Building a Better ABM Motion

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present today's episode, I am beyond thrilled to announce that our second in-person CMO Super Huddle is happening November 6th and 7th, 2025. In Palo Alto last year, we brought together 101 marketing leaders for a day of sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness, and we're doing it again! Same venue, same energy, same ambition to challenge convention, with an added half-day strategy lab exclusively for marketing leaders. We're also excited to have TrustRadius and Boomerang as founding sponsors for this event. Early Bird tickets are now available at cmohuddles.com. You can even see a video there of what we did last year. Grab yours before they're gone. I promise you we will sell out, and it's going to be flocking awesomer!

You're about to listen to a recording from CMO Huddle Studio, our live show featuring the flocking awesome B2B marketing leaders of CMO Huddles. This time, we've got a conversation with CMOs Heidi Bullock, Patty Newcomer, and Bindu Chellapan with special guest host Jon Russo. They break down how to give ABM staying power by building genuine trust with sales, zoning in on the right accounts, and delivering value every step of the way. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Jon: Welcome to CMO Huddles. It is the live streaming show that we hope to inspire you and today, not just on B2B greatness, but on ABX. My name is Jon Russo. I'm a former CMO, now I'm an agency practitioner, and we are going to be talking about all things ABX. Let's shift gears and talk about this whole ABM and ABX. Do we call it ABM? Do we call it ABX? And there seems to be a movement right now to go to the X. Some companies call it marketing ABM because it's a marketing-only initiative. And now X comes into play because you're involving sales, customer success, upsell, cross-sell. It's become a bigger initiative for some, not all, and that's what we're going to dig into with today's guest. So we're really excited to introduce our first guest, Heidi Bullock, who's a CMO of Tealium. Welcome Heidi.

Heidi: Thank you so much for having me. This will be great.

Jon: Excited to have you, and I have to first ask, I think you're out of Palo Alto, if memory serves. How are you doing today?

Heidi: I'm doing great, and yes, out of Palo Alto. No complaints from me.

Jon: You and I, we've had a long-standing relationship back from your days as a CMO at EngageYo. You are a practitioner at heart. You really understand kind of the whole ins and outs of ABX. I'm curious. At Tealium, as a CMO at Tealium, what's that journey been like for you?

Heidi: Yeah, you know, I think the word that you use, which is a great word, is journey. I think for most folks that are, you know, looking at, you know, coming in as a CMO and sort of surveying, you know, what the business looks like. I would say when I joined Tealium, we were an organization that I think did very, very well, but we had more of a broad-based go-to-market. And I think one of the first things, you know, when I came in and again, this is in concert with others as well, our CRO, we basically said, "Look, we have, we see a lot better expansion, we see a lot better retention. We see higher ACVs when we're more focused." So I think the first thing that we did was really define our ICP. And just again, because we're a larger enterprise sale or deal cycles eight months to a year. I mean, I think that's the first thing. It's like, just make sure you have the right go-to-market. And so we spent a lot of time there and just making sure that we had the right industry focus and then the right set of criteria to pursue a certain set of accounts. And I would say, for people listening today, I think in this world, it's easy to get sort of caught up on where the tactics, because that's the fun part, thinking about our great creative direct mail strategy or our field events. But I would say that the most critical thing is getting those accounts right and making sure that people understand the prioritization. That was one of the first things we did.

Jon: That's a fantastic example. People, and I agree with you, you really have to understand what you're going after, what the end point is, before you jump off into ABM and get random acts of marketing, as opposed to an ABX type approach, right? You began kind of that key learning of where to focus first, maybe just double-clicking into that. And going a little bit further, what other learnings have you picked up based on in that role, and any surprises that you've identified along the way in your journey?

