Dan Cafiero: Winning Enterprise Deals with ABM

Sourabh:
Hi everybody. Thank you for joining us. And I have with me, very, very clever, very intelligent, and very dynamic B2B marketer, Dan Cafiero. How are you, Dan?

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Dan:
Good morning. Happy Friday. I'm doing well. How about you?

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Sourabh:
I'm doing well. I want to give a big shout-out to everyone that's watching live, and everyone who's going to watch on demand, because these things get hundreds of views on demand. B2B marketing, we all seem to know what we're doing, but we don't talk about it openly enough. That's what we're going to do today. We're going to break the funnel and learn more about what you're doing at Seagate, with your ABM team and your tactics, to win those enterprise deals. But just before you explain that, I do need to acknowledge. Dan, Seagate is a ubiquitous brand. Seagate means storage. Most of us have bought some sort of Seagate product as a consumer. But what is an enterprise Seagate customer? Are there brands you can share with us? Who would that be?


‍Dan:
Sure. That's a great question. I just want to start off by saying, yes, Seagate is a really strong brand. We have a crazy long heritage, 40 years in the industry. We're one of the top three in the world, globally, that are creating data storage devices. And when it comes to who our enterprise client could be, it's really anyone that's creating data, especially a lot of data, whether it's on-edge, or on-prem, or mobility between the two. I would say, a typical customer, or one that I'd like to focus on enterprise, is probably in the M&E space. Because whenever there's video creation, or generation, there's a lot of data there. Depending on the amount of data that you're storing, you're a great enterprise client for us.

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Sourabh:
Love it. Maybe help us understand the way that you define ABM at Seagate. Are all enterprise customers ABM, or did you start with a narrowed list?

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Dan:
Right. Just to clarify, ABM's a strategy that's broken out into tactics. I wouldn't say a customer is or isn't ABM. They all qualify to be in an ABM program, depending on the amount of engagement or intent, or traffic that they're giving us. Essentially, what we started doing was working with sales, generating a targeted count list, or total addressable market, and going from there. But we found pretty early on, that the match rate across platforms, across the board, is not too great. It's around 50% to 60%. From there, we moved forward the Salesforce connector to see if we can do better match rates there. Over time, what we realized is, we use the platforms themselves to generate the TAM, and actually, works a lot better.

Using ICP, or ideal customer profile, parameters within Demandbase, we're actually able to create a 38% larger total addressable market than previous quarters. Plugging in things like primary verticals, or revenue size, company size, different firmographics, technographics, demographics, helps us create a much larger market, that we can then segment, break apart, and then create personalized campaigns based on where those accounts sit in the funnel. Essentially, we can create and generate different campaigns, different messaging, different content, based on where those accounts fall in the funnel. And that's all based on our engagement methods, our Engagement Minute methodology.

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Sourabh:
‍Which is what I'm going to get to next. Thank you for that framework. I know you've been doing it for a bit, but it's actually quite a novel approach of not going by that, hand-by-hand, line-by-line. These are all the accounts. But look, this is our buyer. We know our buyer. Who else is like, "Let's just go get everybody that's like this." And then, let's structure and put them in. Now, that's the account level. You just led into it, just briefly there. Could you start talking about how you then started to identify the leads, or the prospects, and how you started to enrich those contacts? What were you using to do that?

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Dan:
‍Right. For leads, obviously, we have a lot of different targeting demographics and lots of target titles. We're looking at decision makers, cloud architects. It really depends on the product. We'll use platforms like Leadspace, TechTarget, Demandbase, to enrich those contacts and accounts, and then go after them, essentially, creating tailored messages around their pain points that we're identifying through these platforms. That way, the sales team can, essentially, reach out, break that barrier. And then, the whole idea is that, by tailoring your message, by getting through sooner, you're decreasing the sales cycle, and increasing velocity, and accelerating your pipeline of revenue goals.

