While economic downturns can be challenging and unpredictable, business leaders need to be proactive in positioning their business to navigate through the downturn’s choppy waters. If you and your organization don’t have an action plan, now is the time to develop one. 

How? The Sunny Side Up Podcast is all about helping B2B organizations generate revenues with account-based sales and marketing approaches. The podcast speaks regularly with B2B leaders and asked some of them to share insights about how  their companies are adapting to the looming economic crisis by leveraging account-based approaches to demand generation. Most of those insights revolve around identifying and targeting engagement on the target accounts most likely to purchase their organization’s offerings. Below are five of those B2B leadership insights. Feel free to use what works for you:

1. Use data and insights to drive account engagement. David Mead, Director of Sales Intelligence at Deluxe Corporation

“Everyone is looking to do more with less during an economic downturn. Sales intelligence is one of those areas where you can make a big impact for a relatively low cost, you don’t have to hire more sales teams, you don’t have to sell more stuff, you just have to be more efficient with your data and how you leverage it to engage your target accounts.” Leveraging data to identify and engage in-market accounts for your offerings can turbo-charge your sales and marketing ROI.

2. Focus on creating value for customers. Avishek Chakrobarty, Associate Director, Demand Generation and ABM (International Markets), yellow.ai 

“What businesses can do is be proactive and focus on creating value for their customers even during difficult times. Look for ways to turn a downturn into an opportunity. Businesses should remember that they’re part of a larger ecosystem and need to work together with their partners to survive.” Maintaining your revenues, Chakrobarty notes, requires that you understand the needs of your target accounts and engage with them in data-enabled ways that drive ROI. A good idea for any downturn, for example, is to target your existing accounts for revenue expansion efforts, rather than expensively chasing after net new customers/accounts.

3. Tap into “hidden” demand generation within your databases. Natalie Jackson, Director of Demand Generation at CBIZ

“You already have quite a bit of demand generated in your existing database, and shouldn’t let that go to waste. Think of your CRM more like a living, breathing ecosystem because there’s just so much you can do inside of that database [to generate demand], that doesn’t cost you a dime.” You should be using your data to identify target accounts and tailor engagement efforts with them, which is what ABM is all about. 

Jackson also notes that email is critical for the buyer’s journey and establishing account trust. Whether engaging target accounts with email or other channels, driving ROI takes an account context and a data-informed playbook for optimizing account outreach.

4. Target “a core set of ICP accounts.” Kim Kaminski, CMO for NS1, a leader in smart network control solutions

“We are focused on a core set of ICP (ideal customer profile) accounts, which we score and measure across the funnel. And we target those core accounts [in alignment] across our marketing, sales and development. So again, we’re focused and aligned [around core accounts]. And in terms of marketing prioritization of these core accounts, we use an agile planning framework that’s essentially a mix of always-on [demand generation] and prioritized precision programs. We meet weekly as a cross-functional team across product marketing, sales, development and sales, to review our progress on everything that’s in play with these core ICP accounts.

5. Maintain strategic focus and don’t surrender to “short-term thinking.” Kris Barton, President of Digital Marketing Solutions, Gannet

“Whenever tough times come, it’s really important to stay rooted in your strategy, knowing your strategy, not your tactics. You need to be repeating the strategy to you and your team all the time and tweaking it as you need to, and understanding that you’re investing in your strategy through the tough times because it’s easy to get short-sighted and suddenly end up in a place you don’t want to be because you took a bunch of short term views.” 

For even more insights into how to leverage ABM to target and engage the accounts most likely to buy from you, read Jon Miller’s Unspam Your Brand. 

The post 5 B2B Business Leaders Offer Insights on Leveraging ABM to Survive a Downturn appeared first on Demandbase.

Casey Patterson, Account Based Marketing Manager at Fivetran says, “I think if I took Demandbase away from the sales team, I’d have an uprising on my hands.” Thankfully they’re still happy Demandbase customers and that’s not by accident. At Demandbase, we’ve been busy little DeeBee’s over the last couple of years delivering on our goal of making the best possible sales and account intelligence available to sellers.

First, we acquired InsideView — the OG of sales intelligence — and DemandMatrix — leaders in technographics. Then we launched the industry’s first truly unified Sales Intelligence and Account-Based Experience Platform, and, last November, we rolled all these chart-topping capabilities out to Microsoft Dynamics and HubSpot users, in addition to Salesforce. All this activity boils down to the fact that Demandbase One is the most powerful place for sellers to get the intelligence they need to hit their revenue goals with fewer resources.

Demandbase One by the numbers:

• 83M+ companies and 142M+ contacts, so you can target the right people and accounts
• More than 1 trillion intent signals monthly, so you know exactly what your prospects are looking for
• 41% average increase in engagement among target accounts when using Demandbase Intent, 36% higher than the benchmark, so you can close more deals, faster
• 14% more accurate pipeline predictions using technographics, so you can uncover deals faster
• 48% more B2B traffic matched, so you know exactly which prospect is on your website and can reach out with relevance
• 34,000 monthly sales users turn to Demandbase to hit their number
• More than 750 companies use Demandbase to improve their sales results

But don’t take our word for it, see what our customers have to say about the value they get from Demandbase One for sales.

Fivetran boosts daily opportunity creation and reduces AE ramp time

Fivetran account execs (AEs) and business development reps (BDRs) use Demandbase every day to prioritize accounts, leading to a jump in daily opportunity creation. They’ve also found it significantly shortens AE ramp time by providing all the insights new reps need to hit the ground running.

Account Exec Jonathan Roberts says it best, “When I saw Demandbase the first time, I was like, this is literally all the data I’ve ever wanted about my accounts — every piece of information I could want to create a differentiated experience, finally all in one place!” 

He went on to say, “If you were to take Demandbase away from me, it would be like having to drive a car without my eyes…or flying a plane without being in the cockpit. Demandbase really has become foundational to understanding what’s happening every single day.”

Jonathan’s colleague, Tina Pluff, Enterprise BDR at Fivetran appreciates the flexibility Demandbase offers, “I find that the customization is beautiful because you don’t have to pigeonhole all of your salespeople into a specific way of looking at information. We’re each able to read the information we want, where we want to see it… it’s amazing.” (Read the full story.)

Navisite’s sales team enjoys exceptional adoption rates and saved approximately $50,000 on generating account plans

Navisite sales reps use two tools every day, according to Matt Norris, Sales Operations Specialist at NaviSite: their CRM and Demandbase. “We have a pretty exceptional adoption rate,” remarked Matt modestly as he shared their stats. “97% of reps use the Demandbase sales intelligence solution at least once a week and 80+% use it every day.” 

Before realizing that Demandbase family trees could be used to generate account plans, they were planning to hire a consultant for $50K, specifically for that purpose. Now they’re building account plans around the family trees, turning one relationship into multiple opportunities in related companies, using the contact data to uncover decision-makers, and tapping into the connections feature to get warm introductions.

Matt reports, “The reps really get excited that they can find basically whatever customers they want right at their fingertips, adding “…reps’ confidence in the data and tools, satisfaction in their jobs, reduced turnover — really add up in the end to a product that’s worth more than its weight.” (Catch the full story.)

Alation realized a 73% uplift in opportunities from the previous year

In addition, their outbound pipeline jumped from 0% to 25%. One of their Australian sales reps told Nicole Kimmick, Alation’s Director of Account-Based Marketing, that they’re “killing it” in Australia. He gets all of his opportunities through Demandbase. “It’s the engine that powers our account based experience program, and sales prefers to use Demandbase, anyway,” Nicole notes. (Get the full story.)

Qumu increased their average ACV from new logos by 390%!

Qumu uses Demandbase to focus their sellers on the right accounts, resulting in the impressive gain in average contract value (ACV). Their sales engineers and regional sales managers use intent from Demandbase to understand what their customers and prospects are in the market for and what questions or concerns they have that Qumu still needs to answer. They then tailor their demos and sales calls specifically to each client using that knowledge. As Zach Wright, Director, Sales Operations | SE Manager puts it, “Demandbase helps us see through what our customers and prospects are speaking and thinking about, so we can tailor our conversations and engagement to deliver the best customer experience.” (Hear the rest of the story.)

The post How To Avert a Sales Uprising: Why Sellers Love Demandbase appeared first on Demandbase.

In my last post, I talked about what go-to-market (GTM) means, which we define at Demandbase as all the strategies and activities involved in generating revenue. It involves marketing, sales, account retention, and growth. Then I talked about why GTM needs to be transformed to adapt to today’s digital B2B landscape and escalating complexity. 

