Unwrapping Account Based Marketing | B2B Marketing Shepherd Rajesh Kumar | EP 07

Foreign. Decoding B2B marketing with Rajesh Kumar hello and welcome to another episode of decoding B2B marketing on B2B Marketing shepherd channel. I am Rajesh Kumar and I'm so glad you are tuning in. We started this to bring B2B marketing out from the hallowed portals of large tech B2B multinationals and simplify the concepts with no jargon, no complex talk and share advice from real practitioners to apply to your business. Whether you are a SaaS startup, a traditional B2B business, a B2B marketer or one aspiring to get there. Every week I sit down with some of the most accomplished B2B marketing stars and separate what is real from hype, provide a way to understand an identified area within B2B marketing and offer practical tips and hacks to use it right away. And that will include things AI is changing in every aspect of B2B marketing. My book by the same name is also coming out on Amazon very soon, so stay tuned. And today we have another incredible guest, Sanjay Chaudhary, Head of enterprise marketing at SAP and alum of IIM Lucknow. Sanjay started his career in PR moving to Amex and then to B2B World with Oracle. He's among the few marketers who have worked in account based marketing domain for many years with a proven track record of success and today we'll dive into decoding the whole area of ABM and how can B2B companies make it their power in driving impact when targeting a small number of high value prospects. By the way, Sanjay is a fitness enthusiast, marathoner and a voracious reader. Ready? Let's decode it together. So Sanjay, you have been a B2B marketer for long, so share us with us your journey. How did you get here? What keeps you here? Highs, lows and more. Interestingly, would you do it all over again if you had a choice? Thanks first of all Rajesh for having me. It's a pleasure to be part of this interesting episode that you are putting together. Well, I think I never set out to be a B2B marketer and there are a lot of chance which happens, right? And I started with a PR agency and that PR agency had multiple tech accounts and tech was changing the world around us at that time when Internet had just arrived and while that intrigued me and I used to spend a lot of time understanding the technology trends, one of the tech accounts I was servicing had this maverick marketing person who was very bold, unconventional, bit of a genius. I think in some way that sparked the idea or the concept of getting into marketing. And sometimes manifestation also works. So after serving many years in comms in a phased manner, I moved to B2B marketing from communications. Then I moved on to do a sales strategy role. There's a lot of chance that happens. I had a choice to take the AAPAC role in PR or to move to a completely different tangent role on sales strategy. And you know, subsequently I did industry marketing role, account based marketing role. But if I look back, I think when I was going through that it was. There was a lot of randomness, lot of chance. But if I look back I see all these Lego blocks have come together and if I have to do it again, I think the way the sequence of event that happened with me right from the very beginning of honing my skill in messaging came from PR background in terms of understanding the full sales cycle buyer journey came from the time I spent in sales strategy operations rules for a new completely program where you get familiarized with lot of tools that are available for a salesperson to progress sales and account based marketing. You know, as luck would have it, I got into a team which was an international team being formed along with my EMEA colleagues. They were almost six years ahead of account based marketing practice. So you know, I think the amount of learning on the job that happened during that process was amazing. Two takeaways I have from what you just told me. 1B 2B marketing is really 360 degree marketing. It's a cross functional approach which makes it work. Second, you mentioned a maverick marketer. So all our listeners and audience B2B has some of the coolest people. So it's a cool place to be and talking about that. Tell us a little bit about your own personal passions. I know you have many. Well, I think my biggest passion is my enthusiasm for fitness and it started with running. I have done several marathons, half marathons, full marathons and I'm now preparing for an ultra run border run in December. So actually you know the whole process of planning and training for the run is amazing. And I think running changes your life. You know, the whole lifestyle changes the kind of friends that you have. There are offshoot of running groups I have, I'm part of a book club and that helped me increase, you know, the habit of reading. So I think in terms of what you eat, when you sleep, it has a fabulous and incredible impact on your lifestyle. Brilliant. I'm sure it keeps you, your energy levels high and keeps you going and so many things that you inspire all of us actually with your healthy lifestyle and you have made many of us, including one of our close friends, change his lifestyle. So thank you for that. Now moving to the topic. According to a story that I read on the Bloom Ventures site, John Henry Patterson, he bought a cash registers company for all of $6,500 in year 1884. But then he soon realized his cash registers were way more expensive than all the others in the market which were basically selling simple cash racks. Now what choice did he have? He did not try to lower his price. He actually looked for selective high value clients who he thought will invest in it and will benefit from it in the long run. Right. Then he hired his own sales team. He coached them on how to customize his cash registers for every client. He spoke to their shop floor people, he spoke to their C level executives and he helped them calculate what kind of savings they were going to have in in terms of saving from employee theft and cutting down transaction time. And by 1911, guess what? He sold his millionth cash register