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- [00:00]
Kelly Lindaneau
My favorite saying is that ABM is a strategy, not a tactic, and we should treat it as such. And so when we talk to sales, when we're engaging on account plans, when we're strategically planning our business and really how we use our precious, precious time and money in marketing, we have to keep that at the heart, right? We are in the driver's seat of where we're using abm, where we're deploying it effectively across our accounts and in our target markets. And it is not a silver bullet. It is hard. It requires teamwork, it requires seller and BD active engagement. And without that, it's nothing.
- [00:42]
Claudia Tirico
The B2B Marketing Exchange brings together B2B marketing and sales practitioners from across the country to get the latest tools and tips they need to succeed.
- [00:50]
Kelly Lindaneau
Now we're bringing the insights from the stage to your ears.
- [00:53]
Claudia Tirico
I'm Claudia Tirico.
- [00:55]
Kelly Lindaneau
And I'm Kelly Lindaneau.
- [00:56]
Claudia Tirico
And this is the B2B Marketing Exchange podcast. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the B2BMX podcast. We are hooking you up today with a replay from another popular session from B2BMX west in Scottsdale on a really hot B2B topic. This panel discussion featured some marketing all stars who share their wisdom around the dynamic landscape of demand generation and account based marketing and the pivotal moment where these two strategies intersect today. You'll hear from Wes Lacer of Versiq, Sam Nohava of Blue Yonder, Madeline McGuire of Grubhub, and Annie Chamberlain of Lumen Technologies. And you'll learn how the traditional boundaries between these two approaches are really blurring these days. How companies can leverage the power of data personalization and automation to effectively target high value accounts while still maintaining a broad reach and practical insights and best practices for marketers looking to really strike the right balance between demand gen and ABM to really achieve those optimal results in today's competitive B2B marketplace. It's all going down in 3, 2, 1.
- [02:15]
Moderator
It's great to have a really fun panel here. I think obviously one of the reasons that everybody comes to these conferences is for perspective and one of the reasons that I really enjoy hosting panels and webinars is is we get to put together a diverse group of subject matter experts that all have like this isn't gonna be the. Oh, I agree. Let me add one other thing. Like we have three very different subject matter experts that's going to have a different perspective that's going to resonate hopefully with everybody here. So it's gonna be a ton of fun. I'll shut up. You didn't come to hear from me. And if you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself, we can get started.
- [02:56]
Annie Chamberlain
Hi, my name's Annie Chamberlain. I am an experienced technology marketer. I have experience with demand generation and account based marketing. I'm currently at Lumen Technologies. I am a large enterprise ABM manager focused on the US market.
- [03:19]
Kelly Lindaneau
Hi, my name is Sam Nohava. I lead global marketing at a company called Blue Yonder, based here in Scottsdale, Arizona. And in my role, I have the opportunity to lead a team of 20 enterprise marketers who are specialized by industry, by region, and also by function. And when I say function, I mean they are specialized by field marketing and account based marketing. So this is a really relevant topic that's near and dear to my heart, something that I talk to my team about every single day to force or encourage cross collaboration. And I have to give a call out to my team members here who are in the audience, who, who were recognized by Sixth Sense as ABM program of the year. So we have a lot to be proud of, but also just a lot more work to do. So I'm here learning just like you all are.
- [04:07]
Madeline McGuire
Hi everyone, I'm Madeline McGuire. I lead B2B marketing at GrubHub and I've been doing B2B marketing just north of 15 years. Based out of New York and very excited for this conversation. Thank you all for coming.
- [04:22]
Moderator
All right, so I'm gonna give a shout out to Sam. She came up with a topic and in our first prep call, you know, I'm a big, you know, we all like comedians and we like laughing. And one of the things that really resonates when I'm watching a comedian is like real life, like if you can like really see yourself, like, oh my gosh, that totally is me. You know, I've done that before. So when we thought about like what to talk about and we're like, okay, well what should we talk about? What questions should we ask? We literally just posed the question, like, well, what are the biggest issues that we're having right now? And obviously that's what we're going to be discussing today. So just as a quick show of hands, when it comes to demand generation and account based marketing, like who in here has like an 80 plus percent, like clear understanding? Like my organization has a clear delineation between account based marketing and demand generation. Like 80, it doesn't have to be perfect, but you know, 80, 75, 80 plus percent or higher. Okay, we get a couple hands all right, good. What about say like, call it like 50 ish percent, give or take a little bit on each side. Okay, we get a few more. And then who just is like, hey, the waters are very muddy. We have absolutely no delineation between ABM and demand generation, because that's why I'm here. All right, cool. So we're gonna actually just start with that. So I think from a question standpoint. And Annie, we're gonna start with you. How does your organization classify the difference between ABM and demand generation?