Heidi: Yes, absolutely. So I think a few things on that. I mean, there's always, there's always surprises, for sure. And I think anyone that's actually done this and put these strategies in place, I mean, I would just say, also, just don't give up. Sometimes it does take time. I think one of the first things that you highlighted, even in the intro, is I do believe it's not just a marketing piece. I think a lot of companies will not be successful if they only think of it in marketing like so for us, it's a revenue strategy. I work with my customer success team, I work with my SDR team, my sales team, and they all have to be bought in there. So I would say that is critical. Another aspect that I would say was a learning is that you cannot underestimate the importance of messaging, and again, making sure that you have the right key message. If you're, you know, selling to a large enterprise, chances are you're selling to a buying group. Are you speaking to something that the CIO is going to care about and the CMO and again, like, I know these are kind of basics, but I feel like those are key pieces that, if you get those elements right, amazing. Another key thing that I would leave people with that I feel like we focused on was making sure that we had, we called these really, like, pod meetings. And so it was marketing, the SDR, and the seller, and really attacking accounts together as a team. And I would say one of the best things that we did in that is thinking about how we can make things for sales easier and more scalable. And everyone knows, you know, when you're dealing with more of an account-based strategy, there's a lot that can be very manual. And so I'd say the two things that we did where we were able to get intent and other intelligent signals in a dashboard in Salesforce. So at any time, a rep can say, you know, these are my accounts, you know. And what is, I'll just use this term surging, but it's a combination of, you know, we use UserGems, we use other intent. We use, you know, G2, Marketo, all the signals. But instead of having them have to look 50 different places, or instead of them, depending on one marketer, because all of us, you know, no one has enough people. That's just, we all know that. So thinking about how you can get that intelligence to them faster that was one, and then using some tools to also help them on, you know, in these accounts, what is some of the key information so that they can build their key plans right their strategy. So if I'm pursuing, say, a large pharmaceutical company, do I have one place in Salesforce that will collect all the key things that are going on within that organization? So we were able to do that so that then they can craft like targeted emails, et cetera. So I think stepping back the lens of, how can I make it easier for my sellers to do what they need to do? It's not just I did a field event. I focused on this account, I invited them, and I'm done. It's it's an ongoing motion that you're living together.

Jon: I think that was a terrific sound bite, and I hope people listening really focused in on that dashboard and unified view in working in the workflow, is what I heard you kind of say is, and it's something as marketers, I find we don't think a lot about, because we get so focused, as you said earlier, kind of on the tactics, the email campaigns, the this, the that the activity, and don't take a step back to figure out, how can you make it easy for the sellers? How can you be in their workflow? I really like how you said that, and I would violently agree with you, for what it's worth. You and I could probably talk all day on that, maybe just thinking about that list of ideas that you were sharing there. There's so much pressure right now for revenue, for progress, and you and I both know that this is not an easy solve. It's not like flicking on a light switch and boom, you've got ABM. It takes some effort. Is there a quick win that you would suggest, like, either you've recognized at your own company, or if you're doing a reset or a restart? Are there quick wins that you would suggest companies focus on?

Heidi: Yes, and I think a word you just used is critical, it's focus. So I think for a lot of organizations, they might say, you know, here's our ICP, we might sell into, you know, five different verticals. Maybe, if you're just organizing your initiative and getting things off the ground, focus on your best bets first. Maybe it's we'll focus on financial services, and we'll set up a really clear program with clear success metrics, so that you can show, look, we have the right structure, we have the right patterns in place. And then when you can show that success, then you can start to scale it. So that's, that's really how I like to think about everything. It's like, think of it as almost like a small scientific test. Get that running really well. Kind of work out the kinks. Maybe you're working with some of your you know, best SDRs, best you know sellers, so that you can get some wins on the board and then, and then roll it out to other areas. I think, I think it's really important to kind of get your process down and make sure that you you have these pod calls, you have the right intelligence, you do have the right accounts that, by the way, your sellers have bought into that's something I see, you know, marketers, or they'll work with their rev ops team. Here's a list of accounts, and then it's like, kind of passed on to sales. And that's that needs to be iterative. It's almost like building a house, so get that foundation right, and then you can figure out what stove you're putting in your kitchen. It's like, that part's easy. It's like the marketing part of it, I actually feel like is actually the simple part. It's making sure that everyone's bought in and they have, you have the right mechanics set up. So that's what I would say.

Jon: Awesome response, and we're going to hear a little bit more from you in a bit, Heidi, when we get to the lightning round. So thank you for that participation. And we're now going to bring up Patti Newcomer, who is the CMO of Centerbase and Patti has joined the CMO Huddles before, both in a CMO plus and job hunting capacity in presenting to CMO Huddles. First of all, Patti, you know, I was amazed at your background, and I honed in on the WPI Worcester Polytech Institute. You're now in North Carolina. What part of North Carolina are you in?

Patti: I live just outside of Charlotte, actually, technically in South Carolina, but a mile from the border.

Jon: Excellent. Well, you and I could shovel snow with the best of them, because we both grew up in the same area, not too far from one another. But North Carolina, hopefully you're getting a little less snow than WPI in that area.

