Ops Cast
Ops Cast, by MarketingOps.com, is a podcast for Marketing Operations Pros by Marketing Ops Pros. Hosted by Michael Hartmann, Mike Rizzo & Naomi Liu
Ops Cast
Lessons Learned from an OG ABM Expert with Jessica Fewless and Andrea Frazier
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Can the latest ABM technology truly revolutionize your marketing strategy, or is there more beneath the surface? Join us on this compelling episode of OpsCast as we sit down with Jessica Fewless and Andrea Frazier to explore the oft-misunderstood world of Account-Based Marketing. Jessica brings a rich tapestry of experience from her unique career journey that includes transitioning from sales to marketing, with a notable stint in non-profit organizations. Meanwhile, Andrea shares how her solid background in agricultural economics provided her with the analytical prowess essential for excelling in marketing operations. Together, they unveil personal stories and professional insights that shed light on unconventional paths to success in ABM.
In this episode, we challenge the misconceptions surrounding the implementation of ABM technology. The discussion focuses on the critical need for strategic planning and data readiness before purchasing ABM tools. We dissect the common pitfalls faced by companies who rush into technology investments without a solid ABM strategy, often leading to less-than-stellar results. Jessica and Andrea emphasize the importance of due diligence, continuous evaluation, and validation of sales claims to ensure that your ABM initiatives are on the right track from the onset.
We also delve into the operationalization of ABM, highlighting the essential role of Marketing Operations (MOPs) in both strategic planning and execution. Drawing from pilot programs and real-world examples, we discuss how to set realistic expectations and effectively utilize existing technology to drive success. Moreover, we explore the transformative potential of MOPs professionals when they transition from mere order-takers to crucial players in shaping ABM strategies. By asking insightful questions and demonstrating strategic thinking, MOPs can significantly contribute to the overall success of ABM initiatives. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights and practical advice from our esteemed guests, Jessica Fules and Andrea Frazier.
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Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOpscom, powered by all those MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman, joined by my co-host, Mike Rizzo. Hi buddy, what's happening here?
Speaker 2:What's happening? So much is happening, Hartman. I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1:Is it still? I know we talked yesterday. Is it still smoky and like fire danger?
Speaker 2:in southern california it's crazy like 110 plus feet wave for multiple days running and in the hills behind me there is a pretty gnarly um, I think it's like up to 1300 acres or more. Now it's crazy not good.
Speaker 1:All right, keep you safe, hopefully. All right, yes, uh, well, hopefully you'll be able to. You won't get like some sort of time to evacuate while we're on this, but if you do, that would not be good. If you do, do not good at all all right, so let's get this started.
Speaker 2:The fire alarm that went off in the episode with daryl except for this is a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Except, maybe more serious, except for maybe more serious, so we're cooking this time.
Speaker 1:My mother-in-law lives up in Northern California in the wine country, and she's always in a retirement community. Everyone's required to have a go bag, basically, oh, wow, yeah, they have fires up there far too often. All right, well, let's get into something more fun and interesting and let's talk about all things ABM. Joining us today are Jessica Fules and Andrea Frazier To do that.
Speaker 1:Jessica is currently a Senior Director of Partnerships and Demand Generation at Inverta. She was part of the early team at Demandbase, where she held many roles With companies large and small. She's focused on demand generation, field customer and partner marketing and how all of those functions can help acquire and retain customers, in concert with their sales counterparts. She is also the author of Account-Based Marketing how to Target and Engage Companies that Will Grow your Revenue. Andrea is currently Senior Marketing Operations operations technical consultant at Inverta. Prior to Inverta, andrea worked with other consulting firms and started a career as a marketing database analyst. Andrea has a passion for collaborating with teammates and clients to solve technology and process challenges. So, jessica, andrea, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, andrea, thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:And Jessica, you'll have to get us a link to your book so we can put it in the show notes or something.
Speaker 4:I can do that. I believe it's still out there.
Speaker 1:All right, you believe it's still out there. Is this like a self-published thing?
Speaker 4:No, no, no, no, but it's actually still out on Amazon. I don't know. Every six months I get a royalties check from Wiley Nice.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so you had a publisher go through it. Yeah, I'm not going to derail us, but I found that this publisher thing is interesting, right? Because to your just hint of a comment, you're kind of like, yeah, it should be out there. It's their job to put it out there, yeah. Yeah exactly it's their job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly gotcha, yeah, cool, um, all right, well, let's. Let's start um with a little bit of background. I did a quick summary of your kind of where you are and your careers. But, jessica, I saw that you also have been involved in a lot of non-profit organizations, including starting one, so I'm curious about how that's impacted your career.
Speaker 1:And, andrea, I saw that you studied if I get agricultural economics before getting into marketing and would love to hear what you learned from that experience and what you like applies today and so, and then, what that jump to marketing was. Maybe Jessica, I don't know if you want to start first or Andrea, you guys can choose.
Speaker 4:Yeah, happy to. So, yeah, I mean it's. It's so funny. You know, at this point in my career I'm, you know, 25 years into my career. I can't believe I just said that that's a real big number. But um, it's, uh, it's one of those things that you know, I've been asked like how did you get to where you are?
