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Be Brave: Getting Started with ABM
58 Plays3 years ago
Let's face it: ABM requires a bit of a mindset change, and it can be tough to conquer if you try to eat the elephant in one sitting. That's why we've kicked off our new season with two experts on the subject!
In this episode, we welcome Brenna Zenaty and Shea Castle from Terminus to discuss how companies can assess ABM readiness and move forward with a crawl-walk-run approach to account-based marketing.
Meet Our Guests
Brenna: Brenna is the Senior Enablement Manager at Terminus. In her role, she manages the creation and delivery of customer education and training programs through Terminus's support knowledge base, user community, and e-learning academy. Prior to joining Terminus in 2017, Brenna was the marketing manager at an inbound marketing agency. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two goofy Boston Terriers, Frank & Rue.
Shea: Shea Castle has been at Terminus for 3 years, working as the Senior Customer Marketing Manager, focused on programs to support customer engagement, ABM education, product adoption, retention, and expansion. Before joining Terminus, he worked in a variety of marketing roles across demand gen, content marketing, product marketing, and ABM. He's passionate about helping marketers do cool things. If he isn't talking ABM, he's probably talking about Star Wars.
About Terminus
Terminus is the only account-based engagement platform built to deliver more pipeline and revenue through multi-channel account-based marketing (ABM). The platform, Terminus Engagement Hub, connects the first and third-party data needed to understand both customers and prospects, with the most robust suite of engagement channels—including ads, chat, email, and web—available. Terminus powers multi-channel ABM for thousands of brands globally including DHL, G2, Outreach, and TripActions. Terminus is proud to be a G2 leader in ABM for 13 consecutive quarters. Visit terminus.com to learn more or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About The B2B Mix Show
The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by The B2B Mix agency. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk!
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Transcript
Introduction to B2B Mix Show
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Alaina and Stacey. In each episode, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your sales and marketing strategy. We'll share what we know, along with advice from industry experts who will join us on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?
00:00:19
Speaker
So Alaina, this week, we are talking about account-based marketing. What do you think about ABM?
00:00:28
Speaker
You know, this whole time I thought it was always be marketing. I'm just kidding. That's what I feel like I'm doing is I'm always marketing. But yeah, account-based marketing, that has been a hot thing over the last couple of years, right?
00:00:46
Speaker
Lots of people are, companies are really getting into it and trying to narrow down that ideal customer profile to reach out to and not just get leads, but turn leads into customers. And some people would argue there's always been account based marketing, which there has been, but I think the real cool thing and why it's so hot now
00:01:12
Speaker
is because
Technology's Role in ABM
00:01:13
Speaker
there's so much cool technology, awesome technology that can help you scale and not make it so labor intensive because AVM in the past was very hard. You'd have it manual, right? Right. And like I remember back in the day working at a former company, we had a customer who it was food service.
00:01:35
Speaker
And it was a manufacturer who had a marketing person that was only focused on relationships with a big fast food chain. So nowadays you don't want to hire one person to market just for that one single account because that was their entire job. So what new ABM tools do is let you scale and
00:01:57
Speaker
make the most of the employees you have to reach and keep the customers you want. So I think that is why ABM is so exciting now and why more companies can look at investing in it. And like back in the day, there were not so many different ways to engage with your ideal clients and prospects that
00:02:23
Speaker
you have to have these tools to be able to even keep up. And these tools, like you were saying, allow you to focus on more than just one area.
Meet the Guests: Brenna Zanotti and Shay Castle
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And that leads us into talking about the guests we have today. They are from an ABM technology company called Terminus.
00:02:45
Speaker
Lena, would you like to introduce today's guests? Today we have two guests from Terminus that we're very excited to talk with about ABM. So let me take a minute to introduce you to them. We have Brenna Zanotti, and she is the Senior Enablement Manager at Terminus. In her role, she manages the creation and delivery of customer education and training programs through Terminus' support knowledge base, user community, and e-learning academy.
00:03:11
Speaker
Prior to joining Terminus in 2017, Brenna was the marketing manager at an inbound marketing agency. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two goofy Boston Terriers, Frank and Rue. And then
ABM vs Traditional Lead Generation
00:03:24
Speaker
we also have Shay Castle. And he has been at Terminus for three years working as a senior customer marketing manager focused on programs to support customer engagement, ABM education, product adoption, retention, and expansion.