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Sourabh:
Okay. Thank you for that, Dan. Now, I'm going to pick right up there, because we're going to talk quite a bit about sales, and sales messaging, and personalizing. And then, we'll come back and talk about the data. But you're a marketer. And most people don't know this. You have this extensive history. You've done campaigns for Intel, for Citrix, for Lego. You created videos for a hospital with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. You're quite a prolific marketer. But you are a marketer. How did you guys work with sales, to get the messaging aligned, so that... The outreach, the decks, the scripts, did they come from marketing? Are you using what sales gave you? How did that happen?

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Dan:
Yeah, that's a great question. Just to ladder back to what you're mentioning, that was my agency days. Lots of fun, cool, interesting, sexy projects, I would say. It's hard to make a data storage sexy, but we definitely try. I think, too, ABM is all about alignment with marketing and sales, how can you turn insights into action. For me, I'm setting up monthly trainings with the sales teams, with SDRs, getting them all trained in how to use the platforms the right way, so they can identify the signals, and then go after the accounts or the leads that way. We do tons of live trainings, recorded trainings. I put together decks, walk through them with them. It's a lot of teaching. It's a lot of over-communication in large enterprises.

And of course, as you know, there's a lot of turnover, especially in SDR roles, because a lot of SDRs... It's their first job. I record everything, put it on SalesHood, and just make it mandatory that everyone watch it. Because what I'm trying to do is teach them to, essentially, prospect more diligently with the data available. How do you turn insights into actions? Six to eight months in the past, you're seeing an account or a contact is showing either early stage research and unbranded keywords that work or align with your products, or they're showing late stage vendor evaluation. That's a segment right there. They are either upper funnel, that you want to nurture them, or they're more lower funnel, and you want to reach out to them sooner. And then, on top of that, the Engagement Minute methodology consolidates all of those intense signals, the web traffic, engagement with campaigns.

If they're a BANT lead, that'll appear in Demandbase. And we've connected outreach to Demandbase as well. You can see if there's a call being logged, if a meeting's being held. You have a really holistic picture and overview of what your team is doing against this account. It's really helpful to understand that at a high level. You can see and identify patterns in the data, that you can then take back to your team and say, "Okay. This is how this account went down. What are similar accounts to this? How can we do this again and again, and again?" And what you're doing or creating is a methodology that you're then instilling in the sales team.

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Sourabh:
And are you doing this across the marketing organization? Is there a dedicated team that does this with sales? Or does product marketing come in and out? Does customer marketing or lifecycle marketing come in and out? How does this work when you're on the front end with sales, and you're coordinating so closely on these enterprise deals?

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Dan:
Yeah. No. We have all those teams, sales element, products. It's just a lot of collaboration, a lot of consolidation. I think the idea is, with sales, you just want to give them the easiest thing. You don't want to overwhelm them. What we did with Demandbase is we created a series of reports that go to sales. It's called a snapshot, but there's, essentially, 15 different reports in one email. It goes out weekly. And it's based on their specific list. It's pretty much saying, "Hey, here's your stack rank list in order of priority based on their engagement, based on their intent, based on their web traffic." Or "Here are accounts that recently were marketing qualified, but have no sales, such as." There's all these different reports that just make it a lot easier for them to really hone in and focus on their accounts, and focus on what they need do, which is sell, right?

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Sourabh:
‍Perfect. One last piece, which you just touched on then, then we'll go back to the data. They need to focus on selling. And that's what they're experts at. And especially at a ubiquitous brand, it's easier for them to get their foot in the door, but they've got to build that credibility and relevancy really quick. Because I think I know what you do. Why are you reaching out to me?

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Dan:
‍Right. Everyone knows who Seagate is, so I don't think they need to build credibility behind our brand and name. But yeah, obviously, they need to build a relationship with the person, right?

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Sourabh:
‍Right. Yeah. Exactly right. Because no matter how big you are, or how great your solution is, what does that have to do with me and my job? I don't see the connection here.

