Davis Potter: Growth ABM vs Enterprise ABM

Sourabh:
Enterprise ABM, Davis.. When you say that, what do you mean? What are the goals of enterprise ABM? How would you categorize it?

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Davis:
So you've got these two new frameworks that are derived from the frameworks of the past 20 years, and this is how ABM is best practice in 2023 and where it will be moving forwards. When it comes to the enterprise side, think of an organization that has the resources to put a full fledged wealth, 18 month long campaign within a one-to-one type motion or a one-to-few type motion. And the biggest caveat here is resources. You can be  a startup, you can be a mid-size enterprise, and if you have the resources to do so, you can run Enterprise. But typically you're going to see it in your larger organizations who have that field marketing team, demand-gen that's spiraling on all cylinders. And enterprise sits on top of that. The main goal is that you've got these strategic or select accounts that are top priorities for the go-to market motion, and you are just adding fuel to that overall sales motion fire in terms of, you know… Our overall goal is “We're gonna build this campaign specific to an account or a subset of accounts. We're gonna give them something  very personalized. We're gonna make them feel incredibly special”. And that better customer journey of the customer experience leading to the increase in conversions, reducing the velocity in terms of how long it's taking for these sales cycles to close. And the true goal is “How do we make these accounts feel, feel special and, and get love on a different level than your traditional field marketing demand gen?”.

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Sourabh:
‍I'm actually very personally familiar with this, right?  Because I've worked at the world's largest brokerage. I've worked at the world's largest networking company, right? They have the resources and there were absolutely 30 or 50, what we would call, “Can't Lose Accounts”. It doesn't matter how long they've been with us, or even if they're not with us. By the end of the year, we must have this account or people are literally getting fired, right? So give us an example. You said something there that I'm gonna call a little BS on. Okay? Just right out the gate. I understand the timelines for many of these deals are 12/ 18 months. But dude, that's not gonna work in today's market environment. Give me an idea of on a quarterly basis, Davis, what does Enterprise ABM deliver to the Marketing and the Sales Org?

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Davis:
‍So you've got your overall quarter goals, but these enterprise sales deals, they are that, you know… It's not a three month close/one month close. You're shooting for that long-term deal and you ultimately want that deal to close faster than the 12-month sales cycle. But these enterprise deals, they do take that time on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Let's say you're just starting Enterprise ABM from scratch... There are two different ways that I really would focus on measuring. One being, “How are we growing revenue within the account?” And then also, “How are we increasing contact engagement?”  So let’s almost break down those two different buckets. So on the growth revenue side, which to me is most important, and this is also what resonates the most with your C-suite or your leadership and your board, obviously.

When it comes to growth revenue, the things you should be looking at are “How many opportunities within this account or the subset account are being created? How are we influencing pipeline? If there are opportunities that were created before our program started, how are our tactics influencing those opportunities?” Velocity is another big one. And I'm very bullish on using velocity as a metric, specifically on the growth revenue side. With the notion of dark social or all of these different places like communities, peer-to-peer conversations, organic social. There are all these places that you can't capture within your traditional marketing attribution, where your customers are having their touchpoints. And so velocity is my favorite way to bucket that and look at how we're making the impact in places that you can't measure. So that's the growth revenue side.

And then the contact engagement side, I like to look at it in two different ways: How are we increasing contact engagement at that macro level, meaning the full account? Are contacts engaging with us? But then the most important piece, and this is often overlooked, is the buying route. So going in your CRM, tagging those core people, and if you're just starting off, you're probably not gonna have it perfect if it's a new logo. If you're an existing customer, you'll have some intel, but most likely with ABM, you're trying to break into a new business unit. So you're not gonna have it perfect there either. So it's gonna be continuous iteration, but you want to have those 25-30 people tagged in your CRM and map the specific engagement of those people as well. So you're looking at it in two ways.

Macro or our programs at a go-to market level, making an increase on contact engagement month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter. And then specifically “Do we have and know the right people in the buying group?” This is not just your C-suite, a couple people who are going to sign the checks. This is the full sphere of influence, and to have the right people and are they engaged? And I'll give you a number that I would shoot: it’s 60%. That is the industry benchmark for a very healthy contact engagement within the buying group. And what's really interesting is when you watch the correlation between an opportunity or a deal progressing throughout the sales cycle, when you've signed that check or when you're in that legal stage, you're gonna see 90, 95, sometimes 99% of that buying group all engaging with you. So making sure that you have those key people tagged is very important and not just looking at it from the macro account view.