In this post, as promised, we’ll look at what a transformed GTM looks like.

1. It’s account-based…first.

This is stating the obvious, but I’ll do so to make a point. Business-to-business (B2B) is about companies marketing and selling to other companies, not individual consumers. And within those companies you need to sway entire groups of decision-makers and influencers — the buying committee. Depending on your source, you’ll hear anywhere from 7 – 20 people can be involved. So it makes no sense to focus your GTM around attracting, engaging, and measuring activity on individual leads. 

Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a place for leads in B2B GTM, as you’re sure to attract some inbound. But leads shouldn’t be your focus because they’re only valuable if they’re tied to an account you want to target and if they’re on the buying committee. 

The more efficient way to go to market is to start by targeting accounts — the ones you want and who are most likely to buy from you. Engage the buying committee members at those accounts. And measure engagement and progress at the account level. Are you reaching the accounts you want? Are they engaging with you? Are they moving through the funnel, converting to pipeline, and closed-won deals. That’s what matters. Not loads of random lead activity.

2. Marketing and sales agree on account tiers and resourcing.

At a minimum, sales and marketing need to agree on which accounts to target. But in a transformed GTM, these teams also align on account tiers and how much resource to allocate to each, based on their strategic value. For example, Tier 1 accounts get 1:1 messaging, high-value offers and invitations, executive engagement, and so forth. At Demandbase, we have three tiers of target accounts that we engage 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many, respectively — followed by the rest of our ICP (tier 4) and the balance of our TAM (tier 5).  

3. Data silos are a thing of the past.

Sales and marketing alignment is a must in B2B, where both teams are touching members of the buying committee throughout the entire buyer journey. Remember the analogy of the soccer game from the previous post? For sales and marketing to play as one team, they need a shared view of their accounts. In addition to the basic account data in CRM, they all need to see engagement activity, website behavior, intent data, technographics, and more. More data equals more insights. As long as they’re all seeing the same thing. 

4. Marketing and sales work toward the same goals.

In a transformed GTM, sales and marketing share a common set of goals that are aligned with overall business objectives. I recommend focusing on pipeline generation, bookings, and revenue rather than individual metrics such as website traffic or lead volume, or even the popular metric of marketing-sourced/influenced pipeline. Focusing on the latter, as many marketing teams do, fosters division and competition that gets in the way of team play. 

5. It’s built on a modern GTM tech stack.

None of the above is possible without a modern, data-driven tech stack that streamlines processes and provides rich insights. That means using tools such as marketing automation, CRM, an ABM / GTM platform, sales engagement, chat bots, and analytics platforms. And truly transformed GTM teams not only choose the right technology, they fully integrate it and know how to make it sing. 

6. Marketing gives as much attention to customers as to new logos.

Finally, in a transformed GTM, your marketing team no longer puts customers in the rearview mirror when a deal closes. You play an active role in the customer lifecycle pre- and post sale, focusing equally on them, while also courting new logos to drive business acquisition.

Transformed marketers treat upselling and cross-sales as a funnel, using the same tactics you use to drive new business. For example, using advertising, content and email marketing, gifting, and so forth based on website activity, engagement, journey stage, and intent signals. To rely on relationship building by the account team alone is to miss significant opportunities.

What’s more, in a transformed GTM, marketing also owns responsibility for case studies, customer reference programs, community, and advocacy. These customer marketing functions not only build loyalty and retention, the validation they provide feeds back into the traditional funnel, driving new business acquisition. This type of customer validation is more important than ever, as companies are having to justify every dollar spent.

There you have it.

A transformed GTM is account-based, data-driven, and tech optimized, with all revenue-generating teams working in concert to drive revenue throughout the ongoing customer lifecycle. 

Sound too good to be true? We can help you get there. Just reach out to me at GabeGTM@demandbase.com or visit demandbase.com.

The post A CEO’s Take on What GTM Transformation Looks Like — Part 2 appeared first on Demandbase.

B2B organizations that adopt account based marketing/ABM and use a platform purpose-built to provide an account-first context for their data management and account engagement efforts had a return-on-investment of 367 percent in three years and a payback period of less than six months, according to a Forrester 2022 Total Economic Impact Study. ABM works in B2B.

But the way B2B sellers look at engaging accounts has traditionally and too often been shaped by ineffective, lead-first approaches taken from B2C. Buying cycles in B2B are different from B2C, where an individual seeking to buy shoes can make an immediate decision to buy and then click an “order now” button. B2B buying, and therefore B2B advertising. is much different.

B2B Advertising Needs an Account Context 

“When we look at programmatic advertising in the B2C world, it’s largely targeting individuals making quick decisions on quick transactions,” says Gareth Noonan, General Manager, Ad Cloud, Demandbase. “In the B2B world, buying is far more nuanced. Buying cycles are extended, buyers are considering big ticket purchases, and there are multiple influencers, recommenders and decision-makers involved in the process – you have the concept of a buying committee.” 

Convincing one member of a 10-member buying committee that you’re the best B2B provider will not result in a sale because B2B and B2C buying journeys are fundamentally different. With an all-important account context in mind, how can B2B sellers go about wowing a buying committee that makes a collective buying decision? This blog post describes a three-pronged approach to doing exactly that with B2B advertising. The approach described below is taken from a Demandbase on-demand video, called a three-legged stool approach to B2B Advertising (free to access) hosted by Demandbase’s Gareth Noonan.

Step #1: Identification

B2B advertisers must begin with a proper account context, meaning they need to identify and target the members of an account’s buying committee. A demand-side platform/DSP “should never serve an Ad that has not first been associated with one of your target accounts or one of your specific target people lists,” says Noonan. That’s just wasting ad spend and impressions on people who don’t influence account purchasing.

Step #2: Understand Account Intent (Via Context and Content) 

Having insight into what content particular members of a buying committee are consuming gives you insight into where they are in the buying journey (i.e., context) and enables you to prioritize what actions you might take to move their journey toward a closed deal. 

Noonan makes the point that intent signals are far different in B2C than in B2B. “If a B2C buyer has looked at a pair of boots, selected a size, perhaps selected a color, and dropped them into a shopping cart, they still might not be ready to complete the transaction. B2C advertisers will bid very high on their DSP to win impressions and show that B2C buyer those boots again because they’ve shown clear buying intent.” 

When you’re working with an account context and a buying committee, on the other hand, intent signals must be viewed collectively, analyzed based on the buying group as a whole.

Step #3: Intent-Based Bidding 

Effective ad spend in B2B is about using your budget to serve Ads to accounts that are currently in-market, actually looking for your products and services. You want to bid for ads based on an account-based understanding of buying intent, one that encompasses the buying committee concept, not a lead-based, B2C understanding of intent. 

A DSP for B2B “delivers an account-based understanding of intent around buying committees and people who are reading and researching topics that provide a very high level of confidence that they’re in-market for the B2B products and services you’re offering,” says Noonan. That understanding allows you to target impressions and bid for ads efficiently, without wasting your spend.

Your targeting and bidding can be even better “if your B2B DSP is also connected to an ABX platform so that the consistency of signal around account selection, account prioritization, and account intelligence is feeding directly into your B2B buying platform,” explains Noonan, “as opposed to taking all of those key insights and segmentations out of an ABX platform and putting them into a third party B2C DSP that really has no concept of accounts and buying committees.” 

The Bottom Line: Use a DSP Built for B2B

B2B advertisers need a DSP that’s built specifically for an account context and with buying committees in mind. Using a B2C DSP for your advertising needs simply wastes ad spend and doesn’t account for the complexities of B2B buying. “Specialization matters for DSPs,” concludes Noonan, “there are retail DSPs like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and more. There are location-based DSPs and even app install DSPs, so why shouldn’t there be a DSP to serve the nuanced advertising needs of B2B sellers?”

Learn more about Demandbase’s DSP built specifically for B2B. 

The post 3 Steps to Wowing Buying Committees with B2B Advertising appeared first on Demandbase.

As B2B sales continue to evolve, it is essential to stay ahead of the curve and learn from those who have already been successful in adapting to new trends. 

Whether you’re looking for inspiration for your own team or want to find out what the most influential sales leaders are doing today, these executives can provide invaluable insight into staying ahead amid rapid change.

List methodology

When developing a list of top sales executives, it’s not simply who has the most followers. While reach, specifically on LinkedIn, is important, a variety of other criteria go into such a ranking, including:

• Sharing contextual updates: Whether it’s publishing unique on-topic content or it’s reposting content with additional context, the content needs to be beneficial to their audience. Simply reposting company content isn’t enough.
• Engagement with sales-focused content: If you’re turning to someone for inspiration, they should be actively engaged with the broader community, both passively and actively such as liking and commenting on other content.
• Audience resonance: When these executives publish content, are their audiences actively engaging with it? Is it resonating with them? How about when they comment on other people’s content? Their content –– whether on their profile or when they engage with others’ content ––should resonate with these audiences.

