Interview with Erica Short

hi this is Bob Samuels founder of tech
connector tech connector is a
marketplace and campaign management
platform of Best of Breed account based
marketing lead generation solutions
we’ve partnered with the serious
decision summit to bring you wisdom from
leading account based marketing thought
leaders to that end I’m happy to
introduce you to Erica short marketing
director ed in for Erica has great hands
ik on a VM experience at both CA
technologies and ed in for Erica it’s a
pleasure to speak with you how are you
today I’m doing well it’s beautiful
outside the sun is shining I’m doing
well seriously you got that little
sliver of beautiful weather going on
to take advantage of it right here
excellent well I would me too I’m glad
so thank you for taking the time so I
get to talk with you and I get to
secrets with you about so when my
favorite topics account based marketing
so if you can give our audience a little
bit of a background about where you’ve
been which you’re what’s been your
exposure to b2b marketing an ABM in
particular yeah sure so I’ve been in b2b
field marketing for the last 14 almost
15 years started out at Microsoft and
then moved to a small partner of
Microsoft and actually did a little bit
of business development there and then I
went over to create methodologies where
which is now con company where I spent
just about almost eight years there
starting and demand gen field marketing
and from there while I was at CA we
started researching and looking into a
company’s marketing as everybody knows
in the marketing world became kind of
the buzz word and everybody was talking
about it but not really sure what steps
he needed to take to move forward so I
kind
I took the lead at ca2 what does it mean
to see a how do we go to the next step
what do we need to do what does it mean
to us and so started that about four
years ago at CA and I’m now looking for
where they hired me specifically to help
roll out their ADM program as well
beautiful that’s great so what have you
found
I guess how how similar or different are
your target audiences that see a growth
is important and how does that affect
your your approach yeah so a couple
things it’s not necessarily because
they’re both b2b companies um really
their focus target accounts are you know
top 100 fortune companies and so the
target isn’t different but it is how the
company is different a little bit in
there that internal redesign at home
based marketing at the company so what I
have learned is
I’m marketing talking to other members
and a new company is ABM cannot be
defined for every company in the same
definition in the same approach and the
same strategy do to determine mentally
the company structure your goals and
what you’re trying to achieve those all
can differ from company to company we
may be targeting the same companies the
same target personas but the way that we
go about reaching out to them the way we
go about creating our strategy and
program internally to go target them is
different so it is not a
one-size-fits-all approach from company
to company you really have to define
again for your company and how that best
fit for the structure that your company
has that makes sense and then when
you’re talking about the internal
alignment and so forth I assume that the
main players are sales and marketing and
maybe upper management to some extent so
so yes those are some of the main
players obviously is sales and marketing
and leadership and a couple reasons when
I first started looking and researching
account based marketing at CA I always
had a great relationship with sales I
always you know communicating we
targeted we had successful event
successful webcast successful programs
but then when we started to implement
and strategize around account based
marketing is where marketing then became
a strategic partner to sales and sales
stops looking at marketing as a best
marketers and program manager where they
were really um bringing us to meetings
talk about the account and how to
strategize for to win that account what
we needed to do and marketing had a seat
at the table and we provided data and
insight and then nature that our
programs were aligned to what they were
putting into their plans we actually
helped build those plans so that
relationship really became a strategic
partnership instead of an afterthought
of hate marketing what you have to
support my my accounts and and what are
you doing to where we were aligned from
the beginning on the account plans and
build those out together we also had to
align with not just sales and leadership
on our ABM strategy and approach but we
also had to connect with the inside
sales team the BTR’s
the customer success team there what we
realized in when we started to look into
this with all the different touch points
that our buyers go through in their
journey with us and we wanted to make
sure that that journey with customer
centric and it was consistent in the
messaging and approach of what we were
trying to achieve via to bring in the
customers to club team all those
different teams that have those touch
points with these with these buyers to
make sure that they were enabled on our
strategy on our messaging so we kept
that consistent customer centric
experience for them across their journey
that makes sense yet I always forget
since it’s got that marketing late part
of the name account based marketing that
really a one of the applications or
maybe a more important application is
the is marketing to your current
customers and getting them more engaged
in getting more upsell and cross-sell in
that sort of thing ya know remembering a
new client exactly exactly one thing in
my experience at both companies has been
where we are looking at this very very
big big enterprise companies they
I own something of ours right we have a
huge portfolio both companies I’ve
worked for CAA now in four we have a
very large portfolio and they might own
something of ours in one department to
where we can case that we want to upsell
cross-sell and expand in there and so
it’s not necessarily always at least for
me and my BP ABM experience we haven’t
taken the approach of net net new logos
for us we have they’ve always been a
customer in some way we have known them
in some way shape or form to where we’re
trying to expand we’re trying to become
their strategic partner as they look to
to grow and innovate themselves we want
to do that innovation partner with them
we want to make sure that we are showing
up to what they care about really
looking at it from the customer up the
customer view what what are they trying
to achieve what are their objectives of
what their goals are and what are those
different deployments we can really be
relevant in our messaging to them and