Speaker 4:And I was like do not follow my path or do like some people come out of college and they're like step A, step B, step C and I, you know, first I'm going to be a marketing manager and then I'm going to write. And you know, I started out in sales very quickly realized I didn't want to be in sales or I wasn't very good at it when my first manager told me, um, you should probably be in sales, or I wasn't very good at it. When my first manager told me you should probably be in marketing because I was building sales tools for my region, I was like, hey guys, he's like maybe you should go into marketing. I'm like, oh, ok, yeah. So you know, that took me into marketing and I was in the Bay Area at the time and so I got in. You know the startup bug. If, for any of you who are, I don't know, probably millennial or later, millennial or older, probably remember a company where you joined, a phone call or a video conference, and it said welcome to meeting place.
Speaker 2:I worked for them. Oh nice, they were one of the first video conferencing solutions.
Speaker 4:It was called latitude communications but it was cool. Anyway, they got purchased by Cisco and I took my first exit and took a package and I went to go follow my passion a little bit and I went to go work for a women's sporting goods retailer running their marketing. And then I got into cause marketing, which took me into my nonprofit angle where I did a lot of event marketing which parlayed into field marketing, which you read in my bio earlier. So you know it's all kind of intermingled. But obviously the nonprofit side of things was more B2C versus B2B and at the end of the day I think B2B is more my jam. I think it's more interesting personally.
Speaker 4:But you know you felt really good going to work every day working for nonprofits, which is why I started one here and I live in Truckee, in Lake Tahoe and it's a small community and I wanted to do something to kind of give back and help get girls it's a rural community just so to help give girls opportunities to get involved in STEM fields. So it was matching high school girls with UC Davis has a research lab here in Lake Tahoe and stuff like that. So matching up high school girls with those sorts of opportunities to give them a taste of that before they went off to college.
Speaker 1:Love it, and you, Andrea. Agriculture economics I hadn't even heard of that until I saw you back there.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a very prestigious area to be in when you grow up in Kansas. So, similar to Jess, background is had no plans to do marketing right, and I think the reason for that is being more ops minded which we'll get to those marketing classes in college at that time and again this is 15 years, 16 years ago were very strategy basedbased and marketing strategy only talking about all of that and the philosophy behind these things. That really didn't pique my interest. So what did was the agricultural economics. What I really took from it was it's more microeconomics, right. So, understanding why people make the decisions they make and really I'm a math nerd, I'm going to admit it it was the calculus behind that, right. So, understanding why people make the decisions they make and really I'm a math nerd, I'm going to admit it it was the calculus behind that, which really does dovetail really well into attribution, which was hot at the time.
Speaker 3:So it just happened that I started working for a company doing data entry. Really it's a database analyst. I was really starting with like find people in these roles right before we had tools to help us with that and then turns out they were implementing NetSuite. At the time. I found out that I really, really, really just get excited about putting those pieces together in the right way and running through a big implementation like that. So I just I ran with it. I started being the marketing technology person right At the time. It was like CRM was new for the company I was working at and that just all fell into place from there. So I can't say I did A, b, c, d, similar to Jess. But here I am and I can't believe it either. But I haven't even touched agricultural economics. So what do you know? Funny how the world works like that right, just pay the money for college and then get a job. That's completely different, but I love it.
Speaker 2:That's usually how it goes, right. I would make the argument that attribution is still hot, though.
Speaker 3:Yes, more controversial, but, yes, still hot.
Speaker 2:It's like a fiery topic every time we meet. Right, it's about as fiery topic. Every time we meet, it's about as fiery as like waterfall project management versus agile yeah. I love that people are passionate about this stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, and I feel like when you've done what we all do right, you could probably fight those sides Like you could argue both sides of the coin. So that's where you get yourself spun up.
Speaker 2:So it's our favorite answer in marketing ops and marketing technology. It depends.
Speaker 1:It's a consulting answer. Yeah, there you go. So it's funny I have, I have, I have connections with both of your stories. So, jessica, I also was in sales for a period of time and realize it's not what I made for, at least back then I wasn't, and I also kind of a math nerd. I was an engineering background so and with economics minor, so I never thought about calculus being tied to attribution, though I always thought it's more of a like just a complicated optimization model. But anyway, but either way, right, I mean the math part matters and that's all good.
Speaker 1:Well, so we're going to talk about ABM along the way here and kind of what you all are doing. But you know, jessica, what started this is you. You worked for seven years-ish, I think, is about that at demand base, really at the beginning of when ABM was really kind of coming into its own, and I'm curious about what are some of the major lessons you learned during that time that might help our audience, especially if they're either being in the middle of implementing some sort of ABM solution I don't want to say technology, but solution process, whatever strategy or they're being asked to. I know I have my own stories about being asked to and pushing back because I didn't think the organization was ready. But like, yeah, lessons learned.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know it's it's funny to two main things that I think a lot of people skip over, that I think are really important are one alignment and two, readiness, right, so, just like you just said, and I think you know the alignment side of things, everybody talks about sales and marketing alignment, right, yes, that is true. But alignment is, it needs to be more universal across your organization If you're truly doing account-based marketing. Now one could argue we, we misbranded account-based marketing, right, everybody's trying to like well, it's not really ABM, it's ABX or it's ABE or it's you know. Now it's AB, account-based go-to-market I've been seeing Like, whatever the case, the sentiment is the same as a marketer. If you need to rebrand it inside of your organizations, go nuts, right. But whether you call it ABM, abx, account-based go-to-market, it's all the same principles, right. Adx, account-based go-to-market, it's all the same principles, right. It's getting everybody across your organization aligned around an ICP, a right set of target accounts and going and turning them into revenue, whether they're prospects or existing customers, right, that's the basic principle.
