Account Based Marketing for Business to Business Sales Teams
Tue, Sep 17, 2024 10:40AM • 58:16
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales, abm, sales team, marketing, people, account based marketing, target, understanding, lead, strategy, accounts, technology, drones, team, conferences, calling, dan, linkedin, champion, company
SPEAKERS
Joseph DellaVecchia, Dan Nedelko

Dan Nedelko 00:00
Dan, and there we go. We gotta record. All right. Welcome to another episode of live at the hive digital sales and marketing from the trenches. I just made up a new name for our podcast where we’re diving into latest strategies around business, business growth, sales and marketing. My name is Dan, and I’m your host, and

Joseph DellaVecchia 00:22
I’m the co host, Joe. Happy to be welcome back. Fun fact, this is the first time we’ve recorded this intro today.

Dan Nedelko 00:28
This is, it’s actually the third which isn’t so bad, all things considered,

Joseph DellaVecchia 00:34
all things working it out as we go. Yeah, Dan, it’s great to be back. Excited for us to dive into some more really great topics, and to talk more about the world of marketing, but now also the world of sales. I wonder if that’s a hint.

Dan Nedelko 00:47
It really, really is one of my favorite topics, and something that, you know, I think is not, is often talked about, but not specifically talked about. It’s, it’s, it’s a buzzword around all of the industries, and it’s Account Based Marketing. One of the few things that I’ve seen in the last like decade or so. It’s one of those things that everybody talks about, but when it gets down to like, defining what that means, I think a lot of people are pretty fuzzy on how sales and marketing align into a Account Based Marketing Program.

Joseph DellaVecchia 01:22
Yeah, and to their credit, Account Based Marketing is a huge topic, and we’re not going to cover it all today in our 2025, minute episode, whatever this ends up being. It’s a large topic, and it is hard to define, but hopefully we can help get you started and understanding what it is and the importance of aligning these two teams within your industry. Account Based Marketing is a powerful strategy, a powerful tool, and something that can really take your B to B sales to the next level.

Dan Nedelko 01:51
Yeah, and it works in B to C as well. But B to B is really where the sweet spot, for sure is, so anybody that’s selling to a company. And fundamentally, ABM, I think it, I think especially sales teams are probably not as educated as marketing teams are about it. But really, fundamentally, what it comes down to is it’s a combination of both technology helping to serve a sales and communication strategy. And the alignment is really, and I actually, I’ve got a couple of threads we may discuss them later, where people are kind of arguing on LinkedIn about when something is sales qualified, right? And when is it marketing qualified? How does that work? What’s the job of a BDR and an SDR in line with marketing? And there’s some sales people basically saying, I’ve never had marketing ever deliver a lead that’s probably a fractured relationship that that individual was working in. But you know, let’s roll it back a little bit, and let’s just start with the very basics. So Joe, why don’t you just walk everybody through the high level of ABM and we’ll just start digging rabbit holes from there. Yeah.

Joseph DellaVecchia 03:02
So ABM abbreviated Account Based Marketing. It’s a combination of a strategic sales approach and technologies that focus on targeting specific high value accounts. And when we say high value, we mean high value to your business. Instead of casting a wide net spending a ton on Google or LinkedIn ads, just spray and pray sales more of your traditional way you would approach that. ABM concentrates on a set of target accounts, accounts that you define as being the most important and these can also be accounts and targets that you’ve already made contact with or have the lead information for. From this, we can create three tiers, which we’re going to talk about a lot more in detail, but those are one to one, one to few and one to many creating these personalized campaigns to engage each one based on their unique attributes and needs. Essentially, think of it as if you have a garden outside, and if you grow all these beautiful flowers and plants, they’re all right there in your backyard. You need some flowers for a centerpiece at dinner. You’re not going to go to the garden center, to Walmart and run around the city finding specific flowers when they’re already in your backyard, in reach you can go grab them, bring them inside, and there you go.

Dan Nedelko 04:13
And please don’t go to the Walmart garden center. I would say that that’s like your last hope if you’re gonna we

Joseph DellaVecchia 04:21
frequent the Home Depot one this summer. That one was our home base. One Home

Dan Nedelko 04:25
Depot is a reasonably okay version of that, for sure. Yeah. And just to kind of get back on track here, the real important thing, I think, with the B to B side, and it is super effective for targeting larger accounts when you have buying committees, this gets this does, as you mentioned, Joe, it gets much more complex as you get a little bit deeper into it. But I think one of the things, especially with a lot of organizations that do cold calling on the sales side, account management in a little bit more of an ad hoc. Of old people are waiting for leads to come in through the lead form. And you know the reality is, is in a lot of B to B businesses. You know who your target accounts are, who are those Tiara clients, right? Who are your best current clients? You know, if you look at your top 10 or top 20 accounts that drive your business, how can you find, you know, four to six other accounts with similar size, similar needs, you know, that kind of thing, similar champion, similar buying group. But you have those contacts, and a lot of times, sales teams have those contacts, and they’ve had them for a long time. And it’s really about understanding what that what that one to one relationship means. And when you’re in a state where a potential prospect, or even an existing customer, when they’re, say, coming up for renewal, when they deserve a lot of that one to one sales and account management kind of love, right? And so there’s a big side of this that is definitely technology driven, but the other side of it is understanding who your customers are, who you want to target, and how you get them through. So one to one is I have that person’s number. They know me. I know them to some greater or lesser degree, and the needle is arbitrary as to your particular scenario, some people have different definitions of when that should happen, right? Then you’ve got the one to few, which is, hey, we met at a conference. You know, these guys could be a great prospect, or we presented to them last year. They weren’t quite ready. We’re in budget considerations now. One to few is somewhere midway down the pipeline. There’s maybe been some expression of interest, but you haven’t quite gotten there. And then one to many is where you look at your zoom infos, your ideal customer profiles. You set up all of those attributes so that you can then spread the message far and wide. So it really is the traditional kind of pyramid structure when it comes comes down to it, these are most effective for longer sales cycles. They work with short sales cycles too. I mean, you can have a 30 day sales cycle, no problem. But when you’re talking six months, 12 months, 18 and 24, months, ABM really shines, because it gives you a chance to really build up a more substantial relationship, create personalized consideration buying experiences, use top of funnel things like thought leadership, videos, podcasts, etc. And all of this fundamentally comes down to aligning your sales and marketing team and then leading to a better customer acquisition and business growth experience, both for sales, for marketing and for your customers, right?