Many lists rely entirely on Twitter but, in the B2B world, most people (especially executives) focus their time on LinkedIn. While Twitter allows access to their firehose and therefore a lot of tools can determine influence, this list was manually researched and analyzed by our team one profile at a time.

25 Top Sales Executives to Follow and Learn from in 2023

Without further ado –– and in no particular order –– these are the 25 sales executives worth following and learning from:

David Weiss

CRO, The Sales Collective

Why you should follow David:

David often shares sales advice, sales, deal, and leadership coaching, and on topics related to sales careers. David is also a speaker, author, and podcaster.

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Rosalyn Santa Elena

Founder and Chief Revenue Operations Officer, The RevOps Collective

Why you should follow Rosalyn:

Rosalyn has deep expertise in end-to-end Revenue Operations, from top of funnel to prospect to customer to retention & expansion. She is a noted thought leader in RevOps often speaking on webinars and is the host of The Revenue Engine Podcast where she interviews founders, CEO’s and Revenue Leaders from hyper-growth companies. Rosalyn is the Dean of RevOps School and Host of the RevOps Corner at Pavilion, a Revenue Council Member at HubSpot, and other organizations.

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David Osborne

Chief Sales Officer, Insightly

Why you should follow David:

David frequently hosts Closing Time, a video series focused on tips for go-to-market leaders in the fields of sales, marketing, customer success, and more. David shares clips of this video series on his LinkedIn profile that drives engagement with other sales leaders.

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Bob Marsh

CRO, Bluewater Technologies Group

Why you should follow Bob:

Bob often shares thought leadership content related to leadership and management that, either he has written himself or that he’s curating from other sources. Bob couples that with interesting branded content. He also runs his own website.

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JM Wilke

VP of Operations | Principal Growth Consultant, Scott Leese Consulting

Why you should follow JM:

JM frequently shares content around revenue strategy, sales consulting, sales operations, and revenue operations. She discusses how RevOps creates revenue, comparisons between old and new ways, and she often injects humor into her content.

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Stephanie Valenti

CRO, SmartBug Media

Why you should follow Stephanie:

Stephanie has 15+ years of experience building and leading B2B sales organizations and operational departments from 50 to 500+ team members across the U.S., Australia, and Europe.

Beyond her CRO responsibilities, Stephanie is also a creator and facilitator of executive level courses throughout Pavilion, and serves as a leader for a 1700 member CRO group across the work through the Pavilion network. In addition, she is a start up advisor for Hatchet Ventures.

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Austin Myers

VP, Sales and Customer Success, Certificial

Why you should follow Austin:

When not sharing sales and customer success content, Austin is consistently giving advice to those looking for their next role on topics such as improving their resumes, advice to hiring managers, and helping people to connect with one another. 

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Cynthia Handal

Head of Global Sales, Simera

Why you should follow Cynthia:

As someone who leads a large team of BDRS, team leads, a Sales Training Manager, and a Sales Enablement Manager, Cynthia is in the sales trenches on a daily basis. She provides sales content on a consistent basis that connects with her audience.

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Kevin “KD” Dorsey

SVP of Sales, Bench Accounting

Why you should follow Kevin:

Kevin focuses on the topics of sales, sales leadership, sales management, and sales development. Beyond his day job as SVP of Sales at Bench Marketing, Kevin is a sales consultant, advisor, and keynote speaker.

Kevin is the host of the Live Better Sell Better podcast and has a B2B Sales Masterclass available on Udemy.

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Jeremey Donovan

EVP, Revenue Operations and Strategy, Insight Partners

Why you should follow Jeremey:

Jeremey frequently shares content about sales and revenue operations, including tips for salespeople, sales-related data points, polls, content sourced from third-parties, and other forms of original content.

He is also an Adjunct Professor at NYU School of Professional Studies.

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Richard Smith

VP of Sales EMEA, Allego

Why you should follow Richard:

Richard listens to endless sales calls and shares particle tips and tricks on how to navigate through a sales call, who the real decision-makers are, and how to win them over. Richard is also the co-author of Problem Prospecting?!

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Colin Specter

VP of Sales, Orum

Why you should follow Colin:

Colin is deeply passionate about sales and business operations. His expertise lie in promoting innovative products. He has a history of effectively bringing new services to market through a combination of proven strategy, playbook implementation, and talent management. Currently, he is leading the development of the field sales team at Orum and is a frequent podcast guest.

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Kyle Petersen

VP of Sales, Dandy

Why you should follow Kyle:

Kyle shares his content with a twist. He shows how his day-to-day activities (like running) can actually teach you about sales. Sales leaders, AEs and SDRs often find his content resourceful and Kyle is frequently a podcast guest.

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Ralph Barsi

VP, Global Inside Sales, Tray

Why you should follow Ralph:

Ralph has led sales teams of varying sizes, ranging from as few as two reps to as many as 230 extended directs. He has worked with companies in different stages of maturity, from early-stage to acquisition to publicly-held. His area of expertise is in helping businesses optimize their top-of-funnel operations to ensure they can establish a predictable revenue pipeline, cultivate a strong talent pipeline, and become top performers in their industry.

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Alex Olley

Co-Founder & CRO, Reachdesk

Why you should follow Alex:

Alex’s area of expertise is SaaS technology. He utilizes unique and inventive approaches to capture the attention of potential customers. His philosophy is centered around treating customers with a human touch, rather than viewing them as just sales leads or opportunities. Alex shares tips on how to be a better sales leader, experiences with SDR outreach, and personal experiences such as his travels.

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Christina Brady

SVP of Sales, Spekit

Why you should follow Christina:

Christina has over 15 years of sales experience, including 10 years in leadership positions for B2B technology companies. Christina has a top 25% global podcast, Taking The Lead, where she features women who are leading their orgs, and with a focused audience of B2B executives and their GTM teams. Christina provides a mix of content ranging from productivity tips to leadership advice to perspectives on sales.

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Cathy McPhillips

Chief Growth Officer, Marketing AI Institute

Why you should follow Cathy:

Artificial Intelligence is Cathy’s first love. Cathy provides valuable insights and perspectives on the current state of AI, its potential impact on various industries, and its future trajectory. She keeps her followers informed about the latest trends and developments, and plays an important role in advancing the field of AI and helping others stay ahead of the curve, often sharing insights from her company, Marketing AI Institute.

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Alyssa Merwin Henderson

Vice President, Global Sales Solutions, LinkedIn

Why you should follow Alyssa:

Alyssa provides useful insights and practical tips related to B2B sales and effective selling strategies. She also gives a preview of upcoming ideas that have the potential to revolutionize the way sales operate in 2023.

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Breezy Beaumont

Head of Growth, Correlated

Why you should follow Breezy:

Breezy shares content that provides guidance on what messaging to use for sales outreach. She shares tips on how to uncover PQLs, implement PLG strategies, and achieving revenue targets while tracking performance metrics. She is also the host of the podcast: Product Led Revenue.

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Adam Jay

Chief Revenue Officer, Falkon

Why you should follow Adam:

Adam has experience leading sales teams, building sales processes, playbooks, coaching frameworks, as well as influencing product roadmaps and creating top-performing sales teams. He also plays the role of a consultant to SaaS companies on topics like sales coaching, go-to-market strategy, and leadership development. 

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Laura “LG” Guerra

Vice President of Growth, Pavilion

Why you should follow Laura:

Laura often shares content about sales leadership, fun meeting tips, latest trends and growth areas. She’s passionate about changing the perception of what it means to be a modern revenue professional. Laura currently leads the growth efforts at Pavilion focusing on new member acquisition, retention, and expansion.

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Yurii Veremchuk

Head of Business Growth, Outbound Sales, Woodpecker.co

Why you should follow Yurii:

Yurri provides advice on strategies and techniques that can be utilized to effectively persuade and convert potential customers into paying customers. His guidance includes tactics on identifying and targeting the right audience, sales content generation and customizing sales approaches to meet the unique needs of each customer.

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Sam Nelson

Founder, Agoge and SDRLeader.com

Why you should follow Sam: 

Sam’s content primarily focuses on enhancing the effectiveness of cold calling, email communication and outreach strategies with tips on how to implement them. 