Speaker 4:But everybody needs to be aligned around what that looks like because that takes a lot of forms, right, and most everybody's seen the classic pyramid of one-to-one, one-to-few, one-to-many right. If you're talking to sales, typically they're thinking, ooh, one-to-one ABM, my account is going to get all the love right? If you're talking to most marketing organizations, they're thinking more one-to-many because it's a sharper form of demand gen, it's a little bit more focused, it's a little bit more repeatable and a little bit more predictable, right? And so if you go and do it that way, without that alignment on the definition, that's a problem. Also, most organizations are not going to go all in. So where are you going to start with ABM? What is ABM going to be and what is it not going to be out of the gates, right? Yes, maybe someday you want to get to a blended strategy, but maybe today you're starting one many, right, and you're going to start with this industry segment Right, to get get it started. So you know, I think really having that alignment is good. And then the readiness and that's really where your mops counterparts come into it. Right, because everybody wants to go straight to OK, we're going to go by six sensor demand base and then we're going to be doing AVM. Guess what? You are not.
Speaker 4:Avm technology is not an AVM strategy. You know, we've actually been having this conversation internally recently because it still is coming up. It's like how is this still a thing? I'm like we know better by now, don't we? But you know a lot of people. They buy these AVM technologies and they go. It doesn't work.
Speaker 4:And then they blame the salesperson for overselling the technology. And guess what? I don't actually think. Yes, maybe the salesperson did oversell. That's their job. Their job is to bring in revenue. It's your job as the consumer buyer, beware it's your job as the consumer to do your due diligence, to, like you know, do your own research. You know, double check their claims, work your network. Somebody else you know out. There has been a customer of this product. So validate what the salesperson's saying. Right, and you know. Also, you need to have a strategy for it. You need to build use cases. How are we going to use this and build a strategy before you ever purchase the technology? Not after, but before? So I think those are some of the things, and the data that comes along with it too. Do you have the data? Is your data ready for an ABM strategy? So those are, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:So good.
Speaker 4:So many nuggets.
Speaker 2:I just want to like go back and put them on repeat.
Speaker 1:Like that's the whole episode.
Speaker 4:Mike, you beat me to getting getting off mute, sorry, this is why andrea and I get along so well, because I'm like, oh, it just drives me nuts. I'm like they did what? Oh, no, exactly. But you know, I mean because constantly on linkedin you see somebody out there bashing sixpence or bashing demandandbase, or back in the day it was Terminus or whomever else, and it's like is it really the technology's fault or is it your lack of strategy that caused it not to succeed?
Speaker 4:For you, and I would say at least 75% of the time it's the lack of strategy. And I learned that when I my last year at Demandbase, I ran customer experience, so I was very hands-on with our customers and understanding what was going south. And yes, you know, I would say 15% of the time, 20% of the time there were very legitimate like hey, your product doesn't work the way we need it to. Got it Cool, that's fair, right. But most of the time it was that they didn't have a strategy for it and they handed it to somebody in mops and said go figure it out. And the mops person said, well, I installed it and I connected all the integrations and so I did my part and nobody thought about the strategy, the change management, the enablement, like all the things that went along with it, and then they were like well, this is a hunk of junk and my cfo wants roi and I can't it, so we're going to churn.
Speaker 1:So I'm just curious, curious and readiness I just this just occurred to me, both from an experience that popped in my head, but also, as you were talking like, as part of readiness, also tied to what you were just describing right, having the right resources available to do that, ongoing maintenance and support and and evolution of the solution over time, cause I think I've seen that's been a failure too right, where maybe the solution would work. The people sort of said it once don't really plan on changing it, and then it never really like. Then they wonder why it's not like. I saw it being used to try to to be used for like lead scoring on individual people and I was like isn't that like not what it's supposed to be for?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things you need to constantly evaluate and evolve. And it's also, you know, because out of the gates it's not going to be perfect, like when we work with clients. We're like we are not going to knock your ABM strategy out of the gates, and that's step. We're like we're not going to knock your ABM strategy out of the gates in step one. Right, first we got to try something, figure out what's going to work inside the confines of your organization because of your corporate culture, because of your skill sets, because of all those things. Right, Then we're going to tweak it, and then you do.
Speaker 4:You just like, you know you hear people talk about you need to reevaluate your target account list semi-annually, if not annual. You know, annually if not semi-annually, make sure it's still appropriate, make sure it's still relevant. Right now, we're seeing a lot of people reevaluate their entire ICP because of, you know, the last two years have been tough. Nobody's hitting their pipeline numbers, nobody's hitting their revenue numbers. So it's like, wait a second, are we trying to sell to the wrong audience? So they're doing a lot of that re-evaluation and so, yeah, it constantly needs to be re-evaluated, innovated upon, you know, and those sorts of things, otherwise it gets stale and it loses its effectiveness.
Speaker 1:Andrea's over there, like nodding her head vigorously.
