welcome and thank you for joining
today's webinar nothing is wrong with
your abm strategy but your execution is
failing presented by conversica and
martech i'm your host cynthia ramsaren
before we begin if you have any audio
issues click the screen to enable your
audio if you have any viewing issues you
can use the q a section at any time to
communicate with us
you can send questions directly to the
speakers about their presentation
at any time
without further ado let's get to the
presentation
joining us today is drew nicer founder
of renegade and cmo huddles he will be
moderating the panel discussion later on
and also joining us are sunny des gupta
head of product marketing at conversica
john russo cmo and founder of b2b fusion
and james stanton vice president of
marketing at imperian
welcome drew i'll turn things over to
you now
thank you cynthia
hi i'm delighted to share with you the
findings of the 2021 state of account
based marketing report that my agency
renegade conducted on behalf of
conversica
i will be presenting some of the
highlights and then we will move into a
more in-depth discussion of the
implications with james stanton john
russo and sonny dasgupta
first of all let's go through a little
background on the research let me get to
that slide there we go
our goal was to identify the current
state of the relationship between sales
and marketing quantify the impact of
martech and specifically abm on this
relationship and identify any gaps and
opportunities to get at these issues the
survey was fielded in july and august
2021 among
227 respondents who either worked in
sales or marketing these individuals
worked across 20
more than 20 industries and at various
levels in their organization forty
percent were at the manager level and
sixty percent were at a director or
higher level
seventy four percent of those surveyed
worked at companies with at least a
hundred million in annual revenue and
eighty percent worked at companies with
at least a thousand employees
because we were seeking to understand
the impact of abm on the sales and
marketing relationship all of the
respondents had to be engaged in abm
which we defined in the screener broadly
as currently selling to a defined target
or account okay
so let's get to it
the sales and marketing divide has
shifted
one of the interesting findings in this
report is that the traditional divide
between sales and marketing has shifted
in the bad old days marketing would be
quick to blame sales for not following
up on their great leads while sales
would dismiss the quality of these
so-called great leads and while no doubt
this divide still exists in many
companies
those who have adopted an account-based
marketing approach have witnessed a new
level of data if not downright
cooperation and mutual respect between
sales and marketing
the finger pointing for the most part
has stopped
abm has essentially brought sales and
marketing together
and some thought this would never happen
that said it is important to recognize
that the divide has shifted the conflict
has moved from a strategic issue to an
executional one
there is so
much data and just not enough time it
seems for sales to deliver the level of
personalization that marketing expects
so let's break this down a little bit
more
we're gonna look at four the current
state in four areas there's a shared
belief in abm
surprising harmony
remnants of the old divide
and the big new challenge
believe in abm's ability
this research revealed a remarkable
consensus around abm as a strategic
approach
87 percent of all those surveyed believe
in abm's ability to convert more
pipeline
86 believed in abm's ability to close
more deals and 83 percent believe in
abm's ability to deliver intent data
if you were wondering if these folks are
neophytes and just excited about the
latest bright shiny martech object then
guess again
three out of four of those surveyed have
been working with abm for at least three
years
in martech years that's kind of like dog
years that makes them serious experts
let's move on to surprising harmony
one of the real shockers in this
research was a seemingly newfound
respect between the departments for
example 81
of both groups believe that sales is
doing everything they can to close deals
i really never thought i'd ever hear
that
these are not exactly the fighting words
you would have heard just a few years
ago and here's another shocker 77
percent of sales people believe
marketing drives quality leads wait what
let me repeat that 77 of sales people
believe marketing drives quality leads
is this the sign of the apocalypse we
don't think so
especially when you consider that 76
percent of these same sales people
believe marketing is doing all they can
to enable sales to close deals
while this level of harmony was
certainly not expected and relegates the
old divide to old-school companies who
may not have yet embraced abm
okay let's move on to the next one there
are remnants of the old
divide
lest you think it's all hugs and kisses
between these classic combatants there
were a couple of remnants
specifically marketers are two times
more likely to point at a lack of
cooperation with sales as the reason abm
isn't working it's 40 versus 19
and sales is a lot more confident that
they are building awareness among
targeted accounts than their marketing
counterpart parts but we really had to
work to find these discrepancies this
these disconnects
relatively speaking there's very few
discrepancies in terms of the way they
look at each other and it's so different
than it was in pre-abm days
so what's the big new challenge
where is the divide in a word
personalization
while there is incredible consensus on
the effectiveness of personalized
communications in fact 96 of both groups
believe personalized communications
uh
is to prospects are more effective than
non-personalized the problem is that
personalized engagement isn't scaling
personalization at scale is quite time
consuming and if done without automation
it's difficult it's just plain difficult
to do
often this is due to an inability to use
intent data in outreach at
or at various touch points
so let's look at this this research was
quite interesting here
we call this the personalization
drop-off
the issue of personalization at scale
became particularly pronounced as you
move through the funnel
while 68 percent of initial outreach to
outbound sales prospects are
personalized you see a drop-off to 58
percent on initial outreach to inbound
leads and then this decline continues to
48
for personalizing post-first meeting
outreach to drive early stage
