How to use Account-Based Marketing to drive enterprise sales

00:00there was a lovely example from KPMG. They were trying to break into an account and reposition themselves as experts in compliance in North America. And they sent virtual reality headsets introducing their team who were the experts on compliance. And there was an app that went with it and they updated the content every week. And I think it went to about 70 people across this target account. And they managed to get the meetings that they wanted and open up the account. And it was a really successful campaign. So, you know, being creative about how you reach, whether it's 6, 10, 12, 70 people across an enterprise is what it's all about, I think.

00:40You're listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast, a Zoom video series focusing on what it takes to drive growth in today's competitive business environment. Brought to you by Web Profits, a digital growth consultancy that helps global and national businesses attract, acquire and retain customers through digital marketing. In this episode, we talk about how to use account-based marketing to drive enterprise sales. So if you're looking to increase the size of your B2B deals, then you'll really like this episode. So let's get into it. So today we're talking with Bev Burgess, who's a consultant, speaker, a senior advisor for the ITSMA and Manajian & Co.

01:22and author of the book, A Practitioner's Guide to Account-Based Marketing. Today, we'll be talking about account-based marketing, what it is, how it works, and how you can use it to land enterprise clients. Just quickly, before we get started, make sure to go ahead and hit that subscribe button so that you get the latest episodes as soon as they're released. Now, let's get into it. Welcome, Bev. Thank you very much, Alex. Delighted to be here with you. Yeah, fantastic to have you. I'm so excited about this podcast because I first came across account-based marketing

01:53a couple of years ago when we had the challenge of targeting the Fortune 100 for one of our US clients. And the challenge was that you can't just target these large enterprises with traditional inbound marketing. It just doesn't work. What can you do? Well, that's what we'll be talking about today. And this is going to be a good one because I think a lot of times you think about marketing and you think about trying to attract a specific company and a lot of people just go about the same thing, right? And there's actually this other thing called account-based marketing, right? And

02:24that's the big topic for today. So let's just get straight into it. How do you define account-based marketing or ABM? Yeah, that's a great question. So I first started working in ABM in 2003, and I haven't changed the definition since then. So I think for me, it's all about treating individual accounts as markets in their own right. So if you imagine the scale of some of these accounts, the accounts you mentioned, you know, they're enormous. They're bigger than some small countries. So it kind of makes sense to treat them as you would a market.

02:57Yeah, right. And it's like, so you're treating a big company like its own market. So what does that actually mean? So what does that mean? So like it has its own strategy, it's got its own campaigns. Like, could you just expand on that a bit, please? Yeah, of course. So, I mean, I went to university, I did marketing and business and stuff, and we learned the end-to-end marketing process. So, you know, you start with deciding what you're trying to achieve, then you scan the landscape, then you decide how you want to segment the market,

03:28where you want to be targeting and how you position yourself. And then, you know, you plan your whole marketing campaign, whether it's four Ps, seven Ps, however many Ps we're at now, And you measure how you're going. And we were used to doing that to either industries or geographies, but we weren't used to doing it into individual accounts. And so really simply, that's what account based marketing is. It's that end to end process that's applied into an individual account. Yeah. And so, for example, like if you wanted to target Coca-Cola,

04:00Coca-Cola would be the account and that would be the market and that would be the focus of an entire strategy. Is that right? That's it. That's exactly right. And, I mean, Coca-Cola is a fantastic example. It's huge. It's complex. It's got different areas of the business, you know, supply chain, distribution, marketing and branding. So there's lots of places you could go there depending on what your business is. to grow your business. And the first thing you've got to do is decide, well, you know, what do we do? What do they need? Where should we focus? How do we position ourselves? How do we

04:35compete? What do we want to sell? You know, how do we want to help them? So that sort of company, you know, global banks, oil companies, these are huge businesses, as you rightly say. And we're going to unpack this in a lot more detail over the next hour or so. Yeah. So, So, but I just want to get some of the history because where did the concept for ABM come from? Well, this is a funny story. I've been working with ITSMA since 2001 and I was hosting a dinner in London because we're a membership organization.

05:06And the sponsors of the membership come together and they chat about, you know, things, challenges they're facing, what's going on with their marketing function. They share tips and advice, that sort of stuff. and I was sitting I had I think 25 guests at this dinner in Mayfair in London and I had um Dr Charles Doyle from Accenture on my left and I had a lady from Unisys on my right and suddenly they said you know what we're applying marketers to individual accounts um to work really closely with the account team and open up the account cross sell upsell uh and I thought that's interesting

05:40That's a new model. I've never seen that before. So in 2003, we did a survey to see, you know, were people shifting to this kind of model? Not many people were, you know, literally was those two. What did it look like? How were they doing it? And from their early experiments, we sort of worked with them and put together an approach and a framework. And it's developed ever since. So they were calling it client centric marketing at Accenture. and the Value Adding Solution Provider Program or VASP Unisys.

06:12And I thought, well, I quite like client-centric marketing, but we can't nick that. So let's call it account-based marketing because actually that's what I thought it was. Yeah, and because when I was reading your book and I kind of had a look around online at a lot of different resources and I kept seeing the ITSMA and then I saw your book and then I read your book and your book is fantastic. Anyone who's listening should absolutely purchase that book. It's worth 100 times the price of it. But at first, it seems like it's a sales function, but it's called account-based marketing, right?

06:49So there's an overlap between sales and marketing. And could you just expand on that? Because I know that was like a real aha moment for me. That's a really, really good point. and going back to the definition if you like we also think there's four principles of abm and if you're not abiding by these principles then what you're doing is probably not abm it's probably just sophisticated targeted marketing to a list of accounts so and one of those principles is you

07:19partner with sales so that traditional i mean i've been in marketing for 30 years and that i've worked in some companies where there's been quite a big gap between marketing and sales and you get that whole thing of marketing throwing the leads over and saying well why aren't sales following those up and sales saying what's this rubbish why you know why aren't you getting me better leads and there's always been this gap and and abm is really about closing that gap so you you do it with sales it's in partnership or with account management depending on your structure everything's based around client insight so it's not right what have i got on the truck that

07:54that I want to sell. It's what does this account need and how might we be able to help them by combining what we have with what our partners have and all that stuff. Everything's tailored and personalized to the individuals you're marketing to. And I think really importantly, it's not about MQLs or SALs or any type of lead. It is about driving revenue, but it's also about strengthening relationships and building new relationships across the account and also positioning your brand as the go-to, the trusted advisor, the preferred supplier in that account

08:29as well. So the collaboration with sales is absolutely key to the point where some companies like Microsoft don't call it ABM anymore. They call it account-based engagement. That was going to be one of my questions because I was going to ask you, what's the difference between account-based marketing and account-based engagement? Or is it just a really just a little update for marketing purposes? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it started off as, oh, let's not call this marketing because it isn't the traditional marketing that we do, so we want to position it differently. But actually what's happened is it's a whole orchestration

09:02around the client. So account managers typically, they will try and orchestrate the business around the client. That's part of their job. And account-based marketing is kind of supporting them in that endeavor because it's not always straightforward. And we've seen, I mean, the classic thing, I work a lot with tech companies is, you know, we're so excited about our tech and there's different silos of tech and different products. And all we want to do is shout about our tech. So you get, I was talking to someone yesterday, had 40 different product lines and they were all going into the same types of companies and they all had marketing campaigns.