Joseph DellaVecchia 07:46
Exactly. And I think it’s also important to point out too as well, just on for that alignment, and how that works and comes together, is that when you have these one to many, one to few, one to one contacts, the one to one, that’s your easiest way, of course, to talk to talk to someone. You’ve already got your foot in the door, as you were saying, Dan, but those one to many, where you just might have a sense of who your champion or point of contact should be at that company, or you just might have some rough contact information. The goal is with ABM and those campaigns is to move them along that pipeline and move them to the one to one. Now it’s definitely possible that you would have a deal come out of a one to few, but most likely that one to few is going to get to that deal first by taking a one to one meeting with you. Nobody’s gonna get this a mass outreach email and be like, sign me up right away. They’re gonna want more information for whatever product, service, software it is that you’re selling, yeah, and that’s where it becomes really important to make sure that both sides that are working on that the marketing aspect that is working on nurturing those leads, warming them, getting them into a point where they are familiar with the product, and then the sales team that’s able to go in and close are on the same page and understand how this flow works, and when is the right time to reach out and is taking the marketing team seriously, and the marketing team is taking the sales team seriously. It’s a combined effort, yeah,

Dan Nedelko 09:07
for sure. And I mean, one of the biggest, most contentious gaps in modern business is the divide between sales and marketing, right? And he can see lots. I mean, we’re going to start a whole series of reading Reddit stories about this, and you can see it everywhere. Marketing does not like sales. Sales does not like marketing. Never choose, shall the twain meet, and the bridge is always burned, right? The ship is on fire. The ship is sinking and the water’s on fire. Kind of relationship, and it doesn’t need to be that way, because really there is a ton of crossover, and it really depends on the organization how they how you define sales and marketing efforts, but one of the things that I really am a huge advocate of, especially in B to B, is actually spending a lot of time with the sales team and actually looking at one thing that sales teams, notoriously, are not that. At is actually documenting success, right? So we like to start with like, what are your five one deals look like? Your top five ice deals and your top five loss deals, and just going through emails and conversations and processes. Sales teams typically do have a process. A lot of them do not have a documented process, so it’s a matter of, kind of pulling that out, understanding what’s successful, what the triggers are, and that helps inform marketing and communications where, typically marketing and business teams like that, they don’t, they don’t do that naturally and organically, right? And I think the end result of that is, in fact, you know, this is kind of the amusing thing is, the marketing team will put out a lead magnet. The lead magnet didn’t have the involvement of sales, so it might not be as in depth as it should be for a specific account. So if I’m talking to a CFO, and I’m talking about, you know, reducing churn and what’s called spillage in in finance, right, right? Like unrealized revenue. Well, I don’t want to have a two page PDF that’s going to be talking about, you know, this is going to make your customers happy, or something fairly shallow, right? I need to get into the details and specifics of it. And that’s where that, that lack of alignment, the marketing team may not know certain things, so they’re putting these, these pieces of content out there, promoting them. Leads are coming through. That lead is not the proper person. And if that person was motivated by thinner or not as in depth content or not as specific, for someone that is a decision maker, you get a bad lead, right? And then sales says, well, marketing delivers me garbage leads, right? And it’s something we hear about all the time. And the goal of the sales and marketing alignment, which is really your first step in developing an ABM program, to really get to this point of understanding one to one, once a few and one to many, is understanding that sales and marketing alignment is the first key step you need to take. Even if it’s a small step, it’ll reduce friction, make it easier to tie those marketing up together, and you want to win those high value clients, right? And you know that’s where a third party that understands ABM can help facilitate that as almost like Switzerland, a neutral third party, you know, getting that support, building the bridges, having conversations, and bringing those things together. And that’s that’s really a key part of an Account Based Marketing Strategy, is first that alignment needs to take place, right? So,

Joseph DellaVecchia 12:43
and, yeah, go ahead. No, it’s gonna say. And I think too as well, when you have your two teams, a lot of marketing teams kind of think, in that traditional marketing sense, they don’t think to go after what you already have. You know, sales is saying, Oh, the leads are garbage. So now they’re feeling the pressure to get better leads, and they’re going out there to try and find them and getting you more inbound, more inbound, you’re spending more, spending more on all of your ads when you have leads that are already in your back pocket. Maybe they’re not ready to convert. Maybe they need more education. They need to hear from you more. They need to understand your product more. Something that we see a lot too, Dan, is we have targeted accounts that we’ve been targeting with clients for two years, and only recently are they suddenly opening emails or looking or getting involved in the conversation. It’s like it’s a longer sales process, but you have those ones there that when they do convert and when they do know about you, and if your sales team is effective and is able to sell to them, it’s going to be worth that time investment that you’ve made and that financial investment that you’ve made as well into those targeted campaigns on those people that just need to be brought down your pipeline more. Just because someone isn’t ready to buy right away doesn’t mean they’re not ready to buy in three months, six months, 12 months.

