S2E13: How to Leverage Unified Data for B2B Marketing Wins - ft. Leanne Chescoe, Marketing Director at Demandbase

WEBVTT - > All right. Today, I am sitting down with Leanne. - > She is the Marketing Director at Demandbase. She's a proactive B2B marketer - > who has led both traditional and digital marketing campaigns.

- > She is extremely effective in developing ABM strategies, lead generation channel - > partnerships, and other promotion strategies. - > And she has 15 years of B2B SaaS marketing experience. In 2018, - > she actually created the Women in B2B Network, which is a vibrant community - > for senior professional women to connect, contribute, and grow. - > The mission of the network is actually to create a platform that connects women - > to opportunities, networks, businesses, and expertise that empowers them.

- > And her network actually has over 400 members today. - > So Leanne, I'm super excited to chat with you and get to know more about your background. ground. - > Yeah, so excited to be here.

Thanks for having me, Kira. - > Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about how and why you got into your current - > role and how you got into like the Women in B2B Network because that sounds pretty cool. - > Yeah, so I've been a career-long marketer.

I always want to say lifelong, - > but I obviously haven't been doing this since like career-long. - > So always been in marketing it was something that - > I did that was part of my university degree - > and I did marketing as part of that in my - > last year and thought oh I really should have done a marketing degree because - > this is something that really interests me so then after university - > I went on and did another degree in my marketing diploma - > and I just love the different like disciplines and having uh learning lots of - > different skill sets and really understanding just like all of the different - > kind of aspects of marketing and then over the last nine years I've really developed.

- > My skills in the areas of account-based marketing as we're starting to really - > focus on those accounts that have the highest propensity to buy and really having - > this focus on a target account list as being just a smarter way to go to market. - > That's where I've really got into it. And then I found myself at Demandbase. - > I've been here seven years this year and I'm in a really unique position where - > I use our own technology to help with my own account-based strategy.

- > So I'm getting to use the product on a daily basis and give feedback and some - > product suggestions in terms of where we want to develop it. - > I get really involved in the sales cycle, pre and post sales to help our customers - > really learn how to leverage our technology and really get to practice what - > we preach around account-based marketing as well. - > So yeah it's a really sort of unique position - > to be marketing to marketers hence why i've been - > here for so long that's fun - > that's fun and i would assume you know a ton about your audience like way before - > going into it so that's that's also pretty unique yeah it's great having those - > peer to peer conversations as well so you're adding value in that sales cycle - > as well but it's great just to chat to other colleagues and you're bringing - > that kind of extra value to the to the - > sales team throughout those sales cycles.

So yeah, it's pretty unique. - > Okay, awesome. So what's the one thing or the one tip or one piece of advice - > you'd like to share with marketers, especially in the B2B SaaS space? - > Yeah, so I think, you know, I mentioned about having this account-based approach.

- > And I think one of the most urgent strategies in B2B today is focusing your - > time and your budget on the accounts that are most likely to buy. - > And that's harder than ever. And I think just given the economic climate that - > we find ourselves in, people are taking longer to make decisions, - > particularly around new technologies that they're purchasing, - > or they're not making a decision. People are.

- > Scared really there's that real sort of fear factor if if - > i'm making the wrong decision decision you know my job could be on the line - > here those that are in an active sales cycle a lot of that is actually done - > anonymously so something like 95 of the customer's time in the buyer journey - > is actually done without that sales rep so so much of it is done anonymously and outside of a, - > salesperson's view and sometimes a marketer's view to understand where are these - > companies is researching it.

- > If they're not coming to our website, where else are they looking? - > So I think it's really key to be able to get that intent of what companies are - > searching for, particularly products that are related to what you sell, - > but also if they're researching your competitors, - > like companies should be having that insight because we just need to be so much - > more proactive with those people that are researching and being able to deliver - > that really good customer experience.

- > And it also just helps us be super focused on, you know, the accounts that we - > need to prioritize and ones that are showing those in-market signals. - > And I think another kind of part to that is kind of having everything. - > Once you have sort of decided upon or agreed upon having this account-based approach, - > it's then having one system in place to be able to link all of your data, - > your account level data, your contact level data, all of your systems and channels - > and processes and aligning teams.

