Perform ABM by Categorizing Your Leads - Danilo Nikolich & Nick Bennett - Revenue Today - Episode # 091

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So that's the challenge that you face as an SDR if you're actually going after an account is, you know, how do you see that big picture, right? And so when you're thinking about an MQL, right, typically it's in the form of a, you know, form fill, right? Could be a webinar, you know, attendee, could be somebody that stopped by a booth or somebody that downloaded like a piece of content from the website, right? That's just a single data point, right? So at RoleWorks, the way we expand on that. And, you know, in marketing, you know, in the last, you know, 10, 15 years has just exploded with different technologies. But they live siloed into different areas, right? So you've got third-party intent, or a lot of times, you know, referred to it as the dark funnel, right? You've got people that are, you know, coming to your website, you've got other tools like G2 Crowd that are, you know, pumping out information, right, to you, you know, as well as engagement through the marketing automation platform, right? Whether using like Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot, whatever you're using, you're nurturing these people and they're opening the emails, they're clicking on the links, and sometimes that is not captured, right? So what do we do as SDR leaders? You know, the, the— we'll put together this massive dashboard and then we're going to basically educate our team on like, here's your P1s, here's your priority 2s, your 3s, your 4s, and so forth, right? So you go through this whole, you know, rigmarole of like trying to figure out, okay, well, this person opened up a marketing email, this person did this, this person did this, right? So that's where technology does play a pretty significant role if you have an ABM platform, right? Because what we do at RoleWorks is we'll get all of that information together into our Sales Insights product— little plug here— and be able to actually see what's happening, right? So that way, you know, besides the person that actually filled out the form, who are the other people that you should reach out to at that account? Did they click on an ad? Did they open up a marketing email? Were they doing research on G2 Crowd, right? That way you have a strategic approach to this account rather than just emailing that one particular person.

Boy, have things evolved.

They have, they have. I wish I had this 10 years ago, you know, so, but we're finally here. And it's gaining momentum. So it's just exciting to see.

Nick, talk to me about Alice and MQAs.

Yeah, so I think the first thing, and this is a thing where, you know, like I said, I hop on a lot of prospect, I probably join like 10 prospect and customer calls a week. And so when we're talking about ABM, they're just like, all right, great, I wanna move to an MQA model, which really has nothing to do with us. We're just, you know, marketer, marketer talking about it. They're like, we, we have MQLs though. We can't just abandon the MQL model and just say, we're just gonna move to MQAs tomorrow. And that makes sense. Absolutely. So I think what you need to do is first divide your lead funnel. And so what does that actually mean? So separate your lead types. So you have 2 different lead types. So directly asked to be contacted, which is like those high-intent leads, basically the hand raisers, you know, demo requests. They contacted for sales inquiries, things like that. Then you've got your scored leads, so measured as, you know, basically MQLs. So lead capture forms, content downloads if gated, which another whole conversation we could have around that. But basically it's a contact that's passed to sales when a specific lead score is achieved. So you break that lead funnel in half and you measure what you should expect. So those, you know, those directly asked to be contacted people. It's gonna be lower volume, higher conversion to pipeline and closed won revenue. Hopefully scored leads are gonna be higher volume, but lower conversion, uh, for the pipeline and revenue. And so it's like, okay, you can have that aspect of it. And I think what you really need to focus on, and at least, you know, what I've been kind of thinking about for a while, is for the MQL method, you should focus that on the inbound piece of it. So you're now splitting your funnel across MQL and MQA. So inbound will be like that demand gen MQL model where you figure out, you know, what's your ACV, what's the qualified ops created, win rate, target ACV, things like that. And then it will back you into a number of MQLs needed, which is basically like a demo. The flip side is for us, MQA is basically that account-based outbound model. So everything that we have from an MQA perspective and everything that we're targeting within our sales team is strictly outbound. The goal is to convert with them on outbound or over time push them to that inbound model as well.

