think anytime soon.
- 19:53You crush the definition of ABM too.
- 19:54That's one of my favourites. I, I will certainly pull that
- 19:57quote and use it myself, even if it's not the corporate channel.
- 20:01What your best Rep would do with unlimited time resources?
- 20:04That, that was awesome. I love that.
- 20:06What about targeting? So we know that one of the most
- 20:10challenging parts of account base has been building our ICP,
- 20:14picking the right accounts to approach.
- 20:16How is AI helping to handle the complexity of enterprise
- 20:19targeting? Yeah, that to me is let's call
- 20:23it low hanging fruit, right, Because you take the the human
- 20:27feelings out of it and I think that you see a very different
- 20:30picture of the accounts that you would pick just solely based on
- 20:33the data. Now, you know, a whole nother
- 20:35question or conversation would be what's the quality of our
- 20:38data? You know, is it good enough to
- 20:39rely on assuming that it is using AIA tool like Manus or you
- 20:44know, an automated configuration of number of different tools is
- 20:48going to give you what I've seen to be much, much better account
- 20:52selection process. It's that old engineering axiom,
- 20:55garbage in, garbage out. And you know, sometimes it's a
- 20:58let's pick accounts by committee.
- 21:01Let's get, you know, sales folks to give us their, you know,
- 21:04vanity logos that they really want to do business with.
- 21:07But what's the behind the scenes, what's the growth
- 21:09opportunity? Are they actually a good fit for
- 21:12us to partner with? What's the the historical on the
- 21:16account? Have we had them before?
- 21:17You know, how did that go? What's the what are the things
- 21:19that kept us from working with them in the past?
- 21:22All of these different, you know, my mind is like columns
- 21:25that come out of Salesforce and you know, the more information
- 21:29you can pull in to help you to make that informed decision
- 21:32based on the what's the needs of the business.
- 21:34And so to me, it always starts with what are we really trying
- 21:37to accomplish here? Like what is the goal of the ABM
- 21:40campaign? Not leads, right?
- 21:42Like ABM, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news and other
- 21:46people would disagree. ABM isn't lead Gen. right?
- 21:49And that's why I focus on the relationship part.
- 21:51ABM is really designed to be able to improve those
- 21:55relationships. So, you know, what are the
- 21:57factors that we know we need to incorporate to pick the right
- 22:01accounts? And it's got to start with like,
- 22:03what is our true goal for this campaign?
- 22:06What is it we're actually trying to do?
- 22:08And it has to match the style of campaign, the funnel stage.
- 22:11And then, you know, pulling info from demand base, You know,
- 22:15assuming that they're smart and they're using demand base for
- 22:18their ABM platform, so much data in there that maybe they don't
- 22:21even know is in there that we can then merge that with
- 22:24Salesforce to really be able to, to choose the right accounts.
- 22:27But it's my experience is it's got to be based on like true
- 22:30real world business objectives. Real world business objectives I
- 22:34love the real world thing. I I want to twist your arm a
- 22:36little for a real world success story before we jump into the
- 22:40lightning round. So we'll hit quick hitters next.
- 22:43But what's your favorite real world success story where
- 22:47scaling one to few or one to one account based with the help of
- 22:51AI has gotten you exceptional results?
- 22:54That's a great question. So we've been focusing a lot on
- 22:59a slightly different sector lately and they're a little bit
- 23:02less mature than what I would call the traditional ABM
- 23:05company. So they're not SAS, they're not,
- 23:08you know, tech. They're definitely a little bit
- 23:10behind the curve. And so they have a lot of these
- 23:14companies are global. So they've got like, you know,
- 23:17sales teams and all sorts of different territories, North
- 23:20America, South America, EMEA, APAC, they that presents in it
- 23:25of itself really, really unique challenges, especially when
- 23:29you're talking about that one to few process.
- 23:31And so running pilot campaigns in strategic territories to
- 23:35understand like what works, right?
- 23:38What's the goal of the campaign? In this instance, it was what we
- 23:41call the win back campaign. So old clients that no longer
- 23:44were purchasing from them were the targets of these campaigns
- 23:47throughout these four different regions.
- 23:49Understanding what works. And then once you understand
- 23:52what's going to be valuable to the, to the customer, it isn't,
- 23:55you know, in my experience is you want to, you want to make
- 23:58sure that you're showing them that you understand what their
- 24:01challenge is. This isn't groundbreaking
- 24:02information. And then what is your solution
- 24:04that can help overcome that? Not how great we are not we're
- 24:06the biggest, not we're the oldest, but how do you truly
- 24:09solve their challenges? And then using so team cards,
- 24:13great instance. We created an AI automation
- 24:16process that actually will update the team cards based on
- 24:19the fields coming out of SFDC. So adding in the right sales
- 24:24team members, the right language is a huge piece, right?