Dan Nedelko 13:57
That’s a really important point, because to a salesperson, that’s a lost deal, because I eat what I kill and I have a target to make. But if you’re thinking about building out the pipeline, which is what every B to B sales team needs to be thinking of, because you know, you got to look directly ahead, but you got to look 369, 12 months ahead, easily, and by nurturing that pipeline through. So a really great example of that is just hitting a team. Let’s say you have a 12 or 20 month, 24 a month. We’ll go with 12 month contract cycle in that B to B space. Well, those budgets are determined, not randomly. But you know, we have clients that have. September 30 year ends. October 31 year ends. It happens all the time. So budget considerations are fungible. They don’t happen all at the same time, and just because you missed a budget consideration, they’re going to go dark. It’s going to look like they iced out, but they. They haven’t necessarily. If in that interim period you provide really good value between missing that budget consideration to the next cycle, see two quarters down the road, three two to three quarters, so six to nine months, then you start to see that activity. That’s that’s kind of what we’ve seen. And I think your anecdote kind of reinforce that, they go dark, then they come back, and it’s like, it’s like, hallelujah, right? But that’s all about nurturing that pipeline, right? Yeah, yeah. And also,

Joseph DellaVecchia 15:31
too, like these deals and budgets, people are looking a lot earlier in the year too, as well. So let’s say, for example, you’ve got a september 30 budget and and let’s say one of your targets, and the target is Coca Cola. Coca Cola will start looking in January to start getting their information, because they’ve got a whole approval process. They need to go through internally. They need to look at a bunch of different people. They need to take meetings. And on the top of that, they’re Coca Cola. They’ve got a lot going on. So you know, you may start your process with this person. You might be reaching out to them for a year. Start the process in January, but they’re not going to close until your q3, q4, of the year. That’s something too to also keep in mind that just because, once again, they’re not ready to close right away, doesn’t mean that isn’t a target account that you can profit off of or realize. And that’s where good sales techniques and strategies come into play with follow ups, warming, nurturing, staying in contact and building relationships, sets you apart from your competitor,

Dan Nedelko 16:25
absolutely. And you know, I think one of it is, there’s, there’s two sides to the Account Based Marketing coin. One is technology, and really what that technology allows us to do is find new prospects, understand the activity of current prospects and then target those people in meaningful ways so they see your content without you having to just spray bullets randomly and hopefully something is going to hit right that’s the tech side of it. But like with anything with technology, you have to understand what you want to do, and then how it’s done is much easier when there’s a really informed strategy. What is my ideal customer? What does my target account look like? What does the buying group look like? Is it procurement? It finance? There’ll always be finance involved, but is it sales, or is it marketing, right or, or is it product development like it? Just it really depends on the on the team, but you as a sales team and a marketing team need to really do a deep dive into what valuable target accounts mean, and not be over simplistic about it. And that’s a big part of it. Then the second part is, who are the champions that are going to exist in that buying group? Right? My champion may be a finance team person, because our product or our service saves them a significant amount of money. Well, then you’re targeting a finance team as your champion because you have the biggest benefit to them for one of their biggest pain points, right? Especially things like unrealized revenue spillage, lack of accuracy and realizing revenue, then your champion needs to be in finance and not in sales. They can be supportive, right? But sales would be your champion if your product or service increases the number of total sales, right, as opposed to saving money, right? Then you would reverse that. But I think the fundamental thing to think about here is, what is your sales strategy? Who is your ideal account? Who are the buying champions? And let’s get that information organized properly, because we can start with the one to one, because you know who those people are, then we can go out to the next halo of that, which is, well, I can look at now other similar companies of similar size that are set up the same way. But all of that is informed by having that strategy of understanding what it means. And quite often, you know, one of the things that I’ve seen is it really, you know, it’s the old, 18 to 65 year old males and females in North America,

Joseph DellaVecchia 19:13
everyone’s our target, Dan, everyone’s our target, everyone’s

Dan Nedelko 19:16
our target, yeah, and if everyone’s your target, no one’s your target, unfortunately, right? Like, that’s, that’s just kind of a universal truth,

Joseph DellaVecchia 19:23
that’s a, that’s our first piece of merch for this podcast, that’s, that’s a, that’s a great thing to put on a shirt. But I want to come back though to what you’re saying, though, and kind of just to easily summarize it, honestly, is the biggest, I think, pain point that people don’t fully understand with Account Based Marketing, and it’s the education, the first part to get them kind of on board with it is just how much of a system it is, how it functions like a machine, and how there is a lot of planning and setup. Everything needs to be working together. It needs to be performing for the machine to work like any piece of technology. You know, if you’ve got something that, and I’ve got a gear missing out of a motor or an engine. Okay, it’s not going to run properly, and so you need to have everything properly set up. All the components work off each other. That’s podcasting, video advertising, email marketing, social media. It all plays a role in engaging your target accounts. And it all has its place where it comes into play. Yeah,

Dan Nedelko 20:17
absolutely. And I think the difference is, with all of those channels that you, that you, you just listed out there, the most important thing is that that content is not going to mean a lot to everybody. It should mean a lot to a very specific group. And that’s about like a hyper niche strategy is saying, You know what, I’m in the energy industry, so I am looking at field service managers at fuel distribution plants across the Northeast of North America, right? That’s a very specific group of people that have very specific needs and interests, but a podcast series, like we’ve seen podcast series, for example, that when done properly, whether it’s intellectual property law, which doesn’t sound like it’s going to be, it’s really not the most exciting thing in the world, to be honest. But there are a huge number of people in in the legal world that do this all day long, and it’s incredibly popular, and they go in to enormous amounts of depth. Same thing in logistics, you would find somebody that is head of operations, COO, head of logistics, well, they have very specific needs, and their interests throughout the non buying cycle will be a heck of a lot more than something that you or I might look for, right? But if we don’t know who that account is and who the target buyer is and what their pain points are, you cannot possibly create a podcast, video advertising campaign in depth, email marketing kind of cadence or script to work or social media without understanding all of that. Otherwise, you’re just spraying and praying, and we want to be snipers, right? Like that’s that’s a big part of this. And moving people from that one to many to one to few, develop the relationships, get them interested, and get a relationship built, and then sales can take over. And then sales needs to have a whole thing. It’s offense and defense really, like, in a way, at a football team. No, you’re a huge football fan,