09:35That's chaos for the customers. So this is really about this orchestration piece and taking the voice of the customer, the idea of what the customer actually needs back into the organization. And we're going to get into that in a bit more detail. I've got so many questions. This is a fun interview for me. When does ABM work and when does it not work? Who is it for, essentially? Let's start with that. Who's it for? Well, I believe really passionately that it's for the business. So when it's worked best,

10:07it's been a strategic growth initiative. So after I did that initial sort of dinner and the initial research, I went in to Fujitsu, which I'm sure people will be familiar with on the call. And I was taken into the UK business to try and accelerate their private sector clients because they were very heavily public sector, sort of federal government, local government health, that sort of thing. And as a management team of that business, we decided we would prioritize the

10:38accounts we wanted to do business with. So we'd shift from reacting to requests for proposals, coming in to actually saying, who do we want to do business with? Who do we want to build our future company with? And so we did some account selection work and I facilitated that for the management team. And then we said, okay, those accounts that are really attractive to us and we think we stand a good chance in, we're going to invest account management time. We're going to invest commercial time, legal time, HR time, and of course, marketing time. And so it was an investment decision

11:13and the marketing investment to do ABM on the top accounts was just part of a broader investment in our strategic growth. And that, for me, is when ABM really flies. It's when it's not marketing in a cupboard, designing a campaign and sort of hoping to do something a bit different and throw leads over the wall. It's as a business, this is the right strategy for us and therefore this is the right marketing strategy. Yeah, I get it. I get it. And so there are companies that already are selling to large enterprise and there are companies that are starting to move into selling to large enterprise because of the cycle of their business, right?

11:55And so now they're like, okay, well, we're at a point where we need the bigger contracts now, right? there are like what's the the minimum size of a company before they should be starting to think about abm or what's the minimum size of the marketing and sales team before they should start considering abm well i've helped literally companies with less than 20 employees take an abm approach because it's less about the size of your company but it's more about the size of your deal

12:28So if you're likely to have individual accounts that could bring you hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds, dollars, euros, whatever you're working in, then it's worth you investing the time to treat them as an individual market. If you're selling something, you know, that can be bought pretty easily online and is maybe five thousand pounds, euros, dollars, whatever. ABM doesn't really make sense because actually a really sophisticated targeted demand gen campaign would be more efficient.

13:06Because the thing with ABM is if you are applying a marketer to look at one account or five accounts or a cluster of 20 accounts or any combination of those. that's an expensive resource so you've got to think about the return on investment how big is your deal size what's your client lifetime value likely to be and is that worth putting a person on it or a fifth of a person on it or you know however you want to judge it so I think I'd encourage people to think about that first. So would it be then that like just to

13:41to talk to your point let's say that I want to launch an ABM program right and I've already got my marketing team and my sales team. And, you know, I'm not going to try and change the whole world in the first step because this is sounds really cool. I'm really excited, but you know, I've tried things before that haven't really, you know, performed. You really just need two people to get started, a salesperson and a marketer. Is that what you would suggest? Or like, am I just getting it wrong right now? No, I mean, you're pretty much on the nail. And actually a lot of people, they just start with a pilot. So they say, right, what's our deal size?

14:13OK, it's in the tens of millions. We'll do a one to one. We'll pilot maybe on three accounts. And they'll either ask, you know, someone who's got an existing day job to take those three accounts on and just have a go. So it's an experiment at that stage. Or they might bring someone in to try it or use an agency to try it or a consultant or something. But but that piloting stage is is really important. And what we're seeing actually through the pandemic is that even companies that weren't doing it were doing sort of traditional demand gen.

14:45They're trying to get their demand gen people to even think more in an ABM way, but at scale. So at a more one to many level, which is particularly popular in North America, but is becoming a kind of always on engine for the accounts that matter most. So if you've got 200 accounts or 2,000 accounts and you know that you want to do business with them, then, you know, you've got the technology now to be able to monitor those accounts, to target the personas in those accounts you want to work with. And that can be your demand gen team just working in a different way.

15:18So it comes back to, you know, what type of ABM or types or blend and just giving it a go, experimenting alongside what you're doing already, I think. So what we're talking about right now with like the one salesperson and the one marketer is strategic ABM, right? Is that what we're talking about right now? Is that the one-to-one? Like could you just explain the different types of ABM just for the listeners? Because, I mean, I'm across them, but I think it would be super valuable right now. Yeah, of course.

15:49Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have to be that strategic ABM. So strategic ABM is also called one-to-one. It's where I, as a marketer, work with the account director for Coca-Cola, as you just said, and we put together a plan of what we want to achieve in Coca-Cola, what we want to sell, and how we're going to orchestrate sales and marketing tactics to help us achieve that. So that is a one-to-one. And it's very rare now that you get one marketer focused on one account. It tends to be you handle five accounts or so.

16:22So that's one-to-one or strategic ABM. But then because that worked so well, people said, well, we want more of that, but we can't expand our marketing team. That's like me talking with my team. Hey, I want more. Can we do that? I want more of that. That's working. But by the way, your marketing, you're seen as a cost. We're not going to throw, you know, loads of extra resource at you. So then people started scratching their heads and saying, well, how do we stretch this out and cover more accounts? So we've got Coca-Cola, but what about other consumer product groups or big brands or whatever? And that's where One to Few or ABM Lite came out. And what you're doing there is you're saying, OK, maybe I'll cluster together 15 consumer product groups or 15 car companies or 15 banks or even 15 companies who have something else in common.

17:10So maybe they're at the start of their digital transformation journey brought on by the pandemic, maybe. And because they have these things in common, I'm going to prepare a plan and some solutions of how we can help and that kind of orchestrated sales and marketing motion for that group of 15. But it's still really customized, really personalized. So that's one to few AVM Lite. And the one to many is, OK, we've been spraying and praying stuff out for thousands of accounts across Australia, across Asia, across America, whatever.

