Transcript
Speaker: Hey everyone, welcome back to the ABM Voice Podcast.
Speaker: This is your host, Darun Gopalaswamy.
Speaker: Today, I have the pleasure of speaking to the awesome Amber Oge, the Senior Director, Growth Marketing at ReachDesk.
Speaker: She's an award-winning marketer, a future CMO, and many more molded into one.
Speaker: Let's welcome Amber to the show.
Speaker: Welcome Amber, happy Friday.
Speaker: It's good to have you here.
Speaker: Thanks for having me and happy Friday.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Imbal, let's just start with a quick introduction.
Speaker: I know I've covered a little bit, but if there's anything else that we haven't read about you, known about you, why don't you just give us some background?
Speaker: Well, I am a revenue marketer.
Speaker: That's really how I describe myself.
Speaker: I've been working in this space for over 10 years and I have found my home in B2B software.
Speaker: And I'm currently leading the demand gen function at ReachDesk.
Speaker: And it has been a real pleasure to take on the role at ReachDesk and to do what I kind of have been referring to as marrying demand gen with ABM, as someone who spent like a good seven years doing
Speaker: strictly ABM.
Speaker: I witnessed a lot of the challenges and silos in the separate teams and strategies.
Speaker: And so I wanted to take that on and, you know, bring that together and drive success.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: I think we'll talk a lot about the marriage and intersection of ABM demand today.
Speaker: I'm curious to sort of learn about your marketing journey so far, the last 10 years or so when we start.
Speaker: When do you get really interested in marketing?
Speaker: What is that you like in marketing?
Speaker: Well, it's a funny question to answer.
Speaker: And it kind of, for me, it kind of goes back to
Speaker: I was at a dinner about a month ago with Path Factory, actually meeting with a bunch of marketers in Austin.
Speaker: And their head of strategy, Murali, he was introducing and, you know, speaking with everyone.
Speaker: He wanted to do kind of a kind of like a soft intro of everybody and have themselves, you know, say their names.
Speaker: So, you know, the kind of get to know you.
Speaker: And so he had everybody share what their first job was and whether or not they got into marketing intentionally or accidentally.
Speaker: And the majority of people it's accidental.
Speaker: And I recently saw a post on this from someone else who asked the same question.
Speaker: And so you can guess I'm an accidental marketer.
Speaker: Um, so I, I found my way into marketing by way of filling out a survey about a website.
Speaker: as I was a customer success.
Speaker: I was the person that answered the phones and helped you at a company.
Speaker: And I took a lot of time to think about the website experience and what people were telling me when I was on the phone with them and issues that I was having navigating as I was placing live orders.
Speaker: And at 22 maybe years old, that caught the eye of the director of marketing and I moved into marketing.
Speaker: That's how I started in marketing and like those accidental marketers, I had no idea.
Speaker: Did he mention what is that he liked about what you, your observations or anything like that that triggered his curiosity?
Speaker: Oh, well, I had initially applied for the role in marketing and I was not hired based on my lack of experience.
Speaker: And it was a very validating moment for me to prove myself.
Speaker: because I was very young and I didn't know that I was adding value.
Speaker: And what I was doing, I was just giving my honest thoughts and feedback.
Speaker: And so this was a very interesting experience where they said to me when they offered me the job, you know, we didn't think that you had enough experience and you, you impressed us.
Speaker: I ended up getting to lead a website rebrand project after initially kind of coming into the role.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Sounds like a good accident.
Speaker: It was a really good accident because I had a very, very short time in what was an inside sales role, which today is referred to as a BDR team.
Speaker: And this is many years ago, so I know a little more these days.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I found myself not strong in that area and wanting to, I joke, like I just wanted to give everything away.
Speaker: I wanted to do everything that that person was asking for.
Speaker: I was just much more marketing focused.
Speaker: I was always thinking about the customer and the prospect and what it was like for them.
Speaker: Needless to say, I ended up in the right space.
Speaker: Very nice.
Speaker: And what after that, what else did you do in the next nine years?
Speaker: Well, I had a few different entry rules.
Speaker: I started in event planning.
Speaker: And I like to say that when you figure out your kind of space in marketing, a lot of times it's identifying things that you don't love to do.
Speaker: So, you know, event planning was not my favorite.
