Interview with Sangram Vajre
Chief Evangelist & Co-Founder of Terminus
Listen to our interview with Sangram and learn what he has to say about:
-
Flip My Funnel movement – Challenging the status quo, broad at the top; narrow at the bottom. – Flip it. Engaging customers on their terms and turning them into advocates.
-
Best Practices. Jillian Gartner, Head of ABM at Thompson Reuters targeted 350 accounts and 95% of the time she won using ABM programs.
-
Best Practices. Daniel Day, Director, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Market Planning at Snowflake Computing is growing his ABM team with one-on-one communication and landing pages to each persona at each target company.
-
ABM role. Under marketing but working closely with the sales team – helping them set their quotas for their region via identifying targets and communication materials.
-
ABM 2.0 B2BMX presentation. From Evolution to Revolution. Leading to customer acquisition cost reductions by 60% (ABM is not just a cool thing to do).
-
ABM is a strategy – not a tool or tactic and its different for each business. Done right, it will change the trajectory of your business.
Click here to read the Video Transcript
Hi this is Bob Samuels I’m founder of TechConnectr, TechConnectr is a
marketplace and campaign management platform of Best of Breed account based
marketing lead gen solutions helping marketers deliver highly targeted
quality leads for their sales teams we’ve partnered with the b2b marketing
Expo to bring you wisdom from leading account based marketing thought leaders
to that end I would like to introduce you to Sangram Vajre Co-Founder and
Chief Evangelist of Terminus Sangram and Terminus have quickly built reputations
as leaders in b2b account based marketing I’ve met Sangram a few times
nice guy speaks with a smile so you get a feel that he really likes this ABM
stuff Sangram I’m happy to speak with you again today I’m excited Bob great to
connect with you again it’s a pleasure so so you wrote I didn’t
realize you wrote you wrote a book that was aimed exactly like people for people
like me account based marketing for dummies well it was the very first book
that that was published on IBM and since then I think a lot of people have
published a few more books but at that time I was learning about it as
everybody else in 2015-2016 timeframe and it was a good time outstanding and
and you also create you know coined a term which I really love and in a
concept and if you can explain a little bit flip my funnel yeah sure so flip my
funnel obviously has been a really fun nominee a term but a movement per said
because we now have over 10,000 people in that community with the phenomenal
podcast which which also has so many more people listening to it every day
since its daily but it the whole idea was like what if we challenged the
status quo on how marketing and sales is done and instead of looking at it the
the way the traditional way which is brought at the top and narrow at the
bottom which leads to less than one percent of the leads turning into
customers what if you flipped it and started with the best-fit accounts that
you want to go after then expand the reach within that account not everywhere
but within that account so that’s the second stage and then engage people on
there terms which is super important because
not everyone is gonna engage on your terms so it’s important understand how
do you engage on customers terms and then turn them into advocates which we
all obviously need in order to create massive things so all that to say that
the whole idea of identify expand engage an advocate is a philosophical way of
trying to build a marketing and sales machine and that is based on the crux of
authenticity and better marketing I think it’s brilliant it’s just so
elegant to it’s it’s just as easy to deal with the people that are really the
right people to deal with is the wrong one so might as well cut to the chase
and just focus on on those key accounts and there’s key personas that will drive
the most value for you day it’s wonderful I love it thank you so so what
if you what are some there some examples of best practices of account based
marketing efforts that you’ve seen along the way that you can share sure yeah
absolutely so and I’ll share like in real case like examples of customers
been you know using terminus or not but like just just people who are doing
incredible stuff at with ABM so one example is from Julian Gartner she is
the director of ABM at Thompson riders and her she they are targeting about 350
accounts and 95 percent of the wind that they had in 2018 came from accounts that
was that were influenced by doing doing terminus so you think about that from a
marketing perspective and you were able to say 95 percent of the deals that be
closed we influenced it because we’re focused we were targeted the using a
combination of not only terminus but a few other tools to drive awareness and
engagement in it that just creates confidence for you as a marketer and the
organization in you that we can drive this forward set that was just a number
and a stab that I feel like it’s very interesting and I just heard about it
last week so it’s fresh but there are other best practices like like snow
flight Daniel Dey who’s who has now six people on his
team with the title of a canvas marketing which is very interesting and
by the end of Q1 2019 he is supposed to make that team of 15 people so that team
every one of those 15 people will have the title of account based marketing so now
for me someone who has you know being at the forefront of this this movement it
gives me a ton of pleasure and joy when I hear that people are having real jobs
in ABM and what they do is they do one-on-one campaigns they run about 500
one-to-one campaign which means there is a one ad for one company two to one or
so now within a company so within a company if they are going after multiple
personas they’ll have multiple ads a one to one so one to one company then they
will have a one landing page that is very customized to that page then they
will have a video then they will have a direct mail all of that align to that
one company because that company’s so upon with them and they can only do that
at scale of of these mini cow like 5500 because they know that if they close X
percentage of these five minute accounts they will meet their business objectives