17:43Actually, we're being a bit silly here. Our ideal customer profile looks like this. Maybe it's, you know, smaller manufacturers of consumer product groups. And we're going to track those companies and track our buyer personas, maybe the CMO, the CEO, the CFO in those companies. And when they look like they're looking for something that we can help them with, then we'll send a personalized campaign in. But that's much more like traditional marketing. So that's one to many or, as I call it, programmatic ABM because it is very much automated as a process.

18:21Yeah, right. Thank you for explaining that. So where is the place that will get the highest chance of success to begin with? If you're launching a camp, because I think for a lot of the audience out there, they would not be executing on account-based marketing strategies. It's simple, but it's advanced at the same time, right? And so like a lot of people will be, I think, you know, listening to this for the first time. They may have heard it. They're probably not executing on it, right? I would say like 99%, right?

18:52So to those people, you know, how or where is the best place to begin to give yourself the best possible chance of a successful pilot? Yeah. You're going to hate me because I'm going to say it depends. It depends. Yeah, that's my answer for everything too, but I'm still going to try and get an answer from you though. I'm going to try to pin you in a corner so you can tell me. A little shortcuts, you know. Let's think about this because unless you've got a really sophisticated martech infrastructure where you can, you know, you've got really good data, you can access third

19:23party data, you can spot intent signals, you can personalize content going out. Not everybody has that kind of sophisticated martech and you really need that for one-to-many or programmatic ABM. So let's assume you haven't got that. So we'll just put that to one side. Put that to the side. If you've got really large deal sizes and, you know, you can justify the investment of someone's time, even a day a week on ABM, then you either want to start with a

19:54one-to-one pilot, maybe in three accounts, because it doesn't always work the first time. So spread your risk and do ABM on three accounts, choose three. And this is where the choice is really important. Maybe we'll come back to that. Or you might want to say, well, I'm going to try one to few and actually we're seeing a lot of people trying one to few first now so particularly industry marketers or regional marketers they might say okay i'm going to try i'll just cluster together you know five important retailers in my in my geography or they might say you know let's

20:29go after family businesses in in this particular geography as a cluster because they've got similar issues. So then you try maybe one, maybe three clusters, because the theory is that you spend the same amount of time, if you can justify one-to-one, then maybe that's a day a week per account. If it's more one-to-few, you might do a day a week per cluster. And if you can put sort of half of someone's, maybe it's a field marketer in one of the countries across AsiaPAC. So maybe

21:00you say well one day a week i want you to focus on either an account or a cluster and that's where i would start okay and so that so what you're saying is that for that day that day a week that's that's the marketer's time now right because yeah sales i'm assuming can always engage right so for sales it's kind of easier to adapt a little bit because they're getting warmer conversations that are more friendly right um but from the marketer's perspective then that day they're spending the

21:32whole day like doing what like i was going to suggest a few things but i'd rather hear you tell me what it is and we should say it may not be you know mondays i do abm tuesdays i do events wednesdays you know it won't work like that but let's say it's eight hours across the week So a couple of hours a day you're working on an account. Yeah, that makes sense. So the first thing to do is decide the account. Well, actually, the first thing to do is make sure it's the right thing for your business and that you've got your salespeople bought in and your business leaders bought in

22:03and your CMO, if you aren't the CMO, and they're saying, yeah, we want to try it. So that's the first thing to get people on board. Then you say, well, which account? And that goes back to what I was talking about, the process we did at Fujitsu. It's where is the real possibility for growth? So you want an account where you know you can grow. Either you're breaking in or you're cross-selling, up-selling, or there's a big deal. And where are we potentially competitively strong? So you don't want to go choose an account that's locked out

22:35with a competitor for the next five years. That's pointless. So you need to think about, well, where could we actually play and win? But the third lens on this is, and where there's an account director who wants to play or a salesperson that wants to engage with us and try something different. Because where I've seen ABM fail is where we think, yeah, this is a great account. And the account director says, I don't need your help, thanks. Or they say, yeah, I need your help, but then they're too busy to involve you at all. So you need to be knocking on an end.

23:06Is that at the client side or is that like at our side? No, internally, yeah. Oh, internally, okay, yeah. So our team being too busy to being like, yeah, I'm fine right now. Okay, got it, yeah. Yeah, because if you think about it, you need their time. So the first thing you do as a market, and once you've agreed the account or the cluster, you've got to do your research. So you've got to understand, what have we done so far with this account or these accounts? Where are we today? What sort of projects are we selling them? Is it profitable? Do we have a good reputation? All that sort of stuff. then you need to think about okay what's happening in their world so this is where you you almost

23:41imagine you're the marketer in those accounts or in the account and you've got to think about okay what trends are impacting my business what might you know actually ruin my business what's a big opportunity out there for my business and this is in the account now um and what do i need to do where do i need to spend some money to make sure you know my business thrives once you've done that analysis, then you can sort of, with that background information, you can engage with the sales team and the account directors. They may have some of that information already. So,

24:13they may have an account plan that says, you know, here's what's going on in the account. Here's what we want to sell them. Then you start talking about what are we trying to achieve? What do we want to take in? And who do we need to reach? So, that insight piece all comes first. And typically, you know, depending on how good the account plan is or what access you have to insight and market intelligence and so on. You might, you can do it on public data, but you, you know, you might have other sources in your business. That's going to take you the first two or three weeks. You might even want to interview people in the account. So, you know,

24:47we recommend if you can interview the account team, if there's an account team, interview the people delivering into those accounts. If it's an existing customer, if not, you might even want to interview people in the account or their customers to get you some real clarity as to what's going on. So research comes first. So that's what you do first. So and then. Sorry. And then and then it's about, you know, kind of workshopping together. What are we going to do? What do we want to sell? What do we want to achieve? How do we want to be positioned in this account or cluster? And that's all your marketing toolkit.

25:21So, you know, you've got some brand positioning, you've got some messaging to sort out, you've got value propositions to work out. And then you've got the whole kind of tactics. How do we reach people online and offline? And of course, it's mostly online these days. So I'm going to ask you very specific questions and they might seem simple, but that's just how I think. So I like to just to break it down. So is it better? And I'm sorry, because I just like these questions, right? But is it better to start with an account where you already have an engagement versus to go cold?