Joseph DellaVecchia 22:26
right? Joe. Yo, huge, huge. I love the Denver Broncos. The Broncos of Denver, they are your

Dan Nedelko 22:31
team on the pitch. They’re my team, yes, but yeah, it’s the same idea, right? Like a football team never won the Super Bowl without a playbook, right? And in the same way, ABM is all about this. And you know, for example, things like email marketing really help nurture relationships over a long term. But it has to be done properly. You have to provide the right value, otherwise you’re just it’s signal versus noise, right? And there is so much noise out there right now, so much cold outreach from B to B companies and account managers, BDRs and SDRs, just spamming anybody in a specific industry. And that can hurt you, right, that can really hurt your reputation and be a silent death. But you know, a goal is that you’re with ABM, is with those target accounts, is that the right people are going to see it with things like display, podcast, video, they will get name you’ll get name recognition, and then you have an opportunity, because you’ve got a playbook that they’re going to recognize that, and you need to be doing the same thing with your sales team, positioning them as industry experts, facilitators that can get you through to experts within your organization, for example, to help that CIO or that CFO. And you know, the rest of the things that we do are tracking it in the CRM and the marketing automation platform and setting triggers and doing all of that, all of those good things, but none of that’s going to work if you don’t go back to the core principles of, like, who is my customer, what do they need? And really, like, who is my customer in which scenario, right? I think that’s been, that’s always one of the big hurdles, I think, with with with sales teams, not having a clear vision of that in a very specific way.

Joseph DellaVecchia 24:32
And I want to say too, like, if you’re a marketer listening to this, if you’re a salesperson listening to this, let’s also like, call a spade a spade. Once you get this information, once you get that alignment, it is hard to reach those target people. It is hard to get their attention, get the decision maker to listen to you. It is not easy these days, especially in the digital era that we are in, but by coming together with your teams and aligning and using effective strategies, you will be able to get there. It. Is just a process. And I think if that’s one of the biggest takeaways you can get from this is that Align yourselves, know the direction you’re going, and know who your target is, but then be prepared to win them over. And there are strategies to do that, and with that, Dan, let’s break down some of those strategies, because I know you’ve got a few here that you really want to talk about. First one is, let’s talk about content. When you’re creating content for these things, we want to make sure that you’re creating quality content for those high value prospects. If you are creating content for a CIO in advanced manufacturing, so drones and robotics, you want to make sure that the content is engaging to them. And this is where, in my opinion, LinkedIn is such an asset, because LinkedIn is where you’re able to connect with people B to B easily. They can see the content that you’re offering. But these people aren’t just, you know, the regular people that you’re marketing to when you’re in more of a B to C sort of situation, B to B. People know their industry, know what they’re looking for. You can get a little more technical. You can provide the detail that you need, long form posts on LinkedIn with some emojis that break it down and give you the information you’re looking for, are extremely successful and really beneficial. Because if I’m someone who needs a certain piece of software to do something, and I see a company offering custom software solutions, and they go through all the different things they can do. I’m educated to know that if I’m in that looking phase of what I need, I’ve done that research. I know where I’ve talked to other people, so I know what I’m looking for. You want to be able to create that high value content that will be able to get through to leadership and thought leaders. And when you’re creating that content too, it needs to match those themes as well. If you are creating a thought leadership piece on something in your industry, if you are a CEO or a CFO talking about the things that you’re doing for your company and wanting to set an example in the industry, it needs to be thought leadership. You can’t just jumble on or turn it into a sales pitch. You need to speak. You need to offer insight and offer solutions, next steps and value to your audience, exactly.

Dan Nedelko 27:06
And I think this, this, this is something that is easy to say and difficult to execute 100% it’s kind of constantly. It’s kind of a constant cross to bear. So let’s use the example of advanced manufacturing drones and robotics. And let’s say that, Joe, you are an account manager, you’re in sales, and you are selling these highly advanced drones that range anywhere from $1,000 up to, say, $70,000 with various applications, right? But it’s new technology. It’s hard to sell. It’s got a big price point. It also requires an investment from your target audience, right? So like, who’s your target audience? So let’s just go down this rabbit hole a little bit. One could be military, for example. Two could be logistics. Three could be security, like private security companies, four. We’ll just live it. Limit it to four. We could say science and engineering. So civil engineers designing things, we need drones and to various types of robots to go where human beings can to do things like that. Now, if that’s the scenario, and I’m trying to sell these drones to let’s just go with science and technology, private security and logistics. We’ll do those three right now. I can’t talk about how easy it is, the the navigational system being super easy for a beginner, right? Like some of the value propositions are too generic at that point to have any meaning to somebody that is looking for we use science, the science and engineering side of it, for a drone that is able to fly for three hours over large swaths, like longer range, for example, in forestry, mining and natural resources, right? So the features and benefits that you’re trying to put out there, the thought leadership you’re putting out there, can’t be talking about the benefits of drone technology. Those industries already know what the benefits of drone technologies are. They need the right types of drones with very specific purposes. So let’s say they’re up in northern Alberta, right? Well, high winds, cold weather, hot weather, right? Potential forest fires like these things need to be taken into account. So when you’re creating the content, understanding the buyer means then that you need to go to someone and I’m, again, Joe, you’re, you’re in this Advanced Manufacturing Company creating drones. You may need to talk to your head of engineering, right, and say, Look, I need these 10. Things. How do we deal with this? And they probably, honestly, you talk to engineers, they probably often have this kind of thing, but nobody’s necessarily asked them for it, right? So thought leadership needs to be real. Thought leadership and developing the content is a product of understanding your target. And I just like that was a pretty slap together example. But that is a really important thing, because you could imagine that if you were this advanced manufacturing company making these like drones, and you’re coming out sounding like a consumer drone company talking about the wrong things to your potential target customers, because you’re being too general, then you’re sacrificing your own reputation in the industry, and potentially people won’t understand your unique value propositions, right? Like what you bring to the table. So exactly.