Patti: That's right, it's just cold.

Jon: Awesome. Well, look, we would love to jump in and learn more about your ABX story at Centerbase. Maybe you can give me an example of a play, a successful ABX play that's part of your ABX strategy.

Patti: Yeah, we're actually just implementing ABM here at Centerbase. I've actually implemented it in the last two places that I've been. I do have a view that it should be marketing, Account Based Marketing. I don't think there's anything that we do in marketing, especially in B2B, that doesn't require partnering with sales and other partners across the business. The fact that the account-based program is led by marketing isn't all that different from the demand gen program, which also requires a lot of partnership with sales. When I've seen ABM work really well, I agree with Heidi. It's all about the target list and the account list and making sure that you know who the targets are, and then really being able to leverage intent signals so that you can see who's in a buying process. There's been research that has been published over the last couple of months that says if somebody's not in a buying process, it's really hard and unlikely to get them into a buying process, just because the marketing is so great, and so being able to see with a variety of different technologies. I just think ABM is all about helping warm up the outbound strategy that coincides and partners with the inbound strategy.

Jon: Gotcha, and you've got some particularly valuable experience, because now it sounds like your third go around in implementing it. What have you learned in the success of rounds as part of that process?

Patti: Well, we talk about this all the time in CMO Huddles. I think the first one is really understanding who on your team is actually going to implement it and do the work to capture the learning that whatever technology you buy is going to bring. I think oftentimes we make an investment and we don't really have a plan for who's going to drive that investment along the way. So if you make an investment and you don't have a person on the team that's basically going to be dedicated to it, it's probably not worth making the investment. I think that's probably the biggest learning. And then the other one is just, it doesn't matter what we bring in to the top of the funnel, if we're not working with the team to drive stuff through the funnel and have it come out the bottom. So we need to be working with the BDRs to be making sure that the meetings are booked and demos are scheduled and things like that. And we need to be working with the AEs as they take those into opportunity and to close. And if we're not focused on did the 81 MQLs that we brought in, or MQAs that we brought in from ABM, move through the funnel and come out the bottom as closed deals. It's all for naught, and so just making sure that you're not just focused on the top of the funnel is also really critical.

Jon: Last question before we bring on Bindu, in your experience, it sounds like you're having a lot of collaboration there between maybe marketing, sales and SDRs. What's that dialogue like? Maybe at Centerbase. Or what have you learned about that dialogue?

Patti: I think it's just making sure that the focus is that we're aligned on our one outcome, which is booked deals. And we're not trying to point fingers at each other about who's doing things wrong. We're just trying to all work to get to the best outcomes. We've identified processes that are broken and data tracking issues that are broken and the messaging isn't right. And so whenever we surface an issue, if we can just be focused on, how do we get to a better answer, so that we can get to a better outcome? You know, it's just a lot more fruitful than we're just pointing fingers at each other.

Jon: Awesome. Well, Patti, you're going to be joining us for the lightning round here in a little bit. So thank you for that. And with that, we're going to bring up Bindu Chellappan, who is senior vice president of insights at Corpay. Not only has she been a previous guest, but she's talked on my favorite topic, marketing metrics. Hello Bindu, and welcome from the Atlanta area.

Bindu: Thank you, Jon.

Jon: Super excited to have you here, and you've heard now from a couple speakers talking about their ABM or ABX journey. How has your journey been with ABM and ABX?

Bindu: So we have been on the ABM journey for some time now. In the last few years, we kind of worked on our fundamentals, so we put in a lot of effort in building a prospect database, you know, cleaning the database, enriching it with the right fields, making sure that we had enough contact data too. And then after that, we refined our ICPs, built our TALs and refined it. You know, in the last couple of years, we tested a couple of tools, also ABM specific tools. So I would say, you know, those were like putting a lot of fundamentals down. And today, we are kind of in a place where we are on a very structured ABM play right now. And this is kind of our go-to-market strategy. So, you know, with that, I'd say that we have a very well defined ICP. Our technology stack is pretty much in a good place. Of course, it can evolve, but we have access to intent data in a predictive modeling. We have been playing around with targeting strategies too. Our ABM play, you know, of course, includes a very well rounded multi-channel targeting and engagement model. We have programmatic, we are looking at LinkedIn emails, of course, the next step that we are working on, and that's a constant, you know, both Patti and Heidi talked about it, you know, the teams have to go together, and we have been putting a lot of pressure on the marketing and sales alignment right now to ensure that the teams work together. You know, we are not as what Heidi was talking about, the pod structure. I love it, you know? I love the way she described it, so but that is something that we are working on right now.