progression and the drop it drops again
to 23
of post opportunity creation to drive
middle stage progression in other words
the deeper you get into the sales
process the less likely sales will be
personalizing communications
the scaling personalization challenge so
where does this problem come to a head
just over half believe the phys the
feasibility of personalization is the
challenge these folks are saying it's
just not possible to personalize
everything and given all the data
available it's not surprising that 42
percent are simply overwhelmed by the
amount of data available on their abm
platforms
and mirroring the drop off from the
slide earlier we learned that just 23
percent of sales people say they
personalize every touch
under use of intent data another
interesting finding from this study
relates to the underuse of intent data
while 67 percent of sales people look at
a prospect's website
52 search google and 49 visit the
linkedin profile only 40
use intent data gathered by abm
platforms again we see this drop-off
this is clearly a missed opportunity in
assessing this issue the top barriers to
sending personalized communications
include
the same sales team's understanding of
how to use intent data effectively
sales is simply not having enough
manpower and marketing's ability to get
the data right
the need for personalization at scale
the issue here is that despite the
massive time investment sales people
aren't personalizing their
communications as often or as
effectively as they would like
now why does this matter
on this slide we show you how many
touches in the research how many on
touches on average the folks we surveyed
say it takes to get a first meeting
77 percent said it more than five 44
said more than 10
and how many touches does it take to
close a sale
89 report say it takes at least five
touches and forty percent note it takes
ten or more that's a lot of touches and
a lot of opportunities for
personalization and we know it's not
happening at the scale that marketers
would like and the sales people can do
so the cost of manual personalization is
an issue here and in the research we
found that on average each salesperson
is spending
16.6 hours per week
researching and creating personalized
messages that's over 47 of an average
work week now
we made an approximate guess of salaries
based on the some of the research that
we did elsewhere just average at 100
thousand including overhead you figure
that organizations are roughly spending
forty seven thousand five hundred per
rep on prospect research and message
personalization each year now if we
could reduce that by 20 percent and then
multiply it by say 20 sales reps that's
a big savings
but how do you personalize
communications at scale
the answer is through a carefully
crafted combination of people process
and technology we can move to the next
slide
and at this point it is time to make
this a more interactive presentation so
we're going to turn on everybody's
camera let's reintroduce
james stanton vp of marketing from
uh and then comes at empyrean
sunny das butter das gupta pardon me hey
james
and john john russo all right
well done gentlemen okay well we're
going to start with james and we're
going to focus first on people of the
people process and technology so
james stanton who is the vice president
of marketing at empyrean james hello
so
in the survey it shows that marketing
and sales are aligned on strategy and
the intent of abm first of all are you
seeing that in your organization and
while you're at it could you share a
little bit about empyrean's abm
philosophy and approach
sure well uh first you know that thank
you drew thank you conversica for
pulling together uh really great
research um and this conversation today
um listening through that survey you
know i love those results you know for
me as a marketer it really reinforces
that now is such a great time to be a
marketer um it's it's really exciting um
yeah i i would say looking at imperium
um our sales and marketing teams are
definitely aligned um and we do have the
benefit here of being aligned
organizationally
so i'm part of a team that includes
sales and product so really our whole go
to market is under one roof
but you know i think about avm uh
between marketing and sales i feel like
it's
it's created this like spiritual uh
alignment right um because abm is really
that reflection of marketing and sales
working together right that's kind of
the philosophy in my book um be behind
avm um and as i look back in you know my
career
um there's always been a shared desire
to work together right it's never you
know been that sales and marketing
didn't want to work together um but we
kind of lacked the tools and the lexicon
and the
singular um approach to be able to do it
together right um so that that's what in
you know past years uh has come to bear
um and you know i really
at its base level right abn is just
about engaging at the account level
right um and it means that we're
agreeing right on those accounts that we
want to pursue together uncovering those
accounts that we want to pursue together
um we're no longer looking at individual
leads um we're looking at accounts we're
looking at opportunities right in
salesforce parlance um and then we're
working together kind of who owns which
part of the touch or if we're touching
the uh prospect together being able to
see you know what message have they uh
received open and which haven't they
right um so you know again abm there's a
lot of the discussion around the digital
side of it
but i take more of a philosophical
approach which then rolls into content
um you know it starts thinking about all
the different ways we're using field
marketing tactics as we uh
roll out of the pandemic
into next year
so
as you were hearing this part about the
personalization because you mentioned
that you're you know you're focused on
opportunities and a whole account not an
individual how are you thinking about
you know as you as you're hearing that
personalization did that issue sort of
resonating
yeah this is this is hard oh a a hundred
percent drew i mean um hyper
personalization right that that is the
the golden target right um being able to
um speak to an individual about their
needs understanding how they fit into
the whole decision-making process um and
then meeting them right where where
they're at whether it's a sales
conversation or it's an ad you know that
you're putting in front of them or it's
that powerpoint deck that your product
marketing team you know pulled together
for that specific moment um there's just