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Sourabh:
‍Yeah, and I mean, I can give you the data. I can't name names, right? We work with the largest companies. Privacy is everything, right? Their competitors are literally on this webinar. I can see them, right? I won't name them either, but you know… We have seen this progression of campaigns being run from where the target was five  leads from a particular account to 15 to, as you just said, “Give me anybody that has these criteria”. I am way off with these small numbers of buying groups. They're not that small anymore, right? And also, I've got to find some inclination of the right buying window. You can't do that if you're not reaching enough people. But Davis, I have to switch gears or this whole webinar will be over time. And it can't, right? We have this other thing. So, my friend, what the heck is Growth ABM

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Davis:
Growth ABM, this... If you are a smaller organization or you're a one-person ABM team, this is probably going to be more applicable to you. And the way that I stumbled upon Growth ABM and was really able to make the distinction is I went to launch scale and optimize ABM within, you know, one of the world's largest, most renowned organizations. And then went to go to a VC-backed startup in a hyper-growth space. And when you're launching ABM in that massive org  versus in that hyper-growth startup, it looks so much different. It is not apples-to-apples when it comes to ABM frameworks, when it comes to tactics. When you're in that big organization, you've got a huge budget where agencies are there to help. But when you go to that smaller side, you're doing it yourself. And not only are you on the hook for building the landing page, drafting the messaging and pushing it live, but you're also responsible typically for more accounts. Because you don't have the resources and you don't have the luxury of being able to say, “Hey, I wanna focus just on a one-to-one, or I want a one-to-few”. You're gonna have hundreds if not thousands of accounts that you need to cover.

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Sourabh:
Okay, hold on a second, right? Hundreds or thousands. We won't have time to cover thousands, but let's say I've got hundreds from solo, doing this myself, right? I have a budget, but it's not very much. By the way, there are a number of our clients that are larger companies where their ABM program sounds a lot like this now. It's been shrunk, right? For obvious reasons, right, given what the company's going through. Alright, let's for a moment talk about what you said there, which is targeted counts on the growth ABM side. I've got hundreds of targeted accounts. I mean, peanut-buttering is not gonna work, that's not personalized at all. Am I supposed to prioritize or tier? What am I supposed to do?‍

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Davis:
Absolutely. So you take those hundred accounts and what you're gonna wanna do is use the data that you have, which could be, “What is your go-to-market strategy? Do you have intent data? Do you have any existing engagements?” Whether it's MQLl/SQL opportunity. And then also couple out with conversations with the sales team and you're gonna bucket these hundreds of accounts into three distinct tiers. So tier one is what you'll probably call, “Hey, this is our one-to-one”, and tier one has a smaller number of accounts. And you're going to have tactics that are more personalized. When you get down to tier two and tier three, tier two is a bit more watered down from one-to-one, tier three more watered down as well. And depending on what tier you're in, that is going to determine your tactical eligibility. So tier two will have some personalization but not as robust as the tier one. And then tier three is more, “How do we scale and do the tactics that are able to touch a lot of accounts?”

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Sourabh:
Yeah. As an example, 'cause I've been through this. I followed the same path, went from massive, you know, corporation to scaling a company to unicorn status, you know, “Yay!”. But it's a lot of stress. An example, just to make this real for folks, tell me if I'm getting it right. So in our tier one, our Can't Lose Accounts, especially when you're at a VC-backed startup, there are certain accounts you really do need to win or like accounts, or you've got serious issues with your company in the optics of what you're doing, right? So we’ve got our tier one, one-to-one, hyper-personalized, similar to enterprise, just faster or smaller, okay? Tier two, one-to-many, right? We're scaling what we've learned from tier one, but we're not giving it that attention. And in tier three, I'm assuming we're using what's working in tier two, but we're focusing on targeting. We're not able to personalize tier three anymore, but we can target versus our general brand marketing. Is that in the right ballpark?