Jon: Gotcha, I love how you describe that. Very similar to the two other ladies who talked about a journey. And we see that too in our client base, it's a journey of continuous improvement, if you can share a little bit, or if you feel comfortable sharing a little bit. Sales and Marketing alignment is such a common issue with so many companies. We've been talking about it for two decades, when my hair was jet black. What are the what does good look like from a sales and marketing alignment perspective? In your mind.

Bindu: So being an insights person, the first thing is, are we looking at the same data? Are we interpreting the data or the metric the same way? So that's number one, right? Once you have the data and both the teams sit together and look at the data and come out with the same insights or what is working and what is not working. I think that's, you know, number one in my mind. And the second one is like, you know, those small operational meetings where you quickly look at the data, see what is not working, you know, what seems to be the problem, and start working on that problem right away. So it's like, you don't, you know, it's a team that comes quickly and then, you know, works on things in a very agile way. I think that's, that's the key to success.

Jon: Yeah, that's who has been a journey for so many companies. So what you're sharing there is very common, and glad you kind of painted that picture. What? What does good look like? It gives everybody something to aspire to. And you had mentioned the metrics, and I violently agree, and I think Heidi had mentioned the metrics as well. You being a metrics guru, what is it that you're measuring both at the marketing level and maybe at the executive level, as it relates to ABM?

Bindu: So that's one of the things that we are still putting in place. So currently, we are looking at the pipeline and the revenue metrics. And one of the quick wins that we were seeing is that faster sales cycles on ABM. But we need to, you know, take a step back and put together a big ABM specific metrics, which would include coverage and engagement. So we'd love to hear from others also how they are, how they have approached it. You know, that is something that we're actively working on right now.

Jon: Gotcha, yeah. And that too is a journey, right? So, similar to other companies, all go through that same kind of leading indicators, lagging indicators, volume and velocity, ABX versus non-ABX, lots of ways you can slice and dice that. So we'll definitely come back and dive in with the group on that a little bit further. Are there any other last questions, any other specific examples of measurement that you're finding particularly valuable or resonating, maybe at the executive level, that they care about more than anything right now?

Bindu: I would say it's the revenue metrics. Yeah. At the executive level, it is always revenue, right? I mean, pipeline is all of us look at the pipeline.

Jon: Makes sense, makes sense, and that too, sometimes we get caught up in our own language and our own we marketers talk a lot about the tactics, as Heidi mentioned, you were talking about the technology, but when it comes time to the board, these words may not land as well as they do within this group or within this community. So super helpful. Well, Bindu, thank you, and you'll be joining us, I think, for the hot seat, Budweiser hot seat here in a moment. We're now transitioning to the part where we have to give a shout out to Drew and acknowledge the CMO Huddles. We're each going to share what we've gotten or what we've seen in terms of value out of the community before we get to the lightning round. And I'll just say I'll start things off as a partner. Just having access to these conversations with these ladies is definitely valuable. So with that, I'd like to bring up Heidi to share what she gets out of CMO Huddles.

Heidi: Yeah, thanks for that. I think the key value for me is being able to connect with other CMOs that share your exact same challenges, because in most organizations like senior roles are lonely. You know, it's like you might connect with your CFO and they might be an amazing person, but they're thinking about very different things, or, you know, your head of product. And so it is really nice to talk to other individuals and organizations and realize that a lot of the challenges we face are pretty similar. And I just feel like I get incredible ideas from people. It's really invaluable.

Jon: Awesome. Well, thank you for that, Heidi, and I would agree with you. In my limited time as a CMO. CMO for 10 years, it is a very lonely road, and now you've got a lot of communities, like this one where you can share expertise. Patti, do you have anything to add to that?

Patti: I have similar I'm a founding member of CMO Huddle, so I've been around for almost five years, since Drew started it during COVID. And I would say almost the same thing that Heidi did. It's really nice to hear other people that are dealing maybe more successfully with challenges that I have, and having people that I can reach out to. I also really try to be inspired externally by what's going on, and so it also helps me keep up to date on things. I've got, you know, several people through CMO Huddles and other groups that have helped me with AI and how we really use AI, and what are some cool new technologies that are coming out and things like that. And that would just be a lot harder to get access to if I was out on my own.