Speaker 3:I mean, this is what working with Jess is like she just lays it down right, but no, I completely agree From the MOPs perspective, there are those jobs would be. But you know, making sure we really understand use cases is, I think, the most important, because gone are the days, right, where you're going to implement a tool and you're going to set it up exactly like the documentation online tells you and that's it, and you're done Like that's not a thing anymore. There's so many more tools that has a lot to depend on other tools that are in your tech stack, what else you might be doing, and so it's not really a realistic expectation that you're going to go in, set it up and walk away. I think it's really important to just understand, like, what are the use cases we definitely know right now. Okay, let's pick either all of them or some of them and go in and to Jess's point from there see what you're seeing, evaluate, iterate and continue from there.
Speaker 2:I think it's like ABM is such an interesting thing. I guess I have one comment and then a question to add on. The comment is and I won't name which company it is, but I was speaking with their head of customer success and it was one of the big ABM players and what was amazing to hear from them was their most successful customers. And, jessica, perhaps you can sort of head nod to this or challenge it, but their most successful customers were the ones that had mops at the helm of running a strategic implementation and they had a dedicated person to really make that product work. Again, I won't name it, and they had a dedicated person to really make that product work. Again, I won't, I won't name it. But uh, do you find that in your engagements today and your experiences of the past that having that mobs person that maybe isn't just the I connected the two yeah, like driving that strategic implementation is where you see success? Um, and then I'll add a follow on after that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so, and Andrea, I definitely want you to pipe in here because we were talking a little bit about this yesterday. But you know, yes, there's like the junior level MOPS person that's responsible for implementations and integrations and those sorts of things. But having a true MOPS business partner, I think, is a CMO's best friend and I'm not trying to pander to the crowd here I really, truly do believe that.
Speaker 3:It's okay, somebody who's really their vendor.
Speaker 4:I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:It is like at least the 20th time that someone has said some tagline similar to that over the last three years that we've been recording this episode, and it is just great because that's what we want to keep hearing. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because you know, when you think about things like the strategy, okay, it's like great, we have a strategy, but it's going to require change management. Well, who in an organization actually has change management in their title or in their job description? No one. Where does it typically come from successfully? Typically is from the MOPSops organization. When you have a strategic business partner that's leading mops right, that has that kind of skill set that kind of function within their org right.
Speaker 4:So I think that that is to me. But most organizations don't have that level of mops person not most I would well, I would say the majority of organizations we work with do not elevate mobs to that level within their organization. They're more of a tactician versus a strategic partner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're fighting hard every day to change the hearts and minds of all the companies out there as a community, so this episode is just another step in the right direction, andrea go ahead please.
Speaker 3:No, I mean, I agree completely because a lot of it is just the way that we are understanding the broader landscape, right? So I mentioned how it's no longer that you have one tool and so you just have to know that one tool and we're using that one tool for everything. Now there's just so much more layered in, not only with the data and integrations right, those are the obvious answers. But, like the use cases you're trying to solve, likely you have other use cases that other systems or other data is supporting that are close or, you know, need to run in parallel to what you might be trying to achieve with ABM.
Speaker 3:So I think you know where Jess and I really enjoy working together is I ask questions in a different way than someone who is just focused on strategy might ask, and we're able to kind of figure out together okay, what is it that we really want to accomplish here, what are we solving for? And then we can figure out what the steps are to get there. But I think that's the biggest mindset shift that you have to have is like it's not a series of steps that you're just going to click, click, click, click, click and done. It's going to be different and dynamic, depending on what your use cases are and what your priorities are, and then you very well, will be iterating on it. So don't don't expect that it's going to be over with and you can erase it from your brain, because it'll be back.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah. No, it sounds very similar to the career paths that we all took to get to MOPs too. There wasn't there weren't steps to get there, it was just we found our way.
Speaker 4:I don't know that many cmos that have the brain that a good mops professional has right like I know. I don't and I say this all the time.
Speaker 4:I make andrea laugh all the time because I'm like I want to do this thing. I don't know how, I don't know if it's even possible, but like can you tell me right? And then she goes off and thinks about it and looks at systems and goes, okay, here's the three different ways. I think we could do this. I'm like great. But like me getting there, or like you know the simple things, like I had to build a lucid chart the other day, which is a mainstay of our mops team, and because I was like, oh, we need to do this and oh, we need to do this, and so it's a webinar series that we're doing, and they're like can you create it? And I'm like, oh, my brain doesn't work that way. It took me so long to create this lucid chart, but when I did, I was speaking my mops team's language right, I was able to go check, check, check, got it.
Speaker 4:Yep, this all makes sense, thanks.
Speaker 2:That's so funny. I literally like the way my brain works is in the form of a diagram yes, that's me too, like you, like a decision tree yeah, and I start to do the like if this, then that, all the way down the branches, like instantly and and that's just. And I think in terms of two things. It's like flow charts and spreadsheets, like those are the two. If I can't put it in a table, like I'm probably not going to be able to figure out how to solve the problem, so funny.