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Dan: The idea is that we're understanding your pain points ahead of our outreach. And then, we're breaking through those barriers of saying, "Hey, I see they're interested in this. Maybe I can help you with that. I think we can work together on this." Stuff like that. I wouldn't go as direct as saying, "I saw you were looking at this." Because sometimes, sales reps say that to me. And I'm like, "That's super creepy." Auto block.

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Sourabh:
Yeah. It is creepy. And then, the other part of it is, that's not really helping me. If you tell me, "Hey, we saw that you signed up for a webinar," no offense. But as a seasoned tech buyer, or a seasoned marketer, I'm going to be like, "Yeah. no, duh Sherlock, tell me something I don't know." This is already wasting my time.

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Dan:
Let me go to the webinar without calling me five times about it. That's the worst. I'm just like, "Okay. I'm never signing up for a webinar again." There's too many.

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Sourabh:
Right. Exactly. Right. Like you said, you're building that outreach, you're building the approach, and the personalized messaging on the pain points. What is it that they actually want help with? What can we actually do for them? Now, before we move on to the data, which will be interesting here, and the methodology, I think this is really good for people to listen to and understand. And then, they'll have to figure out how to implement it. This all doesn't happen in a day, but one other piece. This is everything you are doing for sales, Dan. What does sales provide back to you? Do you get data on meetings booked? Do you get data on leads that are lost, or leads that went zombie, or quiet, or deals that completely went to a competitor? How much do you see?

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Dan:
‍I'm glad you said that, because we have this thing called "Awaken the dead," which is bringing back zombie accounts that disappear via email nurture. Yeah. Again, ABM is all about alignment. Sales provides the optimized feedback loop. They tell us what's going on, what's working and what's not, and how we can improve. A few quarters back, we were looking at the data, and we saw, using platforms like Demandbase, we actually increase sales-ready leads by 38%. It was really helpful to see that. And again, it's all in the platform, so I can go in and see it. And then, I'll do reporting, quarterly or monthly, and just let the team know, "This is how many meetings that we booked through ABM insights. These are how many meetings we booked through ABM campaigns." It's really helpful to have all the data consolidated for me, because I am a team of one, doing a lot of these campaigns, doing these programs, and reporting back on them.

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Sourabh:
‍Perfect. Okay. You are getting the data back. And we'll talk about personalization. But first, let's talk about the data that's allowing you to do all this. Please, if you wouldn't mind, slow down and explain to us, what is the Engagement Minute methodology? What does that mean?

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Dan:
‍Sure. That's a great question. Engagement Minutes is, essentially, a scoring methodology that is built and deployed through Demandbase. Everything that a contact or an account does, essentially, is scored and weighted. If you are on our website looking at a certain page that's specific to enterprise, something that I'm interested in, that's a score. And if you are a VP, it's weighted as higher, versus if you're someone that's an influencer over decision maker. There's scoring, and there's waiting, essentially, on every action, whether it's engagement on the website, responses to campaigns, emails, InMails, calls, intent. Obviously, intent's weighted a little bit less, because it's offsite. But the whole idea is that we build and deploy this scoring methodology based on our inputs. And then, the scores help us prioritize accounts for outreach. We also push in data from other sources like TechTarget, Priority Engine. All of that intent is going into Demandbase, to enhance our scoring. I like to think of Demandbase as the turkey and tech target as the stuffing. We're in holiday season. Come on. I think I lost you. Oh, you're on mute.

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Sourabh:
‍That's all right. Someone has to be mute at least once during a live broadcast. It's like a rule. No, I was just saying, I love the analogy of the Turkey, or the framework, and then the stuffing. The stuffing can get replaced, but you still have just that one Turkey. I do want to come back on the engagement minute methodology. Now, this is happening, as you said, for a number of influencers, a number of decision makers, and also, maybe, some tertiary influencers of the deal. Somebody may have been sent something in legal, or in IT, to look it over, especially what you guys sell. Definitely, you've got folks in SOC compliance and security looking at stuff, who will need to sign off on the deal, but aren't in contact at all, with your sales team. Can you give us a sense then, of how the buying committee... What are you able to see as far as the size of the committee, or how many folks get involved? And how long does that normally take?