Jon: Excellent. We're going to dive deep into AI Patti. So thank you for bringing that up, and that'll be in the second half here, in the lightning round that we're going to get to in a moment. But wrapping things up. Bindu, what anything else to add to those two points of view?

Bindu: So I echo everything. What Patti and Heidi have said, you know, peer driven learning. So I've been with the Huddles for a little over a year now. So, you know, it's incredible, peer driven learning, you know, thought provoking discussions every single time I'm, you know, in a huddle. And just to give an example, you know, a couple of weeks ago, you know, as we were looking at building our target account list, refining our target account list, I had a question, I posted to the group, and then, of course, I got so many responses on how the different CMOs have managed it, how they have optimized it. So I'm so incredibly grateful to be a part of this group.

Jon: Excellent. Well, that's a great recap. And if you have further questions, visit CMO Huddles.com. In fact, there's a QR code. It's up in the corner. You can click on it and it'll bring it right there. We're now getting into the lightning round, where we're going to open it up to all candidates to talk here. And our first question, which we somewhat covered, but we'll ask it a little bit more explicitly, because, as we said, it's been a journey for a lot of us on ABX. If you had to identify one common mistake that companies consistently make on rolling out ABX or doing a reset of ABX, what what should be avoided, or what's that one mistake in your experience?

Heidi: I think one key mistake is operating in a silo, and if marketing is not regularly meeting with the sellers, the SDR team and also customer success, that's a real missed opportunity. And again, like, there's a lot that marketing may need to go then do on their own, but you always have to make sure, like, these are the key accounts that we all agree that this is what we want to be pursuing. We all feel that we were talking to the right people, I would say it's that. And I would say internal expectation setting around when you will see certain impact. So as an example, Sam pursuing these five pharmaceutical accounts, I always say, Look, our first goal is to get the right names the right individuals in those accounts. Do we know who the CIO is? Do we know the director of marketing? Great. Now, are they engaged? Great. Now, are they at a level where they're engaged enough that we could ultimately get a meeting, and I think level setting on that timeframe? Because I think some people, they're like, Oh, you rolled out, you know, ABX for this program. It's just like, we've all seen this with events like, where are the where are the deals. We just went to this picture. Joe, it's like it doesn't work that way. But I think a lot of individuals don't set those expectations early so that everyone gets it. I'd say it's those two.

Patti: And then I'll just pile on with one that Heidi you alluded to earlier as well, which is, and the you alluded to just now is it's all about the list and all aspects of marketing, but in ABM especially, so it's all about the list. And if you don't, if you're not aligned on who is the list and who are the people and who are the roles between you and sales, you shouldn't do anything else. And we've gotten in my journey on this. We have multiple companies. We've definitely gotten hung up there a couple of times.

Bindu: I'll add on to it. If your existing processes are broken to start with, ABM will only make it worse. I think the foundation is, of course, you know, get your data right. Make sure you know this. You work on the alignment between the different teams, and then, you know, work on your processes. The last few years, we did a due diligence of all the things, how the leads moved through the pipeline. What were some of the things that were broken? What were the SLAs that had to be put in place? So it's a work in progress, I would say that's something a mistake that companies would make start with that.

Jon: Those are three terrific viewpoints, and just double clicking on Bindu, on that last comment on data, that's the gas in the engine you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on your selling function, your sales, your SDRs, your marketing programs, potentially a platform. It all runs as fast as the quality of your data. So if your data is not good, be it account hierarchical data, contact level data. If you're not really thoughtful about that, you're going to be not making a lot of progress. And we commonly so just echoing what you said there, Bindu, and not disagreeing with any of the other points of view there, I would violently agree. Let's shift gears. We can't have a conversation in marketing these days without talking about AI and what I'm hearing right now in AI and, you know, I would love to kind of hear either use cases or ideas or thoughts. Some of the challenges that I'm hearing right now are, one, it's very difficult, other than a BYO, bring your own ChatGPT and, you know, doing it off the side of your desk, it's very hard to scale. And a lot of people have transformational aspirations of AI, are you using AI and ABM? Where do you or ABX? Do you see a vision there? Like, what types of experiments or ideas that you can share here that are working related to AI?

