ABM From a Product Marketer's Perspective - A Conversation with Rob Young

Speaker A: Foreign. For those that have been following my partner and co host Christina Geralo on LinkedIn, you see that she's been talking a lot about the integration of Brand Demand Land and Expand motions. Four motions. But they need to be integrated into one cohesive go to market strategy. Expand needs to be embedded across all four of those motions. Today we're going to discuss that in deeper detail. I'm, uh, bringing in my guest today who's going to talk about how he's building out his brand with the idea of doing ABM in the future. Today my guest is Rob Young, CMO of Lock Threat grc. Rob, thank you for joining me today.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me here, uh, appreciate it.

Speaker A: Yep, no problem. Now I know Lock Threat GRC comes from a spin off of another larger cyber security company and you're having to redo the website, the messaging, the positioning. But as we were talking before this podcast recording, you was telling me how you were building it with the idea, uh, of uh, it supporting abm, um, in the future, supporting the go to market in the future. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you're building the brand, the messaging, with that in mind?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So, you know, at Lock Threat, so we're a GRC automation solution. Okay. So we're helping companies automate all of the rigorous processes around showing. Well, first of all, establishing, um, compliance with frameworks like gdpr, ccpa, hipaa, all the, you know, there's literally hundreds of these things. Okay. And companies struggle with doing that. So we're helping them automate the processes to get that compliance and then also automate the efforts involved in demonstrating that compliance when they're audited and whatnot. So we're generally marketing and selling to um, infosec and GRC leaders. It's a rather, um, as you can imagine, risk adverse audience. Right. I mean they're, they're all about reducing risk to the organization, making sure that it's secure. So credibility as a vendor is huge. Right? Trust, credibility and all this. I mean, I think every marketer, no matter what segment and vertical they play in, is going to tell you that trust and credibility is important. It's pretty cliche, but I would, I would venture, uh, to say that in cyber, in grc, it's even more so the case. Um, so, you know, in terms of us building out Lock Threat as a new, you know, new entrant in this space, um, we kind of took that real, we took that really serious, right? Like we need to make sure that, uh, that we stand Out. It's also a crowded space, right. There's a lot of uh, cyber security and GRC vendors out there. So it's how do we stand out one, and then two, how do we make sure that when we do stand out, we're coming across as a credible, trustworthy partner, um, for the companies that are interested in doing business with us. So one of the first things we did, I mean we had to do some table stakes work. And I think last time you and I spoke we had done some of that, right? Create, created the homepage, created some of the, some assets where people can learn a little bit about us. Um, you know, book demo pages, like we had the foundational pieces there to kind of talk about who, who we are and what we do. Um, then we were taking the next kind of step, um, in that journey when, when, since you and I spoke, which is start to build out not so much who we are and what we do, but the outcomes that we deliver to, to our customers and got. And also very specific to the different Personas that we satisfy and also the um, different verticals. Right? So um, that's what we've been working, that's the work we've been doing, right? We are now we have some new capabilities coming out around AI security and governance. So we created dedicated pages to speak to those, um, those buyers who are focused in those areas. There's even some new titles we're seeing coming out like Chief AI Officers. Chief AI Risk Officers. Right. So we need to be able to speak to these Personas directly in a way that resonates to, to them. Um, and then we also did the same thing for cyber compliance. We did the same thing for enterprise grc, which is our core less about what we do and more about the outcomes that folks can expect. Um, specific to where their interests lie, based again on where they sit in the organization, their title, their company size and whatnot. So we want to be much more personal. What we didn't want to do, which could, we could have, right, is let's keep it simple and just kind of create some very uh, broad message messaging on our website, very broad messaging in our advertisement and just kind of capture whoever we can and hopefully convert them on that very broad messaging. It's easier, simple, it's faster, it's probably even cheaper, um, in the sense of running those ad campaigns. But it's not as successful, right? It's not as meaningful because it's so generic to everybody. If there's the saying out there, right? If you try to be Everything to everybody. You end up being nothing to anyone. So we didn't want to go down that path, so we went down the more challenging path, which is let's get super personalized and targeted around the Personas that we want to go and help them achieve said outcomes.

Speaker A: Not only the Personas, but also in even the council you were looking at, because I know you were spending a lot of time on the icp, which I see a lot of people do. Everyone's. You see so many discussions now about the ICP on LinkedIn. You. Everyone's talking ICP, ICP, ICP. Most of them, if anything, they're defining the total relevant market and not really the icp. That's a whole another conversation. But what I'm seeing is, well, I'm defining this icp, my brand content, my brand website, my brand messaging still speaks to everyone.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And to me, the ICP are those accounts that are, um, predictive of actually landing and expanding with you. And notice again, the expand, because I said that should be with everything. Even the brand, my foot. Messaging should be with those that are going to most likely grow with us because they align operationally, execution culturally. They have a situation where, um, the competition, and especially as you were saying, your space is very crowded. So how can we show how the competition and the status quo approaches that uh, companies are currently using are irrelevant based on where the company is looking to go and do. How can we show your relevance to these accounts that are most likely to land and expand?