Speaker: I moved into program management, which is, you know, more of a demand general.
Speaker: And I think that my career really
Speaker: really it took off once I went to my first software company, but previous to that, I was at an insurance company in San Francisco and the role that I had, I had a really good boss and I was responsible for supporting the strategy and execution side of the business.
Speaker: And so in like combination with having a really, a really good boss and leader, I also learned
Speaker: The where, where strategy is born, how to think about a strategy, how to plan it out, and then how to put that into an execution plan and then get it to go live by working with a very large creative operational team.
Speaker: I learned project management, time management, and then measurement of impact.
Speaker: So that was all in a very different world and space.
Speaker: It was super valuable.
Speaker: for me as I went into my next job and that was my first software company.
Speaker: And that's also where the ABM story begins.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: So I guess this is what you mean by I can think at five, 50,000 feet level and also maybe five feet level.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I do think that the strategic nature is, um, a natural skillset that some marketers tend to have in the UK.
Speaker: You have to grow it.
Speaker: But I think most marketers have that execution, right?
Speaker: Cause we have to do it to get to any level.
Speaker: We have to do it.
Speaker: We identify that we're strong there and that we like it, or we lean into the strategy.
Speaker: And then as we grow that, so there's a benefit of course, as you're growing into your career to really
Speaker: you know, hold on to the executional aspects and have a lot of respect for the time and work that goes into everything, the weeds, the data, the details, the little micro changes.
Speaker: And then, yeah, the strategic level, I was very drawn to it very early and ABM very much helped me grow that.
Speaker: And I like to say that
Speaker: I was initially drawn to ABM because unlike the demand general that I was in, it allowed me to slow down and think and be more strategic and plan because for the one-to-one motion, there's a lot of planning and slower instead of the, the, what I felt like at the time was very fast moving and reactive.
Speaker: And so I really leaned into that ABM side and that's, you know, a lot of my strategic skills started to, the seeds were planted.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So what kind of combination, so let's say, I'm sure your aspiration right now is to be leading a marketing team, right?
Speaker: So between an execution and strategy, what sort of combination would you think is an idle combination?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: I think it's going to be hugely dependent on the company, right?
Speaker: The role that you're taking, the smaller the business you're at, the more you're going to be leaning into that execution standpoint, the more you're going to be asked to roll up your sleeves.
Speaker: You know, the larger the company, the less you're involved in that.
Speaker: However, it's a really important thing to have access to
Speaker: to both.
Speaker: I think that it's, it's going to be dependent on what your team looks like, who you have working under you.
Speaker: Um, you know, for me, I want to say that I think that the strategic side is, is significantly more important because you need to see the whole picture, but it's also very damaging if you can't see
Speaker: the, you know, the, the 5,000 feet, if you don't understand what's going on from an execution standpoint, then you actually can't spot the issue as a leader.
Speaker: And as a strategy owner, you're, you're just going to look panicked.
Speaker: You're going to ask your team all the time and you're not going to necessarily know.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I wouldn't say,
Speaker: I would say it's at least 60 strategy 40 execution, but it's not necessarily that 40% of your time you need to be executing.
Speaker: It's that you need to have 40% of that knowledge.
Speaker: You need to be able to be comfortable enough to go into the systems and look around yourself.
Speaker: Um, because the further away you get from that, the harder I think that it will be.
Speaker: the higher up you go when you have to answer questions.
Speaker: That's true, I think that makes sense.
Speaker: So in your current role at ReachDesk, right, so what are the different programs that you're running?
Speaker: What are the challenges?
Speaker: What are your learnings?
Speaker: You've been doing ABM for seven years, right?
Speaker: So how have you seen ABM evolve, right, from your own personal experience, in general, how people are approaching?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So I'll start with what, you know, what we're doing, what we're running at ReachDesk.
Speaker: So as I mentioned, I wanted to marry ABM and demand generation here.
Speaker: So when I started, it was, you know, priority number one was to improve the demand engine, make sure it was running really optimally.
Speaker: And then in conjunction, it was to start out building an ABM strategy.
Speaker: So I just start with the, you know, the, the foundational materials, certain, you know, tools that would help us down the road, certain sales enablement things, you know, the biggest, the two biggest things to name would be, um, bringing in ABM campaigns and then, uh, bringing in the MQA model.