- [05:53]
Annie Chamberlain
So at Lumen, we are currently heavily invested in account based marketing, specifically in the large enterprise segment. Everything that we are doing is account based and based on account based strategies, we have our target lists and then we work to capture demand with those specific accounts. There are aspects of the business that do have more traditional demand generation. Those are parts of the business that have maybe a higher volume of customers, but a lower acv. And so in those areas, we look to generate leads and pass those off to sales development reps who will then work on conversion. In the large enterprise space, we do rely on those SDRs at times and those SDRs and that function, that's what we call our demand gen function at Lumen. So that's kind of how we differentiate between ABM and demand gen.
- [06:56]
Kelly Lindaneau
Blue Yonder operates in the B2B technology space. We are the world leader in supply chain transformations across planning to delivery to returns, the end to end supply chain. And within my team of enterprise marketers, if I reflect back where we were in 2016, 2017, we were heavily invested in events. You know, the business that we cater to is largely relationship driven and it's extremely competitive. So we couldn't manage to not show up with the biggest, splashiest booth. Well, thankfully the leadership team at the time had the inkling that we were onto something with abm. We started managing ABM in nights and weekends. I actually spoke about our entire journey last year here at B2BMX to share where we've been, but a little consolidated version. You know, we started ABM nights and weekends and we aimed to prove ourselves right. We aim to prove ourselves to the enterprise sales rep who thought we weren't capable or knowledgeable enough to support their end to end sales cycle. And it was too risky to engage marketing at some of the more critical stages of the buyer's journey. And we proved them wrong. We proved that we were capable, more than capable. We proved that we could shorten sales cycles, that we could increase the size of deals and, you know, fast Forwarding now to today, I have a team of demand gen marketers and ABM marketers who are specialized again by industry, by region and by function. And within those roles, specifically the field marketing team they target typically by demographic, firmographic and intent. So across my entire team it's intent based everything. We've gone all in on intent and the main delineation here with the field marketers they own industry and product driven campaigns, they also own field events. They are the right hand of the sales organization but their primary focus is to drive at bats. So once sales accepts the opportunity, starts to work it, they disengage. That's the nature of the business. Now on the ABM side they manage one to one and one to few ABM programs of which for one to few we typically scale up to about 25 accounts. And within that practice they are engaged throughout the entire end to end buyer's journey. And it's just recently this year that the ABM team has taken on more control over which accounts we select. As a part of that process we've built the credibility and gained the swagger to the point where we can tell sellers no, we don't want to focus on your account. We are not your silver bullet in this instance. Here are some great tools that you can leverage to personalize the custom or the the buyer's journey instead. But that's really where the delineation stands. We follow the traditional. It's a model where one to many is owned by field marketing and one to one and one to few is owned by the ABM teams.
- [09:52]
Madeline McGuire
So at grubhub at a very high level we differentiate between demand gen and ABM with DemandGen being the one to many and and account based marketing being the strategies that are targeting a very specific list of very high value accounts to us. So within the scope of my organization I have corporate accounts. Corporate accounts is a pretty even split between Demand gen and abm. On the campus side where we're winning and trying to sign up higher education campuses, that's very heavy abm, very long sales cycles. I also have driver marketing under my purview that's purely demand generation and the merchant network which is primarily demand generation and we're exploring more on the account based side. I will say one interesting thing about the merchant network and I have some members of my merchant network team here in the audience is the way that we think about and when we considering these target accounts, they're really the high value VIP restaurants that we're trying to sign. It's Very much not a traditional content led, account based strategy. That's not how you're going to win the hearts and minds and contract of a restaurant owner. And so account based marketing in that segment looks very much like turning up with popsicles on a hot day for all the employees that work in the restaurant. And really the surprise and delight, one to one, not scalable approach. And that's where we're winning the business and that's what works there. So I guess my main point is it really depends on who your buyer is, who the customer is, and tailoring an approach that works for them.