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Which ones have those strategic priorities in place? So to me, those are the companies that we really should be talking to and trying to attract. Uh, those are the ones I want to. Those are the ones that give me the long term revenue growth versus I'm speaking to this larger market.

Speaker B: Exactly. I think that especially when you're a company like us who we don't have a brand built yet, we're early stage. A lot of early stage companies will say, oh, well, we can't do ABM because, you know, we're too early. I'd actually argue that point that it's actually probably like one of the ways that you can fill the gap of not yet having a brand is by doing that personal engagement, like really being like practical and like in terms of like sequencing brand. It's not. You don't do brand. It's still important to go off and do some brand activities for sure. Um, but you also at the same time can run an ABM even before you have brand. Um, in fact, it can help fill some gaps, right? You take 20, 30 accounts, right? And you, you personalize those, you get your founders brand, founders brand out there, right? This can help fill some gaps, right? Get them out there talking. You get one really good reference customer, right, that you can take that into market, um, and then you can expand that as your brand grows. But I don't think that you necessarily have to wait. Um, the website as I mentioned should be personalized by, by segment, um, by, by segment. I think it also by Persona helps but you can definitely do some things early before the brand is built. And I think ABM is a great thing to do before a brand is built because it can help fill some g. You normally had to rely on brand and now you can rely on ABM because you are so personalized um, to those accounts that you can become meaningful to them in a real way. Not just because, oh, you know, I've heard of this brand before but it's actually because of the fact that you've been able to um, get real um, credibility with them.

Speaker A: Yes, definitely. But you have to have that strong branding foundation. I don't mean the brand marketing, I mean the branding foundation of your point of view. That's right, your differentiation. I don't just mean on, oh we have these features but the gaps, where are the gaps in the competitors approach? And especially now because I can always add more features. It's really more about the approach that uh, competitors are taking, not about the technology itself. Is it the gaps in the approach that uh, your target accounts are using and where those impacts, understanding where those gaps and impacts play now, which is something that we've actually done. I've even helped startup order management companies, uh, displace enterprise companies like Oracle.

Speaker B: Oh wow.

Speaker A: They didn't have their startups, they didn't have the big brand. But it's like, okay, what's your point of view? What? We need to come in with a point of view. What's going on in the industry, what's going on with your target account, what's going on with the competitors. We need to understand those gaps, those impacts and now being able to show how it's relevant to these specific accounts like Oracle and show them this way you're looking to go, this is how it's going to affect you. Here's how it's going to affect across the organization, not just a Persona pain, uh, point, a departmental pain point, but across the organization. Because that's the other thing. It's how am I going to bring these different buyers together how am I going to help them understand each their own gaps and impacts but also the industry, the companies, the different departments, how am I going to help them understand the collective business to come make that decision?