Speaker: in order to measure the impact there.
Speaker: Those sound like two things when they're very big and difficult things to tackle in themselves.
Speaker: But we started out with the campaigns the way I just refer to them as segmented campaigns, but what it really is is just coming in
Speaker: And how I kind of described it was, you know, you had events over here, you had partner over here, you had demand over here, you had social over here, content over here.
Speaker: And each was doing their own thing and each was, you know, running their responsibilities and putting out the things that they needed to.
Speaker: But, um, when we ran a campaign, I wanted all of that stuff to be interconnected.
Speaker: I wanted the event messaging to match the social, the social messaging to match the gifting, um, messaging that was going out as we were inviting them to these certain things, the content piece to be supportive of what we're speaking
Speaker: at the event, what the SDR team was, you know, messaging.
Speaker: So really just that cohesion of messaging and experience and allowing the buyer or prospect to have a cohesive experience to not
Speaker: you know, with different things.
Speaker: So that was kind of like the initial kind of campaign implementation and change as we're building out the product, you know, the ABM supporting products, and, you know, the MQA model.
Speaker: So it's been
Speaker: Gosh, how long has it been?
Speaker: I mean, it's been quite, it's been some time since we've implemented that and we have since implemented what I call like the full funnel ABM.
Speaker: And that is your one to many working with demand gen, your one to few bringing in some more segmentation of your campaigns and then your one to one.
Speaker: So we now have all of those running and then it's just about scaling and finding the ones that are working better, focusing on those.
Speaker: finding ones that maybe are not as impactful and seeing how we can improve them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you guys talk about something called all bound.
Speaker: Is it merely a wordplay or is there some kind of a different framework than a full funnel sort of marketing, which also incorporates IBM?
Speaker: That's a really good question.
Speaker: So many marketers
Speaker: many ABMers, anyone that's really in the GTM space for years, we've heard different acronyms and different things.
Speaker: What Allbound is and what Allbound engagement is, in some ways, it's an answer to a question that we've all been asking.
Speaker: It is a connector of existing people
Speaker: of existing strategies, if you will, just to simply say what Allbound is, it's the motion of working across your entire GTM team.
Speaker: That is working across your team with the human capital and working across your strategies and then bringing in what Allbound engagement is.
Speaker: This is, I feel like,
Speaker: a really interesting one and it's something that, like I said, it's answering a question for us.
Speaker: It's giving us clarity into what we're all really trying to do.
Speaker: We're all trying to drive more pipeline, drive more revenue.
Speaker: We're all trying to work together and be more collaborative.
Speaker: We know that the GTM team is the core team.
Speaker: We know that we need to be efficient and effective together.
Speaker: We also know the challenges.
Speaker: both from the people side and the campaign side and the tactics and channels.
Speaker: So all-bound engagement is leveraging a tool and or strategy that creates engagement across your different channels.
Speaker: So ReachDesk is an all-bound engagement tool and the way that it supports that
Speaker: is it works across all of your channels and all of your teams.
Speaker: So interesting enough, reach desk and gifting isn't the only thing that can be an all bound engagement tool, but it is one.
Speaker: And so what that means is that you can use gifting across your sales, your marketing, your CS, your whole GTM,
Speaker: function, you can use gifting to increase impact and efficiency across all of your channels, your email, your events, your outreach, and then you can improve certain tactics by leveraging by leveraging gifting.
Speaker: So it's simply put, it's connecting all of these teams
Speaker: channels and tactics together.
Speaker: And it's using something that helps actually break through what is a very noisy and busy landscape.
Speaker: So everybody's trying to figure out how do we get to X pipeline?
Speaker: How do we get X opportunities?
Speaker: How do we make this channel more efficient?
Speaker: How do we make, how do, I mean, this is what we've been talking about for, well, forever and marketing, but really, really a lot.
Speaker: the last year and a half.
Speaker: And it's, it's gifting allows you to do that.
Speaker: Gifting allows you to, you send, you know, an outreach email one way with nothing, no personalization, no gift.
Speaker: You send it with the gift with some personalization, you're going to be more successful.
Speaker: So is it also the cohesion that you talked about?
Speaker: So the first time I read all bound, I thought it's the inbound and outbound, which used to be a different path, right?
Speaker: Is it just marrying of those two bounds and calling it as all bound?