- 24:28And so there's some, you know, countries in EMEA that they
- 24:30don't mind English and there's other countries in EMEA that
- 24:32they want to see their, their native language.
- 24:34So using an AI automation process to be able to create
- 24:39these team cards and update them based on the regions and the
- 24:42sellers was huge because it had taken us three weeks to do.
- 24:47I think, you know, like two different companies, three
- 24:50different companies to start with.
- 24:51And so we cut that down from a two to three-week process all
- 24:55the way down to basically in two days.
- 24:57And that was like a phenomenal win because that allows you to
- 25:02do that scale. Like you can't do the scale
- 25:04without it, right? You might have the aspirational
- 25:06like, hey, we want to be able to do this kind of play globally.
- 25:10It's great. But how do you do it?
- 25:12How do you get there? How do you actually make it, you
- 25:14know, foundational for your organization and, and AI
- 25:17automation has proven for us to be the real game changer in that
- 25:20regard. I love that we're going to jump
- 25:22into the whitening round. So this is going to be a
- 25:26challenge of restraint here, right?
- 25:29If we're in an elevator, we have our, our 32nd sound bites, the
- 25:33first one. You've hit on this a bunch, but
- 25:36I, I'd love for you to kind of zoom out and give us that 32nd
- 25:40sound clip. How is AI going to change
- 25:42account base? Go to market.
- 25:44Wow. It's going to make it
- 25:45streamlined, efficient, fast. That's the key to me for ABM
- 25:50campaigns is get into market quick.
- 25:52That's absolutely the most important part, and it's going
- 25:55to make that doable. So it's not going to replace
- 25:57humans, but it is going to make us better.
- 25:59Love it, love it. Yeah, I I'm pro human on this
- 26:03too. Yeah, me too.
- 26:05Yeah, we, we have to learn all these tools.
- 26:07We, we do, we have to keep up, but it is going to make us
- 26:10better at our jobs. And so being ignorant is not a
- 26:13good strategy. So I, I'm with you there.
- 26:15I agree. What about the biggest challenge
- 26:18in B2B sales? If you could only pick one
- 26:20thing, what do you think's the hardest thing to do today?
- 26:23That's a great question. I think to know where you need
- 26:27to put your time, That to me is really the foundational
- 26:30fundamental component of 1 to many and one to few is it should
- 26:34tell you as a salesperson which accounts are in market and where
- 26:37should I put my time. Perfect.
- 26:39Nailed that one. Yeah, we just talked.
- 26:41We had an executive off site. We were talking about
- 26:43prioritization so much. I mean, knowing where to spend
- 26:46your time. Huge, huge focus for everyone,
- 26:49not just sellers. All right, we have a couple
- 26:51other quick ones. You know this one because you've
- 26:53listed episodes before, but we love to ask tech recs your
- 26:56favorite tools. So you have mentioned Manus.
- 26:59That's MANUS. What are some of the favorite
- 27:02pieces of technology you're using today?
- 27:04Yeah, Manus is up there. Manus is like my new best
- 27:07friend. And then Humantic AI is great.
- 27:10And I'm sure a lot of folks that are watching this are familiar
- 27:14with Crystal Nose. And it's a great tool, don't get
- 27:16me wrong. But Humantic is, in my opinion,
- 27:19even more useful at scale because I can just go and grab a
- 27:22bunch of LinkedIn profiles, drop them into this tool and it's
- 27:25going to give me the important stuff I need to know about that
- 27:29individual. So it's going to give me, you
- 27:32know, your disk personality, the big 5 personality traits, how to
- 27:36sell to you what you care about, you know, is FOMO a thing for
- 27:39you? Is it data-driven?
- 27:41Like these are the, I think the the pieces that we have now the
- 27:45ability to start to incorporate a scale.
- 27:48Love it. What about Goodreads?
- 27:50So we expand reads. We're generous here.
- 27:53That could be book, blog, newsletter, podcast.
- 27:55What stands out to you is the most helpful today.
- 27:58Yeah, I will say, and I can't remember the person's name.
- 28:00I, I saw them, they posted on LinkedIn, they're in our
- 28:04industry. And she mentioned like 5
- 28:06storytelling framework books that I was like, oh, that's
- 28:10really cool. And so I started to check them
- 28:12out and unfortunately I don't have the time to read all five
- 28:16books. So I'm able to go to, you know,
- 28:18Manus and say, hey, give me the abridged high level version.
