Episode 183: How to build a global, AI-native ABM function with Tim Rutten

Speaker 1: This is the Full Funnel B t B marketing podcast, brought to you by full Funnel dot io.

Speaker 2: Let's start. Hey everyone, and welcome to the new episode of Full Funnel Life. I'm really sorry for everybody who giant has life that we are going late. Will literally start in one minute as team just has joined us, and anyhow, as promised, we're going to chat today about building a global AI native ABM function. We've been working with back based team for more than six months, working with multiple regions, and during this time we were really amazed with the way how they integrated AI and ABM process and the way how they are sinking in terms of building the global function.

Speaker 3: Uh.

Speaker 2: While we are waiting for a team, I'm just curious, guys, who has attended team's session on our full final signed in March a few months ago Type plus. Please if you have attended on minus. If you haven't, a lot of course you have, let us know, guys who has attended that session. Well, you're typing just to give some background Team Sam I didn't. Okay, I'm just curious because there isn't my masking because it's it's just good to know how much we should repeat ourselves how much you re present from that session, but just maybe to set up the expectations. What we want to chat today is basically goes through the process of developing the global function, sharing the step by step process, explain how the team was structured, explained the challenges and how they were tackled, and then the last part touched basically the AI system that team and his team created and how we have integrated this into account based marketing. I see that what and team IREDI saw. Gentlemen, Please join me on stage and we can kick it off.

Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and you're waiting for a team to find there you go, it.

Speaker 3: Will here you go.

Speaker 1: Good.

Speaker 2: So we have all three Bold Dad marketing. That was a special bonus for everybody who is joined in US Life.

Speaker 3: It's a rare occasion.

Speaker 2: You can listen to the three Bold bidding the marketers in one place but jobst site. We have the last episode of Full Final Life before the summer break, and I'm really excited to bring our long term connection and friend Tim Ruden, who is CMO and back base to our podcast. So team fest of all, thanks a lot for joining us today.

Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Andre and Flood longtime listener fans, so very privi leuch to be here myself.

Speaker 3: Cut good, So I think.

Speaker 2: We don't need to kind of prepare long inter for this episode. We've been working together on building a global ABI and function, integrating it with a systems right, another project that you were building as well in parallel, and for I think what we can do, you can just make a priefint of what back Base is doing so and who is your target audience. I think that would be beneficial for everyone, and then we'll dive deeper in IBM.

Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, no, happy too. So yeah, first of all, good to meet you.

Speaker 4: Also, my end steam rot and zero at back Base since one and a half years. At this moment in time, I've been of a BACKLACEE for twelve years. So it gives me the benefit of knowing the markets to customer, the technology, the value proposition inside and out. And as the let's say first step of the CMO coming in, I concluded, I need to really understand the man gien properly and I need to bring a vision to life that really works for our target audience, which is give or take two one of thousand to three thousand banks globally mid to larger sized, not the system banks but just one click lower, and not the smallest banks because they wouldn't have the budget to actually digest the product of back base. Basically, with those three thousand accounts, what we are offering is a white label AI native banking operating system, which is essentially a banking platform stack that allows the bank to completely modernize their complete operation. In the past, that would be to become omnichannel, have a nice mobile application, have a nice application, give it to your customers, clients, members, but also to your bank employees. They all need to operate in the digital world. And you know, in the past five to ten years, there was very much to get into a platform setup. And as we all know right now with the AI hurricane going through the industry, banks also need to embrace appropriately those new technologies, those new capabilities, and it's very challenging for them.

Speaker 5: And what is.

Speaker 4: Really cool and interesting is that for most SaaS players it's a real problem the fact that AI is now there and that you can easily build on your own or build certain capabilities and actually dethrown certain applications that you have contracts with.

Speaker 5: It goes to the back it's a bit less obvious to do that because self.

Speaker 4: Building a complete banking platform or a banking operating system is quite a heavy lift because the architectural layering is advanced. You have regulatory complaints to go through your running literally the bank that runs the country. So it's not something that you fight code if I may, nor is it something that you self built because it's just way too costly. It's going to take you too much time. So as back base, we repositioned last year, I say, three or four months ago, to be honest, all the way into becoming an a native company on how we run ourselves internally and being an AI native banking os towards the industry as a first mover, so as a category leader of the previous category, we moved all the way onto the new one, which is quite bold. I think that also as a testament to the work we've been doing. It together, bold not bald, to go and completely transform the way we think about our marketing function and how it collaborates with sales who, in the context of backpase are of course selling a strategic piece of software that runs the complete banking operation.

Speaker 5: So that is not a point.

Speaker 4: Sell it is a platform cell, but it's also a highly enterprised, high ACV long sales cycle cell which will take around one to two years on average. So that is not something that works with the typical high volume SaaS type of playbooks. If anything, it's relationship building, it's being very aware and while creating a lot of awareness all the time, a lot of thought leadership. So in a way, it lends itself perfectly fine for what these fine gentlemen wrote down in the book, which is what I woke up to one and a half years ago and have been implementing ever since.

Speaker 3: That's an awesome introduction.

Speaker 1: I think also the way that you are describing your ICP, we have three thousand banks very precisely the bucket or the segment that you're targeting. I think this is a perfect example of somebody of a company that needs to implement a count based marketing. But I think it would be interesting for the audience or context to understand the organization, the marketing team, or the function how it's organized, because it is not your standard let's say small to medium SaaS company with one marketing department. You have different regions, you have different functions within marketing and as you're kind of like letting us know how that structure, like, what is the role of ABM. Obviously giving your market, giving your ICP, given the long sale cycles, complexity and all that, it's clear that it's a good fit.

Speaker 5: But how does it.

Speaker 1: Fit within your organization? How would you position it as the roll of ABM for pipe base.