Joseph DellaVecchia 30:51
And one more thing I want to just flag about quality content, Dan, before we move on, is, and this is just something. Dan, you know, I got my start in content, so just looking at this, the one thing that I see, and I think is a roadblock that happens for a lot of people when doing this and getting to this point. And if I could give one piece of advice, it would be, don’t get caught up in analysis paralysis, which is our nice little buzzword for it here internally at honeypot. But there’s just so many times where you know you when you’re creating your thought leadership post, when you’re talking about your product, talking about your solutions. You know it better than anyone, and that is great. You know the right selling points. You know the things people care about. You know the points to get across. But don’t get caught up in hemming and Haim over every little detail, every little word and every little part of the presentation. Put something together that is strong, that is effective, but if you start overthinking everything, revisiting every little thing, you’re going to end up over complicating it, and then that high value that you’ve put all of this time and effort in isn’t as high value as it was originally. Yeah,

Dan Nedelko 31:51
well, we need speed to market too. So it needs to be in depth, it needs to be quality, it needs to do all of those things, but it can’t sit there for six months going through seven different teams to get there. So some autonomy for your sales team to be able to go into the engineering team, for example, and get that information out so that other detail can be created is super duper important, absolutely. So yeah, watch out for analysis paralysis. It happens all the time. The bigger the organization, the more the analysis paralysis, to be honest. Yeah.

Joseph DellaVecchia 32:31
The second strategy we’re going to talk about, Dan is ensuring you can move prospects from one to many, one to few, one to one seamlessly based on their activity and engagement. And ultimately, this is going to come down to technology. And CRM understanding what you have, understanding what you want to do, great, but then it’s difficult to action those things out, as we know and as we see quite often. So looking at, you know, we talked about it a little bit already, you want to be able to move them down the pipeline. And you want those one to many to become one to few, and those one to few to become one to one, etc, etc. What are some great ways, Dan, that people can utilize their CRMs just to start getting there? Yeah,

Dan Nedelko 33:11
well, I mean, look, it’s, it’s really again this, this comes down to the fact that doing it is not the problem. It’s what you want to do that is the problem. So to say we want to move people through a funnel is one component of that. But the question is, and this is where a lot of that friction goes between sales and marketing, is, you know, what role does marketing play in here? What about the business development rep? What about my senior development rep, right up to the account executive, slash Sales Lead that’s going to handle this. It’s going to pass through four different people at different stages, right? And the important thing about creating those that movement from a one to many to a one to one relationship, is understanding what steps need to happen in order for you to UN to know somebody on a first name basis, right? So again, this is much less about the technology talk, and we’re gonna have several podcasts talking about the technology, but I don’t think it’s nearly as important as understanding what you want the technology to do. So in a certain scenario, for example, you could say, and this is again, marketers are so guilty of this, right? And we’ve had lots of experiences, typically in smaller organizations, where, hey, they downloaded the PDF, I called them, I tried to sell to them, and they didn’t answer. Like, no, they didn’t and, and because they’re still top of funnel, right, they they got something. There was a hook there that was valuable to them. They’re not ready to buy yet, but they’re somewhere in that process. So we need to understand, you know, what do we want to do? Okay, we’ll try one outreach. But if they don’t answer, it’s no problem. Leave them a nice voicemail. Maybe shoot them. Message saying, Hey, I left a voicemail, happy to fill you in on any one of these common questions that we have about our product or service. And also, here’s a great episode of last episode of our podcast that you might find really interesting, and then potentially giving them more of that type of content is the next step in that flow of moving someone from one to one to one to few. You know you see them go from one initial engagement, like that initial PDF report or checklist download at the top of the funnel, down into, say, a bi weekly news update where you’re providing valuable content to the sales rep or the BDR jumping in when they see that engagement and saying, Hey, I just noticed that we did something in we’ll go back to our advanced manufacturing drones. Example. We had a great podcast episode with our head of engineering talking about the stability of our drones and inclement weather and challenging in challenging climates, that’s of interest to that potential prospect, and it comes out in a different way, but now you’re starting to see it’s like all of that can be automated to a certain degree and made to sound very Natural and be valuable as long as when we’re implementing that in the CRM or marketing automation platform, we understand what those triggers actually are, right? And I think that’s the big part of the strategy is not so much. Hey, yeah, we can tag, we can segment, we can move people into one automation out from another. We’ve got all this content we can develop, but we need to know where the triggers are, and we need to understand realistically, what’s in the life cycle. And that’s a whole lot more than saying they downloaded my PDF, or they filled out the form and they didn’t answer the phone, and I can’t get them on the phone, and so that’s a garbage lead marketing sucks, right? Which is, and that’s common. That’s a very common thing to hear, yeah.

Joseph DellaVecchia 37:02
And that’s where the the account warming, comes into play, the nurturing, the follow ups and lead scoring, you know, set it up that you know. You know your sales process best. Set it up for, let’s say, you know, after 10 engagements, usually they’re more open to a phone call or talking to you. Set up as you know your target is 10. Okay? They open your email, that’s a point. They download your PDF. That’s another point. And score that score your leads, so you’re able to see them go through that pipeline, from that one to many to your one to few to your one to one, and when they’re ready. And I think the easiest way to think about it is, if you’re doing these things, imploring these strategies, and your sales and marketing team are working together and communicating, then marketing will help warm. And open up these doors and provide insights. And then sales can go in, and they can do what they do best sell. You know, ABM is a great strategy, but there’s no silver bullet when it comes to it as well.