Heidi: I think AI is all about scale and efficiency. And for us, I mean, like I said, I think using AI to help automate the account plans, and having that in Salesforce, there's tools like Clay that you can use. There's a few that we use. We use Copy AI that's helping with, like personalization at scale. And I think the key is ABM is easy. When you're doing the one to one, right? It's like the top five biggest accounts that everyone can do, and that's usually, most companies don't have the problem. It's more at scale and AI, especially when you need to know a lot about the account quickly. Historically, that's where your SDRs have spent a lot of their time, or your AEs, like I need to read, you know, their annual report, all of that. AI can take care of care of all that. Like I said, we have kind of the key account plans now in Salesforce, so a rep can go in. Here's my target list, and I already know what I should be prioritizing, and I also know what I should be saying. So I think again, and we all know that you still have to review this. It's like, it's not to say that AI does it, and you just close your eyes and it goes but I think it gets you that 80 to 85% improvement. And I also have seen AI, and we also used it for scoring, so really automating some of the scoring and prioritization, I think it can be used there as well.

Patti: So I think early on with AI, it was all about writing stuff, like, I'm gonna have AI write this email or this blog post or whatever. And I think that that is great. What I'm trying to do and get my team to do is use the AI tools as a thought partner, so both in ChatGPT and in Claude, and even some in Perplexity. It's like, what are the things that you're challenged with? And ask them to give you plans and ideas and strategies, and just like you would when you had a conversation with, you know, with a peer, use that and do it. Do it in multiple places, because they give you multiple different answers. That has been really—I have a super resource constrained team, and so if everybody had to start from scratch on everything, we just wouldn't get very much done. But we're using it as a thought partner, and I'm using it as a thought partner with some of the challenges that I'm dealing with.

Bindu: For us, every tool has its AI component. So it's, you know, we have been using, and being in insights and analytics, that is something that you know, for predictive lead scoring. We have been using that for some time now, and lately, we've also started using—and again, it's not, we're not using a specific tool, but we are, you know, for account research. So, you know, again, it's not in production. It's, you know, very much like, depends upon the rep. We are using that to do more account research. And we've started, the marketing team has started dabbling in personalization. How do you use a Gen AI tool for personalization?

Jon: Yeah, makes sense. It sounds to me like people are just like with ABX at varying levels of adoption of an AI strategy, and I mentioned at the outset, shifting gears now back to ABX and kind of the approach that is going on internally right now. And this might be a sensitive topic to ask as a question of, hey, what's the conversation like with your board of directors? It would be uncomfortable for me, so let me reframe the question a little bit. In my experience of dealing with marketers and non-marketers that are executives, there's almost this clash and tension between a lead-based mentality of the board of we got to generate X number of leads. In the meantime, you bring in a new currency called account-based. Are you seeing that conflict, or how would you suggest reconciling that conflict? If you've been through that before, what would you advise your peers on how to reconcile those two currencies, and keep in mind that as background the boards that we typically run across PE and others. They're very quantitative. They're very smart people. They're very quantitative, but all they think about is lead, lead, lead because it drives the number of SDRs, it drives the number of sales, it drives territory, it drives revenue.

Heidi: Making sure they get the right GTM, because, I mean, what you just said is, like more of an inbound motion, right? And I think that boards, it's part of our job is always ongoing. Education—people have to understand, like, look, if you're selling a large enterprise deal, it's not about volume, it's about the right accounts and making sure that that's clear to people that you're applying the right go-to-market model for what your business is, right? It's, they're very different, and I think education. But then I would also say most boards I find don't really care about the lead number, or if they want bookings, they want retention. They want like, are we growing? Or, you know, how do we feel like our brand is performing in market? And I almost think marketers do themselves a disservice when they get into some of the more tactical elements. It's like, look, if you're showing great growth, if you're showing like, retention's improving, ACVs going up, like, that's what they care about at the end of the day. They don't mind feeling is they don't really care how you get there. And if you do have a board where maybe it's a smaller organization, and they care about those things, it's important to maybe get them prior to a board meeting, and just go through your go-to-market and why, why you're using this strategy? Because, again, these larger enterprise deals, it's not, it's not 25 cents in and a gumball out. I mean, I came from Marketo, and we did a lot in that world too. I feel like create that demand gen model, and that's great if you're a volume, velocity business, but if that's not your product, that's not the right GTM.