Speaker 4: Yeah, so classically ABM is like a team or a function that runs a law side all of the other parts of marketing. And I figured out that that's not very much what you would like to be doing. Why in emotion that we are running everything is ABM. Literally from start to finish, we just do the work for the accounts that we have in front of us. That's three thousand that I mentioned. They're not all in market, they're not all buying, but they better be aware of you. They need to have a view on your brands, your thought, leadership, your point of view, what have you. So, very directly, whatever you organize for is what you show up with, right, That's one of the typical statements in business. You get what you organize for. So when I took over one and a half years ago, we had these little siloed teams that were each doing their own thing, having their own KPI and having their own opinion on how marketing should be run or not. There's also some infighting happening, of course, because the crafts are not really fully aligned.

Speaker 5: Fast forward to today and I'm actually collapsing.

Speaker 4: I have already collapsed most of these functions into running as one like really following the full funnel marketing methodology, but even more so bringing everyone close to the accounts like full stop. There's no other entity that matters in the organization that I'm running, but also the engine that I'm running, which is literally an engine, It's a system that runs. The only currency that matters is are you attacking the right accounts with the right let's say, set of programs following the philosophy that we believe in to pull through eventually to get a conversation and once that conversation happens the highest possible in the organization of the bank, are we able to capture a potential qualified opportunity as or no? And everyone has the same KPI in that sense, so it's not brand versus content versus digital versus the field, who all have a little piece to play in account based marketing.

Speaker 5: It's all of them working in.

Speaker 4: The same engine against the same accounts, having the same things to celebrate, which also relates to how we organize ourselves against the sellers. We're organized by regions. We have six major territories globally. They all have a sales leader, have multiple aees. For all of those, we have one and maximum two ABM managers that run the patch and they're basically the marketing aes and they are as passionate about the pipeline as the sellers. And that's really nice to see because the moment that that click happens, I don't get escalation calls anymore, as in, hey, your marketing team doesn't understand what they need to be doing, or miss aligned or what have you.

Speaker 5: I get different calls. I get celebrations.

Speaker 4: I get hey, you really need to look after the work that this person did, because it's incredible what they pulled off. We've seen a lot of these shifts over the past one and a half years just by organizing the team towards the currency that matters, which is the accounts, and to move very far away of global campaigning and universal campaigning and let's just have an awareness layer on. That is how we started full transparency, but very soon after I figured out that that is not how I buy, That is not how I'm even being influenced, being a clear target to typical marketing platforms that want to sell their licenses to me.

Speaker 5: Right, So fast forward to today. Because of the.

Speaker 4: Advent of AI, and because we were able to build our internal go to market operating system, which is literally, you know, a complete AI native operating application, I'm able to run campaigns at the level of granularity that was not even possible two years ago. So division, if you guys have had already for ages with full funnel, I think it only can now fully get to fruition because.

Speaker 5: The tech allows us to do it.

Speaker 4: I can run fifty odd ICP cluster campaigns against my thirty against my three thousand accounts, hitting run thirty thousand executives exactly in the sport that matters to them, to warm them up, and yeah, like it or not, I don't need an army of people to do that every day. On the contrary, I think that's massive leverage. Of course, the people I do have, they're allocated to other activities which are even more strategic and even more human focused. So I think what I'm trying to say it's a bit of a long win an answer perhaps, but.

Speaker 5: The lines have been blurred consistently this year. I don't even gar.

Speaker 4: As much anymore which actual team or craft you are part of. You're working in the same engine, and it's more about how do we then organize against where's the most traction in the market, and how do we optimize that allocation so it's not under allocated and hence underperformance. I think that's the biggest switch that I've seen over the past few months now that with this methodology, with the setup, with implementing AI to actually grow, not to replace and reduce headcounts, you somehow build a sniper shooter.

Speaker 5: Yeah at skill.

Speaker 2: So basically touch on the last anthems that you mentioned. You didn't announce how I replaced my sixth regional team, so as AI department's.

Speaker 5: No, I replaced work.

Speaker 4: So one of the things that I learned very very early from my back end CTO is you have to take the work out, and the work is the silly work where you're manually going through LinkedIn feeds or doing your own Google research to get a few all on account by now we all know that that is not smart where to spend your time. We also now all know where to go to actually get a decent piece of research from your favorite choice of GPT. I think the next step is to actually have full processes running that do this all the time, twenty for seven in an economical way.

Speaker 5: You don't want to you know, overspend.

Speaker 4: There either, But that's the next step where you see these full agentic workflows that actually make you as the market heer, the ABM manager, the content manager, the digital manager. It will make you supercharged and it forces you to become even more strategic. So for some of it might be a little bit daunting or challenging, and all of a sudden you needything broader in your role and the remit that you have.

Speaker 5: I think it's the best thing that can happen to marketers to be honest strategic.

Speaker 2: Obviously, abastrall and some of the kind of overhyped let's say concepts that were promoted on LinkedIn.

Speaker 4: As all know, right, yeah, but if we if we would believe LinkedIn on the day, we would all not have a job anymore, which fortunately is not not the case.

Speaker 2: Yes, of course you mentioned you. In every region you have regional VP of sales and we've we've been chatting with dozens of B two b cmos who wanted to implement account based marketing in any format right, but quite often then the desire of the main goal is to set up the cross functional collaboration with sales, right, and what we have heard that they always faced problems was getting internal buy in and problems were setting up this necessary cross functional collaboration. So what I would love to ask you how did you handle it? And have you faced any resistance from the regional sales leader center fis again, how did you tackle it?

Speaker 1: Yeah?

Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, it is not easy, and it's also not that weird like finished, and we have the perfect you know, complete setup running where I do see the success already or we're getting very close to a tipping points where more than half is running in that.

Speaker 5: New complete philosophy.

Speaker 4: I think at the end of the day, you need to show results and you cannot be the marketing leader or the market here for that matter, in a region that just again ponies up a new framework and a new slide deck with a new inspiring talk on how we're not going to work and change, you know, the pipeline impact one. It has to start top down, so it's literally CMO and CRO day together conclude we are together collectively going to change the way we go to market.

Speaker 5: That is not enough with step two.