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Taft Love

VP of Sales, DocSend; GTM Advisor – Sales and Marketing Operations at Scale Venture Partners

Why you should follow Taft:

Taft’s content is mainly related to outbound sales emails and revenue operations. He also shares tips on client management and outreach calling tips and tricks.

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Max Altschuler

Founder & General Partner, GTMfund

Why you should follow Max:

Max is known for sharing engaging and entertaining content related to sales processes and GTM strategies. He was the Founder & CEO of Sales Hacker, Inc. which was acquired by Outreach in 2018. Max is also the author of 3 books.

The post 25 Sales Executives to Learn from in 2023 appeared first on Demandbase.

Whether you’re in marketing or sales –– or the business world at large –– ChatGPT has taken over your LinkedIn feeds, Slack groups, and many other conversations. ChatGPT helped AI hit an inflection point with the rise of generative AI, but this shiny object just scratches the surface of what is available today for B2B companies and their sales and marketing teams. 

As more and more AI-powered tools enter the martech landscape, opportunities abound to help B2B companies better achieve their revenue targets. 

However, another trend has kicked off our year.

Many organizations are starting 2023 with fewer resources –– be it because of budget cuts, attrition, or increased responsibilities for team members. 

The good news? Artificial intelligence has the potential to help B2B companies achieve their revenue goals in several ways. And there are tools to help you for virtually every use case. This landscape from Sequoia Capital’s Sonya Huang dates back to October 2022, and since then, the space has exploded:

As promised: here is our @sequoia Gen AI market map V2! Very thankful for the hundreds of folks who wrote in additions and edits.AI people are amazing pic.twitter.com/dXyHR9dSvR

— Sonya Huang (@sonyatweetybird) October 24, 2022

Consider these use cases:

Automating repetitive tasks

AI-powered automation can take over repetitive tasks such as data entry, crafting emails, appointment scheduling, and customer service inquiries, freeing up employees to focus on more high-value activities. AI tools like SmartWriter.ai and Lavender can be connected to your CRM or LinkedIn to help you craft more personalized emails for your outreach. 

There are so many generative AI tools available, and even technologies such as Grammarly are available to help sales teams in that first critical touch with prospects. 

Exceed.ai can help schedule meetings with prospects identified as qualified—through a multitude of channels. 

Improving customer engagement

AI can be used to personalize interactions with customers, for example, by recommending products or services that align with their interests or needs. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, resulting in repeat business.

Intelligent technologies such as Drift can learn from simple chat conversations and sales process automations, which can help create robust CRM records on customers. This could include pages visited, questions asked, and more. Marketing and sales teams can better align by having visible, actionable data received through conversational AI. 

AI-powered email technologies such as rasa.io and Faveeo are able to customize email sends based not only on known and implied interests from form fills and purchase history, but can also automate subsequent sends based on historical email opens and clicks–without additional list building, data remediation, and workflow building. 

Tools like Uniphore can record and analyze sales calls to determine where a sales representative resonated with a customer or prospect, or conversely, where the deal was lost. Great sales teams will use technologies such as this to continually work to improve their pitch and delivery, and also better understand what customers need.

Conversica has an automated AI sales assistant that conducts conversations with leads, further qualifying them before they talk to a rep.

Identifying new revenue opportunities

AI-powered analytics can be used to identify new revenue opportunities by analyzing patterns in customer behavior and identifying trends in sales data. This can help companies make more informed decisions about which products or services to focus on.

Crayon is a competitive intelligence platform that can act in real time to share data immediately with sales teams, with the ability to detect both anomalies as well as big opportunities.

Optimizing pricing

AI can be used to analyze data on customer behavior, costs, and competitors to help companies optimize their pricing strategies. This can lead to increased revenue without sacrificing profitability.

Tools like Remesh can crowdsource and consolidate customer feedback on product, price, and more.

Enhancing lead generation and sales forecasting

AI models can help companies to identify the best leads and forecast the likelihood of a lead converting into a customer. By doing so, the sales team can prioritize their efforts, focus on high-probability leads and make better revenue predictions.

Data modeling tools such as Squark can predict churn risk and lifetime value with existing customer data. By pinpointing signals more intelligently, sales can be focused on the right customer at the right time. 

Technologies such as Rev can help build your ICP by integrating current processes and systems with external company and industry data to help forecast and prioritize. 

The common thread among all of these benefits is that these tools relieve some of the time sales teams spend drowning in data so they can focus on the actionable information discovered through the data. 

Making happier humans in the loop

We often hear the worries of AI taking our jobs, but without human oversight in these AI outputs, your customers and prospects will not be easily fooled.

An AI tool can scale faster and help us generate emails, catchy subject lines, and more. But even the best-written AI-generated emails still need human oversight to ensure the LinkedIn data it pulled in, or the CRM notes you have are still up-to-date. Even the best data analysis needs a human to look it over to check for inaccuracies or biases in the training set. 

Most importantly, the right AI technology allows more time for us to be more human. It lets us engage with our customers and prospects, make stronger connections, and invest time in creating the right product or service for our audience. 

At the Marketing AI Institute, we talk at length about the future being Marketer + Machine. AI is here, and we as sales teams, marketers, and business leaders can embrace AI and learn how it can augment our work, or we can ignore it and get passed up by competitors. 

What steps can you take today? 

• Think about the tasks you do each day, week, or month. Are they repetitive? Are they data-driven? Are they making a prediction? Document this so you can see some places where AI can help you immediately. 
• Estimate the hours you spend on the tasks you listed above. What’s the biggest opportunity for you to save time? What task has the biggest potential to impact revenue if it could be scaled faster? 
• Visit the Marketing AI Institute website for resources. We have a free Intro to AI class, and then things scale up to a Piloting AI course series, an in-person event (MAICON), a book, our AI Academy for Marketers, and more. There is so much FREE content on the site to help get started. 

It’s important we remember that AI is not a magic solution nor a one-size-fits-all technology. I’ve been in the marketing industry for a few decades now and I’m slowly integrating more intelligent technology into what I’m doing. It’s a slow build for me, but I’ve seen immediate returns on time and scalability in my processes and set aside time each month to reevaluate what I could be doing smarter. 

Identifying the right areas where AI can bring the most value and having a data-driven culture and infrastructure is crucial for the successful implementation of AI. 

The post AI’s Potential to Help B2B Companies with Revenue Goals appeared first on Demandbase.

It’s no secret that enterprise-sized organizations have unique needs, but how often are these needs really taken into account by vendors trying to gain market share in that segment?

Beyond the obvious trait that most enterprises are large, often globally dispersed organizations, what other needs are unique to enterprises? While there could be lots of needs to call out, here are just a few that are often overlooked:

1. Most enterprises need technology that can scale. While that seems obvious, you’d be surprised how many vendors have inflexible systems or systems that are based on hard coded data. Sad but true.
2. As companies grow, security also becomes a key sticking point. Not only must the enterprise have secure systems in place for their data, but any vendor or technology they leverage will also need to meet this requirement.
3. As mentioned above, a common trait of enterprises is that they are globally dispersed. And even if they are not currently, they likely have global expansion as one of their north star metrics.
4. Enterprises usually have a buying committee and procurement process when evaluating new technologies. There’s likely a formal RFP in place and a number of stakeholders that have requirements that need to be met. Single-threaded conversations are the quickest way to find yourself ghosted in an enterprise RFP.

Let’s talk about each of these in turn and why they make a difference for enterprises.

Most enterprises need technology that can scale

It makes sense – enterprises are large and need flexibility in the technologies they adopt in order to scale. This flexibility can take different forms. For example, perhaps they need the technology to help automate workflows for them. Or maybe they need the technology to be customizable to fit their current state of business. Whatever the form, each enterprise will likely be different and the technology they adopt needs to be able to meet those needs. One technology that can help enterprises scale is an account-based marketing platform. For more on why, check out this ebook, “The Hidden Costs of Doing Nothing: Why B2B Enterprises Need an ABM Platform.”

Security is non-negotiable

Data breaches happen more than anyone would like and yet some companies are slow to adopt or unable to meet the requirements for stricter security measures. At Demandbase, an enterprise RFP typically involves answering a lot of security questions. We’ve invested in enterprise-grade security that maintains SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2013 certifications, reserved for organizations that consistently demonstrate strong standard operating procedures. If you’re a vendor looking to expand into the enterprise space, consider whether your security is enterprise-grade or in need of additional investment.