- > Because another sort of key challenge is this go-to-market fragmentation where - > sales are using one system, marketing are using another to look at accounts, - > contacts, leads, and And there's not that kind of one shared view. - > So having that one shared view between those teams is just so key. - > So I was saying having something, a platform or something in place to be able - > to give you that one view is really key. - > And then being able to measure the engagement across the buyer journey.

- > So you can see where an account or an individual is in your funnel at any given - > time so that you know as a marketer, I know exactly what kind of messaging that - > I need to deliver to these accounts at these various stages in the sales cycle, - > but also when that lead or account is then ready for sales follow-up. - > So then they also know when's the right time for me to follow up when there's - > a decent amount of engagement. - > It's not just one person downloading a white paper that wouldn't constitute - > something that's sales ready.

- > And then they also know what to say when they're of doing that follow-up as well. - > Okay. Yeah, that is awesome. I like that that's a whole system that kind of - > takes you from, we need to do account-based marketing to like, - > how are we going to link this all together to like, how are we going to make - > this a systematic approach to actually making sure that we're following up with - > people at the right time because we have all the data in front of us and it's - > all combined in a shared view.

- > So like, what were you guys doing before - > you you implemented like consolidated or - > overarching abm system and like how - > does that compare to what you guys are doing now yes i mean i'm in the unique - > position where i work for an abm technology company so we very much practice - > what we preach we we already have that agreement on we're going to use our own - > technology to help our own go-to-market strategy and really live and breathe - > with account-based marketing.

- > We become experts and that helps solidify our position in the market as a thought - > leader and one of the best or the best technology provider in that space as well. - > Prior to demand-based, it was really, you know, a lot of these issues started - > because there wasn't that sales and marketing alignment and marketing were providing - > sales with bad fit leads. - > It was almost like that kind of baton pass of like, well, we've got the lead, - > here you go sales, marketing jobs done.

- > And that's where we leave it. And that just doesn't happen anymore. - > Marketing are getting involved from that, - > you know, helping to kind of work those leads and scoring and keep that engagement - > from the time that that account or an individual becomes a lead through to them - > becoming closed one opportunity as well. - > I think other challenges that I've experienced is then when you don't align - > with sales on what a good lead looks like, and you're not working together to - > really understand and build what does your ideal customer profile look like.

- > And that just results in, again, providing those bad fit leads. - > It's like kind of square peg in a round hole scenario where the result is it's - > a longer sales cycle because you're trying to close those bad fit accounts. - > You get lower average order values because the account isn't a good fit for you. - > It takes longer for you to be able to demonstrate and prove the value of the - > solution that you're trying to sell to that account.

- > And then it impacts things like renewal rates because those accounts are a bad fit. - > And in that scenario, nobody has a great experience from a customer standpoint. - > If they're not a good fit for the business, they're just not going to have a - > great customer experience because the product's really not going to be sufficient - > for their needs, or they might not be quite ready for that product in terms - > of their market maturity. - > And for a lot of SaaS companies, well, for all SaaS companies, - > those renewal rates are so critical because they're measuring things like ARR, - > and that obviously helps things like funding and valuations and M&A opportunities.

- > So it really has a huge knock-on effect throughout the funnel. - > So it's really important to be able to align on those, what does a good customer - > look like? Like, let's build our ideal customer profile together. - > And then we're passing leads to sales that they're actually able to close.

- > I think the other key thing is having some sort of feedback system in place - > to say, if it is a bad lead, tell us and tell us why so that marketing can learn - > from that. And then they can work on improving the quality as well. - > Okay. I haven't heard of companies implementing a feedback system like that, - > but that sounds like such a good idea and something that a lot more people should be doing.

- > Definitely. We have an amazing marketing operations team at Demandbase. We're really spoiled. - > And I always say they're the best in the business, but they - > introduced something thing that looks at mql - > eligible eligibility i always struggle to - > say that word and that's essentially gives the - > sdrs that follow up the leads for us they can - > say am i am i going to accept this and - > does it meet our idle customer profile then they they are able to give us feedback - > on why it's a bad fit so then we can make that improvement and that's like mandatory - > fields that we've built into our crm system to help with that feedback and that's - > something that we look at and we're actually gold on MQL acceptance rates.