Dan Nedelko 37:53
Yeah, for sure. And I think the other interesting thing about about that that type of a comment is, and that kind of a process is, is sales understanding what marketing does, and also being flexible enough to say, You know what the BDR is actually doing, quite a bit of mid funnel marketing, right? Like that is part of that process. And then so sales understanding a little bit more about marketing and marketing stepping in and learning a lot more, I think personally, about what sales is doing and what makes them successful. Because more often than not, what what I’ve heard is, hey, our marketing team puts stuff out, and it’s nothing near to what we say in a sales script, right? And that’s a big problem, because you should be deriving the successful messaging from your bottom of funnel, sales stories up to the top of the funnel in the marketing, because they’re obviously solving a problem with one deals, right? So it’s a little bit of that stepping them closer together. Sales learns a bit about marketing. Marketing learns a bit about sales. We build those bridges, and we make it a continuous process where understanding that someone may not be ready, and just one other point on the technology side of it too, is the best technology is relatively invisible to the end users, right? Your sales team should not be stuck in calculating lead score percentages and things like that. What it all comes out with is, who are the hot leads? Who should you be calling these people look like? That’s a great signal. You guys should be calling these people this week, for example. You know, one of the things that you do with your team, Joe, is is a manual review, in addition to the Technology Review. You know, maybe you know, maybe you could speak a little bit to that the importance of of the manual lead review and being on top of that,

Joseph DellaVecchia 39:45
yeah, it’s really helpful A to be able to track those leads and know what’s happening. But also sometimes you get additional insights. You know, when, with our technology and automatic review, we know that when someone completes a certain. Of events going through our funnel, we get a notification, and we can then tell the sales team, hey, this lead is at this stage now. But besides that, we need to know a little bit more, and we can see going into that manual review, what pages maybe they interacted with, if they downloaded certain things, what downloads did they because there are different downloads. Sometimes there are different products and services, different offerings. Which one are they engaging with? Because then it might have to go through a different sales process, even a different sales team, if the organization is big enough, you know, you might have a sales team dedicated to product A and a sales team dedicated to product B, so we want to make sure that it’s going in the right places. But the most useful part of the manual review for me is I’m able to take a look at what the sales team has also done, what they’ve seen, and what have we what strategies have we already employed, and what’s working and what isn’t. You can track those things and see their life cycle. So you can also see maybe, hey, this person hit a lead score of 10. Great. We flagged it over to the sales team. The sales team went they had a meeting. Awesome. They’re in consideration right now. They need us to follow back up with them in October, and it’s March, so we need to make sure that we’re on top of that. We’re tracking those things, and we’re able to help coordinate with those things, with the sales team. And there are then things with the technology in place for reminders to follow up, and we can then add them to different flows, outreaches, to keep them warm and keep them engaged and make sure that they still know about the product or service that we’re advertising. But that manual review is going to give you so much more additional insights, and it’s also going to allow marketing to understand what sales is doing and what is working and what isn’t, and be able to give proper referrals, strategic recommendations. But also sometimes do it can tell you what’s a good lead and what isn’t? Because there’s spam on the internet, let’s accept it. It’s out there. Not every lead you get is going to be a winner that converts, and not every lead you get is going to be what could be considered a good lead. And so it helps you also identify those where, if somebody might be part of a target account, but not the right person that we should be contacting, we can see, is there a door open there? Is there a champion there that we can utilize, or do we need to keep our outreach up before we found that right contact? So there’s so much to do right there, that just because we’ve got someone that’s filled out a bunch of forms on the website, downloaded things, has interacted with our content over on LinkedIn, doesn’t always necessarily mean that they are champion right? The manual review is crucially important to just understanding more about both sides and what your next steps are in informing your strategy.

Dan Nedelko 42:28
And it’s also crucially important that sales is involved with that and open to suggestions. So to use your example of, hey, we got a prospect in from a great target account, but that person is not in the right department, they’re not in the right position. They’re they’re not the decision maker, but they could potentially be your champion. So you could reach out to them, and even though it’s very obvious that they may not be, maybe they’re in product and you need someone in finance. Nurture that relationship, talk to them, build it up, get them some information about that side of it, and ask them for a connection with someone in finance, or if that could be forwarded, because that is gold sitting right on the table right there. So yeah, the lead’s not 100% qualified on that side of it, but we’ve developed a champion, and that’s a door open, and that’s a non funnel related kind of activity, right? You can’t predict that those things are going to happen, but you need to be resilient enough in the overall process that the entire team understands how they can work together, so sales doesn’t get their back up when marketing gives them a sales tip or play in a playbook, because that could be very effective as well.

Joseph DellaVecchia 43:44
And I think also, too, just to kind of go on that champion note that you had there, Dan, is that it’s absolutely great, you know, you get to when you build them up as a champion, not only could they possibly give you then the right contact information of that decision maker or someone closer to the decision maker that you’re looking for, but also, too, in a lot of B to B companies. A big thing that’s becoming more and more common is town halls and hearing from those more, those workers that are more on the ground level, and those people that could be your champions. And so they’re always asking for suggestions and feedback if you have something that will make their job or their life easier, if you have something that could be really effective at that company, and they see that it’s likely that they will bring that up out of town hall, and that they will bring that up to people, and then from there you can get contact information or people reaching out to you. So it’s still just because somebody may not be the person that’s going to sign on the dotted line and give you that deal doesn’t mean that they are not useful in your sales process or any less important to your goals in the end?