Super interesting. Love hearing the different perspectives. So, you know, going on the obvious topic of ABM, is facilitating sales marketing alignment past the handoff? Nick, why don't you start on that?

Yeah, I think it needs to be one team, one dream, you know, one unit, all that good stuff. It's like being a like field and ABM marketer for most of my time. A lot of companies that I've worked at that have been successful has had marketing under a CRO. That CRO owned, you know, marketing, sales, CS, complete revenue organization, made complete sense. We were all aligned on the KPIs and metrics that mattered. When we said we were gonna do account-based anything, it was like, okay, great. Marketing knows how they're gonna work with sales. Mark— sales knows how they're gonna work with CS. CS knows how they're working with marketing. It's basically across the entire buyer's journey. So not only are you creating a seamless experience because there's no friction for your prospects and customers that you're looking to upsell or expand, you're making it so much easier for them to internally want to work with you. You know, so many people say, oh, we have sales and marketing alignment. Absolutely. And I call BS on that because regardless of the company that you work for, at some point in the organization, there is a misalignment, even if it's a small one. And it has to start from the top down, which is why I think everyone needs to be under that CRO or something similar to that, because it just aligns on metrics, aligns on KPIs, aligns on bonus payouts, all of that stuff. And it makes it so your marketing's not just saying, well, I'm gonna go pump MQLs because that's what I'm getting comped on. And then sales is like, well, these are trash. Like you're handing me off these things that filled out a form that didn't even really wanna be contacted or con— you know, you scanned a lead at a booth that was probably a tire kicker to begin with. And so being aligned and kind of creating that one team will not only make that handoff easier, Mm-hmm. But it makes sure that everyone's rowing in the same direction as well.

Now, Nick, you know, building on this, past the handoff, what activities are you doing at Alice? Like, I'm here, like, I get it, it all sounds great. Now you give it to them, it's somebody else's hot potato, so to speak. What do you do at Alice to support it?

So I mean, personally,

the handoff,

yeah, path there, and I'm like, I'm joining calls as well. Like, it's, you know, on a regular basis. And I know a lot of my marketing counterparts within the organization are also joining running calls and just aligning from like a marketer to marketer standpoint because that's who we sell to. And it just, one, puts them at ease a little bit more, but also it helps them realize and put a vision in place into what gifting could actually look like in their organization based on specific plays that we were running, specific plays that our customers have run as well. It's just, you know, let's be honest, like sometimes marketers, you know, you hop on with a salesperson and it's just, you would much rather connect to someone that is like a peer to you. And I feel like Those not only increase the conversion rate that we've seen, but it also increases the retention rate there as well and the expansion win percentage too.

I could see like, yeah, I could see like marketing supporting like CES a little bit, like in helping another marketer use it. What's going on in my head is what if you're not selling a product for marketers and you need ABM past the handoff? You're selling something and, and, and Nick, you've sold things that weren't for marketers before. What, what, what happens then? Are you just, are you just like air cover, so to speak?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a little bit of that, but it's also a little bit of like increasing the buying committee too. Like that's one thing that could, that could work really well. Like, you know, you have a champion within the account, but I was selling, you know, I worked for a company that we sold to developers and engineers. Wasn't too thrilling or exciting, to be honest with you. I launched ABM from scratch there, and one of the things that I did with sales was not only provide that air cover once that handoff kind of happened, but also made sure that we were kind of expanding that buying committee because it was a, it was a 6-figure cost of the product and it wasn't, it was an enterprise deal. So it was like, you know, you had to put, it wasn't one person that was on the buying committee. There was typically like 8 to 10. And what could we do to expand that purse past the, you know, maybe 2 people that we had on the call through different marketing activities? And it was, you know, roundtables, gifting, tons of different things, you know, just to make them feel like they were a VIP or being wanted versus just basically sending them, you know, garbage.

I like that. Thank you for— because I knew that exact anecdote and I was curious. Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like two seconds. And you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side. Thank you.