- [11:41]
Moderator
Yeah, that's great. And I'll say this, you're gonna hear three different definitions or three versions of a similar answer depending upon the business model, the go to market strategies and stuff like that. I literally do nothing but talk to marketers every single day. And I promise you, I can talk to 10 people on the same day and I will have 10 different definitions of account based marketing. So like again, when it comes to like silver bullet or this, it's like how do you define it and how do you have clear objectives, excuse me, inside of your organization? So everybody's on the same page. Right. And so that, that just the terminology and the definition, I think one of the keynotes called it create a glossary. I really like that because that just has everybody on the same page. And so now that we kind of understand, you know, how we define demand generation in account based marketing, I think it's really clear to like, what are the common misconceptions? Right. So like when you're talking about ABM and demand gen, where are some hangout points where people start to get unsure? And Sam, we'll start with you about the common misconceptions between ABM and demand gen. Sure.
- [12:50]
Kelly Lindaneau
So I'll cover three. The first is that the two functions are siloed, that they operate completely separately from one another. Now the reality is they can be, but they shouldn't be. If you're doing your job correctly, especially if you're a marketing leader, you should encourage collaboration and partnership for the creation of one demand generation plan. That is a critical part when you're speaking to stakeholders, when you're developing goals, when you're outlining channel strategy. It is a critical piece in what makes the world go round on our team. And I am constantly hearing now, as it's been a keen focus of mine, success stories across the team where they're handing off accounts, they're engaging at events with ABM accounts, et cetera. Now the second is that demand gen, demand gen is spray. And pray that it's not strategic, it doesn't leverage ABM technologies. It is just a tactical, hey, let's put these 5,000 accounts into the system and see what sticks against the wall and at Blue Yonder. Anyway, I can speak for us to say that it is not that way. Our demand gen marketers certainly use ABM technologies. They use ABM practices. And of course in the Enterprise B2B space we have to because there's only a finite number of accounts. Now that being said, you know, we use six sense across our entire organization and that is certainly a critical piece. Now last but not least is ABM as a silver bullet. So my favorite saying is that ABM is a strategy, not a tactic and we should treat it as such. And so when we talk to sales, when we're engaging on account plans, when we're strategically planning our business and really how we use our precious, precious time and money in marketing, we have to keep that at the heart, right? We are in the driver's seat of where we're using abm, where we're deploying it effectively across our accounts and in our target markets. And it is not a silver bullet. It is hard. It requires teamwork, it requires seller and BD active engagement. And without that it's nothing.
- [14:56]
Moderator
Maddy?
- [14:58]
Madeline McGuire
Yeah, great points. I think I would just add to that as well. A common misconception is that ABM is just a marketing responsibility. I think anyone in this room that's doing ABM knows that it really requires tremendous buy in from, from every level of the organization up to the leadership, but particularly with the sales team. The moment that you have marketing and sales working in silos, you're done. It really requires a tremendous amount of communication and feedback in order for it to be successful and work the magic that we all know that it can. So I think that that's just a critical misconception that I think is really important because the sales, the sellers, they're in the front lines, they're interacting with customers and if they're not coming back, communicating with the marketing team so that they can tailor their content to be as relevant as possible to the targets. It's just never going to resonate the way that buyers expect in 2024.
- [16:06]
Moderator
You know, Mattie, I think and you can keep the mic. I think you're up first on the next one. I think one of the things that you brought up was a really interesting point. I've been in the room, started my career in Marketing worked in sales, and there's always a general perception of squeaky wheel gets the grease. And we all know sometimes the squeakiest wheel or the loudest voice in the room is sales. And as somebody who's been in both rooms, I can tell you, like, maybe it was my room, but the sales team definitely felt it was marketing's job to act as more of a support mechanism to help drive leads and stuff like that. So I think, Mattie, in your opinion, what would you feel is something that's really important to maintaining alignment when it comes to sales and marketing and executing on the strategies and the programs?