Speaker 2:Hartman, if you're okay, I wanted to ask yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to ask just generally about ABM as a strategy and as an approach. So do you feel you know, here we are. We're saying you got the strategic sort of minded mops individual to help drive a successful implementation of of an ABM platform and and go to market approach. Um, does there need to be preliminary work before that, and is that in any way dependent in the stage of life of the go-to-market organization? Can a, can AB, I guess? More pointedly, can an ABM strategy be used as more of a hypothesis and a test bed, or is it better suited for, hey, we're pretty solid on our ICP and now we know we need to do this approach. Which one do you think is? And is it? It depends, it's okay, I guess.
Speaker 4:Well, given that we work for a, is it? It depends? It's okay, I guess. Well, given that we work for a consulting firm, it depends? No, but I think I think almost any company can be suited to ABM, because what happens is it can be a forcing function, right, because there might be a demand function that's kind of all over the place, right. But a new CMO comes in and is like hey, we're going to do ABM. It becomes a forcing function. It forces marketing to get real solid on what they're doing and why. It forces them to actually talk to their sales counterparts where they might not have right. It doesn't mean that they're going to necessarily be successful out of the gates.
Speaker 4:I think a lot of people are like we're going to do ABM and everything's going to be fine. No, but it's going to be a forcing function to kind of get your act together Right now. If you don't take that approach and you don't think of it that way and you're not strategic and methodical about that, it can still go off the rails. And if you don't have simple things like a lead management system or you don't have a demand funnel right, you got to get that fundamental stuff in place before you know, an ABM program is not going to fix those fundamentals not being there, right? So I don't know. I feel like I kind of talked in circles a little bit there, but I do think there's, think there's fundamentals of marketing that need to be in place in order for ABM to succeed. But as long as those fundamentals are there, abm can be that forcing function that can tighten up the sales and marketing function within an organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think translating that I mean Andrea you probably would translate her better than I would because you work alongside her, but I think in my head the way I interpreted what you were saying is this idea of having the foundational layer to catch let's just call it catching the data. Right, like if you don't have a way to catch all the data and then try to understand what's working or not on the demand side, right, there's probably very little opportunity for you to decide if ABM is working for you or not, because, regardless of how aligned you suddenly are on who your ICP is and who you want to sell to, if you can't measure it, it's probably not going to work. That was how I sort of interpreted what you said and that makes sense to me.
Speaker 3:Anyway, andrea, anything to add? No, I would interpret it the same way and I think you know, back to the idea that you don't have to solve it all at once, Right? So I think?
Speaker 3:sometimes there's this idea of like oh, we're not ready, and like sometimes there's real reason. Like Jess said, I do think having lead management in place and a demand funnel in place, like those are foundational things. That's just going to help you with the change management piece, which, we pointed out, usually doesn't have someone whose role is specifically that which we pointed out, usually doesn't have someone whose role is specifically that, but I think it's good to go with it. I'm always a big fan of like having realistic expectations right, and part of that with ABM is crawl walk run definitely applies here. You can be doing ABM in like a tiny little test pilot, like just at the beginning. Maybe it's just a certain industry or vertical that you're going to do something in. Maybe you're just really going to support two key use cases that your company really needs to solve for and you think ABM and using an ABM platform might be the way to achieve that.
Speaker 3:I think that is relevant and I think that is important for people to know, because until you try you don't know if it is going to work Right. So I think it depends is a fair answer here. But I lean towards go ahead and try it, assuming most people have some sort of demand, funnel lead management process in place.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mentioned earlier that I've been in places where I've been asked to do to quote, do do ABM, and what that was really meant was someone's asked me to go buy some technology and, um, I was. I was kind of reticent in most of those cases for a couple of reasons, mostly, though, because I didn't think the organization was ready, and so my approach to that with them was and the pushback was yeah, I'm all for doing, you know, targeted account selling and marketing right, this is kind of another way of saying it and I said but I don't think we need to go buy new technology for that. But if we're going to do it like I think we can make it work with our marketing automation platform and our CRM and some manual work. But I need you to get together and identify those target accounts. That's the starting point, and they couldn't do that. But let's say you get past that and someone says, okay, we're going to get some sort of technology because we're going to be able to do it at scale. We can identify the target accounts. How do you operationalize that so that you can take advantage of the crawl, walk, run kind of concept of going first?
Speaker 1:But also this is a thing I ran into a similar scenario I think that I've run into before where people want to do lead scoring and they they the sit. You get this stress about coming up with the lead scoring model because people believe that it's the one time and only time they get to do it right, whereas I believe, like, do what you can as well as you can. You know, don't be frivolous about it. But there's a point where you go like, okay, more discussion about it and tweaking of that model is not going to really make much of a difference. Let's go try it and then let's see how it works and then adjust. And it feels like I think you both have said something similar and how you would approach an abm technology implementation as part of a strategy in a long-winded way of saying, like, like that operationalization piece of it, like, how do you like, how do you get started? How do you turn that into a recurring process where you're evaluating it? What's the kind of resources you need?