25:55Yes, it is. It's much easier for your pilot because you can find out more information. So if you think what you're trying to do is find out what's going on in the account, where are they spending money? What are their plans? Where do they need help? It's much easier to get that kind of insight if you've got people already engaged in the account. They may only know their bit from who they're working with and you can build out around that. But if you don't have any engagement, you're going in blind and you're just basing it on desk research or customer interviews, really.

26:27okay and that's my next question now because i think a lot of um the excitement for me around account-based marketing was hey i want to work with this big brand there's an approach now that will give me a higher chance of them kind of answering our call and having a conversation and that conversation actually being helpful for them so that they like us than otherwise right but like what you said it's cold right so if it's cold like like what would you suggest is the best

26:58way to kind of get that started that process and then to make sure that you've picked the right company that you don't spend the next six months on the wrong company yeah yeah um what i've seen people do really successfully is where they've sold a particular solution uh there's one example into a publisher for example that was switching from you know the whole kind of printed world to the digital world. And they sold a solution to this publisher. They know that publishers like that one have the same issue.

27:29They're just at different stages in their switch to digital publishing. So what you would do there is you'd say, well, we could work with these five other publishers. Where are they on their journey? And are any of them at a similar point to this one that we've just helped? If they are, we're going to just go in and say, we understand that you're facing this issue. you know we understand that you you know so far you've got i don't know 10 of your publishing online we can accelerate that and help you get to 80 within the next two years here's how we've

28:00done it for publisher a you know let's have a conversation so so to do that what you're doing is looking at have they got issues in common who would we have to get in front of and then you're understanding those people and and honestly you can go to the detail of you know are they are they visual people? Do they like numbers? Are they word people? You know, so what you present them is how they want to receive information. And then, you know, you've got a very thought through proposition to a very targeted person. And that's, that's how I've seen people break into

28:35new companies through a, often a one to few type of approach. Yeah, right. And like in your book, you talk about to map the stakeholders and the decision units right how do you do that when you don't know my company yet inside out and how do you do it to me personally i find that the biggest challenge is this first part deciding on the company like yes like if it's an existing client yeah i got it if it's similar to my current client

29:05that's that's also helpful but then if it's not and then you have to go out there and or you want to go out there and you want to knock some doors and win, like how do you ensure that you don't make the wrong decision, which will then hurt the whole pilot, you know, because you may not have companies where it fits to have account-based marketing approach yet. And so what you want to do is you want to start to attract other ones. How do you conduct that research to ensure that you have a high chance

29:38of success? Well, as you say, you've got to choose the company. the right companies in the first place. And that goes back to that combination of what's going to make them attractive to us. So have they got needs that we can actually serve, you know, is the other thing that we could actually compete there. How big are they? What issues are they facing? So you're really, and there is a model, it's called a directional policy matrix. It was developed by McKinsey for GE, and you can apply that to decide which accounts.

30:10And that's what we did at Fujitsu. it's in the book it's too complicated for a podcast no no please don't no i won't we don't want to lose them at this point but it is that decision of okay there's potential in the account and we think we could we could be in a good positions we're not locked out from competitors we've got a different point of view we've got um evidence and proof points around our capabilities so you've got to go through that sort of thinking got it and then you just have to be good enough right at that point and to kind of just conduct the right research you know exactly and then it

30:42is the legwork is the research um and you know a lot of this is public information so depending on what level you sell at with your particular solutions but you start on the company's own web pages because if it's a public company they will publish their strategy and they will say you know these are the issues on the investor pages these are the issues we're facing this is how we plan to transform the company or to grow the company over the next few years. Here are strategic initiatives. And often you can look at one of those strategic initiatives and say,

31:13we could help with that. And we're really well placed to help with that initiative. Then it's a case of saying, who owns that initiative in that company? Because you know that they're going to be given a job. The CEO is going to say, right, Alex, I want you to sort out our supply chain issues. You've got two years, here's 2 million quid or whatever it is. Go and sort it out. And so then it's about really understanding you and, you know, what your objectives are, how you like to engage with suppliers,

31:47you know, whether you're on social media, what things you follow, what you're interested in, and looking for an angle to engage. Okay, and you're searching for that angle. And this is, I guess, where my original question around stakeholders and decision units, right? Because these larger organizations have multiple people in the process, right? And so I guess, how do you go about conducting that research in the beginning? Is it just LinkedIn stuff? Is it seeing what they're posting? Or like, because I don't want to talk to you to kind of have an interview to tell you how to sell to them, you know?

32:22Like, it's like, how do you go about actually getting that insight? Well, let's come back to that because I have used interviews in the past. Yeah, absolutely. And it is amazing. So particularly on new companies, we've done an interview where we've given to charity or even existing companies. You can get through to people and say, look, can we have 20 minutes of your time? We really respect you as a business. You're an important client. If they're an existing client, we want to make sure we're investing in the right areas to help you in the future.

32:55Can we just ask you four or five questions? If you're going to go that route, you really have to do your homework before you have the interview. Because actually that interview is part of the ABM process. It's part of positioning you, you know, in their mind. So you don't want to look a complete wally. So you've got to do your research beforehand. So sometimes you can get an interview. That's possible. And I've used that a lot. Yes, we've done that too, by the way. We offered like an amount of money. I think it was $2.50 for half an hour or something like that. It was an Amazon gift card or, you know, something for like shopping or whatever.

33:25And it was surprising. And like it took a bit of follow-up still, but they said yes. And they spent time and they gave us so much information. And it was like, wow, that was pretty awesome. You know, like this is actually a sales tactic right now because I'm interviewing you, but I'm getting the information I need to engage with your company, you know, and obviously you're going to be tactful and you can't just be like a steak knife salesperson. Right. But, you know, yeah. So if it's an existing client, I think I've positioned the interview to say you're really important to us. we want to invest in the right areas. Can I just talk to you about, you know, what's going on with

33:58you and your future goals? If it's a new client, then a benchmarking survey is often a really good way. So let's say you're doing cluster ABM and you've got 15 banks that you're trying to get into. Asking, asking whoever it is in the bank, whether it's the retail managing director or whatever it is, or someone in their team, can you give me 20 minutes because we're doing a give to get around this issue which we think is important for banks like yours um and then you know we'll send you a summary of the results if if you give us that 20 minutes and what's really odd is during a pandemic

34:32people have been more willing to give their time they're sitting at home like we are now and you know they'll jump on a call for 20 minutes and that's fantastic so that and then the conversation has started so if you think about we're really trying to start conversations that's that's the way to do it how you find out who they are that can be tough and you know in some countries in APAC in particular it can be really difficult because people aren't as open on social media so in in North America in the UK parts of Europe you know India the people are very open on social

35:06media but you know countries like Germany Japan it can be quite difficult Singapore is similar to like where it's not all on LinkedIn. I don't know what to do. Then you start doing some digging. So there might be someone in your organization that's worked with them before, either in this company that they're at now or, you know, previous companies. So you can literally say we're trying to find our way into, you know, HSBC. We want to find someone in Singapore in HSBC that we could talk to about this.