00:03:38
Speaker
Before joining, joining terminus, he worked in a variety of marketing roles across demand gen content marketing, product marketing, ABM, you know, just a little bit of things. And he's passionate about helping marketers do cool things. And if he isn't talking ABM, he's probably talking about Star Wars. So Brenna and Shay, welcome to the B2B mix show. We are happy to have you here. Yeah, great to be here. Appreciate it.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yes, thank you so much, Stacy and Alana. So Shay, first I need to find out, are you on the dark side? I guess it probably depends on who you ask. If you ask my daughter, she would say definitely no, I'm a good guy, but maybe my wife would have something different to say.
00:04:22
Speaker
Alright, let's keep up with the Star Wars banter. I've seen the first one and I've seen the Ewok one, but I don't know a lot. Those are those are good descriptors. Yeah, the first one and the Ewok one. Yeah, that's my first one. You don't know if I mean the first one that ever came out or the first one. All right, so enough about Star Wars, I guess, unless you wanted to say something else, Shay.
00:04:48
Speaker
No, just that I could have a whole podcast about it. So I'm happy to continue talking. All right. Well, something else that's been having a lot of buzz beyond Star Wars over the years is ABM, especially recently. So before we dig into a few things about what it
00:05:08
Speaker
If a company's ready to undertake ABM, let's say what is account-based marketing, just to help frame the conversation. So can you guys just give us a little background? What is ABM and how is it different from typical lead gen or inbound marketing? Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to take this one, Shay, if that's good with you. Yeah.
00:05:33
Speaker
Um, so I think framing it in terms of a traditional lead gen approach is a great place to start. So I would say most people that are listening are probably familiar with that traditional marketing funnel. Um, and in that funnel marketing's role is really to cast a wide net at the top and bring in as many leads as possible and move those prospects through kind of a progressive nurture stream and ultimately transition them to sales to prospect.
00:06:01
Speaker
and close the revenue. And the success of that process is generally measured by things like conversions and leads and MQLs, right? But what we've seen as a leader in the ABM space over the last year and really like the B2B industry has seen is that there really are some inherent issues with that process. And these days buyers are really more educated. The market is super saturated and really less than 1%
00:06:32
Speaker
of those B2B leads are actually turning
Is ABM Right for Your Business?
00:06:34
Speaker
into customers. So as a result, we've seen a shift of more businesses moving away from exclusively running those traditional eGen programs. And instead, they're adopting this full lifecycle approach that blends both inbound and account-based strategies.
00:06:51
Speaker
So really ABM or account-based marketing, account-based everything is really, I think what it should be called now, essentially flips that B2B sales and marketing funnel on its head. So instead of starting with marketing channels in an attempt to generate leads, ABM is really all about identifying and targeting best fit accounts that have the biggest revenue potential for your business. So focusing on accounts that look like your most successful customers
00:07:19
Speaker
And then really using marketing technology to serve personalized messages to decision makers and stakeholders at those accounts across channels that they're actively using. And also a big equation of ABM is that the marketing outreach is also supplemented by this coordinated and personalized sales outreach to that same list of accounts.
00:07:43
Speaker
Marketing and sales alignment is something people talk a lot about, but it's a cornerstone element of a successful ABM program. Um, and then really, you know, at the end of the day with ABM, you're also focusing on different metrics. So account level engagement, you know, pipeline and revenue focus metrics rather than volume based metrics like leads. So that's kind of a, a 30 second overview, maybe longer than 30 seconds, but.
00:08:10
Speaker
Hopefully that frames it a little bit in the context of that more traditional approach.
00:08:15
Speaker
The only thing that I'll add, it feels a lot of times we want to say that strategy drives technology. But I really feel, especially with leads, the technology drove the strategy for that more traditional inbound perspective. Because if we think about the boom on marketing automation platforms and email marketing and how that opened up the floodgates on a ton of new contacts that we as marketers could go after and nurture and keep engaged.