Speaker 4:Did you want to start, andrea, or?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I guess for me it just still comes back to like aligning on those key objectives, right, like that's number one. But as far as like going forward and operationalizing it, all those steps that I kind of laughed at earlier about setting up integrations like those have to be done right and you just have to start to see what the tools are offering you. So usually it's a lot of intent, data right, and really understanding what that means and helping. A lot of it is, I feel, like, at the beginning, and, jess, feel free to jump in or disagree, but it's a lot of education at the beginning and making sure that throughout you're educating and reminding everyone what we're looking at, what we're trying to achieve and what we're not trying to achieve. I think that is something that, like, it's really easy to say, oh yeah, we had a kickoff meeting and we explained what this means to everyone and we're all good. Now we're moving forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but did that land? Did they really understand what that means? Do they know what intent means, like? And so I think, for for me, like that's as far as the first step in operationalizing it. There's a lot of education there. There's a lot of just trying and educating of yourself. Right, because every tool is a little bit different and we all know words and some of these tools are strange. They might not mean what you think they mean, like the campaign object. You know things like that, they're all of. That is true with ABM tools as well, so I think I don't know. As far as the first step in operationalizing it, yes, turn it on, but don't underestimate that education piece that you're going to continue to repeat and come back to and the alignment piece that you're going to come back to over and over and over until you're at the quote unquote finish line. That doesn't exist because you're going to be iterating again and expanding.
Speaker 4:Well, and I think it's the development of the use cases that are so key. Right, because I mean you know the promise of these technologies are huge, right, and there's a lot of things you can do with them. You know, and you know once again, when you look at your entire tech stack and where do they fit in? That could be a whole nother podcast. Right, because we can talk about having a tech stack versus a connected ecosystem that's working together right?
Speaker 4:That's a very, to me, very different things. And where does your ABM technology fit into it? And how do you rationalize the features and functionality of each to make sure that there's not duplication of efforts or identify those gaps and those sorts of things? But long story short, though, is if you just say here's the tool, go use it, that's rough. But if you can say, hey, okay, first we're going to use it for these two use cases, that impacts these other, these other two, you know technologies that plug into this, and here's how they now work together versus how they used to leverage it.
Speaker 4:I mean, it was as simple as one of my clients. They used to start all their segmentation in Marketo. For every campaign Marketo, they needed to now switch to leveraging demand-based for their initial segmentation. That was a huge change management shift for them, right To get everybody to think that way. And we're starting at the account level and we're starting in demand base. Now that that MOPS team that used to do that segmentation marketo, they had to be trained up on demand base, but only the parts of demand base that they really needed for that use case, and over time we expanded use cases and what they would need to know about it. But we started with those use cases to kind of you know, fence it in a little bit about what they were going to have to really learn, internalize and operationalize.
Speaker 1:So, is it? I think I hadn't heard either of you talk about this specifically, but I think it's implied is that when you have these different use cases and like what the goals are, there's also should be ways to measure whether or not you achieve those too. Is that like? Is it metrics, is it? You know? So binary? We achieved this, we didn't achieve that. Like what are you seeing in that, especially in the early stages?
Speaker 4:I think the early stages if there's one thing everybody should walk away with, is define what that is. So few organizations actually define that. And so at month nine, when their CFO gets the renewal notification and they're like, well, prove the ROI to me. And you're like, well, cool, Actually, that's not how you actually prove the impact of this tool. And they're like, well, you know, I don't know any different. You tell me how you were supposed. Right, that's a part of that alignment up front and part of those use cases. What is it? Show the impact. It's not always ROI. I know every CFO in there, you know, wants a true ROI number. It's not always ROI Right Saying that sales is getting intent insights. You can't prove the ROI on that, but you can show impact. You can show impact that, hey, if they were seeing intent for account accounts that they showed intent for closed, you know, 1.75 times more often than those that weren't showing intent.
Speaker 4:I mean, I guess you can back into an ROI number, but no, not really. That's an impact right. And so articulating that though, saying hey, we think that sales is going to be this much more efficient, and you need to articulate what that efficiency is right and marketing programs are going to convert at a higher rate because of X, y and Z, right. Listing out those metrics is really important upfront so you don't get stuck in the well, what's the ROI of this tool? Discussion at month nine of your contract.
Speaker 1:Andrea, you look like you were just like ready to jump in there.
Speaker 3:No, I just completely agree because I do think, like there's so many like niche little pieces that these tools support, right, it's not just like you do ABM, like we touched on in the beginning, like some organizations buy these tools and all they really want is the intent, right, it's not just like you do ABM, like we touched on in the beginning, like some organizations buy these tools and all they really want is the intent, right, they just want that additional signal that's going to help them in surfacing what sales should focus on or follow up on.
Speaker 3:Right, and for some organizations that might be fine for a bit. I would say they should expand on that. Like Jeff said, we should define some more use cases and move that forward, move the needle a little bit, but I think in that case it's a completely different calculation of success or not success versus someone who is using it in some grandiose big way, like you read in every single case study. But I think back to the idea that it doesn't have to be all at once. I think that's a big piece of it is making sure you know, for each use case that you're developing, what are we trying to achieve here and, to your point, how will we know if we've achieved it and how will we be? No, when we're ready to like move that needle and move to the next step or the next use case, and I think that really just depends on what those use cases are.
Speaker 2:Hmm, so have you ever seen an organization like actually take the gamble? I don't think. I just don't think it's possible when I think about commissions and stuff. I'm answering my own question before I even ask it. But it's this idea of hey, we're going to give half of the sales team intent signals and the other half is not going to get it, and then we can say did it move the needle or not? You focus solely on this and then you don't get it. I would feel bad for the other group.