Patti: From my perspective, we're talking of—I agree with you. On the board cares about the metrics. What's the pipeline? What's the closed? How big are the deals? Are you going after the right ICP, but we have had an issue historically with the percent of inbound, like, how much of the pipe is coming from inbound versus outbound. So I've been talking about this in the context of, we need to increase the amount of inbound because it's warmer, and we need to use ABM to warm up the outbound and, you know, and to get to the larger prospects. And so there is somebody start, I think Heidi, it may have been you at the very beginning, about what's the point? Like, what are we doing? And so that's how I've been talking about it at the board meeting at Centerbase.

Jon: Excellent. And looks like we're on to our final question here, actually a question and a statement. So what if we kind of reverse engineered that and talked about perhaps your sales peer, and what conversations are you having with your sales peer as it relates to ABX? How has that journey evolved? Because we're all on a journey here. How has that conversation evolved? Or are there any best practices that you would suggest if you don't feel comfortable sharing exactly what's going on? There anything you'd suggest there?

Heidi: I think sellers love to win, right? Everyone likes to win, and I think if you can partner with them and help show that what you're doing is making it's reducing friction from their lives, and they're getting those wins either in less time, the wins are bigger. The sales team's happy. I can't stress that enough, and that's even I Patti talked about this earlier. That's regardless of whether you're using classic demand gen or ABX or whatever. And I think sometimes we love the academic nature of what we do. All of us can. I'm sure everyone here on this can geek out in all the ways, but at the end of the day, if we're not reducing friction and making it easier for them to close business, kind of doesn't matter. So I always come to the lens, like I said, like, how can we use AI to, like, give them the intelligence and. Need quicker. So it's like they're not spending time on that, and they can spend more time, you know, engaging with these folks. Like, what are the things a marketer can do that just gets rid of friction? That's kind of what, what I feel like I spent time thinking about, but that's, that's kind of the lens that I try to attack it with, and just getting very honest feedback from your sales partners, because you want them to always feel like they can be honest. It's not like, hey, marketing, we did our job. Now it's your problem. It's our whole it's all our problem if things aren't working. So I think in marketing, it's really always have to be open to the feedback. And some of it, you're not, you're not going to love all of it, but just keeping that, that line of communication open, is really important.

Patti: Yeah, I totally agree with that. The only thing I would add, we're in the process of having a conversation about where we are with opportunities, and I feel like that is a big win, because it's we're not just having a conversation about MQLs, right? And it requires a partnership between sales and marketing to actually be talking about the pipeline. And so it's, how do we make sure that you have enough pipeline to get to the deals that you need to get to. And to Heidi's point, how do you reduce the friction? How do you make that easier, whether it's warming up their outbound or bringing in more inbound, as long as they have, you know, more pipeline to get to the outcome that they need. That's been a win in my mind, in in terms of the conversation versus, hey, I delivered all the MQLs. You didn't move move them down the pipeline. You didn't move them down the funnel. That's not my fault, and that's not the conversation.

Bindu: And I will add to this, one of the things that we are actively doing now is to educate the sales team every seller as to how the leads, you know, what are we doing with the ABM tool? You know? How does the intent signals come in, right? And so that they buy into it, and the hope is they test it out and let us know. How do we refine it further? So, you know, again, it's a journey.

Jon: Excellent. There's a question that came in from the audience, and I'm going to paraphrase it from it looks like it was directed to you Bindu, from Paul Green, asking about the spread between tool AI and build your own AI programs. Can you share kind of a point of view on that?

Bindu: Sure. So we don't have a big team, right? So my, my insights and analytics team is pretty you know, it's a small team. So here's how I look at build versus, like, use a tool. These are, like, very standard models, elite, you know, lead scoring models, a very standard model. Building something in house takes a lot of time and effort. You know, we found that it is better to outsource it rather than build it in house.

Jon: Gotcha. And what? Just a follow on question there, if you can pop up that other question about the team composition. Bindu, I think it was pointed to you, what groups are represented. Was the team look like if you're able to share that.

Bindu: So my team, it's insights and analytics. So I have the, you know, what of the data, so everything about the data and analytics and why aspect of it. So I have researchers, and, you know, they kind of strategist, go to a lot of primary research and secondary research, talk to a lot of customers, surveys and in depth interviews to understand why something is happening in the market. And the what aspect is all data. We just go into, you know, our data, look at the market data, etc. So it's, it's a it's a combination. It's like, that's what I call my team as an Insights Team.