Speaker: So you put the customer first and the experiences first, and then really try to come up with certain strategies and executions aligned to the customer's buying journey and things like that?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I would say yes, yes and no.
Speaker: In that it's not just combining the outbound and inbound motion, right?
Speaker: It's yes, that is happening, but it's not obsessing and focusing on inbound is this, outbound is that.
Speaker: It's removing kind of the barriers and it's connecting the motions and it's not thinking necessarily, you know,
Speaker: It's looking at the whole number.
Speaker: It's looking at the whole impact.
Speaker: It's looking at the whole team.
Speaker: So it's working all together.
Speaker: So that's why I say yes and no.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So this is for somebody who's beginning.
Speaker: And I talked to a lot of his companies, which is getting started with ABM, right?
Speaker: And they all think ABM to be a channel.
Speaker: I'm going to start doing ABM, right?
Speaker: Actually referring to I'm gonna add a channel to my existing either a GTM mix or more specifically was in marketing and not realizing that to be a strategy So is that something that you come across?
Speaker: And how do you sort of answer that question or do we break that misconception to people who are approaching ABM more as a channel than a strategy?
Speaker: I Mean
Speaker: I would say that if a marketer thinks that that is a channel or strategy, then, you know, we need to really talk about what's how AVM is being discussed.
Speaker: It's almost a larger issue that needs to be solved, which I have thoughts on as we get to it.
Speaker: If your executive team is saying that, like, I think that's probably more common where you have the executive team saying that.
Speaker: I mean, marketing is pretty used to, not saying it's easy, but we're pretty used to being hyper-focused on, being blamed, having a target on our backs.
Speaker: So I'd say we're kind of used to scrutiny, and we've been at places in our career that there's a lack of understanding.
Speaker: I hate to say this, but it's our job to do
Speaker: educate.
Speaker: It's our job to explain that.
Speaker: And personally, I'm very clear.
Speaker: I'm very direct.
Speaker: This is not a channel.
Speaker: This is not a tactic.
Speaker: And I say to leaders that, you know, this, what ABM is, is a, is a organizational wide strategy.
Speaker: It is not a marketing campaign.
Speaker: And if you expect that, then be prepared to be disappointed.
Speaker: it is required to set your exact team up for like the right expectations that it is not a small shift in focus.
Speaker: And there's a lot to it.
Speaker: So, I mean, yeah, I, I'd say that, you know, we have to take it upon ourselves as, you know, as, as much as we don't need anything else to do, um, to, um,
Speaker: to be the loud voice.
Speaker: Now, I think that there is a deeper problem in that kind of an approach.
Speaker: And you're right.
Speaker: I think it's more coming from the exec teams.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, OK, you're you're trying to run a program.
Speaker: Maybe it's a channel that you're doing right now by adding this channel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So how are you going to show me the ROI?
Speaker: Are you going to like improve your lead velocity or your lead pipeline?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the thought sort of starts from there, right?
Speaker: Because this is seen as a channel right now, adding this channel, let's say adding an event channel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So what kind of impact could it have?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think it just start it starts to
Speaker: go very numerical, right?
Speaker: And it's very important at some stage to go and then say, hey, this is really very different, right?
Speaker: So don't measure or don't think this is a tactic, but like as an organization strategy, like you just explained, right?
Speaker: So have you come across and did you have to go through that educative process in the seven years that you've been doing ABM?
Speaker: And how have you been able to convince them?
Speaker: Um, I've had to go through it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Many times.
Speaker: Um, gee, just trying to think, I mean, it, it almost becomes, you know, at some places you, you can sound like a broken record.
Speaker: You just kind of keep having to beat that drum.
Speaker: Um, every single organization I've worked at, it's been a different, you know,
Speaker: situation have also been at different levels and experiences.
Speaker: So, you know, I, I almost have all the flavors of having to do it.
Speaker: Um, I've definitely understood the value of learning the different languages and the, um, focusing on the things that each level cares about and
Speaker: basically being a marketer, right?
Speaker: Speaking to the persona, showing them the pain points and how we can solve internal ABM, if you will.
Speaker: So the way that you're going to talk to a VP of sales about it, a CRO is totally different than how you're going to talk to a BDR or an AE or even a BDR manager.