Speaker 4:So no, not to that degree. But typically we have clients start off with a pilot, so it's going to be some sub-segment of their sales team, right? So you can start to prove it. It's the same thing. You know. Account-based advertising, right? It's really hard because account-based advertising has a much higher CPM than regular advertising. So you know your traditional media firm's going to be like it's just too expensive, let's get rid of it.
Speaker 4:But if you're willing to do an AV test and say, okay, we've got a thousand accounts on our target account list, these 500, we're going to do account-based advertising too. And these 500, we're not. It's not forever more, it's for two months. Right, you can typically prove oh, look at, look at the increase in engagement or the visits to our website on the group, getting the account-based advertising versus the group. That's not. And then you know you proceed as as originally planned. Right. So you can do little, little pilots to prove, right, where you don't have those hard ROI numbers. But to prove that something has an impact, right. But once again, defining that upfront and saying, okay, here's, here's going to be our proof of concept, to prove to everybody that this is working Right and this is what it looks like, and get everybody to go, yep, okay, if it works like that, we agree that we'll move forward.
Speaker 1:That's really important um in this world. Well, I think your point of pulling in, like if you get to the point where renewal is happening on a piece of technology and the cfo is questioning it, you are already in a really sort of an upstream position or you're swimming upstream kind of position. Because if you, if you that up front, you're like this is how we're going to measure it and how we're going to know if we're successful, and you get your CFO or head of finance whatever that person is you work with of a finance standpoint, get them to support that yes, that in fact will be enough for us to go. Yeah, it makes sense Then I think you're in a much better position. So jump on my stump again. Like knowing how to speak finance folks matters. If you can do that, it's going to be huge. And that doesn't have to be ROI. They know that some stuff can't be measured that way, but they want you to try right. They want you to at least put the effort in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So because, like you should be thinking about like, like, ah, okay, I'm going to stop, because I could go on a rant and I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't need to derail us about this idea of intent, just intent. Signals, operationalizing the team explain. You know, we touched a moment ago on, or you all touched a moment ago on, this idea of of truly understanding the use cases and adopting it. Um, do you find that they're really just totally curious? Like, do you find that there's um's a risk sometimes of almost like I'm going to use the term spoon feeding the next step, versus getting the team to take some of that data and think critically about how to operationalize it? I guess, contextually, right, if I'm seeing an intense signal, is it my job, as this person helping with abm, to say and here's the next three messages you should send, or here's what you should glean from this information I've just shared with you and you should run with it on whatever way you want from there, like which, which? Because I? Which camp do you fall in there like?
Speaker 2:I feel like you, you run the risk of over spoon feeding a team, the next steps, and now they're like the dog. That is a rude way to describe it, but for painting a picture, it's the dog that you fed that wants to follow you around and of course, they're not going to do that because they're savvy business professionals. But you just want to strike that balance right Of like. Okay, how do you tactically operationalize around this stuff? I would love to hear what what you normally do there.
Speaker 4:Jess, you want to take the first step? Sure, so that, once again, I think this is where you know, no two ABM strategies have ever been the same right, and you have to look at the organization and what the organization expects and needs, right. Typically, you're also going to look at okay, if there's an SDR team and an AE team, right, you might treat them differently. The SDR team, you might do more spoon feeding right, Because they're typically, you know, first or second job out of college. They do more spoon feeding right, Because they're typically, you know, first or second job out of college. They're in their 20, right.
Speaker 4:But people who are in AE roles have are more seasoned professionals and stuff, so they should know what to do with intense signals without being spoon fed. That being said, that is not always true. So it depends on the maturity of a sales org how much you have to really give them the answer, versus allowing them to kind of decipher it, and sometimes it's upfront. You have to give them more and then, as they get used to and they start to learn how to work with intent, then you can actually back off on how much you have to feed them.
Speaker 4:But, there's not an easy answer there on like always do this or always do that. It's really going to depend on the culture of the sales org and the maturity of the sales org.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think, andrea, that it's helpful for, or do you think Mops has a role to play in that sort of strategic enablement component? I could envision an organization running workshops right Like here we're going to run a lunch and learn on how to interpret some of these intense signals and some action steps. You might take off of it. You know, I don't know if that's something you all do, but yeah, I mean I don't know. I can totally see that happening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I can totally see that happening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we definitely think it's good just to be always talking about it. Like I said, the education thing is just always there and as far as, like the MOPS person involvement because it is it's coming down to those same structures, structures, processes that MOPS is typically already supporting, like your demand funnel, like your lead management system. Right, it's all intertwined at some point because, really, what we're just talking about, like various signals that all equate to wanting to know who we should be talking to right and wanting to know who's engaged enough, who's sales ready, who's not, those sorts of things. So I think, from a MOPs perspective, like it's really important because all of these things are going to converge at some point. And so, yeah, I think lunch and learns talking about it. I think talking about it from the tech perspective of like this is how I can surface information, or I can surface it this way. So, kind of back to the spoon feeding thing. I don't know if I'd call it spoon feeding, but you always have to start somewhere, Right?
Speaker 3:Same thing with like back in the day when everyone was first deciding what are we going to do when we get an MQL? How in the day when everyone was first deciding what are we going to do when we get an MQL? How are we going to notify sales? Is that an email? Is that a task? Is that an email and a task? I think you have to start somewhere. But then getting their feedback and understanding okay, they said this didn't work. Or, oh, this account that was marked as an MQA didn't have enough.