Speaker B: Totally, totally. I think that, listen, I was at IBM a long time and I've been at some startups and, and I'm not going to say that brand isn't important because it absolutely is, right? I mean at IBM it allowed us to, it really opened up some doors, right? Like people will take the phone call pretty quickly. If you're IBM, the problem is, is if you're an early stage and you, you can't use as an excuse, right? You, you have to find ways to overcome that. You don't have a brand and people haven't heard from you, uh, heard, heard of you before and it's going to, you're going to have some headwinds because of that. Good way to solve those headwinds is with ABM because if you can be hyper personalized, you can be relevant to that account, you know that account really, really well. You have your founder out there giving a unique point of view and your fellow executives giving their unique point of view. Then you can get credibility without the work that it takes to do a brand. Because the other problem with early stage with brand building is it's, it's time consuming, right? You're talking about months if not years to build that brand and then you're usually dealing with 8 to 12 month sales cycles to close those deals. So, so if you're waiting a year or two to build a brand and then you got a sales cycle, that's another year. You're talking about three years before you close your first brand sourced deal. M. Most early stage companies don't have that type of a leeway or that type of a Runway. So you have to find ways to do it without the brand. And one great way to do that is become a expert at those 20, 30, 40 accounts and get entrenched in those and make them as, and make those experiences and as personalized as possible. Um, and also another thing I hear from a lot of early stage companies is oh well we tried ABM and it didn't work. And usually when I dig into that a little bit under the covers, it's not really abm. They'll have like an uh, a named account list, some ads and a sequence. Right. It's really sort of like demand gen with a targeted account list.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Not the same thing. Right. Way I think of like real, I know I'd like to hear your opinion too. But for me like real ABM is like thinking about like what does this specific account need right now to move forward in, in trying to make sure we're delivering that, like understanding where they are in the journey and making sure that we align to that. Like what are they trying to solve and making sure that we ah, align to that. And sometimes we're running abm, it's not just about prospecting, uh, new accounts, it's also trying to progress accounts that we already have have in our pipe. So you know, so a lot of times it's like, okay, so what does this company need right now? And this is where I try to bring PMM into it quite a bit. You know, my background is product marketing and I try to bring product marketing into the fold to say, listen, this is where this account is right now that we've been engaging with. We need to make sure that we're delivering what they need now, where they sit today, right? If that's in pipe, we don't need to be sending them thought leadership post on um, what is grc, because we already, they know what GRC is. They're, they're in stage deal, stage three in our pipeline. If they, they don't know what GRC is, then something is wildly wrong here, right? They know what it is. What we need is more customer proof points, ROI calculators, uh, things of that nature that can really show them like how we're differentiated because they're probably in more of a decision making process. So you know, uh, when I was in product marketing, I used to always be kind of flattered by people would be like, well, product marketing is so important. You know, it's, it's the, it's the fuel that goes through the entire engine, which, which is true. But what I like to think about is not just the fuel, it's kind of the fluids that go through the engine.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And stick with me here for a minute because this, I think this is good, right? Because if you think about it as the fluids and not just fuel, it means that you need more than one type. Right? A car doesn't just run on gas. It has oil, it has transmission fluid, it has coolant. And all of those different types of fluids, um, are meaningful depending on where you are looking at the engine and the timing of when those things are needed. And it's the same thing with the fuel that runs through your marketing engine, which you're not always going to put the same fluid in at the different stages. Right? And I've seen this before where marketing teams will try to use the same pieces of content and put it at uh, all the steps of the funnel and then everything just grinds, right? Because they're trying to put the same stuff all the way down. And I get why they try to do it right. Especially early stage, you're resource constrained and you're trying to solve, you're trying to get one piece of content and make it work for as many Personas as you can and, and across as much of the funnel as you can. The problem is it just simply doesn't work. Um, you have to be segmented in order for that engine to run properly. So when people tell me that they haven't been able to make ABM work in early stage and I pull up the hood on that, that's generally what I find is that they haven't done the work um, a lot on the content side of things, um, but also on the sales side as well. Like this is a combined effort and if sales doesn't, if you don't have proper sales handoff on when these accounts are moving and looping sales in, um, it can go sideways, right? Like if contact isn't happening within like it's literally minutes, right? If, if, if a sales rep reaches out to somebody who converts in five minutes versus an hour, the probability of that progressing is wildly higher than, than, than it would have been otherwise. So you know, you have to have all of these things in place. Um, also CX should be coming into this. Like I talked to CX team a lot, right, which like understanding those accounts, like what's success look like for a customer and how can we grow that customer. And so I think what I've seen is again like some issues with um, marketing teams in terms of how they handle top of the funnel as it relates to ABM trying to use one content piece or not segmenting their, their accounts properly and the messages that go with them. And then also on the um, not just the um, the you know, getting new customers but the expansion um, is not being close enough to those other teams to understand how marketing can help progress. Those marketing tends to think hey, once it goes into pipeline we're done. Like that's marketing's job now. And it's, there's so much, I mean you can save so much money and marketing dollars and get so much more revenue if you go after um, keeping the existing customers you have versus going out and getting new ones. Like retention is just so much better. Um, so these are kind of things I talk to the team about and where we're trying to focus a lot now that we're you know uh, have a customer base established at Lock threat now we're super in the weeds looking at all this stuff and not just kind of doing ABM as a demand gen activity with a sequence built around it.

Speaker A: Y. Well you know you've been connected to Christina and I so you already know that we already think uh, that most AVM programs aren't anything more than the targeted demand gen. Right. They're doing the list but the same, doing the same content. The branding, the messaging is still the same and I'm trying to go to this new ICP with the same old branding and that's why I say brand demand, land and expand. It needs to come together. I need to make sure that all four pieces that I'm attracting right I'm getting the right account awareness with the right accounts but I'm being relevant to those accounts getting the interest. I'm driving demand which to me the account based go to market right. I now want to create demand on it. Demand gen is an important part but it's not ABM but it's an important part of that account base go to market. How do I create enough demand with these accounts and show them what's happening it based on their situation. This is where I say it's you want to feel. That's right again the kind of awareness you want to many with your ICP you want now I get to the one to few creating that demand. How do I bring these accounts in? How do I get them curious enough? Now I'm getting into the one to one it's how am I progressing? And that's where ABM plays. Is that advancing that you were saying? So it's to me it's how am I going to advance that account totally.