- [16:52]
Madeline McGuire
Yes. The topic of sales and marketing alignment, there's a lot of big feelings on this topic. The last time I was at B2BMX, there was a session that was just absolutely packed. Lots of emotion in the room. This is a big pain point for a lot of people. And I think we all know, and we've probably all been in situations where there can be a lot of animosity between sales and marketing. You can have marketing teams that feel like, oh, the sales team aren't following up on my leads. At the same time, the sales team can definitely think that they can tend to devalue what marketing is doing. There can be a sense of not celebrating the wins together when it may have been a very joint effort. And we all know in this room how much value marketing provides for organization. So I won't claim to have all the answers, but I can say that at grubhub, I'm lucky enough to have very good relationships with the sales teams. There's a couple of things practically that I have done that have worked really well. So I think, firstly, the key is to be very intentional about creating a really good relationship. State the intention with the. With the sales leader. Your team will take the cues from you to on how they should respect the other team. So it's really important to be extreme, extremely intentional about how you approach that and don't be afraid to, you know, set the example and make sure that when the sales team are celebrating and announcing big wins, that they're making sure to call out the marketing teams and vice versa. So that's basic, but I think it's a really important first step. Secondly, you know, obviously goals, okrs, having shared okrs are very important to make sure that there's no sense of competitiveness. So at my company, I actually have my revenue teams between marketing and sales present marketing business reviews together so that it's not in competition with. But this is what we did to drive the business forward. And that has been very good for alignment as well. I also have captains, so I have a marketing captain on the sales team that's a salesperson that has this as an external extracurricular responsibility. And we have the same thing on the marketing side that's been really helpful. So like I said, don't have all the answers, but I think that when the relationship is really solid, it just makes the working environment a lot more positive and it, you know, definitely increases productivity and is incredibly critical for an effective ABM strategy.
- [19:45]
Annie Chamberlain
At Lumen, we are currently going through a major transformation of the business to go from a telecom company to a technology company. Our CEO has recently published a North Star vision. And I bring this up because at Lumen, from the tops down, we have a corporate narrative that the entire company is rallying around. And we're currently developing commercial plays across sales, marketing and customer success to really make sure that our go to market is cohesive across the customer experience. In addition to everything that Maddie said around meetings, very, very tactically, marketers are involved with developing sales presentations, all of the outreach, messaging, outreach sequences for sellers. We also generate tasks very tactically in salesforce for our sellers. Specifically, we create tasks around high intent. We create. We create tasks around key contact engagement, executive engagement opportunities, event invitations, and gifting. So maybe, maybe there'll be some tips in there for you. That's it.
- [21:09]
Moderator
So who here? So just again, show of hands, audience participation, please. Feels like you have a better than average relationship with sales from a marketing standpoint. So better than average. Okay, that's. What do you think? 40, 30, 40, 35, 40%. Okay, so then raise of hands. And if your sales leaders in here, maybe you don't want to raise your hand, but like, who would have a raise of hands if you have a worse than average relationship with sales? Okay, nobody's raising their hands. Okay, so we didn't get the participation. But I think when you're talking to a salesperson, I mean, understanding metrics like pipeline velocity, I mean, how you're making their life easier. One of the things, and I can do this when looking at talking to a marketing leader about if things didn't work out in their previous organization, I'll ask simple questions of like, hey, when was your weekly meeting with sales or your monthly meeting with sales? And they're like, well, we didn't really have a standing meeting. It's like, oh, okay, that's why you and I are having this conversation. That is a big, big, big reason why these Roles are very much in tandem and why there's not successful. So that sales and marketing alignment is so incredibly important. It's easy to call out, but it's difficult to do. And I think in what I do, if there's one piece of advice that I can give all the marketers is again, every situation is different. Like have enough EQ to really understand who your sales leader is and what message is going to resonate with him or her and really go at it that way. And that might be a, hey, let's go grab a happy hour, let's do this, let's do that. I mean, whatever you think is going to resonate. Having that buy in is so incredibly important. Okay, so as we transition and our thing didn't go so I have no idea how much time we have left, but one of the things that I think five minutes. Okay, cool, we'll make it quick. One of the things that we wanted to talk about is obviously there's such a transition between, you know, the last four years and where we were in 2020, 2021, 2022, and even just the last, you know, year or so, you know, what worked in 22 and 23 is not going to work in 2024. Right. And so I think if, you know, kind of final question for the panelists is as you kind of look forward to 2024, you know, really what are some key initiatives and objectives that you're putting forth that you feel is really going to help kind of propel, you know, ABM and demand gen?
- [23:37]
Annie Chamberlain
So again, continuing the theme of the corporate transformation that we're going through, we are working this year to really shift from product marketing to customer outcome based message marketing. And so there is a lot of work to do there to go back to market research and reshape basically how we go to market. So that'll be a big focus. I think that the other area that will be a big focus is we hope to bring all of our ABM function in house and so really hitting hard on campaign operations and just discipline internally around data and operations so that we can orchestrate all of our different plays appropriately. So those will be our focus areas for the year.