Jon: Gotcha. And just to add on to that, how about your ABM team? Since you brought it up, any insights on the ABM team composition, and maybe for any of the other ladies to answer this too, like, what does that look like from an org perspective? I think that actually would be a really helpful and good question that Paul was possibly interested in as well.

Bindu: I would love to hear what Heidi has to say about the pod. You know, that's super intriguing, but for us, it is like the regular people you know who are doing marketing and sales. We all have come together to build this. So there is not a very dedicated team. There is, of course, you know, a person who's like, operationally managing the ABM and the tool aspect of it, but all of us are, like, working together on this.

Heidi: Yeah, I would say it depends on the size of your organization, obviously, and the size of your marketing team. I mean, there's people listening that they're probably, like, my marketing team is four people. There's other people that maybe have, like, you know, a larger, like, 100 plus team. And I would say, so that lens, you know, we have to think through that a little bit. But I would say the way we have it set up is, I have centers of excellence. So like, I have a digital center of excellence. I have, like, our RevOps team, and they have certain responsibilities. We have, you know, our events team, it's a center of excellence, so they support different things, but for ABM, we basically, it's kind of the classic. A lot of us have grown up having, like, field marketers, and I have, you know, ideally, a field marketer paired to each RVP. But they do more than field marketing. They're really an ABM marketer. So their job is really to own the strategy with that RVP for their region, because, again, it might be different, like in the northeast, you might have, you know, financial services, you might have more healthcare. So our plays and what we're thinking about there might be different content, different types of events. So we really think about it that way, and it's their job to set. At the pod meetings, where we have the SDR, the AEs, and we go through the accounts, and we look at, are we bringing in the right people? Are we engaging them, you know? And then when was the last reach out? It's like, say, say, the engagement on the account is poor, that's on marketing. And then we have to figure out, like, what's our next strategy, or if the engagement is great, but there hasn't been a meeting set. It's like, hey, SDR, you know, what do we need to kind of do here? So it's always kind of looking at the data with that team and figuring out your next strategy. But I do like having somebody that pairs with an RVP. They've got to be close to the business. You can't be, you know, I'm somebody that sits, you know, in San Mateo, just in my little world and not out. I don't think that works.

Patti: And I just I agree with that. I've had smaller teams, but having a marketer that pairs with the sales person team territory and somebody from data or operations to make sure that all the data is coming in right, and that you understand the tracking and all that has been those two people and functions have been super critical.

Jon: Excellent. Well, we're uh, into the closing, closing words, so final thoughts as we go around the horn here, of anything that comes to mind, any wisdom, any tips, anything that resonated here, maybe we'll start off with Heidi again, of anything to share related to ABX?

Heidi: Yeah. I mean, I think we've said it, but be very thoughtful with your account selection. Do not forget about internal marketing and making sure that everybody's bought into your process and what success looks like, what people can expect to see in the first month, what people can expect to see in three months. And I think just again, like setting those expectations, we'll probably see some good pipeline, but that might be at month five or six, and I think that's really important. And then I think the other last thing I'd say is always consider, like, how can you remove friction? Don't create a bunch more processes where sellers are like, really? That says, Why are we doing these other 50 things? Now it's like your job is to get rid of that make it easy for people. And AI is definitely a place to look for that lot of cool, new tools that can help.

Patti: And the only thing I would add is, you're not done when you've finally gotten the dollars in the budget to invest in the tool and the technology. You've got to go a lot further than that.

Bindu: And I will add, make sure your processes and data is ready for this step.

Heidi: Excellent, Jon, I've got one more for everyone. Add one more tool is not going to solve your problems. And I feel like there is this belief that in the world, like, if I just buy this one thing, things are solved, and it's like, your tool is not your ABM or ABX strategy. I just have to say that I've seen it so many times. It's like, not going to solve it. It's you're more your team and your process.

Jon: I think that's an excellent point, actually related to Bindu's point too. As sometimes we see companies with the strategy of buying the tool, and it puts a spotlight on your processes and data. So if you don't have either of those in that foundation, as Heidi said, Your ABX is going to be a constant set of resets until you get better. So the tool is going to amplify it. I want to thank Heidi Patti Bindu for investing your time in CMO Huddles today. So thank you, ladies.

Drew: To hear more conversations like this one and submit your questions while we're live, join us on the next CMO Huddle Studio. We stream to my LinkedIn profile—that's Drew Neisser—every other week.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!