Speaker 4: You need an operational layer that drives discipline, cadence, clarity and accountability.

Speaker 5: Because even with the CMO and RO concluding yes.

Speaker 4: We're going to do this, or in a smaller firm maybe it's the founder or the market leader on their own and they run the full patch, you still need to day to day drive it home. And that literally goes to tracking level, like every week, have you put in the work to go through all of these different steps to do the depth, to follow the flow to eventually get high quality outputs and just make impact. And thirdly, are you measuring it appropriately? Which clearly full Funnel has a very nice view on how to measure it practically, very down to earth. Did we raise awareness yes, no, very simple KPIs. Did we get into dialogue with them and did we expect insights that whether we could.

Speaker 5: Pursue an opportunity there? Yes? Now, Thirdly, did we get a sales conversation eventually?

Speaker 4: Did it materialize into pipeline, did a pipeline qualify get into revenue and so forth. There's not rocket science, and that's the beauty of the work we've been doing together.

Speaker 5: And also I really like the latest book that you released.

Speaker 4: It's just putting to life the simplicity of the work that needs to happen.

Speaker 5: But that's not the real challenge.

Speaker 4: The real challenge is change management, removing old habits, finding sales leaders that are equally bought in to change the game, to change the way they work and their ease, which is not a given because they have their wat they've been successful in working you know, the other way, or to work the classic way, very heavy ADM or no, I don't need ABM. I know all of the people in my accounts.

Speaker 5: You know. It's not multy for that.

Speaker 4: Ain't not raising the wardeness in the accounts that you don't know. And if you may started all of a sudden, it's marketing. So I think there's a lot of credibility to be gained by just doing the hard work, like literally getting in there. And yeah, I'm not sure if it's helpful for this conversation, but I think it was you Andrew writing here in the book as a note to me, that is quite unique that you have an operator that can get into the detail. I think that's the main thing as a CEMO to walk away with. If you are not in the detail and you don't understand how the operation really really works, you're not going to get there. You're also not going to be able to eventually really move the needle and get to that tipping point where they're actually knocking on your door.

Speaker 5: My team also wants to work in a new way.

Speaker 4: Can we please be part of the pilot. The moment you get those phone calls, you can start, you know, doing an early celebration.

Speaker 5: You're still not there, but it's a good signal.

Speaker 1: We got a question from an audience, which is better relevant. I think how were we able to bring the teams together?

Speaker 4: Yeah, to that point, my say, it's myself and the CRO being fully on the same page. Then bringing it to the operational leader, which is our VP Customer Operations called revops. It's the same function here in back base, and that lady Joanna is her name. She completely internalized how we would like to work. Also added a field of the flavors that are specific to back base, and then drove the roll out in very high granular detail towards all the different regions, all the different territories, and all the different accounts with the aes. That translates them into reports which have a cadence which are all looking the same, which then results into meetings which are happening on the cadence they are ran all the same. So eventually you get a homogeneous picture where we can literally compare notes of the forty aes that we have, of the one hundred ABM campaigns that we are running. If you score all all of them, where do we see the gaps? And is that either a team setup, is it maybe a cultural challenge? Is it because we didn't properly enable them? We can literally diagnose across all these little swim lanes for me in AE is a swim lane of pipeline.

Speaker 5: Where is the gap?

Speaker 4: And right now, because we were able to actually build that systemically into our own go to market OS, which is between app you can go to, we could just analyze completely how the market is opening up to us, is getting into dialogue and is or is it not? Let's also be honest, materializing into pipeline. So getting together with the one that runs or the individual that runs the actual operation day to day and needs to deliver pipeline insight to me with key, so basically convincing her and bringing her into the fold. And also, you know there are some compromises how your operations team wants to look at the business, get as close to the view as possible. And when you look at the same picture all day long, both both ends of the spectrum, sales and marketing and partners, Yeah, you start delivering results together. And then lastly, I think the celebration part is not to be underestimated. I think the moment you start doing ABM, well, you get these surprises in your inbox, like we're doing love letters at a pretty decent skill, like ten to twenty per week, but they're well prepared, well research, really targeted the right icps, and you know, they go out there with the center profiles. I think around thirty to forty percent converts into a conversation with a set executive from that account, which is clearly a target account.

Speaker 5: That's an insane number.

Speaker 4: And people will tell each other like the love letter worked, and they're all amazed that the love letter worked, with the risk that they think that love letters is what full funnel marketing is, which is it's one of the many things.

Speaker 5: To get in there.

Speaker 4: But basically the getting the breakthrough moments and getting the aha that is where you start getting that fire going through the organization and the still it needs meticulous day to day management and looking after to continuously move the org in this direction.

Speaker 5: Because old habits they die very, very hard.

Speaker 1: Especially when there is whatever reason why people feel pressure, things might not work as they expect, etc. People tend to revert to their own habits. It's where we feel safe. And I think also has a lot to do with what you said. It has to do with the incentives, how we measure things. Do we have the same view on the process and the results and the motion and how the accounts are actually going through our motion and pipeline. I think you did a lot of things right and you started talking about it, and it's something that I would like to zoom into because you mentioned pilots and you mentioned also you know, starting from the people who you know in specific region and starting with people who might be might become your change champions that might actually spread the world around inside of the organization. And I remember we actually had quite a long back and forth between us about Okay, should we do the pilot? Should we not do the pilot? Because you were definitely already doing ABM. You had an internal ABM star who was just amazing at her work and the results that she was able to achieve, and yet we decided to take a step back. I remember you said something like, you know, I want to make sure that we're running this properly before scaling it across the whole organization. And we decided, what was it about eight months ago or something like that to actually implement the first pilot. And I think it's maybe interesting for the folks who are listening or live or later to bre break it down for us, like how did you define how did you decide which region to pick? How did you define the pilots team? How did you fund that pilot?

Speaker 5: Like?

Speaker 1: How should we think about setting up a pilot in as concrete way as possible?

Speaker 4: Yeah, for what it's worth, the approach that I took was how do you optimize it for the highest probability of success?