there's a ton of um what's the word i
like to orchestration right there's just
a ton of orchestration that needs to
happen um and you know i have uh you
know it gives me
night sweats right is thinking of that
giant matrix right of all these
different stages of the sales and
marketing funnel and all these different
roles and different types of accounts
and industries you get this complex
thing
tons and tons of little squares there to
fill in um and how do we as you know
marketers enable our sales team and our
our own tactics to have that content and
make those conversations resonate
so okay so it it
continues to be this sort of ongoing
almost a holy grail if you will to be
able to get there part of this is is
intent data and that came through in the
in the research that
there's a lot of intent data we know
there's a lot of intent data but it i
was actually surprised to see how low it
was relative to um other
things in terms of information that
sales was using how is marketing using
intent data right now in your at your
org
yeah no i was sort of surprised by that
too uh because intent great intent data
can be really helpful um so mark mark we
have demand base right you know call out
uh to that platform we we did install it
um this year so we're you know a few
months into using it um but what what's
really great about demandbase um is that
it helps give some intelligence right as
to where you want to point your arrow um
because we're able to
set it up to listen right for the types
of clients that we're interested in
pursuing um and
we're you know kind of able to put our
ideal client profile
in there
but what's also really interesting and
why i again like
demand base and and tools like it um is
that
the data becomes a common denominator
between marketing and sales right so
we've installed demandbase the the um
widget whatever you know you call it in
salesforce um for our whole team right
so they're able to put on the blinders
and look at their uh territories and see
who's showing intent and interest at the
moment in their territory and that gets
fed back right you know in the magic of
the platform that then controls um our
spend and the messaging that we're
putting out so that that kind of help
it's one of those tools that i think
helps to build trust and it's probably
at least in
this guy's humble opinion one of the
reasons um why you know you're starting
to see uh better sales and marketing you
know talking about being aligned because
we're all kind of staring at the same
thing
so
and i'm i'm curious in the uh let's get
it zero in on intent data and i know
you're uh early on your install with the
command base but so is marketing using
it intent data in a different way than
sales is maybe you could talk about how
the the the teams are using this data
right now yeah well you know in
and something again philosophically as a
marketer right you know i think that um
marketing has the ability to kind of be
a salesperson you know at a macro level
right whereas if you're a sales
professional you you have
your territory so i think that we are
actually um if i think about it using it
in a similar fashion and that you know
on my team right our digital team we
take a look at the data um and we use it
to uncover ideas right we actually uh
you know came up with a campaign
recently based on um the spikes that we
were seeing amongst our target audience
in uh a certain keyword search right so
ding ding ding duh mr marketer right
captain obvious maybe that should be a
campaign right um so that that's one way
and then for the sales team right it's
kind of about you know
you've only got so much time in the day
right so which accounts are worth
spending time on right i'm working all
these deals there's a lot of time that
goes in with all the activity i've got
in flight if i'm going to spend some
time on trying to you know work with our
bdr and somebody new let's at least
right see if they're showing any intent
online on our web property or elsewhere
for the things the services and value we
provide
right i mean you would think a sales
person would be looking at intent data
really carefully and thinking oh my god
that signal is so high we gotta get on
that um yeah and that's what's great you
know again i think that that's what's
really great because um yes it's a tool
right but we are able to bring that
right to the table and put it right into
salesforce where the um you know the
team spends their time um and that's you
know any of the tools that there's other
tools that we don't want to over
emphasize the demand base is the only
one out there right you know we have a
social tool that we've that we put into
place that has a sales force side to it
there's a competitive intelligence tool
clue that we're just going live with
they go so it's it's kind of you know
marketing is able to meet the sales rep
where they are um and that's again
another part of the abm philosophy in in
my book so john i know you're uh you
have a different point of view and we
might as well just jump in on that in
terms of the uh use of uh intent data go
ahead and jump in
yeah i think some of it overlaps with
james and i'm drawing off like we've had
over 100 plus experiences with account
based marketing on a variety of
different platforms including demandbase
and other platforms
and i think the way james described it
is correct
i would go one step further in that if
i'm in the role of an sdr or sales
i have more
data that i'm trying to synthesize than
i do have time and what we're really
trying to do is get time back for those
functions and i think as marketers and
i've been a former cmo for 10 years and
i'm guilty of this too we we really
relish and enjoy the complexity of
technology and
naming conventions
so i think there's a use case of
marketing and targeting on quote-unquote
intent data but i know in the clients
that we've brought it to and through
we don't really get into the process of
how the sausage is made meaning how the
account is qualified
we get more we involve them in that
process
but once we involve them once it's like
their their work is done
the outcome becomes exactly what james
was talking about in terms of here are
the priority accounts to go after how
they got there it's a little less
relevant for sales because they're just
doing so much and they have so little
time to do it in and you know i think
the time issue too is also something
that conversica and others play really
well into as well
that's kind of a second
issue there but on the primary issue
it's all about trying to save that time