Speaker B: And you know again, you know maybe it's because you know I spent so many years in product marketing but you know to me it's understanding where that customer is today and making sure you give them what they need now to move forward. You know again like you don't want to put um, oil in the gas tank, right? You don't want, you don't want to put gas into your oil tank right there. It's just not going to work. You have to have the right content going in at the right place and oftentimes that's where I see the biggest, biggest mistake with abm. They try to boil the ocean with one piece of content and it just doesn't work. Um, again, I get why they try to do it. I totally empathize because I sit in that seat all the time. Right. We want to add more. The business is constantly pushing against you in terms of, whoa, more Personas. More Personas, more icp. More icp. And it's like, well, every icp, we have to create new content, we got to create new ad campaigns, we got to create new pages. And it becomes hard to scale that. Right. Uh, if you're a small, lean team and you also have to, you have to be showing that you're getting conversions and building pipeline. So I get why they try to kill as many birds with one stone as they can. The problem is, is it even though it might seem like you're helping yourself, you're actually hurting. Your better bet would be to go back to the business and kind of, uh, gently force them to stay focused, um, and not go too broad and say, hey, listen, if we keep this to a more focused group instead of spreading ourselves too thin. Because in B2B, at least in the space I'm in, so you see all different stats, but arguably it's somewhere between 10 and 15 touches that you need to take a cold prospect to a book, a demo. If you start doing multiple touches, um, across a big, huge audience, you'll never get that 10 to 15 on any given one. You'll get one or two here, three or four there. So you've spent a bunch of time, money and resources on getting half baked prospects that never got the full amount of touches that they needed in order to convert. So you get zero. What you're better off doing is making that pool smaller where you can actually use those resources to get more of those folks to get to the 10 to 15 touches. And, and it's not just about touching them anyway. Right. You need to make sure that it's a way that's meaningful to them. Um, and so this is where I think where some teams fall down, they're not thinking about it in that lens.

Speaker A: Yep. And that's where it's the meaningful to them part that I go beyond what usually what product marketing will get because it's, I want to base it on their position and messaging. They're the bridge between sales, marketing and product. But now it's how do I take their messaging, their positioning and make it meaningful to this specific deal? Because a lot of times product marketing, they have a lot of on their. So they gotta be more general, they're more specific than other roles in the market. But it's still too general. So it's, how can I take that positioning, that messaging and make it specific to this deal, their situation, their priorities, what's going on, how do I need to reframe them? Not just reframe their thoughts or ideas, but reframe them in the context of their situation. So that's where I say it needs a deal based content.

Speaker B: God. I mean most companies, you know, for better or for worse, wrong or right, obsess over top of funnel. No, but, but like rarely people ask why deals that should have closed aren't moving. It just doesn't get asked as much as we, we need more top of funnel. We mean more leads. We need more leads. This is typically what you hear, but nobody's ever asking, well, what happened to the deals that we brought, those leads that went to deals that never ended up moving or progressing? We just don't ask that question because it's a hard question to answer. And it also puts people, um, maybe in an uncomfortable position. Right. To answer tough questions. But you know, if cones are going quiet after a strong discovery call, there's some, usually some sort of confidence gap. There's, it's not usually like in my experience, it's not usually disinterest, it's more of a conflict, uh, like a confidence gap. They're just not sure like about you yet. So they're kind of in an evaluation stage if you want to say it that way. Right. And in that sense you don't need more proof of like, of like that this is a problem you need to solve. You've kind of already done that. You need proof that your promise is going to hold up at scale. Right. It's going to be much more focused on your attack and what you deliver. Um, so again I think, and that's why you got to pull CS in, right? Because CS knows what, where the promise usually breaks down and they should be feeding that intel into marketing so that their content is uh, is, is aligned to that.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Here are the promises that we make in marketing. That stuff should be vetted by CS&CS should have a hand in when marketing is creating that. Uh, because, because to your point, right, like we can make all the promises we want at the top of the funnel as marketing, but if we go into the C sales cycle and into a pov, poc, pov or even closed one deal with that customer and we can't live up to the promises that we set at the top, it's not going to be good for anybody. That's why I think about this as like all four functions. Marketing, sales, CS and product. They all influence whether um deals close and whether customers expand. And so all of them need to be aligned. So I think to your point, um, ABM isn't just a tool or another approach to demand. Gen ABM really is like an operating model, an operating system that requires all of those four functions to be working very close together in um pre and post sales for like the land and expand as you're calling it. Right. Like that. That all four of those groups need to be joined at the hip and speaking like speaking from the same singing from the same sheet of music if you will.