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Davis:
Exactly. And a real world example would be in your tier ones as well. Maybe if we're going to, you know… One of the most recognizable ABM tactics, your ads… Tier one would be a personalized ad specific to the account. Maybe it has their name in there, the name and the copy as well. And your tier one accounts are getting that level of personalization where your tier three are getting the more generic type ad that speaks to your ABM messaging and the industry that you're targeting. But you're not getting the name of the account and taking the time to actually build those specific ads.

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Sourabh:
Yeah. And then just to give folks an example, right? Because I also do need to move on. We're halfway through, we're gonna run out of time. This always happens with us, right? But I do respect this morning time for people, so we're gonna keep it to the 30 minutes. As an example to what Davis is saying, when you go beyond the personalized, using the company in the ad and sometimes even comparing our, “How are you doing” versus, “How it's ‘so-and-so doing’”, right? When you get to tier three, to build on what he's saying there is, you may just be able to personalize your ads to job titles, right, or pain points and industry. Which is still far more personalized than your general brand advertising, which is straight-up just putting you in a category of consideration. It's not even specialized as  job title or industry. Okay. Alright. I'm gonna double down on one more thing here on Growth ABM. When would I not use it? Davis, when is it not a good fit for me to go after this growth ABM approach in favor of say, Enterprise?

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Davis:
Resources. That is mainly what it comes down to. Resources and then also your go-to market strategy. So what this would look like is you wouldn't want to do enterprise ABM if you are a startup and you have to cover a lot of accounts. You don't have the luxury of taking… Usually for enterprise, it takes about a quarter. It takes 90 days to set up the program. And on the growth ABM side, you don't have that time. You have to get this thing up and running in a matter of weeks. And additionally, you're looking at, you know… On the enterprise side, your campaigns are those long running multi-touch orchestration. On growth ABM, you have to do more plays. It's, “We're gonna do a sprint of this type of campaign, push it towards our tiered account model, and we'll run a couple different plays within them”. It's all holistic in the end, but it has to be much faster. Enterprise ABM is not for everyone. Growth ABM… Anybody can leverage a growth ABM model and enterprise ABM almost sits directly on top of growth ABM. So as we're moving towards the future of account-based go-to market, growth ABM is really going to be that next level of demand generation where it's, “We're getting hyper-targeted and strategic in where we're placing our resources with that tier account model”.

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Sourabh:
I totally get it. I do want to throw out a caveat here though, right? Because it sounds like, “Oh, well this could be a solution to everything”. One thing I think it's important, and correct us if we're wrong here. I'm gonna ask the audience, if you do have a question, please get it in 'cause we don't have that much time left. So I will try to work it in. I still have one more from yesterday that we got that I wanna work in here. So one thing to keep in mind is the way you've described it, Davis, and the way it actually works out in the real world, right, is growth ABM  is highly experimental. It's agile, right? It runs off sprints and you iterate. And if you are in a situation where you have hundreds if not thousands of sales reps, right?

And SDRs waiting for qualified leads coming in right? To feed into new deal opportunities, that I think you do have to admit that a certain percentage of your ABM budget is committed to a longstanding enterprise ABM strategy that is less experimental, maybe a little less exciting, but extremely reliable, right? If you are working that… As an example, if you're customizing events, if you're able to bring your enterprise accounts, you know, your ABM accounts into events, design round tables or small things around them, that stuff just works. You know, it's not as exciting, but it is extremely reliable. Am I getting some of this right between the mix, between the two?

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Davis:
‍Totally. And even on that event strategy, if you are doing the enterprise ABM, which is more on the one-to-one side, an example of an event that you could do in the enterprise that you couldn't do in growth ABM would be, you know, “Hey, maybe we're having a demo deck for a specific account where we're going in and we're building a bespoke event where it's only for that one-to-one account”. We're on the growth ABM side. You don't have the ability to do that. So your event is… Maybe it's more focused in terms of our invites on our tier one. It's more strategic if it's an exact round table, we only want our tier one. But you have to get more accounts in there. You can't just be focused on, you know, “Doing a event and put your resources for one account.