Speaker 5: Right?

Speaker 4: So the story that you're talking about, she would be in charge of that pilot.

Speaker 5: To begin with, because you know, the type of talent.

Speaker 4: That you work with that will pull through, will unblock it, will give you the right phone, call it the right moment in time to make progress.

Speaker 5: So I think that's a key decision.

Speaker 4: Who's actually the one that's going to wake up every day to drive it home and does not rest until it's driven home and successful.

Speaker 5: It's critical Number two.

Speaker 4: You have to put your bet on the region where you know the right talent is there to actually embrace it fast, and then there will also be the amplifier if indeed it succeeds, which you're practically banking on, right, I guess. Thirdly, you want to see a few proven people that know what they're doing, be it on the digital side, the content side, the ABM side, and similarly on the sales side, like who's the BDM and THEAE that will be in the little pot that's going to prove the point that are changed prone they're aware that the old motion is not maybe the best thing and that there's another alternative to go for which actually might make them way more successful, although initially the investment.

Speaker 5: Is going to be higher.

Speaker 4: So if you just go through that flow and you literally ask the right people, Hey, who should we bring into the team because they know they're operating on the ground each and every day. I think, in five minutes, share the right people to work with, they're all going to be fired up.

Speaker 5: Offer a fifteen minutes call.

Speaker 4: You send them one of these webinars as an example, or one of the courses, and a few of the examples, and you start kicking out the work, just getting into it. And what I noticed immediately was that none of them was used such a good structure and rhythm to begin with. That really sets the group free to do their best work. I think it's also more lightweight than they expected. Of course, the first lift is hard because all these new things. You need to fill out a few documents initially and what have you. But then it's just logical. It becomes all very logical if you apply the mechanic properly, and all of a sudden you get the right result, which also is a bit of a surprise initially, but if you go through the full flow it makes a lot of sense. You optimize the probability that you're going to get a return, and the moment that the puzzle in the formula starts clicking, you're actually done. Because they will continue, you keep monitoring it and what have you. But that's basically the deciding factor that I put in the way to fund it is.

Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very specific to the context.

Speaker 4: Had a big change budget last year because I needed to transform the complete org.

Speaker 5: And I made sure to.

Speaker 4: Let's say, backload a serious amount of funding in my complete budget delocation so that I could make really bold moves. And that was on the ABM side, that was on the brand side, that was on the digital side, had to make a few very big changes and moves.

Speaker 5: And I think my trick so far for what it's worth.

Speaker 4: Because it's not that decades as being a CMO and call the people that know best and just either abstract and extract the right ideas and inspiration and take it forward or put them with your team for a while and see how fast they can change your work. The leverage for those investments that you're making is at least in the way I've seen it so far.

Speaker 5: Second to none.

Speaker 2: Makes perfect sense and maybe a practical question what expectations did you set up for the regional leadership and the team, and also what were the results.

Speaker 3: Of the pilot.

Speaker 2: So I think there's one part for this expectations versus results.

Speaker 4: Yeah, there's one part before it. One part before it also towards my regional leaders.

Speaker 5: Why change, why now? And why this methodology right?

Speaker 4: Because otherwise you can push it through the team, and you can you know, allocate you guys as a full funnel marketing consultant and just push it through force function. I think that's been the biggest challenge to actually convince people of a different way of working. And the biggest thing I was fighting on the day alot was yeah, but we're already doing this, it's just a little bit different. Yes, you know we're doing this. No, you're not really doing this. By the way, you can only make this statement if you went through the full course and then you really benchmark your program, and then you can tell me are you fully doing this or just parts of it and you follow the happy flow of thinking that you are. So that was the thing I was fighting, So I had to force function it through. I basically just signed the guys up set to the team. This is the pilot. You have to go now and here are the expectations. What I did, and maybe that's even not the best advice. I didn't for se put a target on it. The only target I put on it is I want you to follow the full flow, and I want you to report back every other week, and I want to see the signal that this is meaningful to continue investing in. So eventually you get qualified meeting to target accounts, Eventually you get pipeline, and eventually you can say, hey, this is a nice benchmark number I'm going to put on the next pilot. So I didn't inflate the numbers or the expectations by saying, hey, I need ten million out of this pilot or one million or two opportunities.

Speaker 5: Who am I to to tell you what it should be.

Speaker 4: I have no idea, But my hypothesis was that this way of working was going to be meaningful. So not putting the pressure on the team I believe was helpful because they were the right people, on the right talent, in the right DNA and they would go for it.

Speaker 5: And that's exactly what happened. So they delivered pipeline.

Speaker 4: Sorry, on I don't have the number top of mind, but it's been celebrated. It's been a good number in terms of breaking into accounts, getting dialogues and actually leading to first of all, just pipeline and eventually qualified pipeline, which has resulted now in this is the way we work full stop, including my CEO making the full goal or just supporting the goals that I'm pushing. How fast can all of my teams, all of my regions, all of our territories work this way, report this way, and basically play the game this way? How do we scale that most challenging question in the universe of a.

Speaker 6: Am I really like it that you were thinking about as well, like, Okay, the team has to do the right things that the team can do.

Speaker 1: Let me put it differently, Let the team focus on what they can control, right, And I think you did that really well. And I do remember the first that we ran was in the United States and it's a very well known larger European brand still obviously, especially when it comes to the financial sector, the United States being what they are and the banks being there larger, having to create a credibility, having to create awareness with those target accounts, and I know, like when we started having first conversations, you know, with huge names, you know, and just imagine the biggest banks. I don't want to name the names, but it will be those and I remember how much we have celebrated that, And that's why I wanted to ask you because I know that a lot of teams are struggling with this. A lot of teams are struggling with and you were talking about at the beginning, you know, going from kind of broad awareness creation to you know, what what we need to do is we have three thousand banks and then in the United States have these banks and actually, you know what, we are going to focus on whatever specific segment, banking segment. So we are like narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. We're talking about large organizations, you know, very conservative industry. You're talking about a relatively new brand for them. So what do you think kind of the best practicers the lessons learned in terms of actually creating strategic sorry awareness with those senior buyers in those strategic accounts that you're after, not just let's say global brand awareness.