Speaker A: Yeah. I can't tell how many times I see on um people's profiles generate. I mean influenced $10 million in UM pipeline delivered 1.6 million in close one revenue. It's like. And all the number. Everyone would think all those numbers are impressive. I look at well that where's that $8.4 million? What is happening there that that didn't move forward. Why is it sales cycle delays? Why is there leakage or that's a lot of acquisition waste. That means I spent a lot of. Not only do I have that revenue stuck there, but I spent money on sales and marketing resources to get them into the pipeline and then to continue to nurture them. And they're staying there. Huh. Well they left is like that's a lot of waste. So. And it's like why are we looking at how we need to really unstick that pipeline? It's how do I change the interactions that all teams are having. And as you said marketing can't just be which I usually see it once it's an even in abm I get it to pipeline and I do air cover to the different Personas.

Speaker B: Right? Yeah that's right.

Speaker A: Or I respond to sales requests. So with sales support versus well how can I shape yeah. That conversation that sales is going to have by giving them the right content, the right messaging, the right story. Show them how they're going to use it. How can I help them shape a better conversation where then I'm not just relying on them doing how can I align my marketing content and stories with challenger um winning by design spice method. Uh force management's challenge command of the sale and command of the message. How can I align with those sales processes to really support sales as well as customer success teams to have the right messaging. And a lot of teams will say oh I have post pipeline. It's like well uh, let's see what you're talking about.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: They give case studies. Right. This case study is the top of the funnel. It's doesn't support the selling conversation. It gives you credibility. This is the top of funnel because you didn't give me the war story, you didn't show me their specific situation, what was going on, what was happening.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It didn't show me how competitors that are going to give similar case studies.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Are going to create gaps and what their impacts are. So you didn't do any teaching for differentiation. You didn't give me a buying vision and show me how did this relationship evolve? What happens after the sale as ah, you were talking about that confidence that the promise holds up. Well, how, what is that actually like after the sale? Not just giving me the rosy picture, but what are those thorns? How did you handle hiccups? How did you handle things popping up? Show me how you actually mitigated the risk. And that's where a lot of companies aren't doing some of those case studies. And people think it's bottom of the funnel. Right. Doesn't help. Or they'll say, oh, I have this ROI calculator and I'm like, ROI calculators are a double edged sword.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's giving you that number to go to the cfo. But at the same time if I don't answer, what will happen after, um, the deal assigned and give them the confidence that you're actually going to reach these numbers. Buyers get stuck. They're like, well, I'm going to be held to this number. I go show the CFO this number and if we don't.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: My m throat is cut. So it's like, do I move forward? Because they don't have that content to support it. They don't have what I would say decision orchestration. I'm not helping them orchestrate a decision making.

Speaker B: It's true.

Speaker A: I'm not helping them weigh or risk and show trade offs. Right. I'm not helping them bring those different buyers together to create that decision. I'm not helping each one understand what's going on. There is no orchestration because I'm thinking that thought leadership and marketing is great at thought leadership.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But that works at the top and that's why what happens at the bottom, it doesn't work because it's not supporting sewing internal buying conversations.

Speaker B: Definitely. I couldn't agree more. I mean I think that, you know, the, the instincts of most businesses are Mark, we're, we're having problems not meeting our, our revenue targets. So we need pipe, more pipeline. And if we need more pipeline, that means we need more leads from marketing. That's how they're thinking about it. And it just can, in the cycle just keeps continuing more, more volume, more volume and then all you keep getting is more leads, more new leads, more pipeline and then more deals that just don't end up closing. It becomes just a vicious cycle that just doesn't end because volume was never the problem. It was never the problem to begin with. So you're never actually fixing it. So adding more pipeline to a broken system doesn't produce more revenue. It just exposes that the breakdown is, is more expansive and expensive than you probably thought it was. But the problem is that most companies have to go through that a long time before they realize it. And I think um, the good thing about ABM is that it kind of forces change in that regard. It forces the organization to um, align more with the go to market functions. It forces those go to market functions to align better. Um, but you know, teams tend to, I don't know, avoid doing that. Right? Like why isn't marketing talking more with product, right? About like what can this, what can this solution um, do? What are the feature functions that are benefits to our customers to cx? Where are customers falling down? Where are we having problems with sales? When you're doing those discovery calls like what questions are coming up? Looking at win loss analysis, I'm always surprised when I go into an organization how little my marketing team knows about why we're winning deals and why we're losing deals. They usually absolutely know nothing about it. In fact oftentimes they don't even know what deals were even in the pipeline. Only like the real big ones that everybody in the company is talking about, right? Some marquee logo, they'll know they're in pipe. But the long tail of other companies that we have in pipe, a lot of the marketing team doesn't even know those companies at all that are in there. And, and when they go to close loss, they have no idea why we lost that deal. But all of that intel is super duper important in terms of getting that in, in um, into top of funnel. For one thing, it should be in that messaging because you need that to be consistent, right? Like you need to be taking a message that resonates at the top but then carries through all the way down through the sales cycle and even after they're a customer. So I think that's the problem that we're, we're up against is that ah, you Know as cliche as it might sound is that it's still the problem of these the go to market functions working in silos.