00:08:42
Speaker
And there wasn't really technology that helped support that account-based strategy. And now, today, with so many more platforms, so many more pieces of data that we can access, it really creates, just frankly, a better way of going about it, right? Like Brenna mentioned, the 1% of leads turning into sales, it's that focusing on quality versus quantity, which really should be the goal of any marketing program.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah. And when you think about it, Stacy, what's that, um, that chart that you show, you've used before with all the marketing technology things in it. And there's like over that's right. Brinker, I think put together.
00:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's like tons of all different kinds of marketing tools. And it's like, it's overwhelming when you think about it. But it's like, how do you even kind of start to go into everything and just kind of figure out, okay, what do I need to even do, especially, you know, if you're looking at starting something with ABM, it's like, okay, there's probably tons of tools out there for ABM.
00:09:44
Speaker
So now that we kind of know a basic understanding of ABM, let's talk about how a company needs to determine if it's going to be a good fit for them and their team. So what should they be doing to kind of evaluate that and before they take on those next steps in their ABM journey?
Communication in ABM Success
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, and we can dive into a little bit on what as a business you should do to self-assess. But from a top-down view, and Brenna, feel free to add, when we look at our best customers and the folks that have had the most success with ABM, it comes a lot down to how your sales process works and what your sales cycle looks like.
00:10:27
Speaker
So folks that are traditionally good at ABM, they may have a longer sales cycle, something that's a little less transaction focused. They may have more of a complex sales cycle, you know, you're selling to other, we're talking B2B here, you're selling to other, you know, it could be any size companies, small, midsize, large companies, you may have a higher ACV, average contact value compared to the smaller, more transactional things. And then really from the sales process side, it's
00:10:54
Speaker
you know, going back to the contact-based or lead-based methodologies, like, is your sales team struggling today to get in front of the right people with the right message at the right time? Are they struggling to find the buying committee and getting in front of those people? Like, those are things that ABM can certainly help you do. And then on the other side with your CS team, like, is retention a big focus? Is expansion a big focus? Because those are things that ABM can help you do as well.
00:11:20
Speaker
So then in talking about all those teams like sales, marketing, customer success, you need that kind of a team alignment. So how do you kind of go about getting that before you get to the point of going with ABM? Cause that's kind of important, right? Maybe group therapy. I don't know. I'm a big proponent of therapy. So if that's the right approach, um, then definitely include that. But I would say, you know, what we've seen, um,
00:11:49
Speaker
in terms of challenges and what can really make a difference is really starting at the basics. And we kind of mentioned that ABM, rather than casting that wide net and trying to bring in as many people as possible, it's really starting with that focus set of accounts based on the attributes of your customers that are most successful and have the longest lifetime value and are the happiest. So in my opinion, I think one of the best ways to start is by bringing those teams together
00:12:18
Speaker
to talk about your ideal customer profile, which is kind of like a buyer persona, except that it's obviously at the account level. So you're focusing on attributes like what industries you're typically selling into, other technology they use, company size, annual revenue. But bringing those three teams together is especially important for this exercise so that everyone can give feedback on what they're seeing and what they believe
00:12:47
Speaker
the criteria for our best prospects, our best customers really are in creating that profile together, I think is a huge first step and really one that we see people struggle a lot with because they're like, okay, great. I want to do ABM. Who do I go after? So I would say that's a big step in alignment. Shay, I don't know if you would add anything.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the important piece to this too is like that conversation isn't a one time conversation. It's not a single project of we're going to sit down for a week and determine what our
Can B2C Apply ABM Principles?
00:13:20
Speaker
ICP is, and then put a stamp on it. And that's what we're going to use going forward. It evolves over time as you know, your business acquires other companies launches new products expands into new markets. Like part of the core of this is that
00:13:34
Speaker
conversation between marketing, sales, and customer success has to be constant. One of the things that I talk to customers about a lot is they say, I'm having a really hard time getting sales to buy in to the things I want to do with ABM, to buy into this account-based strategy, to give me feedback on my account segmentation. How do I do that? I'm like, okay, well, how are you talking to sales today?