Speaker 5: Yeah, this is.

Speaker 4: Such a tough cookie to crack at this level for the reason that many answers could work. So you have to make a bit of a judgment on what do I personally believe will break through and is also still fundable, right, and you can also just put all these accounts in whatever campaigns and funded for millions. But that's something you have to optimize for. So where I am today and just hearing it transparenting with the group here, I don't really believe in global segment campaigns anymore. And if you think about the context and BA base, we service retail banks, small medium business banks, commercial banks, private banks, and wealth managers. That's five different types of institutions. Whereas one brand can have all five of these lines of business.

Speaker 5: So the three.

Speaker 4: Thousand you could on average do multiply them by three or four, so there's run ten thousand doors through which we can enter with a part of the value proposition.

Speaker 5: Now where we started in the let's say last year, was to.

Speaker 4: Have these segment campaigns globally running and allocate those accounts based on the segments where they are active, which means, if you are Avid m Row, you service all lines of business, you're actually part of all the campaigns, and all the senior buyers and the VP levels and director levels now included, will be exposed to all of those campaigns for all these lines of business.

Speaker 5: Quite nice to get started because it's the fastest way.

Speaker 4: However, it is the proximity to the actual account and the actual Persona's going to see your auding is not great.

Speaker 5: It's actually it's just not great full stop. So where we're moving right now, which I'm really excited about.

Speaker 4: And we'd love to even demo it in the future once I get it running. I'm a firm believer that within one institution, I have ICP clusters itself. So within one bank, there's multiple ICP clusters where I can knock on a door and have a different entry or different wedge. There's the private banking wedge where they have a relationship manager problem to fix and it's actually a funded initiative. Maybe through the retail door, there's a conversational banking investment that they're looking to make. I can also enter through that door. But if those executives are seeing just some random campaigns across all the different segments of that base, they have no idea that they should pick up the phone. So we're now in the middle of an exercise where we do very high quality ICP scoring practically twenty four to seven. Then we do very the account research on all of our accounts where we know they should actually be in dialogue with backbase all the time. Based on that, I'm able to build out a whole cluster of icps. So if ICP cluster buckets and there's dozens like twenty or twenty five, I can then allocate titles to those buckets, so not accounts, titles, and one account can be in multiple buckets. But because it is title driven, all of a sudden, the individual, let's say CFO in the bank in amy Emro is just getting the operational excellence ICP cluster campaign and we're warming up that individual just from that angle, and then eventually if that exits, goes to future pipeline.

Speaker 5: Answer forth, So what is my current belief?

Speaker 4: Yes, I will have a global brand awareness layer just for reaching engagement and mental availability, big friend of a Byron shark.

Speaker 5: But that's where it ends.

Speaker 4: The rest is ICP clusters, and that's how I warm up all the three thousand accounts and all the I think thirty forty fifty thousand contacts that you would like to reach in a very granular and suitable way. Primary channel being linked in we target in Google thated, what have you to raise the awareness and indeed, once it access the bucket, we go the future pipeline and other sequences start. That's my current hypothesis on how I can, in the context of BA base scale this out. And yes, this is only possible if you properly run this with an AI native setup, which is exactly what we've been able to break through into in the past few months. So it gets us to dozens of ICP cluster campaigns that continuously move accounts and personas across as we see fit for what is happening outside into the account.

Speaker 2: And tom Mark Granul level level. If that assigns on that, you would add let's say the ABM team saw market and let's say ABM leaders you mentioned and sells teams.

Speaker 3: Are there any specific.

Speaker 2: Tactics so that that happened and let's say on one of few or one to one level.

Speaker 5: Yeah, so one of the.

Speaker 4: So it sounds a bit hard, but what really works with getting into the CXO level is just play into the ego of individuals. The majority is looking to build their own brand or to be exposed. In banking, you don't typically get exposed as the executive because you're you're a bank.

Speaker 5: You can't really go out there.

Speaker 4: So we essentially offer the platform for them to look incredible just out there, get the exposure and distribution because we have quite some reach, and you're next to this relatively hip brand in the banking space, not fintech, perche but more big fintech, more you know, trustworthy, credible. So our podcast program has with a massive success just getting entry by just having c xos in the conversation and I personally the host, so that means I meet.

Speaker 5: The CEOs all the time.

Speaker 4: They're in my show, and we have a dialogue like we have here, and by surprise, it's always with a target account, right. That's the strategy, very high leverage, very little investment. The second one that to me really stands out is just classic events, like if you know who you need to meet, then I also know where these people are, where they are speaking, or where they are showing up to a physical setting, and we make sure it to also be there, and there's a whole preflow to make sure that we have a meeting with them or that we have a certain that's the opportunity to connect with them appropriately, and then following that there's follow up.

Speaker 5: The third one I would like.

Speaker 4: To share is a little bit more recent, there's a program we run which is called volt which is not back based branded, but it's a community for c exos in banking which has chapters. The first chapter is Women in Banking, where the opportunity there is to actually connect them globally and just create a safe space for them to connect, compare notes, learn from each other and what have you. And at this moment in time, the program only runs for three months. We have thirty eight cxos female cxos that are in the seat, that are in our let's say target account the base who we have access to, and they're actually grateful for us connecting them and they have these circles where.

Speaker 5: They can communicate and basically have dialogues all the time. So in a way, I'm building communities in.

Speaker 4: A very respectful and thought thoughtful way to just connect people with people, which is not a given these days anymore. So if you listen closely, I'm not as much on the thought leadership bumping content and doing a lot of AI slob on the channels. Yes, we have a content strategy that engine is massively important to just score in the LMS appropriately, but to get into the door and get the conversation in the future Pipeline bucket, it's very little tactics to just get the yes, I'm happy to do a podcast with you guys, or sure, I'll show up for the webinar without any prep thirty minutes just to have the dialogue and be exposed.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I can go home.