Speaker: You need to focus on the direct impacts that they care about.
Speaker: And so you just, you know, you have to, if you tell a BDR,
Speaker: you know, it's going to increase pipeline by three X that doesn't impact how much they get paid.
Speaker: The opportunity count impacts how much they're going to get paid and time saved on the, the work that they're doing is going to impact them.
Speaker: If you are talking to a more senior person, they're going to care a lot about that three X pipeline.
Speaker: They're going to care a lot more about the conversion rates and the sales cycle changes.
Speaker: And then, you know, the cost, the cost of implementing a strategy and the efficiency and ROI, that's going to be, you know, more of a concern for your CFO.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Just double quick a little bit on the demand gen.
Speaker: right, versus ABM, right?
Speaker: And I think especially somebody who's just getting started.
Speaker: So there's, I've seen people seeing it as an R, right?
Speaker: So I was doing ABM demand, sorry, demand gen, and I wanted to shift to ABM, right?
Speaker: We all know that it's, you need to have a demand gen
Speaker: engine working for you to basically get started with ABM and basically the demand engine engine feeding into ABM, right?
Speaker: Do you have conversations like this?
Speaker: And if so, how do you answer and what should be the structure?
Speaker: And I think people are struggling to put together, right?
Speaker: So you talked a little bit about how it's done and reached us, right?
Speaker: So let's assume somebody was just getting started, maybe a startup
Speaker: couple of million in revenue.
Speaker: They're now wanting to implement ABM.
Speaker: Got some programs here and there, like the stage that you talked about, right?
Speaker: So fairly scattered, like a lot of pointed siloed programs running, right?
Speaker: And for such a company, right?
Speaker: So how should they approach ABM?
Speaker: How could they bring in something like an ABM?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I almost think that I've come to the belief that
Speaker: you know, they both should exist.
Speaker: There's no real reason that you shouldn't have an inbound motion.
Speaker: I mean, unless it just doesn't work for your buyer and persona and same goes for the outbound motion, but let's just say they're in software and it works.
Speaker: There, there isn't really
Speaker: any reason why you shouldn't be tapping, you know, turning on both faucets, right?
Speaker: They're both bringing in revenue.
Speaker: It's all about finding efficiency between both of them.
Speaker: And so, you know, my advice would truly be like, let's say that they have the demand engine and they're building, you know,
Speaker: they're wanting to build out the ABM motion.
Speaker: My genuine advice would be to do, you know, to keep the faucet on the demand gen side on, do not just turn it off and go over here because you're not going to have anything coming in.
Speaker: And so you've had this built, you have to kind of build something while something is still working.
Speaker: And the goal is to ensure that you're having the most optimization and efficiency with
Speaker: your demand, you know, your, your inbound channel as you roll out the ABM.
Speaker: But, um, I mean, ultimately you need to be paying attention to how both are working and you need to push more on the gas when you see something working more, let's see in ABM.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: I don't think it should be one or the other.
Speaker: I really don't.
Speaker: And I think that's where the kind of marriage comes in is, is getting into a place where we finally have to say like, you don't have to decide they both should coexist together.
Speaker: Demand generation is very, very supportive of ABM strategies.
Speaker: It's the umbrella, right?
Speaker: Like everything that you do from a demand side is ultimately trickling down into your ABM and or your outbound motion.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: it's the, the warming up.
Speaker: So they might not come inbound.
Speaker: They might not fill out a demo request, but they've already been educated through the funnel.
Speaker: And then when they're ready, when they reach a certain stage, that is when you start the ABM journey.
Speaker: So, I mean,
Speaker: That is my personal preference, and that is the advice that I would get.
Speaker: I mean, I did just speak to somebody recently about this who is doing demand gen and needs to build an ABM strategy, and so I've shared this with her.
Speaker: And after having done it so many times, I remind them that it's –
Speaker: takes time to build out.
Speaker: You have to set expectations internally and for yourself.
Speaker: And you have to kind of really determine what are the internal priorities, you know, to decide where to start.
Speaker: I don't really think anyone personally, I don't really think anyone should start ABM with one-to-one.
Speaker: I think that it should start from the top, you know, one-to-many down to one-to-few, then to one-to-one because it's almost like training wheels.
Speaker: You're moving from the man generation slowly away to something that's more different as you go down.