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Dan:
That's a great question. I think it depends on the size of the company. As we spoke earlier, before we went live, if you're at a startup, one person wears many hats. They could be the CLO. They could be the CMO. They could be multiple roles. The buying company's obviously a lot smaller at startups, or SMB companies. Whereas at enterprises, according to tech target data, it's about six to eight. But when I do things like BANT programs, I'm always trying to get at least five to 10. Because two of them won't pick up, two of them have left the company, two of them don't exist. When you do a BANT program, where you do a lead generation program, you probably want to get at least five to 10 contacts per account, just because the response rate's probably a little bit lower than you're hoping to see.

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Sourabh:
‍Yeah, I think five to 10 is really good guidance. And then, of course, like you said, every deal goes differently. Sometimes, there's just two or three people, and they carry the whole thing through. And you're a little surprised, because you don't know what's happening behind the scenes.

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Dan:
‍Yeah. I think a lot of it is, you want to identify an internal champion. And they'll drive it for you. But enterprise deals take up to a year, I would say.

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Sourabh:
‍Right. Exactly. Right.

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Dan:
‍Because when I ...

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Sourabh:
‍Go ahead, sorry.

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Dan:
‍... back at Demandbase, and I see intent, six to eight months in the past. If a meeting's booked, I'll look retroactively and see when they started searching. And then, it's always around the six to eight month mark, where they're doing that initial research. And then, they're kicking off a project. And what's cool is TechTarget has a little buying committee tab. It'll show you all of the people that they've identified on the buying committee at that account. And then, you can use this thing called "Click to add." It's just a one-click button, and it duplicates that contact in your Salesforce instance. The team really likes it, because really easy to use. I think, for the sales team in particular, it's all about usability and easability of use. If it's a one-click solution, they love it, versus... When you have six different platforms, six different tabs, and everyone's toggling between tabs, and then they just want to give up. But if you have everything integrated in one place... And that's why we like demand-based TechTarget, because they work really well-tailored. They're integrated. They have panels in Salesforce. That is like, keep sales in Salesforce.

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Sourabh:
‍Yes. Exactly. Keep sales in Salesforce. I love this. You just segued perfectly into the next piece here. Let's be honest, without putting numbers, because you're a public company, but some of these deals are very significant. They take a long time to build. And they frankly, really hurt if you don't get them. It's an all-in approach. You really do need to win this. Where does the personalization come into this, of... We should take content we have, or create new content, just for this deal, because it's worth it. You're a team of one. How is that even possible?

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Dan:
‍Yeah. I think content creation, at scale, is pretty difficult, I would say. But what I like about Demandbase is we can do personalized digital display. That is a way to do a little bit of personalization without too much of a heavy lift on us. Whereas, my agency days, we would do everything... If it was a one-to-one program, we would customize everything for just this one account. But what really gets that meeting booked is just that early stage research. When we were, on behalf of Citrix, targeting Wells Fargo, we realized our CIO really liked Formula One racing. We invited them into an event. That got a conversation going. That booked a $15 million deal that went year-over-year. I think when it comes to personalization, you really want to focus on research, and understand the pain point, and who that person is, and then do that specific outreach, whether it's one-to-few or one-to-many.

A lot of my focus here at Seagate, because I'm a team of one, is doing one-to-many at scale. Personalization at scale can come in... And looks like digital display. It could be using something like a follows, or an Uberflip, to do personalized webpages. But again, I think, personalization, it's like that fine line of creepy, versus, "Oh, I did my research. And I see what you're interested in. And I'm sending you something that will get you excited, something that you'll share on social," versus, "Hey, let's get a virtual coffee." No one wants to get on Zoom. We're on Zoom all day. Let's be face-to-face and have a real discussion. Who are you as a person? I want to get to know you and build a relationship. I also want to network, because we're all working remote, right?