Speaker 4: But there's there's there's many of these tactics that, let's say I had to open up the hearts and minds of my team to understand that that's actually more than sufficient.

Speaker 5: To just get entry. There's people's business. In this case.

Speaker 2: I have an interesting full up question from MASA. Out of three day accounts rather all than that runaware and you had to engage them. You had accounts in Future Pipeline and actor focus.

Speaker 4: Yeah, look, there's already a natural distribution, right, So the moment you would implement it and you score your accounts, you basically see them appear in the buckets. Your actual pipeline is already all the way to the right, and most likely you're not even activating as much anymore on top unless you need to multi thread. So there are definitely some some moving there. I would say that the if you look at just the target accounts, so the earmarked accounts within the three thousand that we need to work against, that's the one that I care about most, to raise awareness, to bring them into dialogue and eventually into pipeline. When we started the initiative a to measure it, for which we build a complete signal engine. That's maybe for another moment, guys, but we basically saw that around thirty percent was either already in dialogue with us or in pipeline, and the remaining let's.

Speaker 5: Say sixty to seventy percent was indeed unaware.

Speaker 4: And those are the ones that you are investing all that let's say campaigning and awareness building against to get them in happy to report it.

Speaker 5: Right now, that number is looking very different.

Speaker 4: So around sixty to seventy percent is now aware, is showing first signal, and or is highly engaged. There's still twenty thirty percent completely cold. There's also some markets where, yeah, you know, the digital strategies just don't function, so you also can't measure them. So they need to get into physical events and there's a bit of data entry and then you see it, let's say pop up over time. But yeah, I would say the starting position was sixty seventy percent was pretty coold, which you don't need to warm up and basically get into the next stage.

Speaker 1: You know what I find fascinating about what you just shared with us. We spoke about awareness and all the tactics, just like almost all of them, were relationship based. They were based on creating a community, creating a conversation peer to peer, or you being one of the executives. I know that your CEO is also participating in a lot of those executive conversations. Yeah, I know that you also have people subject matter experts who are out there, They're sharing their insights, they're educating, but also having these relationships. So in the age of AIRE, we're seeing a lot of technics for a company that is as advanced as you. With AI, we're still talking a lot about relationships. And I don't think that's the exit, that's an excit. I think that is actually what you said, what you said as well yourself, it's something that we all need right now. I think we would be remiss not to talk about AI because you mentioned several times. You just mentioned the signal engine, you mentioned uh, you know, research mentioned a number of processes that are very important for running a BM for the operational running of it, scoring, understanding where your accounts are collecting all these data, many different processes. So could you break it down for us how your engine looks like and what are the major processes where you saw the biggest bank for your buck in terms of AI investment.

Speaker 4: Yeah, so happy to share a few thoughts and also experiences so to where we are today.

Speaker 5: So last year.

Speaker 4: Around July, we were coming up with the renewal of the ABM platform that we had six cents or demand base, it actually doesn't matter which one it was. And I realized, like, I'm not getting the value out of that particular platform because it's lack folks, it's key, we're driven.

Speaker 5: I have no idea what's behind it.

Speaker 4: Of course you do, but like it's very hard to defend the value. So I figured out, you know what, I'm just gonna terminate and I'm going to use that funding to start figuring out if you could self build a signal engine where of course a relatively evanced company. I myself have an engineering background, but mostly I had a very smart engineer in one of the teams to work with, and my hypothesis was, if anyone can now do research with at that moment still perplexity or CHGPT, but by now it's of course XI, which is great, firecrawls fantastic. If you combine them well, you get incredible results. But in the early days I felt these are just data pipelines and if we somehow bring them together, we make our own model. We sing, we map it against our accounts, and you just run it every week. You already get their party signal, You're going to get your social signal, which you can also acquire through a few set of APIs. You're going to combine it with your sales signals, which for which we have people AI already running on our salesforce, and you combine it with your overall marketing signals, all the campaigns events, so what have you just bring that together. It took us to to three months, and that was the start of the signal engine, which allowed us to continuously score these accounts based on the whole universe of what's happening around them white box. Meaning today I had a meeting to tune one of the elements. We do that all the time, so we're tuning it ongoingly to really make sense for the accounts that we are servicing and looking after, which is a pretty unique I imagine. But b it turned into a saving. Of course we have token spent and so forth. But we tuned it and I think it's been two months ago where we shaved off sixty percent of the token calls by changing a few of the parameters, and I think that will sync to a very low run rate eventually, which is a few thousands per month, which you cannot license one of these platforms for now. Why was this the starting point? Because I just created the gap on purpose. It's also the baseline that you need to actually start scoring accounts. You need to get that intel or somewhere collected. Plus it was my biggest quick wind to turn people's mindset into hey, if we can self build it this fast, perhaps we can do more. Which now let's say fast forward one year, evolved all the way into our own GTMOS, which indeed is a yeah, it's a full blown application that runs agentic workloads, that runs their processes, that runs workflows. Some are completely human land some are fully agentic autonomous. I look at all of my teams as engines in the platform, like literally turned on. Everything is running. I see all the KPIs all the time, I can roll them up. But even more so the reporting now that we had on beautiful slides, which is very aligned to the full funnel methodology, I know was able to bring it to life, and we are able to bring it to life real time, so I can literally see accounts moving through over time, and I can show the actual impact on which moment in time, which campaign, which touch point mattered and why and how it then relates into pipeline.

Speaker 5: So if I take a step back, this is very helpful.