and had 95% of the global market. That to me is probably the earliest example of account based marketing. So I wanted to ask you this sounds like a big term. It's thrown around a lot for many years. Not many people actually do it right. So unpack for us. What is account based marketing? How is it different from traditional marketing? Account based marketing is marketing to one, but I think you have to be very, very mindful in terms of you're focusing on one single account. If I can draw parallel from my personal passion, running account based marketing is a lot like running a marathon. You have to be. There's a lot of precision required. You have to be persistent and you have to be patient. Right. And it's a long term game, but keeping an eye on the finish line. Well said. B2B marketing. All of it is actually a long term game and probably all of marketing is a long term game. There are no easy or quick wins that last forever. So tell us when is ABM the right choice? What selection criteria companies should apply while choosing to go for it? Well, I think if account based marketing is best when your sales cycles are long and complex and you are selling high value solutions or products, right. It may not be appropriate. If it's an impulse purchase, it may not be right. If you can buy off the shelf easily and there is less of repeat purchase, account based marketing would require a lot of investment which can help you get better roi. It's you have to take the customer through the whole process. Right? The whole buyer process in terms of right from, you know, building insights to actually become an advisor to them. Which companies should not do it or what do they have to give up when they choose ABM marketing. As I mentioned that account based marketing is a lot like running. There are a lot of running events which are now available for you to choose from. Every weekend there is a half marathon happening. But you have to be very selective and instead of spreading yourself too thin, you identify certain runs and train for them. Account based marketing is also something similar. Instead of spreading all your marketing dollars across different, you know, account sets and segments, you identify the most relevant, most important customers and provide a disproportionate amount of effort and marketing dollars into those accounts. So well said. You know why only B2B marketing or ABM. In fact, all of strategy is about choosing also what not to do. Because there are always limited resources, people, money, time, attention, energy. If you do choose B2B Marketing for our audience, then you probably want to see what is it that you don't want to do so that you can focus and do a good job of it. Now tell us about the process you know, in account based marketing. How do you even identify accounts? How do you deepen your understanding? How do you build awareness and intimacy? How do you realize their lifetime value? How do you convert it to revenue? And the most important step, the very first step of account based marketing process is the selection of accounts. Selection of account is based on your own reality in terms of how strong you are in selling historically in that space, how profitable you have been in selling on those segments. That's one part of the story. The other part of the story is about external environment. The areas where you have been traditionally very strong, are they growing? Do they have enough business spend, budget, right? And this combination of everything. And the last and the most important thing, even if you have the right metrics in terms of the customers, are you, you already operating in that market? You have, the market is growing. You need to have someone who's passionate from the sales side to grow the share of wallet. So having the right set of people who are willing to invest and come along with you in this ABM journey is important. Tell me, can you also apply ABM to new accounts? Especially I'm talking about Indian SaaS companies, they're just starting off the block trying to reach Indian and global accounts. So can they apply this approach to unlock new accounts? Absolutely. I think as I was talking about the account based marketing process, the first very process, the selection process, after that you have the second Process which is building deep insights into the account or the segment that you're targeting through account based marketing. And these deep insights are not only about the company, it's about the buyer, you know, the buyer groups and it's also about the industry that they are operating in. And all these things are relevant whenever you're. Even if you're trying to target, you know, a completely new set of accounts and you know the approach is once you build deep insights, you are trying to build perspective based on that. So it's called the insight to advisory model. You build the insight, you have built perspective, you have your messaging, you're trying to build a perspective based on your understanding of the account. And then you develop lot of communication assets which could be delivered through digital or in person channels. And finally you have to build reputation with the customer, relationship with the customer. Tell me, what type of digital tools and technologies do you use in this process? How has AI impacted it? AI is everywhere today. Or how do you see it impacting it even further? We are still trying to understand where all it can help us. A lot of the things that used to happen manually and there used to be a challenge in terms of scaling them because account based marketing is all about personalization and that can happen with the use of AI. And AI can help you. There are a lot of tools which are available now. There are many signals that AI tools can help you read and help you customize and personalize your messaging right from the very first step. As I mentioned about the selection process. It can help you with the intent signals, how the customer is, you know, looking at going through their buyer journey. The second piece is about the insight can help you lot of deep develop quick