35:38Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone who might know anyone? So then you, if it's not a social network, it's an old fashioned network, I'm afraid that you've just started tapping into. And that's, I think that's a great point because I think, you know, I guess as like a marketer, Eric can do a lot of things online. And with this level of engagement, you know, with these larger accounts, you're just going to have to put in a lot of legwork, right? Like a lot of sweat equity to just make sure that you can pull it all together, right?

36:08It's a ton of work to close like a deal that's worth a couple million dollars per year or something, right? Like it's not just going to happen because like you're searching on LinkedIn and you're just kind of putting together personas and then trying to hope that that's going to be enough. Is that right? No, that's right. The legwork's important. And even if you have, you know, the tech we said, well, most people won't have that. Even if you have it, you've still got to say these are the accounts we care about. So you've still got to go through that process of which ones matter and so on. You've still got to think about, well, which roles and personas are important and then have some way or some tech service of identifying those people and then have a way of reaching them.

36:50Which, you know, we've had GDPR over here in Europe, which means increasingly, unless someone's opted in to receive your stuff, you can't email them. You can't. So the whole kind of marketing automation systems that rely on email, really tricky now. So social media, LinkedIn, all those sort of channels become more important. And also finding people when they're searching on third-party websites, like information sites and so on. So there's tech to help you. But if you haven't got that tech, it's legwork.

37:21Yeah. And so, okay, so we have now decided on the company. We have done our stakeholder research. We now have an understanding about the landscape, right, like just for that particular account slash market, right? Then the account-based engagement, account-based marketing starts, right? What does it look like? Like how does it now start to be executed, you know? Like what does the strategy look like? What does execution look like? Yeah. Well, again, looking at the – thinking about one-to-one.

37:52So let's start there first. If you've got an account manager who's a real sales bod, So they just like doing the big sales and then passing off the actual delivery of it to someone else. They'll probably have an idea of what are the big things we're going to be going after next. So your plan might start by just checking that that's sensible, doing some sense checking around their plan and then building a marketing plan to support them. If you've got somebody that is an account director who's more service delivery mentality, so not good at spotting the big opportunities,

38:24then the first thing you're going to do is work with them to say, we think these are big opportunities, basically. Let's sense check that, which ones should we be going after. And we tend to think of them as plays. So we think, okay, these are the imperatives and the initiatives that are going on in either an account or a cluster. What plays could we make? So think of that in terms of a solution. Is it this product, this service, this solution, this combination of stuff? That's what we want to take in. And you might have two or three of those, you know, it might not be just one simple one.

38:59So then I think the first thing you have to think about is how do we want to be positioned? What's our messaging? So we see some people, let's go back to that HSBC example. Some people will create a visual identity that is a blend of HSBCs and their own, for example. And they'll create some messaging that sort of plays on HSBCs messaging at a brand level and their own. So they might create something visually that reflects how they want to be positioned over the next two or three years in that account. Even if they don't do that, what they've got to do is some messaging.

39:33So, you know, what's the overall proposition of your company into HSBC? You know, what do you want to be famous for? And then beneath that, these individual plays you've identified, these solutions you want to take in and sell, how do they link to that message, that hero message? and then you're building value propositions as well. So let's say I want to sell cybersecurity into HSBC. All right, you know, who you're selling it to, what do they care about, what the benefits of your solution

40:03and how are you different? You know, you really need to think about that and put that into a value prop and you'll probably tweak the value prop for each individual person. Now that's what salespeople have always done. They've always taken the marketing generic product messaging or whatever and tweaked it a bit. And we've got really annoyed with them because they've been messing with our PowerPoints and stuff. But it makes sense. You know, if you're going in to talk to a particular person, you're going to try and speak in their language and hit their hot buttons. And that's what you need to then do. So the next thing is really about messaging once you've decided what you want to achieve.

40:37And then we get to the bit that all the marketers go, yeah, thank God I know how to do this. It's what combination of activities. Are you going to run a webinar? Are you going to do a piece of research? Are you sending out some direct marketing to someone? Are you doing a social media campaign? You know, what things are you going to combine to help your sales and account teams go in and sell those solutions? So just in that point, yeah, that's great. So from a marketing perspective now, like that third part,

41:08that last part that we all know, you know, like in quotations, right? Yeah. because the amount of people that are within the audience is so small it's smaller than the custom audiences which you can target on social media advertising right so i think a lot of people would think i can just target these companies because of the size of company and position and all that but actually the audience size is too small to run any advertising through social networks

41:39directly right and so the examples which you gave are more engaging with them individually yeah but you're contacting them you're like like like inviting them on to the webinar and you're taking them or like like you're offering them as a research reports but it's like through the social connection it's not through social advertising is that right well no or wrong to they? It's a combination. Yeah. So you might want some surround sound. So there's a lovely example

42:12of a professional service firm that was trying to sell a particular solution. I think it was to a large oil and gas company. And they sent their team in and they got a meeting for this person. They positioned this person as the expert in something. And as soon as they left the building, the client went on LinkedIn and looked at the person's profile. And there was nothing to do with the issue they're supposed to be known for. And also, as they're on social media sort of trawling, they're getting ads from other people related to that keyword,

42:44which is the solution they were going to buy. So I think you need that surround sound piece as well. And we've seen people do pretty successful online campaigns where they know they have the IP address of the person they're trying to target or they've managed to get details because they had some gated content or whatever it is. So they recognize you when you're going to partner websites or their own website, and they serve up information that, you know, may encourage you then to come on and register for a webinar

43:16or ask to meet an expert or whatever. So I think there is definitely a role for the social and digital advertising, even if you're targeting, you know, six people, if you can identify them. but then because you can't actually you can't actually just advertise i think and this is on linkedin right which is where i think the best data that everyone can access right i think the minimum audience size like a hundred maybe 200 people so you can't get six but then should i run campaigns targeting that company and all the senior people in that company or like you know

43:52within like an audience size so that they're getting to know my brand. Like I saw some examples of account-based marketing, again, in inverted commas, because I'm not quite sure how good it was, but where one company got a billboard outside of the building of another company and said, hey, I'll say, for example, Coca-Cola, it's web profits and, you know, we want to do business with you or something like that, right? So everyone would have been talking about it, right? Is that kind of that surround sound thing that you're talking about?