Speaker 4: If you're a startup and you have no bureaucratic stuff to deal with, you can do this very fast, and I think you shouldn't go any other way. If you're a mid sized company, it might be a bit more tricky because of resourcing, funding and just getting it off the reels off the ground. If you're at a size similar to Hours, which is three hundred million in revenue, give or take, I think it's a no brainer because I'm a full believer of go to market ALPHA like your go to market and the way you go to market is IP because everything is going to be commoditized. Content is commoditized, STREA will be commoditized, so you better have a very unique view on how you drive your full go to market motion from the sellers down to the marketeers, that collective engine. You need to have a take on it, and I'm not able to have a very strong vision together with my cro and the operators around us, which we built in a way which yeah, it could be a product, it could literally be something we license out externally. We will not, but it gives us a way to go to market that others do not have. And that's the let's say alpha, that's the profit between commodity and Hey, we are very unique and how we do all of.

Speaker 5: This so a little bit of charade for self build while at.

Speaker 4: The same time we are investing in to opens, we are investing in other tool and in infrastructure which displaces you know, a few other applications and elements that we brought together so far. So your overall spent will go up, you don't se go down and headcount, but the productivity and the quality is one hundred x and I'm not even say making up a big number here. It is literally one hundred cks. So the three thousand counts I was just talking about yesterday, I scored all the clusters in five hours for all these accounts, with all the stakeholders, with all the details in six hours. Total cost around five hundred dollars. That is a thousand decks compared to doing this with human labor, and you know, likely spending your time there now just as soon as you can run these workflows as systems all the time. Yeah, you're you're playing in a different league, and that's that's my game. I want to play in a different league. So that's also what we're absolutely doing with the teams.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Speaker 2: I have touched on multiple let's say process and you also mentioned the signal based engine that you have created. If I can maybe a summarize and maybe you can add a few more processes. What are the typical ABM processes that you're on with AI. Let's say, maybe we can do a breakdown in that way, what's the outsource full to AI, right, and what are the key ABM processes that your team that your team's run.

Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're getting close to doing accounts selection let's say legentically, meaning there's a whole set of variables and parameters that the agent will utilize to score these accounts all the time. Ongoingly based on everything that it knows. The technology is very suitable for it, so you just need to really build it appropriately and with proper detail and review internally so it really delivers as expected. That's I think in a few more weeks we will have it running practically real time, which is then your input to account research. Because let's assume we've got five ronother accounts where you really have the right ICP fit for all the variables that we score against.

Speaker 5: Okay, so those five hundred accounts, how do.

Speaker 4: They map to where we could enter Well, that is account of research to me that you absolutely farm out the AI because it does.

Speaker 5: Research at a level that is just completely superhuman. Right.

Speaker 4: The level of detail, the level of data and contacts that can digest external as well as within your own CRM is just second to none. Of course, you need to look at it then, but getting all the intel up to the surface that is absolutely AI driven. The third one that follows is mapping out to the buying committee the DMU towards the clusters that actually matter to that particular institution. The majority of them were already in our salesforce, but to enrich them and to really do a few loops of runs of finding the other individual rules.

Speaker 5: We utilize Extra four.

Speaker 4: It's an agent that uses extra to find all these individuals and then ingest them into the platform. No brainer, nobody with like, no person should spend their time there, that's just silly.

Speaker 5: So again no brainer to do.

Speaker 4: And you can run that practically completely autonomous because we also double check and triple check that guard fields and what have you. Following that, you need to select what actually goes into which bucket? Is it an ICP cluster account and goes into that particular campaign, is it a future pipeline? Is it an active one on one focus right now? That is a manual decision. So basically the team decides, Hey, which account goes where? And how do we optimize that. We are at a stage where we can actually build a strategy of the tactics that you would like to deploy at a timeline. It's also not crazy to do the way AI because they can do it very well and hold true to the framework. However, the execution then is practically the human meaning, hey, with these three stakeholders, comment on one of their LinkedIn posts and make it thoughtful, so you actually go in as an individual you have an opinion. It's not AI slob, it's not generated, it's not automated. You basically start a dialogue shoot this individual at that moment in time at DM or the connect via your CEO. So all these different steps, some of them I think we should automate eventually to get a little bit more volume out of it.

Speaker 5: But to actually engage at this.

Speaker 4: Moment in time is all human lad, because if you listen closely, our bdms eventually will not be doing all that research, all that mapping, all that committee cleaning, blah blah blah blah. They get pushed to the actual individuals that matter to us, and they can start relationship building. And I'm seeing more of that already happening in the pockets where we apply it.

Speaker 5: This all the way, and I do not want to replace that.

Speaker 4: I think that is you can tell this is AI bullshit, This is a bull tel talking to me.

Speaker 5: I'm actually annoyed, and I would dequalify the brand. Right.

Speaker 4: So that's where we're trying to find the balance scale clearly in that first part and then.

Speaker 5: The actual relationship building and beach out at the.

Speaker 4: Right moment for the accounts that matter to us is human if the accounts are not target accounts, but they are in that bucket, because there's enough engagement that I will probably put an auto by it very soon.

Speaker 5: Should content vestuer BDM.

Speaker 4: Power there you take the AI to actually do a little bit of work there, but keep it nicely metered. And then lastly, of course you can generate any tactic as a result, because you've got all this context.

Speaker 5: Love letters.

Speaker 4: Yes, we generate eighty percent of them, and then you have a good you put a proper reader's I on that that you optimize it. If you want to build an ICP clus teror webinar, of course we generate it exactly based on the pain points. We make a nice deck, we invite the right people, and we go. But still there's someone in the driver's seat. There's someone working against a certain pocket of accounts that wants to set up that webinar because it's the logical next thing to do that doesn't go automatic. See I can go all and all and on, but I think if you distill the principles, it's all the research, all the assimilation, all the contact creation, that's all fully fully driven by AI.

Speaker 1: I'll just very quickly excuse myself after. And also I just want to be mindful as well. You mentioned you were back to be so in the case that you would need to stop in a minute, please let us know so we can wrap it up. Tim.

Speaker 5: But I have been a five four minutes, okay.

Speaker 1: So thank you so much. It's going to have to excuse myself.

Speaker 5: Thank you. This is awesome, and.