Think global 

Corporate citizens are global and companies need to think globally to ensure long term success. Some technology platforms are just not ready to scale at the global level. Whether that means the product is in another language or the data in the platform can be separated for different business units or countries, there’s different ways that global enterprises go to market that need to be taken into consideration. Demandbase recently announced Workspaces, which allows customers to configure account partitions for their business units, keeping data and activities separated. What’s unique about Demandbase Workspaces is that it’s more than just filtering the data. Different business units can keep their data completely separate from other business units also using Demandbase so that insights and actions stay within a workspace or business unit.

Going beyond the individual B2B buyer

When engaging with an enterprise, it’s important to remember that more than one person is likely involved in a buying decision. A buying committee or buying group is usually established for an RFP to ensure that all stakeholders and parties leveraging the new technology have a chance to provide their requirements. This is where it becomes important to try and identify members of the buying committee to sway them in favor of your technology. This is easier said than done but luckily, go-to-market platforms like Demandbase have the right technology to help you find and target these buying committee members. The key is to multi-thread the discussion and prove to every stakeholder why your product best serves their needs.

For organizations looking to expand into the enterprise segment, understanding the above needs are important, but what can you do to actually find and target this segment? Since the buying committee is an important element of a deal, what can you do to find and engage members of the buying committee? To start, having the right technology in place can help your organization get ahead of the competition, especially if a target account has a global footprint. Let’s explore what the right technology can do for you:

Intent matters

Let’s start with intent. What is intent and why should you care? Intent is defined as the behavioral buying signals that a person is showing when they are researching your product or service. Many companies leverage intent provided by a third-party vendor like Bombora, G2 or TrustRadius. There are also go-to-market platforms, like Demandbase, that provide their own proprietary intent. Whichever direction you decide to go, it’s important to note that unlike traditional lead generation marketing, using intent means identifying a buying opportunity before a lead gen form is filled out. And as different individuals within a buying committee research solutions online, those buying signals help to signal who are the potential members of a buying committee.

Pinpoint the location of the activity

Some intent providers, like Demandbase, even provide the geolocation of that intent signal. This is super helpful if you are targeting an enterprise organization with many business units or if your organization has offices in different countries. Intent by geolocation helps you narrow down where the intent signal is coming from. 

Besides intent, it’s also important to know where your website traffic is coming from. Providing website traffic by geolocation helps you better understand which regional offices of multinational companies are engaging with your website. If coupled with other engagement activity, like in Demandbase, organizations can easily focus on a particular geographic area, and report on activity from within that geographic area (including engagement sourced from CRM and marketing automation in addition to unknown web visitor data).

Target the right buyer

Once you’ve identified that an account is in-market, targeting them with relevant messages is the next step. Demandbase Advertising optimizes bids by intent to prevent large accounts from being overly targeted. When you want to spend your marketing dollars efficiently, using Demandbase Advertising is the logical choice for this reason. On top of intent optimized bids, you can also supplement your advertising strategy with people based advertising from Demandbase. You can target using Known Contacts, Job Function, Job Level, and Persona to help ensure you’re targeting the right people at an account. Using this combination of intent and people helps organizations target the right buyers of an account for maximum efficiency. 

So if you’re thinking about moving up-market and targeting enterprises, remember that enterprises have unique needs. Meeting those unique needs, like being scalable, supporting different business units or identifying buying committee members will get you a long way in making the short list for your next enterprise RFP. Happy prospecting! 

The post POV: The Unique Needs of Enterprises Can Be Non-Starters For Some Vendors appeared first on Demandbase.

Go to LinkedIn.com and time how long it takes you to see go-to-market or GTM in your main timeline feed. It was four seconds for me. 

In true marketer form, I’ll take on ChatGPT in explaining what the heck a GTM strategy is, why everyone’s talking about it, and a few key takeaways as you refine your go-to-market strategy.

What is a Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy?

ChatGPT’s take: A GTM (go-to-market) strategy is a plan for how a company will introduce a product or service to the market and make it successful. It typically includes elements such as target customer segments, positioning, pricing, and channels for distribution and promotion. The goal of a GTM strategy is to maximize revenue and profitability by effectively reaching and satisfying target customers.

AI’s quite formal these days. For most sales and marketing leaders, we’re thinking more about what plan of strategies and tactics we need to engage to hit our pipeline and revenue targets when we talk about go-to-market strategy.

A GTM strategy is:

• Not one size fits all
• Always evolving (monthly, sometimes weekly, even daily)
• Plural, not singular (we may have multiple that we house under an umbrella GTM strategy)
• Inclusive of account-based strategy (ABM, ABX, etc.) and demand generation

Why is everyone talking about GTM strategy?

ChatGPT’s take: It’s likely that go-to-market (GTM) strategy is being discussed more frequently due to the changing business landscape, specifically with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the shift to remote work and increased use of digital channels for commerce, many companies are rethinking their GTM strategies to effectively reach customers in this new environment. Additionally, as the competition in many industries has increased, businesses are looking for ways to differentiate themselves and stand out in the market, which a well-crafted GTM strategy can help with.

Pats AI on the head. Great start here. Another huge factor is that every single company in the world is talking about doing more with less today. We can’t miss with our budget. Our time must be used wisely. We have to focus on the accounts most likely to buy.

Every revenue leader is confiding in those they trust and sharing tips, tricks, and best practices to survive and thrive as things continue to grow more challenging. The strategies that got us here probably aren’t going to get us to our next growth milestones and we’re – as the cool kids say – shook.

What are a few key takeaways?

ChatGPT is grounded for horrible attempts at giving you a few key takeaways so I’ll fly solo on this one.

1. Construct your GTM with a spectrum of styles

Expect to have 1:1 account-based programs delivering extremely personalized outreach and content, 1:Few programs scaling it down a bit, and 1:Many programs to complement more targeted demand generation. The number of accounts in each tier is going to vary based on resources, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach and what works today is going to be different in 300 days.

2. Embrace and prepare for the uncertainty

Do your top-down budget and your bottom-up budget and your budget based on historical benchmarks and your budget based on industry benchmarks. Try to be as educated as possible when making decisions and defend them with data. Frequently highlight top and low performers and work to refine the mix of tactics and channels based on how they’re working for you throughout the year.

3. Build your village because it takes one

Talk to your peers. Build your network. Work with people and technology providers that you trust. Ask for introductions from connected folks in your network. Build a sort of hive mind. Things are changing quickly and trying to do it alone is going to increase the already alarmingly high rates of fatigue in our industry.

4. Deeply align sales, marketing and customer success

A tale as old as time, but the most aligned and orchestrated organizations are seeing the most success. We at Demandbase can certainly help with all of these, but don’t skip the steps it takes to create, foster, and strengthen productive cross-functional relationships. This also requires a shared definition of success – cough, cough, pipeline and revenue.

5. Help us help you

From our CEO (hey Gabe!) to your CSM, we’re here to help. Connect with us on LinkedIn (here I am), message us, join our communities, engage with the Demandbase Champions, tell us what we can help you with. We’re having hundreds of these conversations daily and you always have an open invitation to talk shop or have a sort of therapy session working through this together. We’re here for you. <3

The post What the Heck is a Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy and What Do I Need to Know? appeared first on Demandbase.

Colonel Mustard…

In the conservatory… 

With the candlestick! 

B2B sales can feel a bit like a game of Clue as you piece together the evidence to first determine which prospects are the best fit for your product or service, and then guide those prospects through the twists and turns of the buyer’s journey.

Today’s B2B sales tools are crucial to gathering those clues in one place, tracking the data points, and making your case. They have CRM integration. They have market targeting. They have robust analytics. Some even have intent data. But as it turns out, there is a critical piece missing from many of these tools when it comes to account-based marketing, sales, and the customer experience: 

They have the who.

They have the where (and maybe the when).

But they’re missing the all-important “what.”

A stymied investigation, a B2B cold case

That’s right, all those bells and whistles in today’s B2B sales tools do a great job of identifying and providing reconnaissance on which geographies or companies to target. Many even incorporate sales intelligence like contact details on key decision makers –– vitally important information for your organization’s sales and marketing efforts.

But that’s where many B2B sales tools stop, often leading your team’s investigation –– or sales efforts –– to a dead end.

Don’t let the case go cold! The crucial piece of evidence sales and marketing professionals need to get in the door, move their sales forward, and close that case –– er, deal –– is knowing the “what.” And Industry Intelligence provides those pivotal clues, filling in the missing pieces needed to secure new business, conduct more productive sales conversations, and build stronger customer relationships.

Blowing the case wide open for B2B sales

Industry Intelligence informs sales and marketing pros about what is going on within their prospect’s niche –– what their target company’s day-to-day operations look like, what the industry’s typical challenges are, what fuels their supply chain and sales, what trends are impacting their bottom line, what industry risks or issues might be keeping the business owner up at night.