so they can maximize their productivity
and it may be a reason why on the survey
the sales side is not
saying that they're really engaged in
intent because they may not get involved
in the inner workings as much or they
don't they don't have the time to get
into it like we do in marketing
well since we're thank you john since
we're going around the horn and and you
brought up conversica sonny do you want
to weigh in at all on this conversation
around intent data usage of it and so
forth
yeah no i mean i i thought it was uh
just like uh what jim james and john
talk and you talked about i thought it
was one of the most uh
surprising thing that uh
you know um
over sixty percent of folks don't use
intend data during during research and
to me
um
that data is is the key to your success
in delivering personalization so
um it's extremely powerful to engage a
customer and improve that buying
experience so i found it very surprising
and
you know
there are technologies i mean you know
intelligent automation technologies like
conversational ai
and i'm going to talk a little bit about
conversational abm but how that
technology can leverage the data and the
execution gap we talked about how it can
mitigate that execution gap so that's uh
that's uh
something we see smart companies are
looking at and we're going to get to
that but we're going to go back to james
for a second now because so james we're
starting to talk about it part of this
depends i think on measurement because
you know come everybody sort of does
what whatever's measured gets done uh as
they say so i'm curious how you're
measuring right now
the success of your abm program and i
again it's early on and then anything
you plan to refine later on
yeah for sure i mean there's a lot of uh
i would say change again in how
um marketers are going to approve roi
right and i can tell you about again
from
from this guy's perspective right i i
think that the the days of just
following that happy lead down through
to you know success or not right mql sql
all of that honestly i'm i'm kind of
i don't even use that term you know and
planning wise i see it and i squash it
and my own organization i'm not saying
it doesn't have value elsewhere ever
everywhere um but i like to look at
success of abm as measured on
impact on the opportunity right um and
that impact can come in a variety of
ways right it could be finding a new
person to attach to that opportunity
right it could be successfully
leveraging a fantastic powerpoint right
that the product marketing team um had
queued up for you to use and you know
stage three um you know nurture or
something like that right so as we
measure uh you know our success i like
to i always use the term impact right
because i never like to claim marketing
you know mql i feel like it was just
like a big you put it's like a flag on
the moon right we got this mql and now
it's here you go sales like please
follow up on it right and if you don't
right that's the the old mentality drew
i think you were talking about
when you start to use the word impact um
that again you know kind of goes back to
a shared philosophy so that's we have
some early stage dashboards that that
we've created on that um that that were
that we've built out um and we require
some re-plumbing in salesforce that's
happening right now looking at the
opportunity um as the object as opposed
to the the lead uh record um
and the contact record so there's some
structural changes we have to make to uh
to accomplish it they're gonna take a
little bit of time to uh to roll out
yeah and by the way thank you for
mentioning the death of mql and and i
really do see that uh in a lot of the
cmos that i talked to in various other
uh conversations and the the problem
with mql is simply up we're done
and so you stop there and say look at
all these mqls and it's really useless
it's just absolutely useless number uh
and it gets more marketers in trouble
than it helps them so i i'm with you
let's kill that right now this might be
the last webinar
an mql was ever mentioned r.i.p
okay so that's a good place i think for
us to sort of move from the people
conversation of this and let's get into
the process implications of this
research and leading that charge will be
john russo founder and cmo of b2b fusion
we've already met john but hey john
great to see you great to see you as
well um so
how do highly effective organizations
move from a disjointed approach to a
unified sort of abm strategy
nice easy question
exactly um
usually we like to start with the end in
mind and with the end in mind
typically we like to have a visual of
what reporting looks like and what
people want to be reporting outcome wise
because it becomes a forcing function
for everything else to fall behind so
once you really have a really solid
understanding and usually it's around
volume velocity of
types of deals that you're impacting the
speed
the different areas that they're coming
in the business could be inbound it
could be partners it could be outbound
once you map all that out
and get everybody kind of focused on the
measurement side of things uh it makes
it a lot easier to have the subsequent
conversations of okay we're trying to
get to this outcome what do we need to
do to get there
so
give me a so we want to and but when is
an outcome not just a lot of sales and
new customers
yeah yeah so it's um very specific
around so in the account based marketing
world uh there's tiering so
you'd want to start with where are your
tiered accounts why are you going after
them
how are you going after them what's the
expectation say in 2022 to end the year
if you've tiered your accounts let's
call it across three categories tier one
tier two tier three
how many accounts in each of those
categories what's your hypothesis or
your micro hypothesis to really go after
and
from that you can kind of backward solve
and do the revenue numbers so it's more
than just hey we're trying to hit this
big revenue number it's we need to get
this number of accounts and those are
typically lagging indicators there's
leading indicators that will help you
get to the lagging indicators which is
the pipeline impact and the revenue
throughput so
good examples of leading indicators
would be engaged accounts
accounts that
are showing interest that didn't show
interest before
or it could be a leading indicator could
be hey we're getting the technology in
place like james mentioned to facilitate
that kind of conversation so there
there's a lot of leading indicators that
eventually roll up to the lagging
indicator
unfortunately a lot of executives are