Speaker: And I think that's a really good approach for all of the challenges that you experience.
Speaker: And I mean, if you're just doing ABM for the first time and you're a small team and you can do five one-to-ones a quarter,
Speaker: I mean, that's a lot of investment.
Speaker: And if you don't see results immediately, then you're shut down.
Speaker: And you're done.
Speaker: You're just saying ABM is not for me.
Speaker: Maybe it's because you've not done it as well as it should be.
Speaker: And then just thinking that framework possibly did not fit.
Speaker: So just to...
Speaker: Just double click more on it, right?
Speaker: So your demand gen is bringing you some conversations, leads, right?
Speaker: So building pipelines.
Speaker: So you're extracting some, a specific set of accounts based on some qualification criteria and you also establish a certain stage and then putting them into, let's say, one to few kind of an ABM bucket and then going through that motion of converting.
Speaker: Is that the kind of
Speaker: optimal process that you think these kind of companies should do or how?
Speaker: Well, I mean, again, it's going to be really dependent on each company, right?
Speaker: But, you know, overall, I think you should be looking at your whole ICP, right?
Speaker: Those should be getting demand gen initiatives.
Speaker: You should have your accounts, your target accounts selected.
Speaker: They should be the same in marketing as they are in sales.
Speaker: And then your ABM campaigns should be focused on
Speaker: building MQAs for the outbound team.
Speaker: So you're building that engagement because you're not going to get every single person to do a demo class.
Speaker: So you've got that group over there, and then you've got the group that you're warming up to build MQAs.
Speaker: And then once the MQA, the sales team starts to work them, but you're still running campaigns.
Speaker: throughout the various stages until they get to close one and then of course moving to a customer ABM motion.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, I do think that they should play off of each other.
Speaker: I do think that when it comes to the various campaigns, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do it.
Speaker: The one to many, one to few, one to one.
Speaker: It's almost like a tongue twister.
Speaker: Um, they can be done through stages of the buyer journey.
Speaker: Like that's totally normal.
Speaker: It can be done based on your tiered accounts strategy.
Speaker: That's also very normal.
Speaker: Um, I prefer to do the, the more of the funnel stages myself.
Speaker: Um, because I think that there's more opera.
Speaker: I think based on my experience, there's more opportunity for impact and it kind of is, is,
Speaker: holding their hand it's holding their hand for these different campaign experiences the more the more engaged you are the more personalized it gets um and then i like to do post-op creation one-to-one campaigns because i like to i like to do personalized one-to-ones and once you're post off you have a you have a good like handle on what's going on with the account and so you can
Speaker: you can really personalize the content and the copy to what their pain points are, their strategy, like what are their KPIs and really, really create a unique experience that's really cementing your brand and with them and, you know, really building that relationship.
Speaker: And then also, of course, you know, from revenue perspective, you're helping the sales team close
Speaker: their deals, you're helping them get to the finish line faster.
Speaker: And I don't, I don't really think there's like a standard or a lot of marketers that do post-op campaign.
Speaker: I don't think that if you asked 50 salespeople, I don't know if many of them would say, oh yeah, my marketing team does that, or I feel like they're supported.
Speaker: And I think that really helps with the alignment and the enablement too.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Sure, we talk a lot about inter-functional alignment, sales, marketing, maybe in some cases, customer success.
Speaker: What about what kind of alignment, especially this is for larger companies, right?
Speaker: So you are just organized in a way based on specifics.
Speaker: So there's a creative team, there is maybe an operations team, right?
Speaker: Then there is this digital marketing team, right?
Speaker: When you start doing something and switching from a demand gen,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So very lead focused, broad, high volume, high velocity kind of campaign and getting into ABM way where it requires a lot more attention and things like that.
Speaker: So what kind of intra team collaboration?
Speaker: And this is not a topic that's discussed a whole lot.
Speaker: So I thought I'll get some perspective.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So how do you align functions even within the marketing team?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that goes back to enablement and, um, I've definitely had a handful of, of, of jobs that I've had to kind of do that.
Speaker: And I would just say that, uh, I, today I prefer working for, uh, you know, earlier mid, you know, startup sizes.
Speaker: Um, the,
Speaker: the type of company you work for also, it is more likely that you'll be working with people that know this strategy.
Speaker: So I would say I'm just a little more selective because I've done it.