When sales and marketing teams tap into the clues offered by Industry Intelligence, they will uncover not only the inner-workings of a prospect’s industry, they’ll also discover the industry-specific issues that shape how the prospect views his or her business, their vertical, and the broader marketplace.

As an added benefit, Industry Intelligence is a tremendous time-saver, packaged in a convenient, consumable, and easy-to-share, or as I like to say, actionable format. In as little as five minutes:

• A salesperson can get the industry-focused talking points needed to feel confident on a prospect call.
• A marketer can quickly gather salient industry insights to create a tailored communication or presentation.
• A relationship manager can identify an industry trend or recent event to share with a client as a valuable, personalized touchpoint.

Armed with Industry Intelligence, sales and marketing professionals can build a rock-solid case, going beyond the who and where to get to the bottom of WHAT is impacting clients and prospects today, and in the future. Once they have that insight they can tailor solutions and value-added advice to the buyer’s needs. And that’s the kind of personalized, gumshoe detective work today’s business owners are searching for!

The answer to the mystery of B2B sales success was right there all along! You can learn more about how to use Industry Intelligence to uncover the clues you need to close more deals. Watch this video then read this eBook to shine a new light on the mysteries of losing a sale.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

More than 25 years of experience with building early-stage companies through marketing strategy and operational execution have taught Vertical IQ president David Buffaloe a thing or two about B2B sales! Prior to joining the Vertical IQ team in 2019, David served as SVP of marketing at Zift Solutions, the leading provider of enterprise channel management solutions, and held marketing leadership roles at several other technology firms. In addition, David was the president and founder of M-pact Marketing, a boutique agency that helped early-stage companies grow through integrated marketing strategy and execution. When he’s not busy making the case for Industry Intelligence, you’ll find David spending time with family, playing tennis, and sipping bourbon while cheering on the NC State Wolfpack and Carolina Hurricanes.

ABOUT VERTICAL IQ

Headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., Vertical IQ is a nationally recognized leader in Industry Intelligence. Whether they’re pitching a local brewery or a national biotech company, successful sales, marketing, and customer success teams use Vertical IQ to better understand a prospect’s or client’s business challenges before, during, and after meetings. Covering more than 560 distinct industries, 3,400 local economies, and more than 97 percent of the U.S. economy and Canada, Vertical IQ equips users with the confidence and credibility to make memorable first impressions and sustain enduring relationships. 

The post Crack the Case for B2B Sales By Using Industry Intelligence appeared first on Demandbase.

Two topics guaranteed to get CMOs talking are:

1. Pipeline attribution (e.g. how to assign “credit” for opportunities between marketing, SDR, sales, partners, etc.)
2. Methods to set and defend marketing budgets

It turns out, these are related because many CFOs connect “marketing-sourced pipeline” goals to their marketing budgets.

In this post, I’m going to explain why I think this is the wrong approach for many companies, and then share some key benchmarks that represent the right strategy. This is critical information for any B2B CMO, and I’d love to hear your thoughts (agree or disagree) in the comments.

Why marketing-sourced pipeline is flawed

In my Marketo days, I preached that the quickest path to CMO credibility and respect was to “take a seat at the revenue table”, which meant directly connecting marketing investments to pipeline and revenue. (Note: I always talk about marketing investment, never spending, since we want people to think of marketing as an investment and not a cost center.) 

In those days, the model of sales and marketing alignment was a relay race, in which marketing would generate, nurture, and score a lead, then pass it like a baton to an SDR, who in turn would pass it to sales as a marketing-sourced opportunity. It was fairly easy to show how more marketing investment would generate more leads, and therefore more marketing-sourced pipeline and revenue. That’s how I would set and defend my marketing budget in the early days of Marketo.

The baton handoff model made sense back then, when deals were relatively low value and high velocity, and were often sold to a single decision maker. But it increasingly doesn’t make sense today, especially for more complex, higher value deals. Buying groups are larger and more complex (the most recent data from Gartner says 14 members on average, roughly half “active” and half “occasional”). And effective account-based motions demand marketing and sales orchestration at every step of the journey, pre- and post-opportunity. This includes SDRs and AEs prospecting into target accounts that are also getting marketing touches, AEs inviting key prospects to field events, and SDRs helping to set meetings and staff the booth at a tradeshow. 

A better model for sales and marketing alignment today is a soccer (or football) team, in which players in different positions pass the ball back and forth as it moves up and down the field. In this model, you don’t give credit to any one touch, any more than you give the credit for a goal to any one kick from any specific player. Trying to assign credit breaks down the very teamwork that is required for success. Can you imagine a soccer team putting different scores on the board depending on who scored the goal? Or worse, what if they paid players only for the scores they made? They’d never pass the ball to each other and would ultimately perform much worse as a team.

The team ultimately cares about the total number of goals, and that’s how you should think about pipeline. Rather than getting into squabbles about whether any given opportunity is marketing-sourced, or sales-sourced, or SDR-sourced, etc., focus on what really matters: is there enough TOTAL pipeline to meet your company’s revenue goals, i.e. “Everyone-Sourced Pipeline.”

This also solves the problem that so many touches happen outside of your ability to track. This includes things like word of mouth and conversations in so-called “dark social” communities. It also includes all the great marketing you do that influences deals indirectly, such as PR and awards; ungated content; analyst reports; public speaking; peer review sites; web traffic from unknown visitors; brand advertising; and those intangible feelings about your company that make up your brand – all of which can increase the likelihood a prospect responds to a sales outreach, but from which marketing wouldn’t get any “direct” credit.

If your deals have any level of complexity beyond a single buyer, then switching to Everyone-Sourced Pipeline — and measuring and paying marketing and SDRs on that goal — is, in my opinion, one of the most critical things you can do to drive sales and marketing alignment, focus your marketing on all the things that impact revenue, and optimize your account-based motions.

Setting and defending your marketing budget: benchmarks

OK, perhaps you’re convinced, but your CFO and board are still used to you sharing traditional metrics like MQLs and marketing-sourced (or influenced) pipeline. What can you do? First, share this article with them, and if you need, reach out to me directly (a DM on LinkedIn works great) and I’ll speak to them!

Second, as you move to Everyone-Sourced Pipeline, you’ll need a new way to set and defend the marketing budget. Fortunately, it’s still possible. How? Using benchmarks. 

The cmosurvey.org publishes lots of data on marketing as a percentage of total company budget and total company revenue, by industry, company size, etc. In Sept 2022, the marketing budget accounted for an average of 7.8 percent of revenue at B2B product companies, and 5.9 percent for B2B services companies. Here’s the data for marketing as a percentage of revenues:

Personally, I find the data by employee easier to work with since they show a more linear pattern of companies spending a declining percentage of revenue on marketing as they grow larger:

And here’s the data by industry:

The cmosurvey.org data, while useful, does require you to interpolate from multiple data points to land on the right number for you. For SaaS companies in particular, we can do better: Insight Partners publishes some great benchmark data for total marketing budget — includes people, program, and other (mostly tech spend) — as a fraction of the new logo bookings goal, based on the average deal size (in ARR) for new logo contracts:

•  <$15K new logo deal size: 55% Total Marketing Spend vs. New Logo Bookings 
•  $15K-$75K new logo deal size: 57% Total Marketing Spend vs. New Logo Bookings 
•  >$75K new logo deal size: 20% Total Marketing Spend vs. New Logo Bookings

It’s interesting to me that the marketing spend for companies with large deal sizes is much lower. Also, I note that these numbers aren’t as useful if your deal sizes are around that $75K break point, since the difference between the two lines is so significant.  

So here’s another (even more detailed) way to get to the same outcome: take the % of total sales & marketing investment that goes to marketing, and divide it by your Magic Number (new logo bookings as measured in ARR growth, divided by total sales and marketing investment) and you’ll get the total marketing spend as a fraction of new ARR logo bookings: 

Here’s an example. Let’s assume you are targeting a Magic Number of 0.75. This means you book $0.75 in won ARR (annual recurring revenue) for $1 in total Sales & Marketing (S&M) investment. Some companies do even better, but anything above 0.75 is generally considered good. 

Now let’s assume marketing makes up 25 percent of the total S&M number. This is a reasonable estimate based on the Insight Partners benchmarks:

•  <$15K new logo deal size: 42% Marketing % of S&M investment 
•  $15K-$75K new logo deal size: 29% Marketing % of S&M investment 
•  >$75K new logo deal size: 22% Marketing % of S&M investment

Again, we note that companies with larger deal sizes tend to spend proportionally less on marketing as a percent of the total. (The Keybanc Capital Markets Technology Group Private Company SaaS Survey also has benchmarks on marketing as a % of total S&M investment.)