focused on the lagging indicators which
causes for a lot of friction of this
alignment issue that you talk about yeah
yeah well and that's true in any context
of any marketer's challenge it's always
focuses on revenue when there's a lot of
things that have to get there and it is
as you say a lagging indicator as you
were talking about tier one tier two
tier three and we didn't actually share
that particular data but we are talking
about personalization and one of the
things the research showed and it's not
surprising is the level of
personalization declines by tier
pretty quickly
and so you might have some sales people
who are personalizing tier one
um but they're just raising their hands
and say i can't do it with tier two and
two three i'm out of time i can't um and
i'm curious if that aligns with uh some
of the things that you see uh out there
yeah i think that's an interesting um
question and you could go one step
further and say there's there could be
three different categories a one-to-one
abm a one-to-many
uh and in between one to few and the
one-to-one
typically in larger companies you're
doing a heck of a lot of personalization
and customization on both sales and
marketing
the newer companies that we see on the
sas side that are growing aggressively
that come up from demand gen routes
that have that mql model and we may
agree to disagree on this but i actually
think
the leads aren't quite dead yet they're
they may be less important or they're
they're not getting the oxygen that they
need so they they may be dying but
they're not yet dead
uh but they could roll up because a lot
of these sas companies
are used to the lead level model
and so they want to do the one-to-many
as a strategy or an outreach so they're
a little bit more personalized there
than they are in a pure demand gen world
in the pure demand gen world just not
enough personalization that's happening
there at all uh either on the sales or
the marketing side right and but by the
way right well the one even the
one-on-one
there was not it wasn't like 90 of
one-on-one communications were
personalized it was like 90 of first
touch person but it just even at tier
one it was declining very quickly and by
tier three uh was non-existent i hear
what you're saying about mql what i'm
simply saying and those leads certainly
have a place to go but for marketers to
actually report in on them and put any
value in those uh in the short term is
just problematic because
you know you can't ring a victory bell
of any kind with an mql yeah you can't
you can't buy a lunch or a beer with an
mql but what you can do
is it can be an input to your reportable
process
as part of your account based strategy
so that's where we see
a lot of companies and and james is uh
we've done some surveying on this and in
our experience about 30 percent of the
companies have the model that james is
talking about where they move to the all
contact and all opportunity world
however the other 70 percent have
conditioned their boards to look at mqls
that's the rub
so
you can get them to coexist
or you can as james mentioned if you
have the 30 model where your all
opportunity
doesn't matter though i mean in either
model you still need personalization so
whatever your salesforce architecture is
you really need to be personalized in
that communication if you're going to
get any kind of conversion
otherwise we're just moving chairs
around on the titanic from one bucket to
the other
so well speaking of so is one of the
things we we can agree on
personalization as it really matters we
can agree that abm is an effective way
of going to market but it does still
doesn't always work and sometimes it's
it seems like it's a team structure
slash process issue and i'm wondering
from your perspective is there an ideal
team structure across sales and
marketing that makes abm more effective
than not
yeah great question um i would say that
in
what we see is
there's no one-size-fits-all but where
we see weak areas are product marketing
around the icp the messaging uh product
marketing and hiring especially out on
the east coast of the us is very
challenging skill set and the valley not
an issue but
uh on the east coast more challenging
and sales enablement because now you're
talking about
companies that are
trying to move more up market or move
into different markets and you're having
to train sales people particularly sdrs
or bdrs if you're not automating that
function you're then having to train
them and training them in a new motion
is can be pretty challenging and and
arming and equipping your sales people
with the right insights can be pretty
challenging so those are the two areas
that pretty consistently we see as
issues in organizations trying to trying
to do abm successfully uh and if you so
if you don't have product marketing in
the right place sort of
delivering against this and you don't
have sales enablement uh fully loaded
abm isn't going to work
i would say it would be a tall task to
get it to work
okay
um
so
of course you know when we started this
research we we just we talked about abm
as let's start with a targeted account
list
what are the challenges in just getting
there
um great yeah a great question so
we see
there could be a number of ques uh
issues that come up there but one issue
can be
sales is focused on one thing and
marketing is focused on another so
that doesn't help anybody
so getting consistency around that is a
real challenge and not that i want to
drop a dime on our sales brethren
because without them we are
not successful
but if if marketing goes hat in hand
saying hey what account should i go
focused on next
typically the reaction we've seen is
sales will give the gristle of the
accounts
because they're not going to give up
their best accounts they're going to
give up what hey i haven't had any luck
getting in here i'll go to marketing
because
their time is limited and they want to
focus on where they think they can
succeed so where where that
breaks through is if they collaborate if
they if marketing comes with a data
point of view
an informed point of view on perhaps
intent data or
other mechanisms i could say this is
what we think or have a hypothesis
and actually dashboard that out like we
dashboard that out for our clients to
show where we're having success
that's been super helpful to kind of get
the dialogue going around which accounts
to focus on it's a process for sure
okay
so the research it keeps we keep coming
back to a tent data in
how it's deployed um in you know and i'm
curious because again in this research
it's sort of you saw