44:24It is, exactly. And actually, when there are specific deals and opportunities coming up, let's say you're the outsider and you're trying to break in and people are kind of, well, I've never heard of this company. You know, I've seen and we've done it for Jitsu as well, where we've literally understood somebody's journey to work. And it was one story, I think it was in Germany, where the journey to the office, when we all traveled to offices, there were loads and loads of billboards bought just along that journey for that key decision maker.

44:55Because it made sense. And suddenly the decision maker saying, Mike, these people are everywhere, you know. It's like retargeting. Just on that journey to work. 3.0, yeah. You can be really creative. The one thing I would say about the decision makers is what we have, if you imagine a dartboard, I don't know if that translates, but hopefully it will, and you've got the bullseye in the middle and then you've got a circle and then you've got the outer sort of ring. Yes. What we think about is, you know, the bullseyes are the people who will make the decision or authorise the decision,

45:27and you absolutely have to be building relationships with them. But there will be some significant influences around them. And they could be, you know, members of their staff. They could be their peers in different companies that they, you know, phone up and say, have you ever heard of this company, this supplier? They could be other consultants. You know, they could be third party advisors advising on the deal or whatever. So you need to know who they are. And you need, as a marketer, you're getting into these audiences now and what messages you need to send to different audiences.

46:01But then the outer ring, you know, that's stuff like, you know, people that listen to your podcast. Someone might be influenced by your podcast or bloggers or, you know. So you need to be thinking about how do I, if it's important enough, certainly at a one-to-one, what's my strategy for influencing and communicating each of those three rings of influence, if you like. So that's where something like a LinkedIn campaign might make sense. But what I've seen people do if they have the technology, so things like demand base or you can literally recognize someone

46:34coming to your website and show them more appropriate images. You can even recognize them as coming from Coca-Cola or HSBC and show them the messaging that you want to. and that's personalization now isn't it that's that personalization thing that that this is all about isn't it this is all about being personal um but this is a way to kind of just to use a tech um to kind of help with that customization process right like if you know that someone has

47:04come from hsbc they're on the site you've made sure that the site can kind of kind of adapt its messaging depending on the account that's on the site. Yeah. Yeah. And you could just do something simple like if they're coming from HSBC, you have kind of banking relevant images and you tailor the content a little bit. If you're also targeting Toyota, they might come to the site and you've got automotive kind of industries and you're tailoring the content a bit. They might both be buying cybersecurity, but you're showing them relevant contextual images

47:39and you've got that personalized bit, even if it's just personalized to the company. So we've seen a lot of people doing things like that. And that can, you know, that's one part, one tactic in your campaign. But you might also be sending these people something. You know, people, there was a lovely example from KPMG. They were trying to break into an account and reposition themselves as experts in compliance in North America. And they sent virtual reality headsets introducing their team who were the experts on compliance. And there was an app that went with it and they updated the content every week.

48:13And I think it went to about 70 people across this target account. And they managed to get the meetings that they wanted and open up the account. And, you know, it was a really successful campaign. So, you know, being creative about how you reach, whether it's 6, 10, 12, 70 people across an enterprise is what it's all about, I think. Yeah, that's great. Before I mention that I like LinkedIn, is that the best one for like the simplest way to start or is it Facebook?

48:45Is it search? Is it like neither? Is it something different? You know, like what would you advise? Because I'm not the expert. I've just learned from you and I've been applying all my marketing and kind of to overlay it. But it's not simple, right? So, yes, what would you advise are the best channels? Yeah. Well, there's a lovely lady called Dorothea Gosling who works for DXC Technology out of Germany and Switzerland. And she describes LinkedIn as the best kept business database in the world.

49:20So, you know, it's going to be better than your database because everyone's trying to keep up their own data, you know. It's such a good database. So in the main, it's a good place to start. but there may be companies that don't use LinkedIn or countries that don't use LinkedIn so again it depends a little bit but of all of them that's that's my go-to I must admit. Yeah sure okay and then I wish I had the name now there are companies out there where you can

49:53they cost thousands a month but they will give you all the contact information just for specific organizations i forget what it's called i'm sorry i'm covering my mouth on the podcast um i forget what it's called um but they have this tool where you install the tool bar and it will give you kind of access to 10 people's contact information right everyone installs it but part of the terms and conditions and the service um basically is they can read all your emails and so what they do is that they scrape the footer signatures and they have the date stamps and they get all their

50:26contact information from that and then you have their emails now can you email them or not I don't know can you call them or not I'm not sure but is that kind of tool something which is advised or not it's something that is sold let's put it that way I'm sure of that because they're trying to sell me right now so i'm just kind of asking you kind of i've got a couple of reasons of yeah asking that you know well i'm going to go back to dorothea gosling who i just mentioned

51:00re-linked in um and she's been working in abm she's got a great global program running uh and we had a discussion last october at rtsma's marketing vision conference and i loved what she said she's she said increasingly we've got to market with respect because actually and i get it I'm sure you get it because I work with ITSMA. It's an American company, but I'm in the UK. I get so much spam email that is, you know, hi, do you need a cleaning company? Hi, do you want to buy a list?

51:31You know, hi, can I come and do a computer backup with you? That is illegal. I have not opted in. But because I'm working for an American company, they think it's okay to. So I'm hitting unsubscribe the whole time. And actually, I find that disrespectful, especially when it gets to the, and this is what Dorothea said, actually, the second email. Oh, you must have missed my first one. I know. No, I'm not interested. Now, you could say that's account-based marketing, particularly one-to-many programmatic, but I say it's disrespectful and it's not intelligent.

52:04And if ABM is anything, it's intelligent. It's doing that homework first and having something relevant and useful to say. So I think that's not in the spirit of ABM, but that won't be a popular view, I'm afraid. Yeah, no, no. And like, I think there's two different parts. I think there's the tools and then how they're used. Like I remember, and just to your outreach story, because I had one, which I was so bad. I actually shared it on LinkedIn. I actually just shared it on my blog, but it was like the third follow-up and they said, hey, could you please reply so I can check this off my list? I'm like, I don't get angry much, right?