- > So it comes back to actually, once you do have these systems in place, - > it's being like accountable and standing by that to say, - > we're going to be gold on this and we're going to look at this and we want, - > you know, a certain percentage of all of the MQLs that come through to hit a - > certain acceptance rate. - > So that's as important as having that process in place as well. - > Okay. Yeah.

I like setting that as kind of a metric upfront and then tracking - > that metric. That's really fun. - > And then another thing that you said is how important it is to link this data - > from different teams together and have like a shared dashboard or a shared view between teams. - > So do you have any like tips on setting that up?

- > And like, well, first having this conversation with sales and aligning the ICP - > and then putting together this shared view. - > You like do you have any insight into like how to have those - > conversations or what would make like a really successful outcome yeah - > so this is where you build your abm team - > your abm leadership team and it needs to come from the top down so getting that - > organizational buy-in to say we're going to have this account-based approach - > to our go-to-market strategy we're really going to focus on getting the right - > accounts in our pipeline and trying to convert those into customers so So getting - > that agreement, firstly, is fundamental.

- > And then secondly, it's that collaboration of that ABM leadership team. - > And that should be made up of sales, marketing, operations. - > Sometimes your finance team is also part of that as well, depending on the size - > of your organization, to really help you define and collaborate on what does - > that ideal customer profile look like. - > And you have all of that data that exists in your CRM system.

- > So you look at your existing customer data to be like, what are our most successful customers? - > Where do we have customers with the highest renewal rates, the ones that spend - > the most money with us, and look for commonalities between those. - > So are we seeing patterns in industries that those accounts are in certain revenue - > sizes, geographies, perhaps it's some other technology solutions that they're - > using that are complementary to yours. - > All of those things, revenue ranges, employee sizes, that could be another thing that comes into it.

- > And then also looking at applying that same model to accounts that are in your - > current pipeline so that you're making sure that you're always... - > Keeping that ICP relevant. And that ICP scoring is something that you should - > do every 12 months and then going back, reviewing that customer data. - > Reviewing your pipeline data to make sure that actually the industries that - > we're trying to sell into are still relevant.

- > We're still closing business with them and you're getting agreement from teams as well. - > And it also can differ depending on the segment. - > So you might have a slightly different ICP criteria for your enterprise size - > accounts, for your mid-market size accounts. - > We have it differently for our EMEA accounts versus the ones that we sell into - > in the US.

There's other criteria that we use. - > So you don't have to have one model for the whole company. - > You can adapt it to suit the key segments that you're selling into or the key - > markets that you're selling into. - > To okay awesome there is a lot to - > unpack there so can we - > get like more detailed with this - > like I want specifics like is somebody coming in with - > like a really detailed spreadsheet having like spent - > some hours combing through like all the companies databases - > and then bringing that into like I don't know like - > a one-hour conversation with the head of sales and - > head of marketing or like how is this conversation literally happening - > yeah so that's a that's um a good - > way of how it could be done definitely and that's how it looks - > at and how we sort of do that at demand bay so typically marketing operations - > or your sales operations team are pulling that data from your crm and then you're - > meeting with that abm leadership team to agree on what the icp criteria looks - > like so it's leaders across sales marketing and your operations team.

- > To make sure that you have the right ICP for your key segments and key markets. - > And again, as I said, that's something that should be reviewed regularly. - > Every year and that will depend on that review time will depend on how long - > your sales cycles are if your sales cycles are like two years plus you're probably - > not going to review that data. - > Every year it might be slightly longer if they're sort of you know six to nine - > months you would probably do that you know annually for example but that's definitely - > something that you'd want to revisit towards the end of the year when you're - > in your planning cycle so like October October, - > early November timeframe, - > have that locked down for the year ahead.

- > And so then you can start applying those account scoring models as those accounts - > are coming into your CRM or those ones that exist already. - > You've got that criteria in place. So we actually have it split out by industry. - > So each industry that we're targeting has a weighting criteria to it.