that sales wasn't able to do it you
talked a little about it before but i
don't i want to double back on that
topic and sort of talk about how
you know in the best case scenario how
is say intent data being deployed by
some of the clients that you work with
yeah best case scenario is um i think it
goes back to what we were talking about
earlier from a marketing perspective it
could help inform or come up with a
hypothesis on a target account it can
help where we've seen it really
effective is help with nurturing so
around keywords and keyword topics
from a sales perspective it's really
around the prioritization if there are a
number of accounts that that it will
really help kind of guide what to do and
that could be in one of two different
scenarios it could be in a scenario
where your account based uh target is
known so for example like healthcare in
the u.s
is very well known
there's only a certain number of
hospitals versus a sas company based in
silicon valley going after a brand new
target it may be unknown um so intent
data can really help in both of those
scenarios
uh help prioritize for sales
where we see a lot less of it is
trying to train sales on
what exactly a surge score is or
aspects of how the sausage gets made
that's where it gets a little bit
complex for sales because all they care
about is the conversation and closing
and the time of which which deal should
i work on next um so that that's the
model that we typically see
okay
yeah one uh one thing i'd love to just
jump in on that something i said earlier
i think really just resonated there it's
that lexicon of terminology between
sales and marketing where i feel like
marketers were really good at inventing
terms right like you know instead of
calling something a gifting program you
know i've heard it described as
dimensional marketing right you know so
and and if i'm a sales rep you're
rolling your eyes at that point like
what are they so i i think there is a
you know being able to be on the same
page and talk you know in sales speak
and hey we're trying to help expand your
opportunity i'm listening
interesting so you're saying that
conflict comes
in in this people in processing when
you're using different language and
marketing is using marketing speak and
sales is doing their thing
so in that case marketing needs to sort
of just yeah demarcify their
their language interesting um
and and i guess that sort of gets at
this overall question of
this best practices when aligning a
cross-functional team john around abm
and just a couple of tips to sort of get
this right
yeah i would say one tip right off the
bat would be a standing huddle
in and around account based marketing
and that is usually a cross-functional
team sales sales ops marketing marketing
ops what deals are in the pipeline what
deals need help what deals don't need
help and that's usually on a bi-weekly
or weekly basis
that alone right there could could
really help a number of companies
there's a bunch of other meetings and a
bunch of other research
and in fact that would be another tip is
marketing should or
or could provide
uh some air cover for sales on some of
these target accounts through some
account research and if uh they can't do
that directly either technology or
coming up with a framework to help them
with that will help the sales process a
lot more because when you think about an
sdr or a sales person
especially sdrs they're very junior in
their career and they're they're dialing
a thousand people
and they only have that split second to
make an impact if they know exactly what
they're trying to do uh that that's
really really helpful uh to to guide
them because they're they're spending a
lot of other energy doing other things
so those would be two things i'd say um
step one would be the huddle step two
would be the research that's awesome
okay that's great and so it's really
about um coming together from a people's
standpoint we all know what we each
other are doing and then from a
marketing perspective how can we really
make a difference well give them the
information they need at the right time
okay all right well let's move on to
technology with uh sunnydaz gupta who's
the head of product marketing at
conversica so stepping back for a second
sunday is
what were you most surprised about when
seeing the results of this research
yeah so a couple of things surprised me
um
i think the first thing
is that the divide between marketing and
sales has shifted
you know we talked about there is
alignment on strategy but there's a
massive gap in execution uh that was
definitely an aha moment because um
uh i wasn't expecting that i
you know i was expecting that this the
the
there's some gaps in strategy so to see
that and that that the fact that it has
moved that was really an interesting
moment and it gives me the opportunity
to to
kind of as i plan for my year and you
know content planning and everything
it's just it's a it's a good kind of
data point to have
the second thing is that uh i think that
we talked about personalization drop-off
as you as you go down the funnel i mean
you think that the more you interact
with a customer the more you know about
them
the more personalization you are going
to provide i mean that's what you would
think
so that was a little surprising that
you know the more you know the customer
the less personalization you're
providing and one explanation could be
us thinking why you know this is
happening and one explanation could be
that once the relationship has been
established once the context is in place
the need of personalization may be
slightly different it may not be as
overt uh external it may be more in the
context more more covert that could be
one explanation
or it could be just an execution gap i
mean you know you can't just uh
scale personalization manually because
it's just hard to do
and you know you guys were talking about
it's probably par you you most likely a
lot of companies are doing this well
when when it comes to one to one
but as soon as you go from one to few
one to many
that's where the problem really is
and then the third thing i think we all
talked about the under use of intent
data you know um it's uh
james talked about how this is like
really really pure gold and why wouldn't
you be using it so that was also very
surprising for me to to see and uh yeah
i think those are the i think three key
things that i found surprising yeah in
some ways it's it's funny when i hear
about intent data it feels like the the
the technology and what it's producing
is a little bit ahead of what the people