Sourabh:
Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, right? Because again, we don't talk about this enough. If you're not an established brand and you don't have the pull, right, to bring in your tier ones into a demo day, you shouldn't do it. Like Davis is saying, you should get thought leaders together, make it an invite only 30 or person or so, or even 15 or 20 virtual, you know, experience. And bring people together on the thought leadership side, engage who may be ready for a personalized or one-on-one experience, but trying to run a demo day when you don't have brand recognition is a very disappointing experience.

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Davis:
Absolutely. And the smaller events as well, if you have a really compelling topic or thought leader coming in, whether it's a round table or whatnot, those rush. And the experiences are also another thing that you can layer on top of those to get more of those accounts in. Because all the leaders want to talk to each other and hear what's working well and not working. And that can be a really great powerful tool on that growth ABM side.

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Sourabh:
Okay, I have two questions left. One, I've gotta get in here, even though it's not on growth, right, ABM, but it is probably the number one request we are getting from existing and new clients. And we're not alone. A lot of folks are getting this request right now, right, on the demand gen side. Zombie Leads. They were perfectly good leads, we were doing great. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with these prospects, but engagement has disappeared. How do I revive these zombies? I'm talking specifically within my ABM accounts. Any ideas for our account-based marketers, what they can do to re-engage perfectly good ABM buying groups?

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Davis:
That is such a great question. And the engagement, like the lead engagement… If this was someone who was previously engaged, I want to know and go back in the data and say, “What were they engaging with? What were the topics that were resonating? What type of events were they going to do?” And then, you know, when looking at that, see where the cutoff point was, what was their last engagement touchpoint and build a hypothesis around why. And when it comes to, you know… There are a lot of different tactics that you can leverage, whether it's retargeting or inviting them to bespoke events, continuously nurturing them. But even in the macro environment today, it can shift so fast given what's happening from a go-to market level  in terms of business pivots or budget pivots. And so there's a lot of that going on. And if you want to re-engage someone, it definitely depends on what their engagement level was previously. But that’s the first place that I would start. “Is there a way that we could give them more value in that path that they were finding interesting?” If it was.. They're really interested in account integrity or some level of fraud. How do we provide value within that specific lane that resonates really well with them in terms of nurture or next-level tactics?

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Sourabh:
Exactly. And I'm gonna call out a difference here, right? Because you, you talked a lot there about growth ABM tactics, you know, to rebuild that velocity. Just throwing in one example in the interest of time. On the enterprise side, and again, you can't do this if you're on the growth side, if you don't have it, is partners, right? Zombie leads and re-engagement with perfectly good buying centers are great for when you're running partner programs because often a partner has the engagement that you may have lost, and they can bring you back in. Because it's not like you're not a trusted brand. For some reason, you fell out of relevance, right? So again, another difference here is on the enterprise side, it may not sound as exciting, but you have things like partner ecosystems that you can leverage, right? On the growth side, I'm sorry, You're not there yet.

Perfect. So last question here, and this is really sort of forward-looking, Davis, right? Velocity. I'm gonna sum up a lot of what we talked about today. The #1 word that folks can use to secure their teams, secure their budget, get back to a seat on the table instead of just wondering if you know the axe is gonna fall on their program next, which is the environment a lot of us, you know, in the tech world are in, right? Velocity. What would you advise our more senior audience members? I'm talking VPs or above that are responsible for the entire program and maybe even other non-ABM programs, anything they should be looking for as far as velocity of lead conversion and pipeline creation

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Davis:
Velocity? The biggest metric I'd be looking at is “How fast are your ABM-supported opportunities closing?”, and compare that to a control group or your company average when it comes to accounts that are similar to the ones in the program. That is such a crucial metric because ABM… You're putting more resources into these accounts naturally, and with the additional engagement touchpoints and with all of this extra help, your opportunities should be closing faster, which will lead to shorter sales cycles. And that shorter sales cycle leads to quicker revenue, which leads to bringing the sales team and bringing your ABM program to new accounts. So, you know, revenue just increases incrementally. And the two biggest buckets that always open the eyes of the board or of the C-suite, it’s revenue, “How are we growing revenue?”, and, “How are we increasing contact engagement?” Those are the two metrics I would absolutely put on every single deck that you're presenting and every single month look to see how the bulk of those metrics are performing.

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