- [24:28]
Kelly Lindaneau
As we've now had our ABM practice in house for about four years. It's funny, now every year we have to go through an exercise of prioritization and roles and responsibility review. So although we are considered a more mature ABM practice, there's not a year or maybe even a quarter where we aren't as leaders sitting down to talk about what are you owning, what are you owning, what's the channel mix? And literally writing out roles and responsibilities. So that was a big exercise to start off. The new year was okay, where are the lines now? But where does the organization need them to be and how can we best accommodate? And I think in 2024, what I aim to do is with some additional technologies that we're adding to measure influence as opposed to just traditional sourcing, I am now starting the conversations with leadership to guide our KPIs by function. So today my team, my entire team is measured based upon source pipeline and source revenue. And unfortunately that's just not fair, nor is it indicative of the true value that my teams add, especially ABM in the cases where they are owning and engaging across the entire buyer's journey. So incorporating new metrics, new KPIs that guide our success and then we can hopefully use those to then advocate for more, budget, more resources and put our dollars where, where the success lays. Then separately, maybe a little more tactically, continue to refine our ABM account lists. That's of strategic importance for us because every account costs a minimum of $10,000 to execute on, whether it's incorporating outside agency build or channel activation, you know, minimum 10k for a one to one account is what we've, we've put the price tag at, let alone the precious energy and the resources on my team actually creating the programs so managing those account lists and making sure we're in lockstep with sales to meet our goals. And then last but not least, sales enablement, we've talked about that a lot here on the panel, making sure sales is in lockstep. We've hired about 33% new sales reps just starting this year in the last 90 days. And you know, we think we built the FOMO, we have an award winning program and then a new group of 50 people walk in the door and you're starting from scratch all over again. It feels so those, those are my priorities and they continue to grow and evolve. We still have a lot to learn and a lot to accomplish and we're just trying to keep up with the needs of the business and inevitably just figuring out how we can best resonate with our customers because that's what it's all about. It's not about us, it's about them.
- [27:06]
Madeline McGuire
Yeah. So we're very excited about leveraging tech to accelerate pipeline velocity. So looking at a few different options there. And then additionally, we know a lot of our customers are putting, they're under pressure to do more with less. Like, I'm sure a lot of people in this room are feeling the same. So I think now more than ever, it's really important to make sure that the content that we're putting out there is relevant and it's helpful and it's actually adding value and that we're speaking to the needs of our customers. So we're looking at ways to accelerate that and improve how we're doing that.
- [27:42]
Moderator
Yeah, you know, and I think, you know, if there's one kind of through line in a lot of what I've heard up here is, you know, and I think a lot of times, you know, especially when you talk to marketers, there's that delicate balance of, well, you know, it's the build a plane in the air, right? It's like we need the pilot and we need the mechanic. You know, somebody that's going to keep us going in the right direction, but also can work on the engine, pick up the quick wins as we continue to go. And that's a very difficult thing. It's just. It's just. It's a really hard job. And I think that's the thing that you get here, is what we do is really hard. There's nothing, one clear answer. And I think a lot of people come to conferences like this looking for the silver bullet, looking for the right answer, the aha moment that's gonna accelerate and propel their career to the next step. And I don't think we can really look at that as far as what we're looking to get out of this. Pick one or two things that you can kind of take here and bring to your organization and say, hey, you know what? There's something I can really take here. And it's, you know, it's not a tactic, it's a strategy. And sometimes it's working on the business versus working in the business and pulling yourself up to really put together a really strong, you know, comprehensive, you know, account base and demand generation strategy. So, again, thank you all so much. We're probably at the five minutes, I'm assuming. Okay, we're at the five minutes. Give it up for the panelists. Thank you so much.
- [29:11]
Claudia Tirico
All right, thanks again for joining us for today's episode, everyone. I know we're all constantly trying to really strike that bright balance of demand gen and abm. And these awesome marketers really dropped some key knowledge on the topic and its place in B2B marketing. Our milestone 10th season is nearing the finish line. We've got one more episode for you next week. And then the team and I are off to Alpharetta, Georgia for B2BMX East. It's not too late to register, guys. You could get all the information you need and a discount code in our show notes. Thanks again for tuning in today. We'll catch you for the season finale next Wednesday. Take care.