00:13:56
Speaker
I'm like, well, you know, I'll reach out if I have a question or like I have a sales rep that gives me good feedback. I'm like, okay, well, there's your problem. Like you should be meeting with sales weekly or at least biweekly meeting with the leaders so that there's continued accountability and visibility and buy-in to everything that you're doing. Cause like if there's one thing that is the most important thing with ABM,
00:14:17
Speaker
It's that relationship between sales and marketing. As marketers, we can do whatever we want as much as we want, but if sales doesn't care, like it's not going to work. So keeping that conversation going and that feedback loop going is super critical.
00:14:30
Speaker
And like you said, it's having those ongoing conversations, not just a, oh, I have something I want to ask. I'm going to do it. And then three months later, then you have another question because then you're, you're, you're definitely not aligned because you're not on the same page because you're not always talking. So that's definitely a key thing right there. And then also what about like.
00:14:50
Speaker
the types of business. I know we've mentioned B2B and a lot of people think about B2B when they think about ABM, but what about B2C or other types of businesses? Is it a good fit for those?
00:15:03
Speaker
I think, I mean, this is just my take. Obviously, like our experience with Terman is we sell to B2B companies. But frankly, a lot of what creates the account based strategy is taken from what B2C marketers do. So I would say like, if you're going to call it account based marketing, I would say that a lot of B2C companies
00:15:23
Speaker
have been and are continuing to do ABM. They're focused on understanding who their buyers are, their personas are. They're getting really targeted with their messaging and understanding where their buyers are on the internet or in person, and they're going after those specific things. If we could circle back around to aligning with customer success and sales, I think one thing too that
00:15:49
Speaker
constantly talking to me with those groups you might learn things about the buying committee personas that you may not have realized as a marketer because sales might be most focused on that decision maker whereas customer success might deal with the day-to-day user or person that's in engaging with your company. So I think that could be revealing too if you're having those conversations. You find that people aren't always clear on
00:16:15
Speaker
who they need to be reaching to or focusing on in those ABM outreaches if they don't know who all those stakeholders are in the buying process? Yeah, I think it's a great point. We talk about account-based marketing as being account-centric, and a lot of the data exists to help you message to specific accounts that you know are in market or engaging with you, et cetera. But those core tenets of just being a good marketer, right?
00:16:44
Speaker
creating buyer personas, understanding who you're buying committee is, doing content mapping across your different life cycle stages, four different personas, four different, you know, industry segments, et cetera. Like those core tenants of just doing good marketing are still incredibly important to ABM because once that sales conversation starts to happen, you know, as a marketer, you can still try to give good coverage on an account, but they're talking to individuals, right? And you need
Challenges in ABM Implementation
00:17:10
Speaker
to deliver content and messaging that helps them talk to those individuals.
00:17:13
Speaker
OK so we've talked about how to figure out if you're going to fit for ABM. There's still a lot of challenges though that a newcomer needs to face as far as developing and implementing a multi-channel strategy because that's really where you have to be almost everywhere these days to meet the buyers where they want to be met at the time they want to be met on the channel they want to be met. So what are the
00:17:38
Speaker
roadblocks that you see newcomers facing? Are there any deal breakers among these roadblocks that would keep them from progressing? I'm going to be positive and say
00:17:49
Speaker
that hopefully there are no deal breakers. But certainly we see a lot of common challenges. I would say beyond some of the ones that we already discussed, like sales and marketing alignment and creating that open feedback loop, I think that measurement tends to be a big one. So I think that
00:18:13
Speaker
Like I mentioned, you know, kind of at the top, um, ABM, when you're thinking about evaluating ABM, you know, fundamentally everyone should be aligned on, uh, business outcomes related to pipeline and revenue. So while, you know, our own marketing team is still running traditional demand gen programs, um, and measuring things like leads and conversions, um, and website traffic and all of that stuff, that's not necessarily how we are evaluating the success of ABM.
00:18:43
Speaker
So I think it's really a mindset shift for a lot of marketers. And Shay and I also come from a very traditional marketing background. I worked at an inbound marketing agency before coming to Terminus. So I very much had to rewire my brain when I started working here. But I think that not only does the marketing team have to align around metrics, but it's also when you're used to
00:19:06
Speaker
reporting to your CMO or other executive stakeholders on the success of your programs, you might still be KPI'd on lead volume. And I think kind of working to slowly introduce more of those pipeline and revenue-centric metrics and focusing on account-level engagement, which is super important. It gives you the most complete snapshot
00:19:30
Speaker
of really like viability in an account versus individual lead interactions. I see that as a big one, but again, I think it's also about starting small, creating that open feedback loop and proving value along the way.
00:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, trying to start starting too big can be, you know, it's not a deal breaker, but it can be a huge roadblock. And I know we're going to talk a little bit about sort of this crawl, walk, run approach that we like to pitch. But, you know, by starting, Brenna mentioned earlier, like,
00:20:02
Speaker
Someone's starting by saying, I want to do ABM. Where do I start? That's a really good way to get in too deep, too fast. And instead, you need to start with, what are the critical business objectives that I'm trying to drive? Is it net new pipeline? Is it better retention? Everything that you do should tie back to those one or two or three critical business objectives that you're trying to drive. And everything else that you do informs those things, like understanding the sales relationship to drive X.
00:20:30
Speaker
running marketing programs to drive X and that will keep your focus much smaller to start. And then when you can iterate and expand into other areas of the business to create that like full lifecycle ABM that is kind of the idealized version of what we all want to be able to do. Do you find that? Oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I was just gonna say that I think the angst like you were mentioning a minute ago, Brenda of okay, we're not focusing on generating leads. That's
00:20:59
Speaker
and not seeing those leads come in, you need to keep reminding yourself about this crawl walk run approach and remind the CMO, okay, yeah, we're not going to have all these leads anymore because we're crawling right now. And also remember our business goal is XYZ. It's no longer create this many leads. So I guess I could really appreciate having that angst about it.
00:21:24
Speaker
Well, and I think part of it is just having that frank conversation. Like, you know, I had this firsthand experience at a previous job where we were new to running ABM and that exact thing happened, right? Like we had slowly shifting our sales strategy and we had certain sales reps that were more focused on specific accounts amongst an enterprise segment.
00:21:43
Speaker
And I had a conversation with our VP of marketing who was like, like, I'm getting questions from my CEO because we're not seeing any more leads for amongst these accounts. And it seems like, like, you know, we know it takes a long time to sell to these folks. We're not seeing any of those short term results.
00:22:00
Speaker
And I said back to him, I was like, well, okay, well, let's talk to the CEO. Like, does he really care about leads? Like, if we generate 1000 leads, and that's it, is he gonna feel like we did a good job? Yeah, well, we're trying to close revenue here. So like, let's let's change the conversation to be focused on those dollar metrics, because those are the things he's reporting to the board on.
00:22:20
Speaker
He's not going to the board and saying we drove X leads. It's about the pipeline and the revenue of the business. So why wouldn't we also
Key Elements of Effective ABM
00:22:27
Speaker
as marketers align our metrics to suit the business metrics? Yeah, because he doesn't want to go into the board me and say, yeah, we got 1000 leads this month and absolutely no new customers. Right? Exactly. Exactly. What? So one thing that you had mentioned, Shay was making sure that you define those objectives and goals.
00:22:47
Speaker
And do you find that if that's not done up front, that people have struggle with succeeding with ABM?
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, not to dumb it down too much, but that's true of anything you do in life, right? Like if you don't know how you want to measure your success, you don't know if you had success or not. And that isn't just about what are the KPIs that we want to measure this against, but it's also about understanding what are our current metrics, what are our current baselines so that we have something to compare it to. Like if we just launch an ABM program and say we want to drive a bunch of pipeline,
00:23:23
Speaker
And then at the end of the quarter, we say, Oh, we drew X amount of pipeline. Good job. But like, was that better than what we were doing before? Like that's the thing that matters the most. So like doing that self-assessment, understanding your gaps, how you're doing things today and setting baselines for what you want to do in the future. That's how you're really going to be able to see the success that ABM specifically drove. Right. And it's kind of funny because people think, um,
00:23:48
Speaker
Sure, I've created my goal, but a lot of people just grab on the next new shiny thing. Okay. ABM is going to solve all our problems. That's exactly what I was going to say. I was going to describe it that same exact way. It's the shiny new thing that we're just going to run with and go. And not that ABM is not, it's just a shiny new thing, but that mentality that a lot of us nowadays
00:24:11
Speaker
latch on to the next, okay, let's try to jump into quickly. Yeah. Right. So speaking of jumping into quickly, you kind of mentioned the crawl, walk, run approach. So if a company is ready, you know, they're ready to get started with ABN, but silly, they have some limits around like bandwidth, budget issues. What are the areas that you need to start with? So it's not like overwhelming and you go in the right direction.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say, you know, there are really some core tenants of a good ABM program. And we've kind of talked about all of them already. And really, you can break it down to data and account segmentation. So what data do you have at your disposal to be able to actually find and select and prioritize those accounts that you want to go after?