- > We do the same across technologies, revenue ranges, employee sizes, - > even country for where we're targeting specific countries in EMEA will have - > certain countries that are a higher priority for us to target. - > So it can be as granular as you want. - > Depends on what's most important to you. - > So where you know those accounts that meet this criteria that make really good - > customers for us.

So there's not a limit as to how much you can have in there. - > And then that scoring can be really helpful because when you come to your target - > account list selection, those accounts with the highest account scores should - > be considered to be a target account. - > Okay. So we're doing account scoring based on like what industry it's in and - > like how closely that kind of aligns with the, the ICP that you've created.

- > Okay. And so do you have any tips on like how to set up that lead scoring system - > so that it's successful? - > Like, how do you know if you're doing too much lead scoring versus like not enough, - > or like you're paying too much attention to just like numbers and metrics - > versus like when it's actually - > going to like work and be useful for sales leaders - > in the sales team yeah and i think it is - > again it's getting that feedback from those leaders in - > your abm in your abm team so they can again - > solicit that feedback from the sales leaders - > and regional managed managers to see like what's most - > important to you and typically the sales - > salesperson would be it might be like four or five - > key data points where you're like - > this is a really good fit for us an industry would always be one - > of those revenue range employee size would be another - > as well company HQ would be another one so it's - > not you know lots and lots of different data points so I think getting that - > feedback and agreement on like these are all the ones that we're going to agree - > on and then there's CRM systems and marketing automation systems out there and - > tools like Demandbase that can help with that scoring piece as well.

- > Okay, awesome. So if we had to like quickly summarize, like step by step this - > process from beginning to end - > of like, creating an account based marketing strategy that's successful, - > like step by step, what would you have someone do if they were setting this up for the first time? - > So I think the first bit would be, so that sales and marketing alignment piece is key. - > So I think that the three kind of core things around that is aligning on the - > data, sharing insights once you have all of these systems in place where you're - > able to get things like account intelligence, where they're showing intent and engagement, - > and then coordinating those account interactions between sales and marketing, - > and then some steps to help align teams on that.

- > So firstly, starting with that collaboration on what your idle customer profile - > looks like and those account scoring models. - > Then agree on your go-to-market style as well. - > So are we going to have a one-to-one or one-to-many approach? - > And then I think the other key part is actually picking those target accounts.

- > And it should be something that is marketing driven. So based on the scoring - > that we're getting from those accounts, we can make recommendations to say these - > should be considered for target account list. - > But ultimately, that account selection process to determine whether an account - > should be a target account or not should be owned by sales. - > And then within that, we give them the freedom to tier their target accounts.

- > And that tiering is really key because then it helps us, the kind of next step to that is saying, - > okay, we're going to then define what we call entitlements for each of those - > account tiers that is going to help support that target account engagement. - > So those accounts at tier one should be those ones that have the highest potential value. - > Value so if it's an existing customer where there's you know big upsell or cross-sell - > opportunities of new products or selling into new business units for example - > or it could be the size of the account if it's in an enterprise segment and it has you know a, - > it's going to be spending a lot of money or the opportunity to be spending a - > lot of money with your company, they should be considered those tier one accounts.

- > And then tier two, and just so just give you an idea of the numbers for our - > tiering, our sales reps have three accounts at tier one, 30 at tier two, - > and then the rest of their target accounts at tier three, which would be about 150 to 200. - > So we're not talking about thousands or hundreds and hundreds of accounts. - > It's quite a finite list. - > And then those entitlements are another great way of ensuring that sales and marketing are aligned.

- > So the entitlements is almost like a contract between marketing and sales. - > So it's marketing saying to sales, for each of your account tiers, - > this is what we're going to deliver from a marketing program standpoint. - > This is how much we're going to spend on things like advertising, - > direct mail, executive events to try and help drive engagement with those target accounts. - > And that's all agreed upon at the end of the year for the next coming year.

- > So the entitlements will change year on year as well. - > So that's really important. And it really helps them buy into this idea of having - > an account-based approach because these target accounts are getting more of - > a white glove treatment. - > A lot of the messaging and outreach that you're doing to these accounts is a - > lot more personalized to those accounts because you're able to get all of that - > insight into those accounts with regards to intent and engagement where they - > are on the buyer journey.