Speaker: It's really hard.
Speaker: It's tiring.
Speaker: But it ultimately comes down to the person that's running ABM.
Speaker: It really does.
Speaker: You have to spend the time.
Speaker: You have to spend the time to explain it.
Speaker: But I think almost like the thing that I have kind of said repeatedly throughout this process when I have had to enable has really been don't overthink it.
Speaker: It's not that different.
Speaker: I've had content like in the past say, okay, so what, like, how do we do ABM content?
Speaker: I don't really think that there's like this whole different idea or strategy than what they're already doing.
Speaker: Um, other than, you know, there's going to be opportunities and requests that say, Hey, we need this one-to-one asset.
Speaker: We want to just personalize it for this account.
Speaker: And I don't think that the content experience is starkly different from non ABM, you know,
Speaker: I think it's really only the very personalized content operations.
Speaker: That one's a lot more complicated.
Speaker: That one's definitely different.
Speaker: Um, and so, you know, you have to take it upon yourself to explain to your ops team.
Speaker: These are the things that I need to measure.
Speaker: This is, you know, these are the things that I want to be paying attention to.
Speaker: And if it's somebody who hasn't done it before, it can be really hard for them to break the, you know, the traditional Salesforce campaign or the everything's on a contact level because you're looking on an account level.
Speaker: So that can be challenging.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Outside of explaining to them, you know, these are the numbers that I need.
Speaker: This is the conversions that we'll be focusing on.
Speaker: And, you know, it's looking at from an account model.
Speaker: I've had success in connecting my ops people with other ABM ops that I've either worked with or I know in the space because they're going to speak a language that I just haven't quite gotten fluent in.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Are there specific KPI based approaches help in making sure you're hitting, let's say the targets and things like that.
Speaker: So I'm talking about like if there are dependency, let's say from from your creative team design team, for example.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I understand it's part of the overall project team, right?
Speaker: Project management effort.
Speaker: uh since you've gone through so what are the some challenges right so operational challenges some of it you just talked about right so can those um challenges be addressed just by putting okay this is the sort of a kpi i i launch i plan a campaign and then three days from now uh or three days before i need this creatives right so these are the assets that needs to be repurposed some model like that is it or how
Speaker: I mean, I wouldn't say that that process would be starkly different than the creative process that is today, right?
Speaker: It's going through it with your team the first time and building out that framework together.
Speaker: And I almost think it's a learn as you go, right?
Speaker: So like in experiences that I've had,
Speaker: What has been beneficial is, and this isn't new, it's having a campaign kickoff.
Speaker: It's putting together a campaign creative brief and it's providing them with all of the assets that we need, all of the variations.
Speaker: And then I think that, you know, to really, this has always just been my style.
Speaker: But I think that it's effective in building this cross collaboration is
Speaker: bringing that creative, having that conversation and then saying to the content team or whatever team you're around, okay, and when can you get this done by?
Speaker: And what is the process that's gonna be the most effective to work with your team?
Speaker: It goes a really long way to ask what they
Speaker: you know, what's their working style and, and, you know, fitting in with them instead of forcing them into your way of working.
Speaker: And then it just becomes a little bit easier.
Speaker: I think that, you know, a lot of, a lot of it comes down to the person you have running your strategy.
Speaker: If they're not a really good communicator, if they're not the,
Speaker: if they're difficult to work with, like, it's just going to make everything that much harder.
Speaker: I think that there's a level of like human connection and genuine sincerity in working with your team.
Speaker: Like I've had, you know, when I first started working with sales, I did not like it.
Speaker: Many marketers might be nodding their heads.
Speaker: But I stopped fighting what felt like not my own instinct.
Speaker: And I started just kind of listening and observing and thinking about what their experience was like and what their challenges were.
Speaker: And it sounds really simple, but...
Speaker: I just kind of learned, okay, when working with the sales team, let's say you're working one-to-one with your different AEs, how do they best receive information?
Speaker: How do they like to work together?
Speaker: And then doing the way that the salesperson likes to work and modifying to make it work for them.
Speaker: Because if you don't have their buy-in and if you're just pissing them off, then you're just going to be harder.
Speaker: And like the number one thing that to this day, like,
Speaker: I say all the time is my strategy and the work that I am here to do is directly to support your team, your numbers and your success.