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Sourabh:
‍I just got a comment from another very senior marketer I know pretty well here, just came in, which is that, "Yeah, we are getting contact acquisition, but our job, as marketers, is to nurture." This is where I was going with the customer journey question. Do you see that there's certain content, or there are certain pain points, that are better suited from that initial contact acquisition, or that are better suited later stage, as the deal is developing?

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Dan:
‍Definitely. Again, our journey stage is based on Engagement Minutes. We have upper funnel, mid, lower. And to, essentially, enter each part of that funnel, you have to have a certain level of engagement, or meet an Engagement Minute threshold. Something like 20, 40, 60 could be a way to differentiate that. And then, each journey stage has its own campaign with its own content and messaging. If you're upper funnel, because you've only Googled cloud computing, you're going to get an ebook, or a white paper, or a very upper funnel survey about what CIOs think about the future of data storage. But if you're searching for competitors, like Western Digital, or any of our top competitors, we're going to put you probably lower-mid funnel, where you'll get something around our alliance and partner content, more product specific. And then, if you're lower funnel, we're going to hit you with the demo.

We're going to get you with the ROI calculator. And that's, really, where I've seen the most success. We used to do a challenger sales on my agency days. Essentially, everyone got a custom report of their cost savings sent to them. And God, it was such a pain, because we would create hundreds of these things at a time. And I'd have to go in and check every number, every calculation against... This was back in the day, before you had the tech. This was when we had target account list in Excel. If you're still doing target account list on Excel, and sending them to sales, you're doing it wrong. I'm telling you, it's not worth your time and aggravation. Get a platform. It'll save your life.

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Sourabh:
‍Right, right. Exactly. And that's a great point, something you said there about that bottom of funnel, or that sales-ready lead, and the content that is, essentially, showing them what it's like to be a customer, especially around that first year, or the first two-year mark of... We need to know if the person imagines themself as a customer, because then we know that they're actually heading in that direction, or if that's where they draw the line. I don't want to calculate ROI. I don't actually want to know the details of implementation.

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Dan:
‍You don't want to save money.

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Sourabh:
‍Exactly. Right. Like, "Wait a second, I thought that was your pain point." Or "I don't care what your onboarding process is like." Wait, why wouldn't you, if you actually want to use our product? That makes no sense.

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Dan:
‍Onboarding.

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Sourabh:
‍Right. Think about what you guys sell. It's not a rip and replace. There's got to be a migration plan from where they are. It's the brains of their business, their data, right?

Okay. Last question then. What is your measure of success internally, as an organization, for the ABM side of things? Are there some key metrics that you guys hang your hat on, and everything else will come second, but we really need to nail these things every month, every quarter?

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Dan:
‍Yeah. When I started, we were launching a new product. It was all about generating awareness, but over time, it was less about MQLs and more about SQLs, right? How can we drive meetings, book meetings? How can we drive and accelerate pipelines? I would say, right now, my main focus is, how do we book meetings faster? How do we move accounts, leads down funnel faster? I've been focusing a lot on velocity, which is the time that each leader account stays in a stage, and how we use Salesforce and Pardot automations to reduce that time. Because if we can reduce the time a lead sits in every stage, we can shorten the deal cycle and then accelerate the pipeline. A deal that took a year, if it could take six to eight months, that's great. It's more money in our pocket faster. It gives sales more time to work on new accounts. I would say velocity is my key goal and metric currently, as it drives with pipeline acceleration and revenue generation.

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Sourabh:
‍This is wonderful, Dan. When you and I were prepping, you're like, "This is a lot. I'm like, we're going to get through all of this." But it's just one person.

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Dan:
‍With a minute to spare.

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Sourabh:
‍Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much, Dan. I'm going to try to see if we can bring you back. We're thinking about an event early next year. I might try to get that on your schedule, but this has been super helpful. And I will see you on the on-demand when we get this out to everybody.

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Dan:
Sounds great. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And to everyone at home, good luck with your ABM campaigns.

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Sourabh:
‍Thanks, Dan. Take care everyone. Bye.

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Dan:
Have a good one.

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