- > And then that can reflect in the messaging that you're putting in front of those - > accounts, whether it's through a marketing campaign or through sales outreach. - > And then another part is actually sharing that account intelligence. - > So again, any intent that you're seeing for that account, that's a target account, - > that salesperson should have insight into that as well, making it as easy as - > possible. So So sending them a weekly...

- > Digest of like these are your target accounts and these are the top - > things that they're showing intent for whether that's product intent - > or competitors whether that's their - > you know in gate that we're seeing high engagement or a high spike of visitors - > to our website from this particular target account this is great insight and - > that should be shared very regularly with with your sales team and when we have - > slack alerts set up for when a target account comes to our - > website so their account owner and the SDR owner will get - > an alert to let them know so they can be really like - > reactive and then the final part to - > it is meeting regularly to check in on what's happening - > and one of the forums that we have for this and - > I recommend this to anybody we call it an ABX stand-up so it's a monthly meeting - > between myself the sales rep and their SDR and we look at their target account - > list so some of it might be looking - > at where are all your current target account sitting in the funnel?

- > Are there too many accounts at the top of funnel that have been stuck at a certain - > journey stage for X amount of time? - > How can we try and drive more engagement and get them moving to a forward journey stage? - > It could be accounts where they're already in pipeline and we want to do some - > more like personalized outreach. - > It's going to help like close a deal.

We can look at that. - > It could be that we see accounts that are actually, you have a lot of accounts - > in one particular industry, let's run a really specific or run an industry-specific - > campaign into those accounts to help drive that engagement as well. - > So that is something that's been really successful, key to that sales and marketing alignment piece. - > And it really helps you act as one team and really be that partner to sales.

- > So yeah, the ABM stand-ups is something that I would highly recommend. - > Okay. Awesome. I really, really love this system.

It's so clear and dreamlined. - > So sales and marketing alignment and figuring out the ICP and account scoring - > and the go-to-market style, picking the target accounts, - > and then marketing figures out for each of the accounts how much money they're - > going to spend on things like advertising and what kind of messaging they're - > going to do to personalize to those accounts. - > And then you share the account intelligence to the salespeople through a weekly - > email or Slack alert or however you do it.

- > And then you meet regularly through these ABX standups to figure out how each - > SDR can drive more or how you can help each SDR drive more engagement for their account, - > how you can help them create a better outreach plan, - > get some deals unstuck, whatever it is. - > Yeah. And it's also, it's all about the accounts to prioritize as well so where - > they're seeing the ones that have that highest engagement. - > Another digest we call it a weekly digest would be - > these are the accounts to focus on this this week so - > the sdrs have this kind of like um order of operations to be like okay this - > week i'm going to focus on these accounts that are showing high intent for our - > competitors for example like that could be really low hanging fruit because - > that would indicate somebody's in a researching researching and is in a kind - > of evaluation stage potentially.

- > So you would want to start, you know, engaging with that account ASAP. - > So yeah, a huge part of it is about helping them prioritize what accounts to go after. - > So having that account intelligence that gives them all of that insight and - > it just helps focus their efforts for that upcoming week. - > Okay.

Awesome. Well, I really, really appreciate this conversation, - > Leanne. And as we're wrapping the conversation up, do you have anything you'd - > like to share or promote with regards to your company or any projects that you're working on? - > So I think anybody that's out there considering an account-based approach looking - > or just looking like where to get started, - > demandbase.

com has a whole host of resources for all different kinds of ABM maturity levels. - > One particular asset that's great - > is something called unspam your brand and it's this - > definitive guide to account-based marketing - > that's been written by our cmo john - > miller who is he's co-founder and cmo of marketo and engageo as well so he has - > a whole host of experience so that's a really comprehensive asset to to look - > at and then we also have a certification program so anybody Anybody that's looking - > to really get the basic understanding of an ABM strategy.

- > We have foundation level right up to expert as well. That's available on our - > website. So go check both of those things out. - > Okay, awesome.

Thank you so - > much for the conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.