00:25:02
Speaker
Um, it's channel engagement, which we talked a little bit about. So ABM is not just a single channel or a, you know, really a single campaign. It's kind of this coordinated strategy. So deciding what channels you're going to be leveraging, um, go to market alignment and measurement.
00:25:19
Speaker
are the big ones. I would say in addition to determining those business goals and objectives at the start, we like to talk about multi-channel ABM and full life cycle ABM. Like I mentioned, with ABM, marketing's job doesn't stop after demand gen. Really, marketing and sales are working together all the way through to expansion or retention with customer success.
00:25:48
Speaker
I would say also breaking it down and saying, okay, we don't have to come out of the gate targeting every single stage of our sales cycle or using every single channel and deploying all of these super hyper-targeted account segments. It's really about starting small. So once you've got the business objective down, I would say a good next step is to say, okay, based on the business objective,
00:26:13
Speaker
where in the life cycle stage are we thinking about targeting? Is it brand awareness? Is it opportunity creation? Is it pipeline acceleration? And once you kind of hone in and zero and say, okay, opportunity creation is really what we're looking to impact here with this strategy and this goal, you can really kind of focus and there's a certain amount of, or certain types of metrics that you're gonna be looking at to affect opportunity creation, for example,
00:26:41
Speaker
There are certain channels that'll probably be more effective for accounts in that lifecycle stage. So I think it's really starting small from that aspect as well. And again, just to keep hitting the nail on the head, it's conversations with sales and with CS and continued buy-in, continued iteration and feedback loops on all of your strategies and, you know, even expanding beyond your go to market team.
00:27:10
Speaker
you know, especially when it comes to the data or the measurement piece, like RevOps or even finance, like whoever owns sort of your CRM or your marketing automation platform, like the critical places that you're looking to get your data. Those are folks that need
The TEAM Framework: A Guide to ABM
00:27:25
Speaker
to be involved in the conversation early and often.
00:27:28
Speaker
So I did my homework and we work with a customer who uses terminus. So I'm already familiar that you guys have what you call the team framework for target, engage, activate and measure. Can you tell us a little bit more about that framework and how it goes to play in ABM? Yes.
00:27:47
Speaker
I'm happy to jump in. So Team is a tried and true framework that is not necessarily exclusive to Terminus, but is certainly something. So before joining this role, the Enablement Team, Marketing Team, I was in customer success at Terminus. So this has been around for a while, and it's really this tried and true framework.
00:28:08
Speaker
that we use to help guide our customers to help them get started more quickly with ABM initiatives and help them scale as they get more sophisticated. So it really kind of focuses again on those four core tenants. So targeting is all about who you're going after and leveraging data to select the right accounts. Engage is multi-channel engagement and scaling that out. Activation is
00:28:35
Speaker
marketing and sales and customer success, working together in that coordinated effort and marketing, really sharing insights with those teams to help them be more successful. And I think that's a big part too, which we kind of touched on, right? Like I recently talked to a group of BDRs and I'd asked for some feedback on what their relationship with marketing was like. And it was very much that traditional siloed approach. And when I took it a step further and said, what do you feel like you could
00:29:05
Speaker
use for marketing to help you be more successful in your jobs. The number one thing that people said was, we just need to talk to them. We need more insight on the campaigns and the content they're running. So again, that's such a huge part of it. And then measure, again, is all about what metrics are we going to be focusing on to prove the success across the customer lifecycle, depending on where we're focused.
00:29:30
Speaker
to really prove that these programs are having an impact. So it's really, it sounds kind of hypothetical, but it's really an orchestration or like tactically focused framework to help you plan and launch an actual ABM program. So with regard to the team framework and the crawl walk run approach, that's hard to say.