Speaker 2: We can pick up a few questions from our community. As I know, we can continue and for hours. I have like quite a few questions to us, but maybe for the next time we'll have a good reason to schedule another episode for the next season starting from September. So let's pick up this one from karthech with distribution becoming a key mode, how you're doubling down on distribution in the era of slap.

Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a great question, Karthik, and I don't think there's a real full answer today.

Speaker 5: I mean there's an answer today. Of course.

Speaker 4: You got to play nice with the alms, meaning recency is very and pr media is now becoming more important because it's well scored.

Speaker 5: I think it represent representational.

Speaker 4: Wikipedia, Reddit LinkedIn is no scored properly, so there's new channels coming together that influence the LM scores, and you can either buy air ops or something similar to continuously churn out relevant blocks that allow you to you know, get the highest rankings in the prompts and in the domains that matter to you. I think that's a no brainer. At the same time, it's stable stakes. So if you don't do it, that's facilly. Just actually play and go either invest or build or operate whatever you find this the right way for you.

Speaker 5: But you have to get into that.

Speaker 4: Motion where to continuously be in top of mind in the l M context. You just have to deliver with a content engine, and it has to be systematic. It cannot be human. Lad that there's just no way you're going to get a breakthrough. That is one two. Distribution to me is more how do I get access to my audience, And at this moment in time, it's still relatively costly because I don't own the LinkedIn audience. I'm paying for it every time to get engagement and to boost posts and whatever. So one of the major investments we're going to be making right now up until end of next year is build those communities, those close knits, communities that are ours we own those communities. They cannot be monetized per se by anyone else by a platform player. I think email is going to be materially more valuable in the coming period because that is the most trusted entry point into the daily life of any individual. So if you have a very high quality distribution through email where you deliver value all the time, you are looking at something very meaningful for your marketing operation.

Speaker 5: So one of the experience of running is called Momentum.

Speaker 4: It's a CXO newsletter so for CEOs only, and it's one to one invites via our CEO's profile, and every two weeks we give them a very high quality distribution email that just summarizes all the crazy stuff that happens in aim.

Speaker 5: Banking and we just yeah, remove.

Speaker 4: We do signal versus noise that already had seventy signups and it's just getting started. So we have seventy CEOs that are inner distribution which we can talk to every other week. And I'm now more thinking from that angle to get owned distribution more than you are rented or eventually earned, because the cost is just getting out of hand because these platforms are raising the prices all the time.

Speaker 5: Changing their algorithms.

Speaker 4: So the moment you've got something going, probably very soon is going to be killed again. So that's my vision of philosophy on distribution. I think we're at five percent of her we should be, so we have a lot of leeway still to go, which is indeed, podcast, webinar, newsletter, you know, community building, all those things.

Speaker 5: That are for the majority of you. I believe top of mindte topics.

Speaker 2: Thank you, And maybe just to wrap up our chat, if I would try to summarize everthon that we have discussed today, And let's imagine we have a conversation with a Philo B two B CMO who wants to implement let's say the global A B m AI native function. How would you, maybe, how would you explain the step by step process, the course steps that should be taken in a certain order right, and how to make it successful?

Speaker 3: So I think it would be a good summary.

Speaker 4: That's a big question to answer still, but I'll I'll try in a few minutes, and I honestly do have another conversation to go to. But I think first of all, get to see in your alignment at your peer level, that's either your sales counterpart or your front or CEO, And in doing so, you have to be strategic and tack the goal, like really get on the same page on how this whole engine is going to work. That's why I really like the frameworks of full Funnel because it really specks out relatively tactically, what happens in each layer of the framework or in each bucket of activities. What are the things we're going to do, why do they matter? What is the GAPI we're going to measure to eventually see velocity? So that first part you need to do is championing, creating understanding and alignment, creating the mental buy in to then pull the trigger and go and invest and change the way your org organizes and operates both on sales side is all the marketing side.

Speaker 5: Two.

Speaker 4: My belief system personally is that you need to be very hands on to drive change. Otherwise, threadsheet or slide deck exercise, you give it to a few individuals in your team and you'll just go off focusing.

Speaker 5: On their day to day.

Speaker 4: That's not the leadership I would bring to drive change here. I would argue to actually run one of the pasts together with you know, the gentleman move funnel or at least be very close to it so you understand the deep mechanic, because by operating, you're going to.

Speaker 5: See the limitations.

Speaker 4: You're going to see where your team finds misalignments, You're going to see where your team is blocked. You're going to see where your team is maybe understaffed or underqualified at this moment. Be very close to the shop that you're running. And thirdly, you need to be the champion all the time to continuously defend the program because you're going to get pushed back, and there's going to be delayed, and there's gonna be a whole bunch of standard change management challenges you have to go through, and you need to be the strongest player to continuously fly the flag to keep pushing. I think they're the visibility you create overall all the time is the thing that will move the need eventually, and then you will find that other people, other senior people are going to start talking about it in a very positive way because you are delivering, you're close to it, you're accountable also taking a hit if it's not working or if it's delayed or whatever.

Speaker 5: To eventually, I.

Speaker 4: Think it takes one to two quarters to show some real results to say this is what we've been able to do compared to the benchmark. So let's actually bring a whole org to that new model, which will take you at least six to twelve months on top. So you're buying time with the way you run, operate, stay close, and you know, continuously create visibility. Now, I'm not sure if that's what you were looking for, because I know you like more technical answer per se, but I think this is the difference between succeeding and completely thanking on it next to being technically involved on an initiative like this.

Speaker 3: I love it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: I think it was a prelliant answer, and was that being said, I think we can wrap it up because.

Speaker 3: It's just more than one hour of us talk.

Speaker 2: Can Thank you so much for coming and for having a friend conversation with us, and thank you all guys who are joined and who ask the questions. I think this was fantastic questions. And with that being said, will pause for a summer break and come back with the new season of podcasts late this year in September. Thank you so much, old team, wish you all the success and listen you guys are fantastic summer, have a great one, take care.

Speaker 5: Welcome, Thanks everyone, thanks all, thanks all to be here.