Dan Nedelko 44:44
Yeah, for sure. And I think the the other thing that’s important too is understanding that that is a referral. It’s an internal referral. So again, this kind of leads to the strategy, at least communication between sales, at least the communications between marketing. So it’s having enough flexibility in your funnel that you’re not just legitimately kind of you’re not just, like, objectively saying, hey, that person filled out some kind of a form they registered. I called they didn’t answer. Let’s throw that lead in the garbage and move on. That’s the worst thing you could do, because these are investments, and these investments do pay off over time. Just to wrap things up on this one, because we’ve gone quite a bit over which is fine. Did want to talk a little bit? I think one of the things that oftentimes when we talk to businesses that’s a misconception is, is that, because we are focused on the digital technology and marketing sides, that the traditional methods are all garbage and should be thrown out, and nothing could be further from the truth. You know, as they say, a handshake deal, a dinner looking somebody in the eye, some of those really traditional kind of tropes that you hear about from salespeople. If I can just sit them down or talk to them face to face. I know I can close the deal. There’s a lot to be said for that, beyond the tropes themselves, right?

Joseph DellaVecchia 46:09
So, tropes are tropes because they got to there for in a way, you know, they work, and especially, like other strategies, I know you’re going to bring it up in a second Dan, but like cold calling a lot of people like, you know, I hate the feeling if I’ve got to call someone cold just in my everyday life, you know, like, imagine being the salesperson in that you got to go through 50 cold calling prospects in a week. Yeah, it sucks, but people are doing it because it works. It’s true.

Dan Nedelko 46:33
And it’s more like 50 in a day, sometimes 50 in the morning, depending what level you’re at. Can you tell I’m the marketing guy? Yeah, exactly. Look, cold calling is hard. It takes a huge social battery. You take a lot of abuse. It can be really cringe. And again, I think this is important, a little bit of a sidebar. There is nuance in everything. People say, I hate automations. Well, you don’t hate automations. Automations are good, useful things. If I want to be able to scale it 1000s of times. I don’t have to repeat myself over and over. Now, the nuances is that automation can be done well, and it can be done very badly, just like anything else, right? So cold calling, bad. Cold calling is just slamming it at the wall, Robo dialing, war dialing, that same number, and I get this that happens too. I’ve done demos with some companies, and all I’m getting is like, like, I’ve got one particular account manager that provided a quote and has called me over 30 times in one week. Now, based on that alone, I probably don’t want to do business with them, you know, I mean, and it’s hard in sales, it’s not easy, but there’s also a nuance to how that cold calling is done, and you definitely don’t want it to jeopardize a relationship that you’re building up, because on some side of the sales, you know, there’s an old boiler room mentality there that can actually hurt you in today’s day and age, for sure. So anyhow, that was a bit of a sidebar to some of the traditional strategies. But another really good traditional strategy for sales is actually warm calling right circling back, if you’re in sales and if you hand over to an Accounts team every three months, drop a line to your contacts so that you don’t just disappear and fly off into the ether. Warm calling can be incredibly effective, right for those sales people as well networking events and conferences. Joe, I know you work with a lot of our clients that do quite a bit of this. And you know, there’s a bunch of strategies that that we’ve used, yeah,

Joseph DellaVecchia 48:47
and I think, also, sorry, just to pile on to your warm calling there too. A lot of our clients salespeople, they go to conferences, and they’re able to generate lists and contacts there, and then you have a little bit of your warm calling right there, or just a little bit more warm. They’re aware of you that we bring them in. But instead of just reaching out right away to make that sale, we add them to our flows and our our emails and our if we do bi weekly updates with some clients, things like that, we add them there to continue warming and continue nurturing and make sure they are engaged. So that sales person has that easier step in the door, and they’ve already made that connection. So conferences, getting inbounds that way is really, really effective. And then there’s really effective ways to get those contacts at conferences through advertising, which is a whole other thing we could talk about. Well, we

Dan Nedelko 49:34
could, yeah, we’ll talk about that’s more of a tactical strategy there. But just to touch on your warm calling point, pardon me? So just to touch on your warm calling point there, let’s just use another example where there’s a conference coming up, and I know that I’m going, and I know, Joe, you’re going to be there, and you’re one of my prospects, and I’ve got, I see a list of the companies I’m. Um, I could do some research on LinkedIn. Could use Zoom info, for example, what better reason for a salesperson to reach out to a prospective contact? If you know that those people are going to be there, then by saying, Hey, Joe, you know whether it’s done via LinkedIn mail, done properly within mail or via normal email, or whether it’s a phone call, it’s a great reason to give somebody a call to say, Hey, Joe, I’m just wondering, are you going to be at the etail show on September 28 in Toronto? Were you going to be there?

Joseph DellaVecchia 50:38
Yes, Dan, I am going to be there.

Dan Nedelko 50:39
I guess the script that was a bit of an improv, no,

Joseph DellaVecchia 50:44
you’re 100% right in what you’re saying. Like, yeah, like, if I am somebody or they’re and I see that, I’m more open to a conversation, because those conferences are for networking, seeing what’s new in the industry, and also that’s just a proactive step right there where it’s like, Hey, are you gonna be at this show? We’ve got something really great that you know, if you’ve got the time, we’d love to show you to talk to you about more. Those networking events are so, so effective. It kind of reminds me, too, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a pop culture reference here, but there’s a great episode of The Office. It’s season three, episode two. And in this episode, Michael goes to a conference and everything and everybody, of course, thinks, you know Michael Scott. He’s the big, goofy guy. There’s a big target account that the paper company is trying to close, and they haven’t been able to close because they have an exclusivity deal with something else. Michael utilizes the conference and that ability to make contact with someone there, to talk to them, set sit down with them, have a good conversation, and then be able to tell them about their products and offerings, and he comes back saying they’re gonna call you to set up the deal. So, you know, it’s very effective right there where, you know, like modern media, but just to show you, go to a conference, you are proactive. You know who your targets are. It’s very similar to ABM. You know who your target is. You know they need some education. You know they need some warming, some nurturing, and then possibly from there, they might need a little more, or you’re able to go into deeper conversations with them from there, but you’re making that connection.