Speaker A: Yes, they definitely is. They're working in yes, we might be aligned align on an icp. Right. Align on the list, align on activities. But sales and marketing customer success is still swimming in their own lanes.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: It's still marketing your brand awareness pipeline. Yeah but to me I should be impacting win rates, deal sizes, sales cycles. I want to change the account experience. ABM is about changing the account experience along the buyer's journey. It is really uncovering where the issues are.

Speaker B: Ah right.

Speaker A: Talk to one company. The um was a channel sales company. They were doing ABM and they were using six sense. They talked about how they were six cents case studies like okay good that means you that you're using the tool but let's talk about your port. And when we dug deeper they were winning deals $35,000 and below. I think above 35000 they were losing. Now to me ABM should be helping you get those larger deals. Well it's like well let's go what's going on now if the product doesn't match the higher those larger enterprise that would go for a higher deal well then yeah I wouldn't even be targeting them. But if it is in a desert line well then there's an issue that you're not that they're not teaching for differentiation against Salesforce. They're not really focused on where the gaps are the impacts. They're not showing where Salesforce is irrelevant. So now it's how do I change that messaging in that middle. It's like I got interest but I'm comparing these two. Well how do I make them irrelevant?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And through stories they're not comparison charts that only tell me and that's another thing I see a lot of times. Oh we have these comparison charts for the middle of the bottom of the funnel. It's like no. Oh what you're doing with those comparison charts is selling me a good enough solution. The competitors might not be have all the stuff that you are check marking. Right. But they might just have enough and they made up the lower price. So what you just did was push me to a night um a good enough solution and that's versus really showing me well here's my gaps are here's where the impacts here's what's going to affect you and that to me those stories is your middle bottom not these comparison charts that I could actually push you to A good enough solution.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree with you more. I think, yeah, I mean it is definitely a matter of, I think um, these go to market functions not working together in the way that they should and also not seeing the value in

Speaker A: um,

Speaker B: going sort of deeper than where their roles have traditionally gone. As I mentioned, a lot of the marketing teams and many that I even worked within, they feel like close one, close lost is the end game, but it's really just the beginning. Like those closed loss have so much information in it that you should be taking back into your marketing. The closed ones. Listen, I mean expansion costs uh, like 5 to 7x less than acquisition, right? That's the stat that's commonly out there. So there's so much there to say like why aren't you trying to expand those existing accounts? And you're leaving dollars on the table from a marketing perspective, right? If you're talk, talking about customer acquisition costs, if you're leaving um, expansion deals off the table, then you've just lost a great avenue for you to reduce those customer acquisition costs from a marketing perspective. And if you're not talking to sales and making sure there's proper handoff and what's happening in those discovery calls, um, and making sure that those sales reps, um, understand are sharing information back to you on Objection. Handling and whatnot, then you're also leaving. You're also increasing your cost on the acquisition side so it becomes a double whammy, right? You're adding cost on the acquisition side because of poor processes, trying to use one message regardless of where the, and who the person is and where they are in the journey. And then you're also not keeping an eye on existing um, customers who you could grow. You know, you could look at the mapping your full, but the full buying committee within those accounts, finding inactive Personas in those accounts, making sure you're making those accounts aware of new use cases and new capabilities. Um, you know, expansion should be something strategic that you're focused on, not just opportunistic. And marketing should definitely have a place in that, in that um, process. And I think it's an opportunity that is overlooked by many of the marketing teams where they should. They could be putting a feather in their cap if you will, um, for the marketing team in terms of, you know, what they're able to deliver to the business. And then um, on as the business as a whole, I think there's a lot of opportunity there that just isn't happening. Um, that could be, that wouldn't just benefit the Marketing team in terms of marketing being able to say hey look, the additional value we deliver but more importantly the business is actually losing out on that revenue because it's just not being active. Pun.