So, we divide the marketing percentage by the Magic Number, we get 25% / .75 = 0.333, meaning you need to spend $0.33 in marketing to get $1 in new logo ARR, and that your marketing budget would be a third of your new logo bookings target. Voila! You have a budget benchmark your CFO can buy into. (You can obviously adjust this based on your own Magic Number and marketing investment percentage).

Additional marketing budget and ROI benchmarks

We can also use the benchmark data to allocate our budgets and even set targets for marketing ROI and efficiency. First, Insight Partners also publishes data on how much of your total Marketing investment should be on programs (versus people and other): 

•  <$15K new logo deal size: 52% programs % of total marketing investment (38% people, 10% other)
•  $15K-$75K new logo deal size: 57% programs % of total marketing investment  (33% people, 10% other)
•  >$75K new logo deal size: 40% programs % of total marketing investment  (43% people, 17% other)

(I note that the companies with the largest deal sizes tend to invest more in people and technology, which reflects the nature of an account-based go-to-market.)

IDC also publishes what they call the People to Program ratio (which combines programs and other), which often lands around 60-65 percent programs (though this data is skewed by large companies with large budgets) and 35-40 percent people. 

Personally, I think 60 percent programs (including other) and 40 percent people is a good target. 

So, let’s take the $0.33 in marketing to get $1 in new logo ARR we calculated in the prior section, and multiply that by 60%. This gets us 60% x $0.33 = $0.20 in marketing programs for $1.0 of new logo ARR (and $0.133 in people). 

Finally, let’s use the Pipeline Win rate to get a required marketing efficiency. If your win rate is 30 percent, then you’re looking at a target ROI of $0.06 (30% x 0.2) program investment for $1 in new logo Pipeline (all sources). The inverse is what I call the marketing “Golden Ratio” (pipeline $ per investment $), in this case 16.67x. This is a good ROI target to aim for as you work to achieve an efficient marketing investment (though again, you can adjust the math for your own business).

What do you think? What are your targets for marketing efficiency? What benchmarks do you use to set and defend your marketing budget? Please let me know in the comments!

PS: The Insight Partners benchmarks also give data on how the program budget gets allocated across digital, events, content, and other channels (PR, analysts, etc.); where marketing departments focus their resources on new business vs expansion, renewal, sales enablement, and brand; and how many FTEs you should have based on the new logos bookings target. If you’re a SaaS company, check them out!

The post The CMO’s Guide to Setting and Defending Your Marketing Budget and ROI appeared first on Demandbase.

Our mission, at Demandbase, is to transform the way B2B companies go to market. I love the simplicity and power of that statement, and it gives me a sense of purpose every day. But perhaps you’re wondering why B2B go-to-market needs transforming. Maybe you’re even wondering what the heck we mean by “go-to-market.” Let’s break it down in today’s post. Then be on the lookout for my next blog, where I’ll talk about what a transformed GTM looks like. 

What does go-to-market mean? 

We asked that very question in a recent C-Suite survey conducted by DemandGen Report, and here’s what the market had to say.

With no single definition garnering a majority of the votes, clearly there’s confusion about what the term means. That’s why I’m taking a moment to define it. 

At Demandbase, GTM refers quite simply to all the strategies and activities having to do with generating revenue. It encompasses all the definitions above, but aligns most closely to the second option, “All customer-facing activities, including marketing, sales, account retention, and growth.” 

Now, why does B2B GTM need transformation?

So glad you asked. I see two primary reasons.

1. The shift to digital

B2B GTM has always been more challenging than B2C. There are more people involved in each buying decision, more complex solutions that require more consideration, and more initiatives vying for the same budget dollars. But the level of complexity has escalated in modern times with the digital revolution. And that’s been amplified since the start of the pandemic, when much of the workforce shifted to remote work. 

According to industry experts, as much as 95% of the buyer journey is carried out without engaging your sales reps. In other words, the journey is conducted almost entirely online, and is mostly hidden from the marketers and sellers who need to engage these prospective buyers. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, with multiple stakeholders involved in every purchase decision, you’ve got a network of activity happening that resembles a soccer match more than a single-threaded relay race, where there would be a clear handoff between marketing and sales. 

As in soccer, where the ball moves forwards, backwards, and sideways, passing from offense to defense and back again until eventually a goal is scored, in today’s go-to-market, sales needs to jump in early, marketing needs to stay in the game all the way until a deal closes, and customer success comes in from the sidelines if the sale involves an existing customer. With the entire revenue organization on the field, alignment is not only nice, it’s essential. These teams must work as one, targeting the same accounts and decision-makers, sharing the same goals, working from the same data — say goodbye to siloed data — and they need to be working from the same playbook. That’s the transformation that needs to take place.

And because most of the buyer journey is hidden from view, and buyers don’t raise their hands until the journey’s almost over, intent data is now an imperative. Think of it this way, intent is the new lead — the only way to effectively identify the right accounts and decision-makers to target and the right time to engage. Without intent, you’re simply relying on guesswork and hunches, wasting precious time and money chasing prospects who will never buy from you.

2. The escalating rate of change

What started out as gradual change has grown into perpetual motion. Technology, the economy, and the world as a whole are changing faster, and so too must companies as they adapt to these shifting landscapes. They’ve been adjusting to the great resignation since mid-pandemic, followed more recently by layoffs across many industries. The result is a shrinking workforce, now working harder, more stressed and distracted, and having less time to think about purchase decisions.

A tightened economy is causing companies to rethink priorities, to curtail budgets, and scrutinize every dollar spent, putting more pressure on revenue teams marketing and selling to them.

As well, technology continues to evolve. With more tech options, companies being more risk averse, and scrutinizing budgets more carefully, more stakeholders are getting involved in buying decisions. And so the complexity spiral continues.

Finally, much of this change is happening covertly. Your contact at an account is suddenly gone, new execs are hired, initiatives shift behind the scenes, while marketers and salespeople often miss it, thinking they can rely on current relationships and previous knowledge to drive more business with current customers. Meanwhile competitors see opportunity in these changes and move in to exploit it. 

Never before has there been such a need for data and insight to guide our GTM decisions and actions. And that’s why B2B GTM needs to be transformed.

Check in next month to learn what a transformed GTM looks like. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. What would you like me to write about? Send your ideas to gabeGTM@demandbase.com.

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Yes, digital advertising works

We all know that it can be difficult to prove digital advertising’s true business impact. Theoretically of course, it makes sense – put your branded ads in front of your target accounts and they’re more likely to engage with you. But does it actually work? And how can you show it? At Demandbase, we face the same challenges our customers do – doing more with less, demonstrating ROI, and striving to balance near-term revenue growth vs. longer-term brand awareness and affinity. So we decided to put our own advertising to the test, and we’re excited to share our results and insights!

Details of the test

We set up an A/B test to determine if display advertising had any measurable impact on awareness and engagement from the accounts being targeted. To measure this, we looked at two metrics –journey stage velocity (the average amount of a time an account spends in a journey stage) and journey stage conversion rates (the percent of accounts in one journey stage that convert forward to the next stage). We felt these two metrics would be the best indicators to look at because progressing through the journey stages requires higher levels of intent (awareness) and engagement. And beyond demonstrating meaningful engagement within the accounts, they are also tangible results that you can tie to future revenue. 

We then selected our audience – landing on a segment that gave us a large enough pool of accounts to run an effective split test. It was pretty straight forward from there – one half of the accounts received ads while the other did not. And that was the only difference in the test – all other variables remained the same!

With everything in place, we ran the test for a full quarter before pulling together the results.

Results

I’ll admit – I didn’t wait for the full quarter to look at the early results. Not surprisingly, we were already seeing early indicators that the group receiving the ads had stronger performance than the other test group. However, we remained steadfast in our test and waited the full quarter to pull together the final results. Suffice it to say, the group that received ads performed significantly better, with results below:

• Qualified journey stage accounts progressed 54% faster while converting 27% higher
• Aware journey stage accounts converted 31% higher
• Engaged journey stage accounts progressed 40% faster

TLDR: the accounts that received ads progressed significantly faster from one stage to the next and at a much higher conversion rate. 

Being that the only difference between these two groups was one received display advertising and one did not, the results truly show the impact of that single variable. 

Now the results were amazing, but were we shocked? Not really, and here’s why: this is exactly what our ad tech is designed to do. Demandbase has the only DSP built for B2B which means it automatically optimizes your campaigns to spend budget in the most effective way. It not only uses intent to prioritize who to show ads to, but also prioritizes bidding down to the person level, putting your ads in front of key personas within the buying group. 