Speaker 3:When I talked to them, we were missing x, y or z and just being able to refine, so it's less about spoon feeding and giving them something to respond to, so that you have that two-way dialogue about how to make it better. I think that's a good call is the secret sauce to what is going to make it great yeah, the way I don't think I wouldn't use.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't use spoon feeding either. I think it's like it's being realistic about where that organization is and meeting them where they are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you give an open-ended like what should we do?
Speaker 1:Everyone just kind of goes are you talking to me Putting something?
Speaker 3:there and then having the response is usually more helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this time is flying by. I didn't realize. But we're going to have to wrap up here soon. But I did want to get one more question, because we kind of have. I think this is an important one for our audience, who may feel like they're not involved with the initial strategy for ABM. So do you have any recommendations on how our listeners who are in marketing ops mostly revenue ops can get involved and be seen as part of the strategic? You know the planning for either you know continuing to evolve an ABM strategy or implementing one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I know for me, like at first, like anything, right, I'm just researching everything I can and I think that you know number one it's like from ABM is not going away, despite having the ebbs and flows of it being trendy or not trendy. Like it's here, a lot more people are using it more and more every day right, and we're so lucky to work with some of them. But I think all MOPs people should keep in mind that it's coming. They might not be experiencing it at their current role, but their next role they're going to experience or their role after that. So I think, initially, just whether it's priority for your organization right now. Educate yourself on what that means, because again, the term ABM is so vague Like what does that mean? Like it can support a lot of different use cases and you know you start looking at one thing on LinkedIn. Luckily, thanks to algorithms, it starts feeding you more of that type of content Like this is actually really helpful there. So that would be number one like, educate yourself whether this is definitely coming at your organization or maybe isn't even something you'll tackle at your current role and it'll be the next one.
Speaker 3:The next piece is like doing what mops people are good at to begin with, which what I think is like the secret sauce to being a good mops person is asking the hard questions, not just saying yes. Thank you for your request. I will execute it right Asking. What are we trying to achieve here? Is the goal for sales to decide what to do with it, like the question you asked? Is the goal for sales to decide what to do with these signals, or is the goal for us to only tell them when something is like at X point Right? So really just getting that clarification and constantly asking those questions. I think you know, at first, when I, you know, was coming up as a baby mops person, I don't know what the name would be a juvenile mops person you feel like you're being the squeaky wheel.
Speaker 3:Cause you know you're the one that's saying, uh, have we considered this or what about that? And I think it's really honing in on that skill and flipping it around and being the person who's like you know, asking that in a more productive way. That helps others see you as someone who can think about strategy. I think for so long people were like, oh, we won't talk about strategy because the mops person's in the room. That's not the case.
Speaker 3:I think you really have to use that muscle of asking questions and asking the why behind what they're trying to do. It's really going to get you there and it's going to help you help form what's going to happen right. Because my initial goal in being involved and being the loud one to speak up was I am one of those people that someone was saying here, andrea, do this thing, and it's completely outlined for me. I like, but I want to help decide how it's going to be Right, and so for me I think it really had to start asking those questions so that I could have a seat at defining what that looks for our organization versus just being seen as like an order taker, and that they were just going to tell me, hey, plug it into Salesforce and we'll be good, because that's not going to be true.
Speaker 4:So I think, just ask the hard questions, educate yourself and I think those hard questions have oftentimes painted Mops people as kind of the buzzkill in the room right, and they're not. If you actually bring them to the table upfront and let them ask their questions and let them be a part of the solutioning right, your solution, your strategy, your execution is just going to be that much better because they've asked all those questions upfront and so you're not going to go down a path and then have to backtrack and do something different because everything's been thought of upfront. So if you're a demand gen leader or CMO listening to this, bring your mops people to the table up front.
Speaker 2:So many good nuggets Love it. I'm sorry I'm going to say this again and Hartman's just going to smile and shake his head at me. I hear so much product management in all of this, like it is my I'm on this, I'm on this Hill that I'm going to die on. Jessica and Andrea I. You are a product manager in Mops. Your product is made up of many products and you have many users and you need to understand the use cases for those users and how to implement those features and Timebox, when and where we're going to implement these things. So all I heard today was more justification for the fact that you are a manager. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think you're just, I think you're just hearing things, Mike.
Speaker 2:I know I've got a filter on my ear. That's all I hear now. I hear what I want to hear. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, this has been great. We really had hoped to cover even more ground, so I'm I'm sorry we didn't get to do that. But, jessica, andrea, thank you so much for sharing. This has actually been really, really helpful. I think our listeners will benefit as well. If folks want to keep up with uh you, what you're doing, what is going on at your organization, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 4:Uh, invertacom is really. You know, we've got. We put out lots of fun marketing campaigns, educational marketing campaigns. Our most recent was who killed ABM. Who killed ABM as you can tell by today. We don't think ABM was killed by the time. This actually airs the storyline. The secret storyline is she actually faced her death because everybody was doing it wrong.
Speaker 3:So definitely check out that campaign. It's been awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, all right, fantastic. Well, thank you, it really is. It's been helpful and good. Mike, thanks for joining. Thanks to all our listeners out there and until next time we will talk to you later. Bye, everyone, Bye.