deep domain knowledge on the account and its environment. It can help you personalize the messaging. There are a lot of tools which can automatically can create a context of the communication that you want to send. So I think AI will really help in terms of scaling the account based marketing. Because sometimes the strategic account based marketing, there's a limitation, you can do it for very few set of accounts. I believe account AI can help scale that further. Yeah, we've seen it evolve because first I saw many, many years back, large, multinational, you could do only for a few selective global top accounts because it was expensive, it was a skill hard to come by. But with digital I've seen now classical marketing, one is too few, one is too many. Where even digital tools you can reach out at that level and that has lowered the cost and in fact given rise to like a mid Range and a lower range options in doing ABM as well, Correct? That's right. And in fact account based marketing can be applied across the sales cycle. And as you mentioned about the a new account for door opening. What can be done? Let me give you some examples of some of the activities that I did for a door opening in one of the large conglomerate account and I was working with a multinational tech provider. We were not getting an entry into the account. It was a very strong competitive domain. Right. It was almost incumbent there. What we created along with the sales team is a challenger report. In the challenger report upfront, we said we can help you save say $200 million of savings. Right. And we explained step by step processes on what are the areas that we will help you improve your efficiency, improve your customer experience. It was a five page document that was created and that document was sent to the senior management to asking for a meeting. And we got the meeting. It works. I have seen in my own tenure in SAP, you know, the accounts which were close to us, which were really our focus for the year. The connection was so strong at the executive level, we were actually never marketing to them. The teams will meet at the beginning of the year or even before start of the year to chart out a technology course for the next year where all of their key decision makers will participate. All of the our key executives and resources will participate. Maybe use a tool like design thinking workshops to unearth things which were latent and then chart out a plan which almost we together owned. What was fascinating for me was that in abm, not only sales and marketing get on same side of the table. Even the client and the selling or a marketing company get on the same side of the table. It's just so much more productive and everybody is happy and everybody is a very open discussion and conversation in an environment of trust. Yeah. Ali, you had mentioned about what is the difference between traditional and account based marketing. And the biggest difference is alignment between sales and marketing. It's a team sport, it cannot be done in isolation. Marketing cannot decide that they want to run account based marketing program. There has to be a sales sponsorship. You need to get an executive sponsor to endorse the program. Right. And there are multiple benefits of account based marketing. I think it can help you connect the dots. It can shape the demand rather than just pure servicing the demand. Right. You can engage early. So there are multiple such benefits. So tell us, in your roles when you used abm, how did you measure success? Well, as I mentioned in the beginning, it's like a Marathon. And you have to be very, very patient. But you know, you can actually start seeing some initial results. And the initial results can be measured with the actions that you are taking, how many white papers that you have produced, how many thought leadership blogs that you have written. The second stage would be how your customers are responding to those assets that you are developing, how they're responding to various channels that you're engaging with, are they participating in your events? But the ultimate goal is to increase the velocity, how much time it takes to close the deal. Number one is how much you have been able to influence to increase the size of the deal. And also in terms of the volume of engagement that have started to happen. That all is a byproduct. But I think the most important piece is people do business with people, right? And people they trust. And a simple example of trust is, you know, simple equation of trust is credibility, reliability, intimacy and nominator can put self orientation. Yeah, you put it very well. And I have seen my own experience, you know, and ABM as well as maybe all of marketing. There are metrics at three levels. First like you said, the execution or activity metrics which tells you whether you converted your plan into action. Right. And then there is engagement metrics which is really is the customer, how are they receiving, are they engaging with it, is it being effective? And then there is the impact metrics which is really about the amount of revenue that you have, the account, the retention and expansion within the account and the level of loyalty and advocacy you can demonstrate because that is also your future security. Because in all of these accounts you eventually look at the lifetime value of the account and how do you maximize it to each other's benefit? Well, I mentioned about the advocacy program. I ran a program for Oracle with HDFC Bank. It was a 25 year celebration and the whole co creation was done along with the bank. The bank, how they have gone through the journey. With Oracle we created multiple assets, right from creating a coffee table book. A coffee table book was written as if the bank was sharing that how they have benefited by leveraging technology such as Oracle's. So it's a completely different approach where you're co creating this stuff with the customer. Then we did a series of senior level leadership meetings about their whole journey. So I think that's another example, a height of advocacy and how you can