manually can do and so it feels like
scaling personalization
is
is this
this the issue that this research really
points to and just doing it manually is
problematic they can't keep up so i
guess the question is since we're
talking about technology
what is you know is technology going to
be able to fix this
yeah
yeah so look i mean selling when you're
selling complex solution into
large enterprise companies
it's not easy because uh you know no
single person can simply pull the
trigger on a deal
without consulting with a with a
interconnected matrix of people and each
of these people each of this uh you know
stakeholder uh has their own kpis their
challenges their success criteria
criteria
and
abm platform is fantastic in giving you
that insight but when it comes to the
execution it falls short right
so organizations are today we see that's
struggling to to to use that abm insight
effectively
because of that lack of resources and
what what's happening because of the
execution gap it's creating
fragmentation between marketing and
sales which then leads to missed or lost
opportunities
longer cell cycle
and poor customer experience or buying
experience you know because when it's
not personalized that experience is not
enjoyable
so
the technology could be used to fill
this gap especially intelligent
automation like conversational ai and
and
i believe conversational ai and uh abm
coming together
creating conversational abm is was
really created conversational abm is
really the uh you know came to existence
to bridge that gap and to do it at scale
so and there are two thoughts or
actually three thoughts as you were uh
talking the first one is this notion of
it feels like this is about augmentating
augmentation not replacement this is
about helping humans do their jobs
better and that you know that the humans
are overwhelmed by the intent data and
so wouldn't it be awesome if technology
could come along and help them uh sort
of deal with all this intent data so
they don't have to you know filter it
all and figure it out uh
and so i think that's what you're
talking about with conversational ai and
what was interesting there is only 39 of
the respondents that we've surveyed were
and these are people who were in the
market and they are doing abm
who were familiar with the idea of
conversational uh ai um so there we had
an awareness issue but at the same time
those that were aware
purchase intent was very high so what
did you make of that data and you know
why are people is it you know was i when
i talked about augmentation is that what
conversational ai is really helping to
do
yeah first of all you're absolutely
right it is people and technology coming
together that's why you're talking to
people process technology so
conversational ai is is not replacing
anybody but it's really helping
deliver that personalization at scale um
the the meaning i make out of out of you
know that uh the 39 respondents
um you know who are uh said that they
are not familiar with uh conversational
ai um because it's i think it's a new
technology i mean you know conferencing
layer is a new technology a lot of
companies are still not aware of it
and even people who are aware of it
i mean we have seen sometimes they're
skeptical that if it can be used in a
customer customer
interaction or customer conversation
customer conversations as you as we all
know they're highly nuanced and and and
they're also sensitive so you have to be
careful
but companies who have used it
or somebody uh you know or know somebody
that that have used it they know the
power of conversational ai uh in my role
i talk to customers frequently who talk
about
how it completely it has completely
changed their customer engagement
strategy
and the value that they are getting out
of it so today we're seeing a lot of
this leading smart companies as we call
them in every industry are trying to get
a competitive edge and conversationally
ai is one of these technologies that
they're looking at to establish that
competitive
competitive advantage so it is uh yeah
it's it's it's a really important
technique and that's why you see
that the purchase intent is really high
um with folks that are that are aware of
and and i'm as i'm thinking about the
various macro issues that marketers and
sales departments have which is they
can't get enough sdrs and so all these
companies that have aggressive growth
goals the sales people say okay or the
whoever handles the sdrs and say we need
more sdrs and part of what i hear you
saying is that conversational ai
uh
part of it is making them more efficient
so maybe you don't need quite as many i
mean i don't know i'm just reading into
this data here that's i mean
drew that's exactly right um you know i
mean the the data is suggesting as soon
as you go from you know one to few one
to many uh you know that's where the
problem begins that there is
you can't deliver that personalization
at scale that is not to say that sdr's
are not important they're really
important but it's
this technology these types of
technologies kind of helping them to
effectively scale deliver that
personalization at scale um and some of
these things can be automated today and
and we see uh smart companies are using
this technology to deliver that
automation and and deliver up an
excellent kind of buying experience for
for the yeah
you use this term conversational abm a
second ago and i'm reminded a little bit
of james saying wait are we introducing
another marketing jargon here thing but
it's okay what what exactly
is that
yeah yeah yeah so um
i joke that uh conversational abm is the
love child of avm and conversational ai
coming together
the love child well perfect because
we're talking about the sales and
marketing sort of love
uh so that's what the research suggests
there's a lot more love than there was
so conversational ai
is is being born as we speak okay i mean
conversational abm but
what does that what does that look like
yeah yeah so abm solution is really all
about that knowledge and insight about
that account
and then the context within that account
and what needs to be done
conversational ai on the other hand it's
it's all about execution of that insight
because
because insight without action is
delusion
wait can i quote you insight without
action is delusion okay yeah
there you go uh
but so far like conversational ai
has mostly been used for lead-based
marketing i mean you know and
as we see technology maturing
uh we are seeing tremendous
possibilities for conversational ai to
be used in in abm initiatives because
it's now can deliver the level of