Dan Nedelko 52:07
Or you could say something as simple as, there’s a keynote that you know is of interest. Or some session could say, Hey, I’m going to go to this session. I’m going to this keynote. If you’re going to be around, let’s grab a coffee, or let’s grab a drink or let’s grab a bite to eat. It’d be great just to get some face time to meet face to face you don’t even have. You can make a really soft sell on that, and you could book out your conference or your networking event based solely on that. And that’s a warm call. I mean, you know, you have something in common. It can bridge the diff, the gap between cold and warm call, but it is a highly effective strategy, as well as taking that and then using something like LinkedIn and actually creating that engagement, depending on if your your prospects are active on LinkedIn, which a lot of people are, they tend to be lurkers, not posters, you know, so you can, you can engage in similar threads along with them as well. But the idea being that these traditional strategies are not a bridge too far away from these digital strategies, because we live in a digital world, in the information age. So cold calling, warm calling, networking events, conferences, all of these things can be integrated into the approach, the technology can then help with visibility, that kind of thing. But you know you can, you can kiss babies and shake hands and and do all the things that you do at normal networking and conferencing type events with an informed ABM strategy, because you know your targets and you have the technology to back it up. So

Joseph DellaVecchia 53:41
agreed. And I think my last note, just on my last note, just on that is just simply like, you know, people are going to these networking events and conferences. They’re going there to network and to make connections and to learn more about what’s going on in the industry. They’re doing the same thing as you or you’re presenting yourself as something new in the industry, which is what they want to know. So don’t be afraid to jump out there and make those connections, send those messages. What’s the worst someone’s gonna say, No, you find someone else to meet with. You just keep going. You keep trucking along. You don’t give up

Dan Nedelko 54:10
exactly, exactly. So we’re gonna put a pin in this, I think. Yeah, this pod, we

Joseph DellaVecchia 54:16
didn’t even get to social and some other useful digital strategies. Dan, there’s still so much more we can talk about with this. Well, with

Dan Nedelko 54:22
this. Well, this is ABM part one of infinity. So Account Based Marketing, sales and marketing alignment. That’s a bit of an intro. There’s a lot of rabbit holes we’re going to go down. I think one of the things that’s interesting are sales strategies for sales teams that integrate some of these concepts, even maybe prior to engaging with a group like honeypot, where we can go in and actually help you set up your martech stack, help you get the sales and marketing alignment. But we got lots to talk about on the marketing side, on the content side, on the sales and marketing alignment, and then straight up on sales tactics. That real sales teams can use, even as a baby step right, to get you heading in the right direction. Because the buzzword around this industry would be digital transformation. Right? If you go into very enterprise style organizations, you’ll hear a lot of digital transformation. ABM is all over the place. It’s basically rolling a giant boulder up a hill in a lot of medium sized organizations. Baby steps are the way to go, because there’s a lot of different steps that need to go in there and and I think that’s that’s where we can go with this. You know, we ABM is the umbrella that we can talk about so many things. And so yeah, episode one, part one of infinity. And if

Joseph DellaVecchia 55:50
you want to make sure you see all the other infinite parts that will never end, connect with us on LinkedIn.

Dan Nedelko 55:54
There you go. And don’t forget to Like, Subscribe, ring that bell and rate this podcast and rate this podcast if you found this useful. Well, if you’re watching a short you definitely should go listen to the whole podcast. But you can review us on iTunes. Spotify. Oh my god, Deezer, wherever

Joseph DellaVecchia 56:14
you get your podcast, everywhere your podcast. You can review us with Weezer, the band that’s correct,

Dan Nedelko 56:23
and obviously on YouTube as well. So with that, we will put a wrap into this episode of live at the hive digital sales and marketing from the trenches, and we will sign off for now. Thank you so much, Joseph,

Joseph DellaVecchia 56:35
thank you, Dan. It’s always a pleasure. I look forward to the next one. Any

Dan Nedelko 56:38
wisdom to impart to our massive audience of your mom,

Joseph DellaVecchia 56:44
my massive audience of my mom. If the audience is my mom, it’s that I’ll see you at Christmas. If it’s the massive marketing audience, the best wisdom that I can bestow is, Do not be afraid to research your competitors and don’t and don’t reinvent the wheel to run yourself over.

Dan Nedelko 57:03
I like it. I like it. I think that’s a good piece of advice. The one piece of advice I could give to his sales team getting out there is take a look back at your last five one deals, your last five ice deals, your last five lost deals. Typically, you’ll have a ton of documents, a lot of email threads going back and forth, even if you do it in the easiest way, which is just going back and looking at your thread with specific people. Go look at those and find the winning keys, because there’s always those little connective dots. You can connect those dots to see what got you a win, what got you iced, and what lost you a deal, and like, go back and look at that, because that’s going to inform what you can do moving forward. So that’s a little sales tip for today, and we’ll have lots more of those to come in future episodes. All right. Joseph, thank you so much, sir.

Joseph DellaVecchia 58:01
Thank you Dan,

Dan Nedelko 58:03
signing out, signing out, signing off,

Joseph DellaVecchia 58:06
not signing signing off something, signing off and blasting off. All right, we’ll

Dan Nedelko 58:10
get we’ll work on the outro, ladies and gentlemen, but we’ll see you next time on Live at the hive. You.