As the Digital Marketing team here at Demandbase, we care about supporting the sales team but also being our best customer which means testing, trying, and experimenting with our own tools and tech. This was a fun test to run as it answers a question we hear so often. We’re continually exploring new ways to test and share our insights, so be on the lookout for future updates, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever want to talk shop!

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In this edition of our Professional Services Blog, I had the pleasure to speak with Demandbase Director of Strategy and Managed Services, Melissa Cornett, about Demandbase Managed Services. Melissa has deep client experience combined with a strong marketing background allowing her to lead her team in helping clients achieve their business outcomes.

What are managed services at DemandBase?

Managed services are a type of service we provide in the Professional Services Group that provide staffing augmentation in order to accelerate the adoption of the Demandbase platform. If you don’t have the expertise on your team to manage things in the platform or you need an extra set of hands for a period of time, our managed services consultants can actually go in and make adjustments for you with you.

What is the typical use case for Managed Services? 

There are so many use cases! Managed services is a fluid offering and the use case really depends on your needs. Many of our customers come to us because they don’t have the expertise in-house or they want to expedite the process. They tend to see accelerated time to value and platform outcomes from our services.

Recently, we have seen many clients who are using us as staff augmentation. Due to the economy, our team can help fill a temporary staffing void to ensure that your program doesn’t miss a beat.

How can Managed Services help my business?

Many of our clients use our services to focus on configuring the platform to ensure optimal performance of their ABM Programs. Our consultants can teach you as they go or we can teach your team after we’ve done the work. We let you be the guide.  

Our main goal is to make things easy for our clients and accelerate adoption of the platform to enable ABM success.

What should I expect from a Managed Services contract?

We are a partner for working inside the Demandbase One product! You will meet with your consultant and they will discuss what you are trying to accomplish. From there, they will dive right in and execute for you.

What clients tend to benefit most from Managed Services?

A variety of clients see benefits from our Managed Services. In the Enterprise space, clients typically work with us because they want another set of hands to propel a project forward. In the mid-Market, it’s more affordable to work with us as an extension of their team to realize their ABM goals. Whatever the case may be, we become a part of your team!

What are the backgrounds of your Managed Services Consultants?

We have a really well-rounded team with each person bringing their unique brand of expertise, and of course, all of our consultants have achieved Advanced Demandbase certifications, for both the ABX Cloud and the Advertising Cloud. Our team is growing, and our consultants come from both corporate enterprise and agency backgrounds. Their skill sets range from digital media, email marketing, advertising and sales enablement. We have an agile team, and they are accustomed to handling projects from start-ups to mid-market to Fortune 500 enterprise accounts.

How can I get the support of Demandbase Managed Services?

It’s easy to get started with Managed Services. Just talk to your Growth Account Director or Customer Success Manager and they will pull Managed Services to discuss your unique needs, and we will put a plan together for you.

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As the marketing industry continues to change, it is essential to stay ahead of the curve and learn from those who have already been successful in adapting to new trends. 

With that in mind, here are 25 Marketing Executives you should follow to learn from in 2023. Whether you’re looking for inspiration for your own team or want to find out what the most influential marketers are doing today, these executives can provide invaluable insight into staying ahead amid rapid change.

Without further ado – and in no particular order – these are the 25 marketing executives worth following and learning from:

Jon Miller

CMO, Demandbase

Jane Serra

VP of Marketing, Justuno

Kyle Lacy

CMO, Jellyfish

Tyler Lessard

VP, Marketing and Chief Video Strategist, Vidyard

Kathleen Booth

Senior Vice President Marketing & Member Success, Pavilion

Heidi Bullock

CMO, Tealium

Megan Heuer

CMO, Aite-Novarica Group

Meghan Keaney Anderson

VP of Marketing, Jasper

Charlie Riley

VP of Marketing, North America, Send

Kipp Bodnar

CMO, HubSpot

Jon Russo

CMO & Founder, B2B Fusion

Kyle Coleman

SVP, Marketing, Clari

Mark Huber

Head of Brand & Product Marketing, Metadata

Laura Heisman

CMO, VMware

Melanie Deziel

Co-Founder & VP of Marketing, The Convoy

Jess Forrester

CMO, Jebbit

Chandar Pattabhiram

CMO, Coupa Software

Ruth Zive

CMO, LivePerson

Hila Segal

VP, Product & Customer Marketing, Observe.AI

David van Schaick

CMO, The Marketing Practice

Jay Desai

Head Of Marketing, Captivate Talent

Kim Salem-Jackson

Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, Akamai Technologies

Brandon Redlinger

VP of Marketing, Crosschq

Kieran Flanagan

CMO & GM Self-Serve, Zapier

Bernie Borges

Vice President, Global Content Marketing, iQor

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The Smarter CMO Forum is a series of peer conversations, hosted by Demandbase, where senior marketing leaders gather to discuss their biggest challenges. A recent Smarter CMO Forum meetup, hosted by Coupa CMO Chandar Pattabhiram, focused on “How to Set Up and Manage Double Funnels.” 

So what is a “double funnel”? It’s a funnel that tracks both lead-based metrics from traditional demand gen (such as MQLs) as well as account-based metrics (such as MQAs). Funnel metrics help organizations connect specific investments/actions to impacts on revenues to maximize the effectiveness of every single dollar in the budget. The double funnel is a “both/and” approach – asking, why must we choose either the MQL or the MQA when they can be stronger together, working side-by-side?

After all, an account is typically made up of a buying committee and that committee is made up of individuals. We need to see the account as a whole, with an account-based context to engage with individuals within each account. Accounts and leads, MQAs and MQLs, aren’t archenemies but can actually sing in harmony. 

Setting Up the Double Funnel: People, Processes, and Technology

“We look at operationalizing our double funnel in terms of people, process, and technology,” says Coupa CMO Pattabhiram. “So first on people, we’ve segregated our marketing teams using a clear alignment based on [B2B customer] segments.” Coupa (a SaaS/software provider) has a dedicated account-based marketing team for enterprise companies/accounts and another one dedicated to small and midsize businesses/SMBs. Coupa deploys a digital center of excellence that serves each team in targeting their enterprise and SMB accounts, respectively. 

In terms of processes around engaging accounts, Coupa uses three tiers of ABM: one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many.  Each “are driven by an entitlement model [note: account entitlements are a framework created to make clear what the level of investment should be for each tier of accounts], which is based on discussions we’ve had [internally],” says Pattabhiram. “ So maybe the North American enterprise sales organization gets 5 one-to-one accounts, 15 one-to-few accounts, and a single one-to-many for a more scalable approach.”

On the technology side of the double funnel, says Pattabhiram, “the most important tool we use is the single, Demandbase platform.” Coupa deploys Demandbase as “the orchestrator of our entire approach, from gaining intent and insight into different accounts and then going into different account journeys,” depending on the account’s level of engagement and funnel stage. With an account context and account-based insights from Demandbase, “you can move the deal forward, even if an account is not initially engaged” and provide tailored messaging to advance the account journey from awareness to closed revenue and increased lifetime value.

How MQAs and MQLs Live in Harmony

How does Coupa keep one funnel from cannibalizing the other? “What we do differently at Coupa is we look at MQLs and MQAs together as a sourcing model,” says Pattabhiram. So instead of Coupa asking “what’s your inbound, your outbound, and what is sales driving?,” the software company has created “an allbound model, which means that about 30-35% of our business needs to come from inbound and then 65% is allbound, which is the cost of MQAs – sales, marketing, and account development reps going after target accounts.”

Since teams are aligned to the same target accounts with allbound, Pattabhiram says, “sourcing doesn’t really matter in that context and the way to operationalize allbound is to create the incentive system so that account development reps are comped regardless of what the sourcing is.”

The allbound model has reduced conflict in the enterprise business, notes Pattabhiram, who offered a hypothetical.“If we’re going after Procter and Gamble, for instance, the partner at Accenture might have introduced us to the CIO, then the CIO might have come to our website or maybe attended an event we hosted, and then maybe someone from our sales team had dinner with someone at P&G, but who really cares about who’s sourcing it, whether it’s sales or marketing, right?” 

Pattabhiram explains that “the allbound model has really paid off for us in terms of driving harmony, not harm within our operation, because conflicts over sourcing have been eliminated by treating MQLs and MQAs the same.”

To learn more about how Demandbase can help drive efficiency with your organization’s inbound and allbound motion, see a demo here.

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