52:39But I was like, what's going on in the world these days? So with that being said, Like how some of these, I guess, like databases helpful to get contact information or how would you go about, you know, just getting that opt-in so that you can send them something, you know, because you need to start somewhere. And how do you get it started? Yeah. One option is to start using social media. So if you know what they're interested in and you're commenting on things that they're interested in and, you know,

53:09you can start a conversation and follow each other and you can get it going that way. So that's a good use of social media, I think, because you've got to be relevant for them to want to engage with you. You can buy, you know, lists and things and you can give companies, I won't mention any names because there's a bunch of them, but you can give them, you know, here's the companies, here's the roles. you know if you spot somebody that fits this profile it show this ad and then get them to

53:41come through to us and and we'll then register them and get their permission to engage so that's another way that you can go about it as well um so there's different approaches but i think the key thing is the as you say you can get use the tool but it's the approach that you take with the tool that's the the key thing and i don't know if you you look at the marketunist i love the marketunist. And when you were telling your story there, Alex, one of his latest cartoons, it was literally, you know, one email coming in ignored, another email coming in ignored, another email coming in. And this person gets to like the sixth one and they respond and say,

54:14oh, look, for God's sake, go away or something. And the email that comes back is, thank you for confirming your email. That's awesome. It's marketunist. Have a look at it. It's brilliant. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's certainly highly recommended. You've shared quite a lot of tactical stuff as well as strategic stuff. So thank you for that. What are some of the coolest campaigns that you've seen? Or like you shared before about the VR goggles or whatever it was. That's smart. Like, are there any really cool, smart campaigns that weren't so expensive as having to send

54:4870 VR goggles out, you know, with all that type of stuff? Are there other, like, smart ideas that you've seen that you went, hmm, that's something different I haven't thought about or that I think is cool? Yeah, well, it's interesting that there's cool tactics. So someone was trying to sell to McDonald's, and so they built a direct mail piece that was basically a Big Mac, and each layer of the Big Mac was a different part of the solution that they could give to McDonald's. So they, you know, and they had it delivered and all that sort of stuff.

55:22So that was pretty cool. And it was a physical thing and, you know, right on what the client understood, you know, speaking in their language, if you like. Oh, gosh, there's, you know, there's a range of, it's a lovely one from, I think it was SAP, who couldn't hold their usual golf day, for example. So they asked the people in their key accounts to film themselves taking a golf swing. And then they got them on a Zoom call where a golf pro analysed the golf swing and, you know, gave them some feedback.

55:58That was pretty cool. I mean, it didn't cost a lot. It was the golf pro, their time, really. And that wasn't into one account that was into, you know, a range of important accounts, trying to engage at a more exec level, if you like. um so there's all sorts of stuff i mean yeah um curating you know custom ebooks and providing assets that sales people can customize for their account so if you are doing a cluster and you've created all the content but then the salesperson can uh use something like follows to

56:30to really create a very custom uh publication for one of their stakeholders that's that's developed and been pretty cool recently as well so there's a lot of customization isn't there like in account-based marketing right there's a lot of um high value touch points where you really want to stand out and be seen as quality and like oh wow like they did that you know i would definitely have a conversation you know i'm so impressed with that that yeah that's worth a conversation

57:01at least and then at least that's that's the foot in the door and also but that can also be used to grow the relationship you know hey we already have them as a client they're kind of in our top 10 let's send them something to really expand that that account you know yeah yeah exactly right you've got to stand out it's the same and actually as more and more people do account-based marketing your account-based marketing has got to be more creative yeah because if everyone is doing some personalization you know how are you going to go beyond that and it's funny now like i think

57:33with all that happened in 2020 and with the contraction and expansion and contraction, you know, like of all of like everyone's scared and then opening and so on and then closing and so on. So it's that customer-centric approach is the key for all marketing now, right? Yeah, you could, like if you sell electrical services, sure, right? That's like a search campaign on Google, right? But if you sell anything that is a process and that takes time to make a decision on and there's a contract of some sort and it's selling to businesses, that customer-centric approach is the cost of entry.

58:16And what account-based marketing seems to do is it takes that customer-centric approach and really focuses on a few customers. Yeah? Is that the best way to kind of say it? I mean, that's a really nice way of saying it. Yeah, it is completely customer-centric. And the companies that have been doing it a while, you know, they're scaling that customer-centric. Either they're putting more people on it or they're using the technology that's available. Or in the case of Microsoft in North America, they're seeing their account-based marketing team

58:47as a kind of incubator for great new creative marketing ideas. So they do it on a few accounts and they share the kind of tactics out to the wider marketing team to use. So it's a really good source of kind of customer-centric innovation, if you like. Yeah, great. And there's a couple more points left, but where do you see account-based marketing going in the future? Like obviously it's come so far in the last 20 years with all the tech and the platforms and everything, but where's it going next?

59:19Yeah, this is a really tough one. I did get the crystal ball out. Well, you read the book on it, So if someone's going to crystal ball it, it's going to be you. Yeah, I'm going to do it. Okay. What we are seeing is more and more people are embedding their programs and it becomes business as usual, the way we do marketing or the way we do the bits of marketing that sit under brand or around product development and solution development and so on. So I think the way that you do industry marketing, that's increasingly, these three companies in the industry

59:52will treat as one-to-one accounts. Then we've got a couple of clusters of different, you know, issue led groups. And then we've got a more programmatic always on going out to the rest of the companies we want to do business with in that industry. You know, so where industry marketing used to be, well, I'll go to, you know, this retail show and then I'll have a retail roundtable. And it's becoming even more intelligent and sophisticated. So I think ABM is influencing that. I think it's the one to many programmatic is influencing demand gen campaigns, whether they're horizontal out to a particular type of buyer or therefore a particular type of solution.

01:00:33So as I sit here, I think, you know, there's no sign of interest in ABM stopping. I think it is continuing to shape the way that we do B2B marketing outside of the more, you know, umbrella branding campaigns or whatever. So even that, even the way we do branding, I think branding how we want to be perceived in an individual account and getting our brand preference up, ABM is a great way of doing that as well. So I see it continuing to shape the way we do B2B marketing.