build jointly, go to market together jointly communicate to your common customers. Fantastic. Now tell me for the uninitiated who are not on the journey, how do you even build an investment case? How do you assemble a team? What kind of talent skills are required? It's heavy lifting so you have to do a lot of convincing and selling as a marketer to even go that path. Also valid for new SaaS founders if they want to take that approach. It's very simple. I think if you look at the stats, 60% of the business is done easily with your current set of accounts. Right. And most of the time you will find that if you're not, you lose when you are not invited to the table early or you've not been able to put forward the right differentiators. Right. And you are. It's now with digital most of the decisions are made even before the salesperson is called. And the last point is there is a lot of shadow IT which is happening. Initially our technology was decided by a CIO or a cto. Now there are a lot of other decision makers who are playing an equally important role. If you are not influencing the whole buyer group then you will completely miss out. And account based marketing helps you do that. It can help you get the better ROI of from your investment. It can reduce waste. It's not just I think revenue is a byproduct of account based marketing. The most important piece it help you build relationship and reputations so that you can continue to engage with those set of customers and keep on building the mutually beneficial relationship. Growing your share of wallet in the process. Tell me two things. One is maybe if you recall things that did not work. I'm sure there were learnings along the way. People are going to start among our audience. They may feel they will have challenges. Talk to us about what kind of challenges you face. Things that didn't work, made you feel like did I embark on the right journey? And so on. Also then talk to us about some of the brands or companies that you've seen doing it well so people can go and read more about them and maybe you can share links to anything that we will share with our readers. Well, there was an interesting program which I had conceptualized. One of the tech companies which I was working with, they have very strong robust back office but they were not so strong in the front office solutions. The process which I defined was we'll do mystery shopping and we engaged JD Power to do a complete benchmarking and we mandated them to reach out to 15 cities in the country, speak to 5,000 people like you and me and check with them about their banking experience digitally as well as going to the branch. And we created a complete voice of customer study that was A very powerful exercise. But the process it took to get off the ground, you know, there was a lot of convincing that had to be done internally. And there were two deals which I was eyeing on to sort of, you know, increase the velocity of those conversations. Unfortunately I missed that. That's why I say it's a, it was a bit of a miss as well as, but I think it gave me, opened up a lot of other things for me. When I, when we published this study, it was just not pure voice of customer studies identifying the gaps in their current digital and physical channels. We also did a diagnost, it was a very intense exercise and we went to each of the 15 top banks in the country and presented how they are faring compared to their peer group. And we got audience from the retail banking heads, from the chief operating officers, we got deep conversations happening and in the process we positioned our solutions of how we can help improve their front office. Even though we missed two deals because the buying, they were very close to the buying decision. But in the process we had multiple other opportunities opened up for us and as a follow up exercise we did design thinking workshops on the identified gaps. So that's something I will say miss, but an amazing experience of, you know, while you started tactically to just look at two deals and when you created something bigger, it helped you completely influence the whole banking industry. So definitely not for the faint of the heart, only for people who have power to stay. Because I remember in my tenure during SAP there was a campaign done in Australia and this was the era when the digital transformation was the buzzword. So we went and surveyed a select set of C CEO account CEOs to say, where do you think you are on your journey of digital transformation on a scale of say 1 to 10? And then we went to their consumers and asked them, where do you see this brand or company in their journey on digital transformation? Do you see them as a digital company? And it was stark. Most CEOs rated themselves like 80% and the consumers rated them 20%, 30%, 10% in cases and I think maybe one or two of them which were more aligned. So that when we shared with those accounts that just, you know, people's eyes popped up, they said, wow, you know, and you cannot not see the customer's gap with the customer's voice. And that led to a series of discussions and how we could help them, series of workshops and very powerful strategic plans which were not about selling to them, which was actually led by them. So we got on the same side of the table and that led to obviously great results. So now Sanjay, tell me which are the brands that you admire who do this and can this also be applied to non tech accounts? I'm conscious because of your background and my background, we are talking a lot of software, but B2B is much larger. B2B is people selling machinery, equipment, maybe aircrafts, consulting, banking services, financial services, real estate services, so much of it, right? Even agency services. Can they apply this or are they maybe even already applying it? Well, rule of the games remain the same in B2B whether it's for tech or for any other industry. As long as you are trying to target large deals which are complex and has a higher number of decision makers and or influencers, account based marketing works. Like I mentioned, you know, the people