Speaker A: Yep, definitely. And going on that uh, when I lost that cause lost is that important to us. I deferate in analytics.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Um, what they continue to um, lose deals to competitors. Lower cost competitors. And we kept saying nice to have.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The problem was they weren't, they were, they're messaging their content. It was focused on the transportation manager m their departmental pain points. Now if I want to get a larger deal, I have to embed myself across the organization totally. Otherwise you're going to be a nice to have and I'm going to go with a lower cost alternative. So it's how do I now fit myself in and show they were doing predictive rate analytics? Well, it should impact uh, where I'm allocating product because now I'm talking about thinking about mixing it with demand forecasting. I can see where product, where the product is most wanted. I can match it with pricing and where am I going to have the greatest margin returns. It should in fact inventory M. Do I do just in time, right. Inventory, uh, management or do I need to hold more? Yes, holding more gives me a cost right there. But it's against the rates that I'm expecting freight costs. It's where do I put different locations and network optimization. It is pricing.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Do I do discounts now or should I wait? Right. Um. It affects so much.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: And that's where it's like you need to really show the impact you can have the on the organization and, and help sales have that where they could embed themselves.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: There was the other thing I saw when I was looking in is like well where are we getting the engagement? Well at the manager level and the director level, every time that they went up to the C suite and the vp they were directed down. Well, there's an issue there. How can I help sales change that account experience? How can I help sales connect with that chief supply chain officer, that chief financial officer? How can we help them? Um, connect with them but also continue engagement with them where it's not drop down and say well go speak to this person.

Speaker B: Right, right, right.

Speaker A: How could I do that? And that's where I say marketing. That's where we can come in and help. That's why I say we can shape those account experiences. And uh, you do these with those accounts that mean the most.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: These are the ones that you Want to put your time and resources on shape that conversation that sales can have. Now I'm learning from that. And this is where I say scale. You can scale abm but you m scare your impact on revenue because now I'm m taking that. And now how can we apply what we just learned to the overall go to market? How can we apply that and help sales and marketing now using these lessons to go after other ones that might be your tier twos and tier threes continue to win. So that's where it's how can I shape those account experiences with those accounts that we need to land and expand? And that's what ABM should be about. But it's becoming so much about campaigns. The demand gen campaigns. Yeah. And not looking at those individual interactions totally. To improve it.

Speaker B: Totally. It's all about demand gen campaigns and volume, uh just bringing it in. And it's all external facing. It's all external focused. Right. Like how can we just go out into market and bring things in? I would argue that marketing first should look so if you think about it out versus in marketing often goes looking out right away. Like I want to get external facing as quickly as possible with as many campaigns as possible in front of many as people as possible and then bring those in. I would argue you should start the other end of the entire um process which is at the close one close lost. Start there, see what learnings you can have in those close lost close one deals. Then talk to CS which is the one like the one kind of step before that. What are they hearing? Like where are deals falling? Where does our promise not hold up? Where does it hold up really well? What are good customers? What are their attributes? What, what parts of the product are they using? What parts of the product are they having success with? You want to understand what is a really good customer look like a really happy customer versus an unhappy customer. Then I would go to the next step in the process working backward to frontward and I would start looking at uh, sales, um, engineering. When you're on calls, what do you demo? What sticks out? What technical questions do you get asked? What are you getting asked to shown a lot in the product, what pushback do you get? Then I would take it the next step. I'd go to sales. When you're doing discovery calls, what are you getting asked when you're on the event show floor, what questions? What objection. Handling what makes a customer like ears light up versus eyes roll back. And I would then take all of that and then work that in the marketing factory, if you will, then start looking external and staying sending things out because now you have all of that context to build from. But most don't do that. They just don't. In fact, not only do they start at the, at the front of that, they start in marketing only and then send stuff out. They never even go retrospectively and look back after what they brought in starts to move. They get it to the point of, hey, the person converted, they're in MQL sales now you go work it and they're done. They have nothing to do with trying to progress it through the deal stages. And they also have nothing to do or very little to do with how can we expand this account now that we have it. Which by the, by the way, as I mentioned, is a much less expensive endeavor. Um, and there's a lot of dollars that I believe that marketing is leaving on the table for itself to put in their, uh, feather in their cap that they were able to contribute back to the business. But more importantly, the business is missing out on that revenue as a whole by it not being addressed. So that's kind of how I think about it. And I think that ABM, done the right way, can help solve a lot, a lot of that because it forces these teams to collaborate, collaborate more. It forces you to go out and have a unified message, um, and understand the accounts. So it forces you to do that internal homework before going out in the market and just bringing in a bunch of volume. Because that bringing in just a bunch of volume is just exposing a problem. If you don't have the system behind it, that's going to work. Because no matter how much volume you keep putting, all it's going to keep doing for you is prove to you that you have a system that isn't, isn't, isn't working right. So you're bringing in more of. It's still not working. It's still not working. It's like, okay, well when are you going to realize that it's not working? Because no matter how much we bring in the process behind it isn't right. And maybe even the front of it isn't right because we don't understand the details of what's happening later in there that we should be talking about up, uh, front that we're not talking about because we're just, we don't have access to that intel or we're not taking advantage of the access that we do have to that intel so that we could be making better claims up front, create more meaningful message then when we do create that volume, that volume is built on promises that hold up. It's built on things that are truthful and meaningful. And then when they go have that discovery call, it goes great. When they have the technical team come in and do a technical demo, it goes flawlessly. When CS gets involved and they start to do customer onboarding, everything flows naturally. Because you worked the marketing engine sort of worked backwards and understand what a good customer, happy customer looks like versus an unhappy customer or a closed loss deal. And was able to create a story from the beginning that holds through each of those phases of the deal, including expanding them later. Because now you've earned their trust. Right? They bought a good bag of goods. Right. They are happy with their purchase. So now when you come and market to them and say, hey, we just launched this new cool thing that we think you're going to like, they're going to be like, oh, this is Rob messaging me. And I worked with Rob. Is everything that he told me was working great. I like the product is everything I thought it would be. I'm more likely to going to expand in that, in that uh, purchase based on that everything aligned the way it was from the top to the very end. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: And I agree. I do it the same way. When we can.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: When the clients would actually let us. I like starting from let's focus on expansion and retention. Let's get to know those best customers inside out. Where we can better define an ICP beyond industry technographics, uh, demographics, um, intent. Where I can see why some clients got the most value. Where I can now improve those interactions. Where we can now focus on the kind of experience that needs to happen. Where we can now expand them or keep these accounts. Now I'm working backward and saying, okay, now we know where, how we need to expand and what that needs to look like. Now how can we lead there? How can we make sure we're not only progressing accounts to a close, but we're going to build that buying vision where we're going to be able to expand with them. How do I lead to that customer experience? Yeah, uh, where it's seamless, now I can move them forward. Now I'm going to be like, okay, now I see how I can move these forward. I see where the hiccups are. I see now what's progressing, what's not, why I see what's expanding, why Now I'm going to bring in, let's do build out an account based go to market where I'm able to build that demand. I'm able now to optimize the brand to attract more of those ICP accounts. But I always do like going working backwards if I can when clients would let me when they're not like no, we're so focused on.