so ABM really is changing not only the culture and the career paths for a lot
of marketers because now it’s become a real job and a real career but it’s also
changing the way companies are measuring outcomes which has been very exciting
for me and so account based marketing is one of the things that’s interesting
about it is is is it really requires a deep relationship between sales and
marketing so we’re that new title the the ABM role is that under marketing or
sales or combination thereof well it’s it is under marketing but very closely
tied to sales because the way in again if you take snowflake as an example they
have all these regional offices and they have few marketing people over there and
feel regional sales leader over there so let’s say they have a regional sales
leader in Boston and there’s an a few marketing person there they’re also
getting an ABM person which means this person now is fully responsible
for helping figure out where the best fit accounts in Boston not the
salesperson but this person so they know what the volume that they can drive then
they are figuring out how what kind of awareness and engagement they are gonna
do so this literally what happens at least in the case of snowflake and I’m
seeing that happen more often now which is marketing is actually this is game
changer Bob I think marketing is actually helping sales set
quota for their region which is very different ballgame from maybe from the
days of you and I coming where our sales pretty much tells marketing what to do
marketing now because they have fit data because they know they have intend
because they understand what the total addressable market looks like in a
region that you can really go after they now know that it’s not a unlimited
universe of people that they can they can sell to so the data information
they’re able to go to in this case let’s say Boston and say hey look we only have
150 accounts that you can actually go after in this region so it makes sense
to hire no more than two sales reps or whatever might be the equation for it so
that level of insights and information the cause markers are starting to have
as they’re trying to hone in into ABM it is really changing the way marketing is
helpful to not only be at the table and having a seat at the table and that kind
of conversation to literally help them understand who to go after and how many
they can go after so that’s another flip oh yeah it’s a hundred percent flip in
terms of what marketing role is I feel like the future and the sewer I was
talking about the ABM to you at the conference and I plan to share this
maturity curve from status quo to ABM 1.0 to ABM 2 I feel like they’re going
from a status quo predictable conversion rates to ABM 1.0 which was
figure out a more efficient model within a sub-segment of a customer lifecycle to
this ABM 2.0 which is efficient growth model for the business at scale right
that that’s where the utopia is that’s where I think the tables are turned
again where marketers are now going to be able to identify the quota
figure on how many sales reps you need have intelligence around which accounts
are actually gonna close because they have insights into engagement models
they really can not only be in the head of the whole thing and tell what’s gonna
happen or how many accounts there are but also can tell how many are actually
gonna close because they have that data but all of this is only possible if
you’re focused on a few very important map metrics as opposed to all the
thousand vanity metrics that most of us track beautiful so so I speaking of the
your presentation so just to put in a little plug so Tuesday February 26 at
the B2B MX at 11:25 you’ll be speaking about ABM 2.0 how to take your
marketing from good to great so 2.0 is that the that’s the next stage from is
that the from revolution to evolution is that the yeah exactly I think it is it
has began I’m glad you said revolution to evolution because I totally agree I
feel like there has been this big push of hey do ABM do ABM without a lot of
insights into well does it really change stuff so in this event I’m planning to
share stories of customers and companies who have purely shown that since they
started to practice ABM there they have reduced the cost of acquisition for a
customer not only for a customer by sixty percent see so you know if you
really take that in context is like if your cost of acquisition for a customer
is reduced to less than fifty or sixty percent you’re not only an efficient
marketer you’re running an efficient business you have trust and respect from
your CFO and CEO I think I think it’s gonna blow people’s mind up when they
see that this is not a just a cool thing to do it actually has now not just oh it
will have some efficient growth at some level it actually is a business driver
if you want to have a profitable company in a business to run beautiful and and
and I know that that you’re gonna be speaking about you’re gonna be sharing a
some you know four strategic business strategies or of what people need to
implement do you want to some of that now or should we use it as
a teaser to to show up to your event and hear about it
show up to the event I feel like these are around the fact that we did I am
literally gonna show how you can reduce your acquisition cost or share story of
companies have reduced acquisition cost by 60% and I think that itself should be it
could be a big teaser for people to figure out oh my goodness this is gonna
be interesting excellent well I look forward to the
event so is is there any other questions I should be asking you am i missing some
exciting things that that you can share well now I think the big big part is I
think ABM is a is is a strategy and not a tool or a product or a or a tactic
which is why it is complicated and it’s different for every business I feel like
I love for people to come into the conference or if you’re launching ABM
think about and I have an open mind and understanding that it is a truly very
iterative process but when done right and when you see results you are truly
gonna change the trajectory of your business and that is really the most
important thing to think about outstanding well I look forward to
seeing you and I look forward to to hearing your presentation I think it’s
gonna be awesome oh man thank you so much I’m excited
excellent well thank you for sharing and I look forward to seeing you right same
here take care thank you