- 28:22And it's really, really interesting.
- 28:24We all talk about this, I know, but like, we're all humans at
- 28:28the end of the day and we're trying to sell to other humans
- 28:30and we're consumers. So, you know, we're not robots
- 28:34in the B to B space that we then like take off that coat and go
- 28:37back to the B to C world when I'm at home and shop a different
- 28:40way. We all are influenced by the
- 28:42same stuff. So the idea that that words
- 28:46matter that much and how you frame stuff and that it's
- 28:49possible to really frame things up, that is going to make it
- 28:53easier to sell to somebody just based on what they care about
- 28:56and and how they assimilate information.
- 28:58So if I come at you with, you know, hey, Chris, if you don't
- 29:01do this today, you're going to experience this kind of loss.
- 29:04And if you experience that kind of loss, this is going to happen
- 29:06and you're not concerned about that.
- 29:08And you're just going to be like, OK, well, I don't really
- 29:10care. It's not an issue to me.
- 29:13I'm more concerned about what's the ROI over here and and how
- 29:16does it, you know, long term play into my plans.
- 29:19That's a huge miss. If I can start to figure that
- 29:21stuff out in advance and I'm selling to you in the style that
- 29:23you're willing to be sold to, that's going to make my job even
- 29:27easier. So those storytelling frameworks
- 29:29for sales gold as far as I'm concerned.
- 29:32Awesome. What about good people?
- 29:34Who inspires you in the B2B space especially?
- 29:37Oh man. Well, I mean, I think Gabe for
- 29:40sure, just by by virtue of like the quality of the stuff that is
- 29:46put out on LinkedIn all the time.
- 29:48You, because you're an OG in this space, you've been around
- 29:51forever. I mean, starting way back when,
- 29:54like, you know, there isn't a person in the industry that you
- 29:56don't know or what's going on currently.
- 29:58So I mean, definitely some of the some of the folks that I
- 30:01look to outside of that, there's some folks that, you know, I
- 30:04would say are competitors of ours that that I'm always kind
- 30:08of stalking their LinkedIn, not going to mention any names, but
- 30:12I'm always impressed with with their information.
- 30:14On the client side, we have some clients who are just super duper
- 30:18smart. Jason Lewis over at Camore's,
- 30:20which is a spin off of DuPont is one of my favorite people.
- 30:24Sure, I'll shoot your or his LinkedIn over to you after this,
- 30:27so you can maybe reach out to him and get him on here.
- 30:29But yeah, I mean, super, super smart guy, really younger and
- 30:33taking a, a, bringing a fresh approach to an industry that's
- 30:36over 100 years old, so. Sandy well, checks in the mail
- 30:40from Gabe Rogel and I. So when you get those checks,
- 30:43thank you for mentioning us. Now I, I do the same.
- 30:46I'd put you on that list too. And then this is the the hard
- 30:50hitting journalistic question here, the most important one of
- 30:53all. Vincent, how can everyone get in
- 30:55touch with you after this episode?
- 30:57So our website, isabmagency.com, couldn't be much easier than
- 31:02that. You can call me, obviously, but
- 31:04I'm not going to put my phone number out there. e-mail is
- 31:07vincent@abmagency.com. So yeah, we just relaunched the
- 31:12website. Oh gosh, I want to say two
- 31:14months ago maybe. So it's something that I'm, I'm
- 31:17real proud of. It definitely represents who we
- 31:19are now and what we do. So I would definitely drive
- 31:22folks to, to check out the website and see what's in it for
- 31:24them. There's a lot of cool
- 31:25information. I think the way we've segmented
- 31:27is interesting. So there's kind of three
- 31:30different tracks. Either you're new to ABM and
- 31:32haven't done it, you've got some experience or you've been doing
- 31:35it for a while. There's always ways we can help
- 31:37people to to improve, even when they've been doing it for, you
- 31:40know, four or five years above it.
- 31:42Outstanding. You nailed it, Sir.
- 31:44Great to see you again. Thanks for joining us.
- 31:46Yeah, man, thanks for having me, Chris.
- 31:47Really. Always a pleasure.
- 31:50Thanks for joining us for On Base.
- 31:52If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share, rate,
- 31:55review and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you
- 31:59get your podcasts. This show is brought to you by
- 32:01Demand Base, the only account based experience platform built
- 32:04for sales and marketing alignment.