personalization that is needed in an in
an abm
uh conversation in an abm capacity so
when you take that insight from abm and
use that insight to deliver personalized
engagement at scale
you have conversational ibm
okay so i'm imagining now if i'm on 101
heading into the city i am now going to
see the billboard insight without action
equals delusion sunny does gupta
conversica boom there it is that's your
next billboard um
james as you hear the term
conversational abi abm is that something
as a marketer you say huh okay i'm
interested tell me more
yeah no i i get it i i i understand
where um where sonny's coming from and i
i don't disagree um you know could be a
a little jargony but um i'll definitely
run with it right i think that you know
we marketers need to understand each
other before we you know enable sales
with it um and yeah there is um a need
um to
you know if you
what i like about conversation i because
i think about marketing all the time as
conversational you know if my team would
roll their eyes and all the times i
compare marketing to successfully
navigating a cocktail party right um and
that you know you're not going in there
and standing at one side and shouting at
people to you know it's like you'll
learn a little bit and you'll learn a
little bit more and so that's what
happens right um
when you think about that content
problem unfolding right because as you
learn
then you're going a little bit deeper
and there's more nuance to the next
thing you need to say or the next
conversation you need to have right um
so i like the give and take aspect of
saying of conversation
and ai yeah it can allow you to scale as
long as it doesn't become you know to
turn terminator and you know it can you
know if it goes wrong it could go really
wrong as well right right well and i
think this is where we're thinking of it
as augmentation versus replacement uh
and so forth but john you're in this
world every day so
conversational abm does that feel like
this as sonny calls it a love child does
that feel like there's going to be a
as abm advances going to be just part of
the conversation
yeah it's a
very thoughtful question and because
we've seen our clients deploy with
conversica in this kind of model i'm a
little bit biased to say yes uh so
uh yeah we've already we've already uh
enabled our clients to do that and we've
seen it kind of at close range so yeah i
definitely think it's it's out there
and it's interesting so scott i see a
question from one of the audiences says
we have challenges connecting the intent
data at the account level with the
individual who is doing the research or
is in the market how can we do that
better that sounds like what you just
described
isn't it yeah yeah
there could be a couple different
options um that could be an option or
depending on the tech stack for example
if they're using and i'm just gonna name
a couple like six cents just acquired a
company called slintel
which has a lot of that capability they
have a license to zoom
uh zoom has their intent add-on license
everything with zoom's now an add-on
which i've heard from a bunch of our
clients
so those could be a couple different
options that give intent at the person
level as opposed to the account level um
typically what we've done and we've done
this with our demand based customers uh
of which you know james is a
demand-based customer as well
we've looked at
more than just
the intent at the account we're looking
at the total engagement in that account
so we're looking for other signals
and intent is one of those signals so if
there's enough in intense score and
other engagement score it bubbles up to
a marketing qualified account so
in and of itself an egg in a cake is not
all that exciting in and of itself
intent is not all that exciting but when
you put it with all the other
ingredients it tastes pretty good um so
that could be another way to to look at
it but james may have a point of view on
it as well
well i and james do you have a point of
view because we're running out of time
so you know maybe you can bring some
pithy insights into those folks who are
about to have to you know continue the
journey that you're on
yeah no i i think that um that that's
probably the insight right that we are
all on this journey i think that your
research proves that you know for the
first time in a while it's a journey
worth being on for sales and marketing
together um and you know i as a marketer
and fully on the lookout
for you know for the tools and the and
the processes that help us be more
effective
as a team and i don't buy things or
think about strategies that only work in
marketing i'm always thinking how does
this work for marketing and sales
together
cool i mean i think as i sort of think
about all of this
thing and what where we've gone is when
sales and marketing are working together
and they're aiming to personalize if
they want to get to this next level of
personalization and they want to take
out take advantage of all this data
available it's almost going to be
impossible for them to do it manually i
mean i think that's where um that's
where we are and so with that i'm going
to turn it over to sunny and you know
bring us home
yeah so um you know like i'm just what
um
i mean closing i would say look
conversational avm is doing really three
things right i mean it helps it helps
you engage with your customer it's
accelerating your deal cycle
and um it finally helps you deliver an
iconic customer experience um i and at
the end of the day
you know that's how you get better roi
on your abm investments and you you get
better revenue predictability
and just i just wanted to close out by
saying
by thanking everybody you know so thank
you for you know joining this session
today and hopefully uh hopefully you
learned something that's valuable
and
hopefully that will make you slightly
better at at your work
i also wanted to give the panel speakers
and our moderator drew a big round of
applause job really well done i've
really learned a thing or two just
talking to you guys
um two quick things before i close out
the first one is that you can
download today's presentation and
there's a link to download the survey
report as you can see here to your left
and the second thing is that we are
doing another webinar on the same topic
on on november 3rd conversational abm as
you can see to your right
where we are going to
go a little deeper into conversational
abm so there's a link here for you to
register for that event
if you'd like to learn more and with
that
thanks everybody and have a wonderful
rest of the day
thanks honey