Speaker B: But if you don't have that, if you don't have that or you don't have access to it, um, you know, I still think there's something to be said for not having any of that communication that's going out to that prospect. Be generic. It should all be tied to at least what that account has already told you they care about. So you know, you had a conversation with them, you know, afterwards. Like I think marketing, like say sales does a discovery call, right? Marketing should be filling the silence in between when they have a next converse sales conversation with, with meaningful things that are specific to that account that aren't generic. Like a customer story from their industry,

Speaker A: um, content their situation. So now that that story is even

Speaker B: tell just oh totally content addressing a specific objection that they got from that actual call. Um, I also have encouraged founders engaging in, in their, in the person's LinkedIn content. Not pitching but just being present. Right. Like having folks like paying attention, um, a personalized note from the rep with something specific from that conversation that happened or maybe even an in person connection at like an upcoming event. But I, no matter what your mix of those things are, or maybe there's other ones you would do. I would argue that even if you don't have a lot of data from existing customers, maybe because you're still too new, you should at least try your best and never have it be generic. Ah after, especially after that discovery call, always try to tie it to something that you know about that account from what they told you they care about.

Speaker A: Yep, definitely.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And or uh, how can I reframe them? I'm always listening to what's the sales conversations. Where'd they get stuck? What happened? What insights can I bring to others? So it's always think about what are those next steps? What does that next experience need to be like? What needs to happen from a marketing sales customer success perspective where the three teams are working together on it 100%. I am getting towards the end of the podcast but I do want to thank you so much for coming in sharing uh, what you're doing at Lockfront grc, how the brand is playing a bigger role but also uh talking about from your product market experience the role that content should play. Especially account based content where I should need to be at the deal level versus that thought leadership that most companies continue to push out as a way of just being top of mind. But being top of mind doesn't mean that uh, I'm going to move forward. I need more than top of mind

Speaker B: to move forward 100%.

Speaker A: I do want to encourage because Rob not only um, not only being the CMO for lock threat to URC, he's also uh, very active on LinkedIn and shares content messages. I know my partner Christina is always back and forth with you, a lot of times adding on reposting but adding on additional insights. So I do encourage people to check out Rob Young on LinkedIn. I also know that you do have m, uh other support for marketers marketing hq. Uh, so I do encourage people to check out again, Rob Young on LinkedIn. And Bob, thank you very much.

Speaker B: You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.