00:30:00
Speaker
If you're, I watched one of your webinars recently and you mentioned that even if you're not ready to go whole hog across the board, you can still go forward, even if you're at crawl in one space and walk in the other. So it sounds like there shouldn't, if you're really dedicated and you have the things in place, you shouldn't let maybe not being fully ready in every area stop you from dipping your toe in and starting crawling.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And that's why I think that the crawl walk run approach is super effective at helping you launch and scale an ABM strategy. Because if you go through that self-assessment exercise across those four tenants that Brenna walked through, you can easily find where are our gaps and where are our strengths.
00:30:51
Speaker
and you can sort
Starting Small with ABM
00:30:52
Speaker
of form your initial strategy based around that like maybe we don't know that we're very good at. Understanding the data that we have to actually segment and build like a really strong ICP so we need to leverage sales more in that conversation to help us select those accounts.
00:31:09
Speaker
So maybe we should start with a much smaller like one to few program just to see what early results we can get because we know that we can do a good job measuring that. On the other hand, we can be a little more sophisticated with the tools that we have at our disposal. But like understanding where you are across team and the four tenants there can help inform what your initial strategy should be.
00:31:32
Speaker
Absolutely. And I would say to kind of double click into what she just said, you know, what we see some success with too, or what we recommend is, you know, a lot of times this is a brand new strategy for folks and it requires a lot of change management and going to your sales leader and saying, Hey, guess what? We're going to roll out this strategy to the entire sales organization. I'm sure it doesn't always go over great. So we absolutely recommend.
00:31:57
Speaker
you know, thinking about even starting with a few reps that are a little more leaned in and a little more open minded and piloting it with a few of them or even like a very small sub segment of your ICP in a segment that
00:32:12
Speaker
you guys are particularly strong in or you, you know, is really aligned with that original business objective, start there. And then as you see buy in, improve success, you know, expand out because we know that this is going to take like I said, some change management and it won't always happen overnight. Yeah, I love that approach because getting people to kind of be your champion,
00:32:36
Speaker
getting them to a point where they they're trying it. They're like, Oh, this is awesome. Because they're going to be the ones that are going to help sell it to everybody else. And so taking that approach, I love it and is definitely a way that a lot of companies should consider going if
00:32:53
Speaker
change is hard for their company because a lot of companies have a very hard time with change, which kind of leads into my next thing. So is there any final advice or tips or tools or anything like that that you would share for those ABM newbies? Yeah, just to dumb it down.
00:33:15
Speaker
Just try it, you know, and obviously everything that we've talked about today are all the things that you should do and think about before trying to launch a program. But don't approach this as, you know, this is this huge organizational shift in how we do everything with go to market. That might be the end goal for you, right? Like you might want to go full on. Everything is ABM.
00:33:40
Speaker
but you're never going to get anywhere if you try to go to your sales leader and pitch that idea. So find what are the small things that we can do, or even if you're saying, we're just not ready for this. We have so much work we need to do before we could try to launch an ABM program.
00:33:56
Speaker
we'll find out what that work is and just take those things off one by one you know we mentioned those core marketing tenants of fire personas and understanding your icp and content mapping like maybe those are the things that you need to do first and there's nothing wrong with that but as long as you're you know making forward progress quarter by quarter you'll get where you want to go.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, I would totally agree. I would also say, don't let yourself get paralyzed by all of the gold standard ways to do ABM that are out there. I think that it can be really overwhelming, especially once you've invested in technology.
00:34:33
Speaker
like a new customer terminus and they feel like they have nowhere to start. But I think really, again, just you know your business better than anybody. Really start with those objectives and start small and keep iterating, like see what works, see what doesn't work. And I think starting small and being really measurement minded and having those baselines or control groups,
00:34:58
Speaker
When you're starting any new initiative is super important will really help you prove out the value and you know really the third thing I would say is that I can't we can't stress enough the importance of creating that open feedback loop with your go to market teams. I think that's the biggest detriment.
00:35:17
Speaker
that we see the people that try to do run programs like this and maybe ultimately end up rolling it back is because that framework really for communication just isn't where it needs it to be, to be successful. But yeah, be brave, try it, keep iterating and see what works for sure. Be brave is a great summation of all of this. Maybe that's what we should title this episode, Be Brave.