01:01:06Yeah. And I think, you know, for people that are like thinking that, well, this is probably something I should do, but not just yet. Your competitors that do this are going to eat your lunch. They just are because it's so much better for the customer. Like it's so much more customer centric than just some outreach and some Facebook ads or some LinkedIn ads or whatever that you want to be doing, you know, and, you know, some outbounding without all the marketing support. And so, you know, this is something like that we're investing in pretty heavily and it's something which takes a bit of time

01:01:39to get there. Like it takes a bit of time for you to actually, because there's so many parts, there's so many moving parts, you know. um so yeah no this has really been really good now you have a new book coming out called executive engagement strategies how to have conversations and develop relationships that build a b2b business right um i was gonna ask you like what's that one about how is that look different to the account-based marketing book yeah sounds similar to me yeah no and it is and that came out actually in march this year so um sorry last year 2020 so the reason i wrote that

01:02:15was because I saw people that had had ABM programs, so O2 in the UK, Adobe, they had also started exec engagement programs, partly because they realized that even when they're doing ABM, they're increasingly commonly needing to get to a senior level in the organization. And that, why wouldn't you engage execs? Because they have budget that they don't always share. So they've got access to budget, they can speed up solutions, and they help you shape your solution. So it's right for their business. So they are key. We're seeing more and more people trying to get up to

01:02:51that level. So again, I saw this trend. I thought, okay, let's try and capture this. ITSMA has researched how execs want to engage for, God, about 20 years now. And so we brought all of that thinking together into this book on how you decide which execs, how you decide what they're interested in and what they want to hear about, and then how you build your executive engagement activities around those two things. And actually, the biggest challenge is a bit like ABM is getting lined up internally to do it and getting your execs and your account managers and your subject

01:03:24matter experts in front of the executives that matter for the future of your business, really. Yeah, and I think that's such a fabulous point. And that is on my list to read. I have a big list. Your first book was so amazing. The hardest place to begin with ABM is internally. It's changing mindset it's changing the process it's changing how you think about things and it's kind of investing in something that is a bit more long-term right um on that point how long should somebody

01:03:55test um the pilot or account-based marketing just for their organization you know like how long should it but once the research has been done and the strategy has been set and now the campaign's started. How long should you expect the return to start to see something? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, when we look at metrics, three months is short term. So you might not see increases in revenue or anything in three months, depends on your sales

01:04:27cycle. But you might see some leading indicators, you might see new meetings being set up with people you hadn't reached before, or increased interest in what you have to say about a particular area so getting those leading indicators um is important and and your account team and your sales team might might also notice that they're getting a better kind of relationship with marketing and what marketing is doing is more helpful for them so that internal feedback in six months you should be getting should be you could be getting you know requests for proofs of

01:05:01concept or invitations to pitch for stuff or so you you're looking at opportunity pipeline certainly there if if not within three but it's really you know you should be running thinking of a year you know testing it for the year um improving the case in the year because that's when you really start to see results and and this you know sorry if this sounds awful but the really best results kick in after a year you know the more the longer you do this when you've got a program embedded we see you know the outcomes that people are getting double you know once they've been going

01:05:35and they've got a program embedded and that can take, you know, two or three years. So that's when you really start. And then it continues to roll on after that. So like as long as you're continuing to start something every three months, then after a year, then every three months it should be starting to hit. But I do like your point on the leading indicators thing, right? Like if it's just silence, okay, maybe that's a warning. So you should have some leading indicators, right, like to say, okay, we're on the right path, you know? Yeah. And the key thing is getting agreement on those with your salespeople, with your kind of account directors. And when you start to see those coming through, that keeps the momentum and keeps them interested and keeps them on board. Because we know salespeople get bored really quickly. If they're not seeing anything, you know, they'll go on to the next thing. You've got to really understand what's in it for them and show them the results as well.

01:06:30Yeah, fantastic. I've got a few quickfire questions that I like to ask at the end of every podcast. Let's start with those and then we'll wrap it up shortly after that. So number one, there's five questions. What book has had the biggest impact on your success? Oh, wow. That's a really good one. It's going to be like those ones. It's going to be like random things like that. Yeah. Okay. I really like Konichi Omai, who wrote The Mind of the Strategist. It's a while ago now. I loved that book. And it was at the stage of my career where it just set a whole load of light bulbs off about strategy and business.

01:07:06Oh, great. I mean, I've heard a lot of strategy books, but I haven't heard of that one. Thank you. Number two, what's your number one piece of advice for hiring awesome people? Don't be afraid to hire people who aren't like you. That's a good one. That's a hard one. That takes experience. That is really hard. That takes a lifetime. Yeah. Cool. So number three, what's your best time management or productivity tip? Yeah. From someone who's written two books and consults and speaks and travels. I wouldn't say I'm brilliant at this.

01:07:40Honestly, all I do is I say what's urgent and what can I do later? And I put all the stuff that I've got to do into those two lists. Okay, good. Number four, what's the best piece of business advice that you've received? The best piece of business advice I've received is do something that you actually believe in, because if you believe in it, then you're not faking anything. You're authentic. You're genuine. And I think that's why after 17 years or something, I'm still doing ABM because I really believe in it.

01:08:14Yeah, great. And number five, this is way, way, way easier one. How do you relax after a crazy day in the office or the home office now? I'm a gardener and a horticulturalist, so I just get my hands in the soil basically. Yeah, great. And I can see your plants behind you that look great. They look very green and very well looked after. You'll see I don't have any plants. I'm not liking. I've killed cactuses, but that's just because I don't focus on it.

01:08:44Thank you so much for those answers. Now, if there's one thing that you want our listeners to do, like some site to go, some book to buy, some place to check out. ask what would you like them to do or where should they go i think go to itsma.com because there is such a lot of great information there it's not all member content so there's a lot of stuff that you can see without being a member and you know it will just give you one idea that you can apply into your your job and you're investing in yourself you're learning so that's all good yeah and um

01:09:17it's certainly something i can highly recommend i mean i think i landed on the itsma website first because I was looking around for account-based marketing and I saw the charts and all that and then I but everything led back to the ITSMA website like every time I went to account-based marketing like all the references went back there again and then I found your book so on top of that like I would highly recommend like if you're interested in account-based marketing check out Bev Burgess's book Practical Guide to Account-Based Marketing it is it just it explains everything step by step not as friendly as this conversation right now but this is a good intro

01:09:50and that book, I bought that book for everybody that was working on that account and had to target this Fortune 100 companies and it kind of just opened up all of our minds. And these are seasoned marketers that have been doing this stuff for 15, 20 years, hadn't heard of it, could easily apply it. It wasn't that simple obviously but it really changed how we thought about all marketing after that, you know, and it's very, very highly recommended. Bev, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I got to ask you all the questions that I had in my,

01:10:23and I hope the people that are listening, like have found the value of account-based marketing, you know, through this podcast. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and have a good evening. Morning. Thanks very much, Alan. Morning or evening? Morning. Have a good morning. Morning, yeah. I'm evening. I should have known that, it's obvious. Thanks so much, Bev. Speak to you soon. It's been a pleasure. It's been really good fun. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please give us a five-star rating on iTunes. For more episodes, please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast.

01:10:56And if you need help driving growth for your company, please get in touch with us at webprofits.io.