do business with people and people they trust. And trust can be gained by making sure you are credible. And the credibility comes with a solid thought leadership and thought leadership which can help your buyers to take the confident decision based on the education that you have provided and the insight that you have provided, making you a preferred choice. Reliability. You have to be very, very consistent in your engagement with those accounts. You are not just doing sporadic activities. You're constantly in with them and constantly showing them proof of concept so that they can rely on you. And the third piece, intimacy. Account based marketing is all about keeping the customer in the center so you understand their pain points. And of course you cannot be just self oriented. You have to start with the customer first mindset. Large potential customers or large organizations are an easy target for everyone because they are large, they buy a lot of things and they buy that in large quantities, right? So everybody wants to make inroads there. But you know, it's not a Leeds business as people confuse. You cannot call on them or send brochures to them or emails to them or bombard them with digital content and expect them to buy from you. If it is not thought through, if it is not relevant, if it is not deep enough and done in a sustained manner over a period of time, you know, pursued diligently and with tenacity, you're unlikely to make an entry. And if after making an entry, you don't make the most of it in terms of actually getting, getting them to see value from what you have provided to them and bet their future with you, you're actually shortchanging yourself, right? And you know, as I often say and feel, B2B relationships, and even more so in large accounts are made for life. So there is a mutual sense of respect and appreciation when you get that business and then to see it through, that's what possibly gets the best value on both sides for the longer run. Yeah, unlike maybe B2C which is not an impulse purchase, it's a high involved buying process. People put their career, their jobs at stake if they do a wrong purchase. So how as service provider or a solution provider, you can help make their job easier. And when I mentioned about the whole process of account based marketing from insights to building perspectives to developing communication assets to finally delivering through engagement platform, I would say 70% of the job is to build the right insights. So now before I let you go, what will be your advice for the following for new SaaS founders and marketers who are trying to expand globally? Traditional B2B oriented businesses could be currently suppliers, provider of services, provider of equipment, like I said, real estate facilities and so on. Marketers who are already in B2B and those who are aspiring to get into B2B market. So I think when you are a startup and you're a SaaS startup, you have limited resources, right? So instead of, you know, marketing broadly, if you focus on where you can, you have higher probability of winning. That's the best use of your marketing investment. It will reduce the wastage. So there is no brainer in that. That's number one. Number two is because the nature of account based marketing is all about personalization, right? You don't understand you are new in that market. When you learn about the customer that you're trying to market, you in the process itself. Personalize and become. You don't need to be a local player, but you can talk local. You can completely come from the customer's perspective. So that intimacy part will completely be taken care of. You can build relationship there. The third piece is because sales and marketing cannot go in isolation. You have anyways limited resources. So it makes sense to bring them together and work on a common account plan, common agenda to convert that market and land and expand. Right? That's the approach Every I think SaaS provider who has a global aspiration should take? What about the traditional B2B? I don't know if I can use the word legacy businesses which have been this for long, how can they apply this approach to cement their relationships? And many of them are in the process of transitioning their businesses to new generation or next generation. Like I earlier mentioned, relationship and reputation. They already have strong relationship with their customers, but they have customers have some preconceived notions about them, certain perceptions about them while they're modernizing they need to change those perceptions and the perception can be changed with the account based marketing. And that's the basic fundamental of that. Right? Of account based marketing. Building those, you know, changing those perception. Making sure you are thinking about the customer first. Making sure that you are thinking about their pain points, their aspirations. Right. And serving to those rather than if you're a hammer and looking for a nail. Fantastic. Any advice for aspiring B2B marketers or people already in B2B who are wanting to adopt ABM? I think first is to have definitely a customer centric approach and also have a learner mindset. Right? Right. So try to learn about the customer's business and the most important piece is art of possible. Be futurist. Look at the possibilities that are there that once you have provided the solution to the customer, how their life would change. Right. Look at the ultimate end point and then work backward. Wow. What a way to simplify the concepts of account based marketing. Many thanks to Sanjay for sharing so many gems with us today. If you found this helpful, I'd love you to hit a follow, leave a quick review or share this episode with someone in your network who cares about better B2B marketing. That way we can keep bringing you honest, no BS conversations every single week. Got a topic or question you want us to break down? Next, drop me a line at my email id mentioned here or hit me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening. And remember, don't follow the herd. You are the shepherd. See you next time.