00:35:49
Speaker
So you guys have a ton of great content and programs on your site. Are there any that you would point people to go check out now or try? We'll definitely list it in the show notes.
00:36:05
Speaker
So much great content. Huge shout out to our content design team. Depending on what you're looking for, we have a lot of great content specific to a multi-channel strategy and how to get up and running from that perspective. We have campaign workbooks if you want to see what that end goal looks like. If you're running a program, here are the things to be thinking about.
00:36:27
Speaker
as well as content that's your how to builds like internal buy-in, how to pitch this to your boss. So a lot of different great things. If you go to terminus.com and our resource hub, we have a lot of good recommendations. There's a sort of an ABM 101 content stream that has a lot of this really good introductory content. I do like that workbook. I've read through that and used it some with people in it. It's a great resource. So go check that out for sure. But Terminus has a lot of good stuff you need to look at.
00:36:58
Speaker
All right, so we've come to the most important part of our podcast. Just for fun question. So if you guys weren't doing ABM and helping people master ABM, what would your dream jobs be? And whoever wants to go first, go for it.
00:37:15
Speaker
Oh man, I thought about this a lot. So if I can have two, I'm going to cheat and do two. But before when I was in college, I almost pursued a degree in veterinary science. So I would say maybe I would go back and do that and be a large animal vet.
00:37:37
Speaker
or a children's book author and illustrator. That's something I love to do when I was younger. And I think maybe, you know, why not? I would take a stab at that. After conquering ABM and the ABM industry, I can do anything. Well, I've got a great idea for you.
00:37:56
Speaker
If you want to explain ABN, like you're talking to a five-year-old, why don't you illustrate it? Yes. Shame. Put it on the content calendar. Yeah, definitely jotting that down to run by our content team for sure. Yeah, so I have an acting background, actually. It's what I went to school for originally and why I had moved to Atlanta. Really?
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah, it you know, I was with my girlfriend, now my wife, and we kind of both had a realization and saying we kind of like having a regular paycheck. So I kind of pivot a little bit. But I also used to run a podcast of my own, like was like sort of a gaming pop culture podcast. And so my ideal version is to meld all of those things together. And I would be a stay at home dad.
00:38:43
Speaker
who runs a gaming website and also gets to like go act whenever he wants. That would be nice. That would be a very fun life. Too bad the darn life gets in the way and makes you have a steady paycheck.
00:39:02
Speaker
But you know, you could do like a stay-at-home dad YouTube channel and get rich. Elena Sun watches a lot of those stay-at-home family YouTube things. Sure. Some of them are crazy. Some of them are extremely annoying. My life isn't interesting enough. Well, neither are theirs. Yes, he thinks after watching all these YouTube channels that just anybody can have a Lamborghini. Sure. I'm like, dude, that's not true. Oh, yeah. Dream big.
00:39:33
Speaker
Thanks so much for joining us. I definitely want to make sure that we get ways that our listeners can connect with you or follow you online. Would you like to share your LinkedIn or any other social profiles?
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, so I think mine's pretty easy. I'm just Brenna Zanotti on LinkedIn and I believe also on Twitter. Let me actually double check, but pretty sure I don't. Yeah, just at Brenna Zanotti on Twitter as well.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, LinkedIn's a good place for me. It's just my name. And then, also, if anyone wants to shoot an email, you can email me shea at terminus.com. If you have questions about what we talked about, or you're looking for a good content resource to solve a certain problem, those will always get to be super easy. So connect with me there too. All right. And we will include those in the show notes so that people can easily reach out.
00:40:28
Speaker
And if you want to make sure to also follow me and Stacey, you can get in touch with us on social. On Twitter, you can find Stacey at Stacey underscore Jax, that's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X. And you can find me at Elena underscore Jax, and that's A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X. And if you are not a Twitter fan, you can always look us up on LinkedIn. Talk to you next time. Be brave. Thanks, guys. Yes, be brave.
00:40:57
Speaker
The B2B Mix show is hosted by Stacey Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, the B2B Mix Agency. If you need help with your B2B inbound marketing efforts, visit us at theb2bmix.com.