Speaker: I don't know that, you know, I can't speak for anyone specifically, but let's just say that it's been really well received and perhaps they haven't had that
Speaker: experience in past.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's good points.
Speaker: I think a lot of times we just talk about strategy and then we don't talk a lot about the execution aspects and challenges and handover and things like that.
Speaker: And as you start involving and going deeper, I think these are some of the problems that you hit.
Speaker: And then it's better to have some sort of a clarity around how you approach
Speaker: and i think it comes to how you like leverage human relationships and how do you work with people's let's say biases and needs and all of that i suppose yeah can't take that for granted awesome uh just last couple of questions um so like closing the year right so a lot of teams
Speaker: are now thinking about or maybe going back to their drawing boards to reevaluate their ABM strategy or kickstarting, right?
Speaker: So what are some advices you have for these teams?
Speaker: Well, just for starting the year,
Speaker: I'd have to say, and I don't know if I'm late to the party on this, but I would say starting like one plan at least six months at a time.
Speaker: Like my life changed dramatically when I started planning six months sprints and having kind of the year kind of baked out from that perspective.
Speaker: But doing that three months before the fiscal year starts.
Speaker: So
Speaker: That's what we do at ReachDesk.
Speaker: And so we're starting planning for H1 of 2024 in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker: We're starting Q4 next week.
Speaker: And so we already have that planned.
Speaker: And we're thinking about what's next.
Speaker: There is a lot less.
Speaker: Well, I mean, there's always panic and stress in like every single marketing day-to-day job.
Speaker: But there's a lot less of it.
Speaker: in terms of planning.
Speaker: But, you know, so I'd say plan early is going to be so beneficial to being able to respond better to the unplanned things.
Speaker: I'd also say that having your priorities and, you know, not just your KPIs and your OKRs, but having your priorities
Speaker: priorities within your OKRs established firmly and asking yourself every time you get a new request that wasn't planned, how much is this going to impact pipeline?
Speaker: How much is this going to move the needle?
Speaker: No matter if you're doing ABM or anything else, we're marketers.
Speaker: We want to support.
Speaker: We want to support driving pipeline.
Speaker: So we want and we're creative.
Speaker: So when somebody asks us, we want to do it.
Speaker: If that thing
Speaker: is not going to bring enough value, then don't do it.
Speaker: So I think that, you know, practicing saying no and having your pre-established priorities is definitely a benefit.
Speaker: And I think the last thing would be to, you know, both ABM and marketers just to keep pushing forward.
Speaker: It's been a tough time for many of us and
Speaker: Little by little, we're making progress.
Speaker: So just keep pushing forward because, you know, we're all in it together.
Speaker: And for ABMers as a whole, I'd say be with your people because I have, I spent so long, so long not knowing anyone in ABM and I,
Speaker: The world opens up when you speak with other ABMers.
Speaker: ABMers want to talk to other ABMers and there are enough of us.
Speaker: We are virtual enough.
Speaker: We are global enough.
Speaker: So go where the people are, talk to them.
Speaker: There's tons of them out there.
Speaker: And I've, you know, to the people that I still meet that are newer to ABM and just figuring it out.
Speaker: That's one of the first things they say to me after speaking is I'm so glad to
Speaker: I have somebody to talk to about this.
Speaker: I feel like I'm doing it all by myself.
Speaker: So if you feel that way, reach out on LinkedIn to people that are communities out there.
Speaker: I just came across ForgeX, an ABM community, and I'm very impressed with their offerings and templates.
Speaker: And this is a place that I think ABMers should be.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Don't reinvent the wheel.
Speaker: The wheel has been invented.
Speaker: Try and then make use of it.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: And with this has been a fascinating conversation.
Speaker: So thanks for your insight.
Speaker: A lot of things that we've discussed.
Speaker: Hopefully it's going to be some of it is going to be very useful for some of our audiences.
Speaker: Thank you so much for taking time.
Speaker: Any parting thoughts, comments?
Speaker: How can people reach out to you?
Speaker: LinkedIn, I suppose.
Speaker: Yeah, LinkedIn's always the best place.
Speaker: So yeah, and I think that I set a lot apart in comments.
Speaker: So I'll leave it.
Speaker: I'll leave everybody alone now.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