one thing that we did is we actually
took out the word marketing in a
company’s marketing and for we did it at
CH a we called it accomplished
management because it’s not with the
marketing effort it’s a full team effort
and making sure that everybody that has
a different touch points are aware of
what that account is trying to achieve
what we’re trying to achieve in that
plan yeah it makes total sense so it
accounts it’s basically account centric
everything focusing on exactly the best
for the account yeah I always forget I
mean once you have the sale that’s not
the end at the beginning that’s just
your foot in the debate exactly yep
you’ve got a really really plan around
that sole customer lifecycle very good
so how do you go about identifying and
prioritizing which accounts to go after
and and and also which personas to go
after and the different sorts of
messaging I guess for each sort of
person
yeah sure great question
so the identifying accounts can
sometimes be the most difficult thing
when you first are starting a confident
marketing because sales will give you a
list and say here my accounts who I want
to have accomplished marketing for
because they’re a huge account and I’m
trying to break in there to where what
we have done we actually use technology
to help us understand these accounts a
little bit more and their intent based
on what we are trying to achieve and on
their own the account objectives and
what they’re trying to achieve so we’ll
really didn’t understand being do a
little bit of research on names of power
to understand okay what are their
objectives that they’re trying to
achieve and how do our solutions help
them achieve their objectives and then
we’ll use technology to actually do some
intensive for us so putting it up
against the technology to understand are
they even out there talking about this
and this is aligned to their objectives
with what we have to offer on our
solution so we can go back to sales
message strategic partnership where that
insight that we bring to be able to say
you know what I know you want to target
this account or XYZ but honestly they’re
not it’s not in their objectives and
goals as an account as a customer and
they’re not even researching it they’re
not hiring those positions we just don’t
see that they are high intent so it’s
not worth our time and resources and
budget to target them where we can
actually go these accounts have a high
priority
I intend to fires are solutions that are
aligned because they are researching not
just they’re not researching our
products but the research team is
keeping key words trying to find more
information and when we have that
insight and data we can become very
targeted towards going after quality
instead of quantity and we really
understand that there is a need for
then very quickly to where we can start
targeting that way so that is it is a
mixture of and to the point that we were
talking about earlier the whole customer
lifecycle
what’s that current customer with their
health score what you know is are they
happy with us right now with what they
have implemented we want to cross sell
these products to them are they
researching it right now do they have
the high intent and what are the goals
that we’re trying to achieve once you’ve
laid that out like what are the trends
you are trying to get met new customers
are you trying to improve your renewal
rate are you trying to upsell cross-sell
really identify the goals of what you’re
trying to do that will help get an
account list where you want it to be
once you get it to where you want it to
be then you’re actually able to go and
push it up again 7/10 data and have that
insight really get the list narrowed
down again still need that field
knowledge from sales and working with
the sales team and having that
collaboration but it’s all about
research insight and collaboration
itself to identify those beautiful so it
sounds like guys you’re getting you’re
using some intelligence and signals both
internal and some third-party data maybe
in Bangor or tech target or something
like that correct
so at Ta we use onion baby they have a
platform that we were able to execute
very targeted advertising to our
accounts when we figured out their
intent they gave us the intense
information and signals and then we were
able to launch campaign specific for
those account for those programs we had
done that in fact here at in forward
bunker for a little bit and and I am
familiar with Madison long because while
all about be more seems to mandates and
numbers that I’m familiar with
okay so what other kind of tools and
technology have you had a chance to
either
explore or use
yeah sure so really helped us with
launching very personalized
communications that fit that also get a
very good view of account engagement
based on those programs what they’re
doing because one of the things to be
able to measure a complex marketing is
engagement what we have to do is kind of
draw a line in the sand right how are
you the power engaging with us by
persona by industry by our solution
areas are they even currently engaging
with us across our programs and across
your website we were able to get that
information from engage oh I also need
to previously at two mandates where
they’re able to draw that line and then
once we launch the program the very
specific accomplished marketing programs
we go back to that data and when we
started to see an increase in that
engagement to where we can go to
leadership and sales and go see this is
working we’re getting higher engagement
in the accounts that we care about in
the solution focus areas that we are
targeting them with and in these certain
personas so engage otels with that and
demand base has a beautiful platform
that extremely user-friendly where
you’re able to see that engagement
information and also intent information
all in one platform and launch programs
at the same time so demand base engage
do Bambara Marketo has a few things that
we have utilized to help us with our
with our AVM as well mostly just
connecting to the different technologies
making sure that we have that so those
are a few of the technologies that I am
familiar with beautiful those are all
good I’ll make sure we do a proper shout
out to those folks so appreciate it so
on the on the GDP our size and privacy
a have you done much research on that or
you is that is that created any kind of
challenge or limitations for you so
great question very very involved in GPR
and in for those a phenomenal job of any
program that we roll out we get we work
with our team internally to make sure
that there’s no any technologies that
were onboarding vendors that were
operating programs that were executing
that is always like top of the line
priority make sure that we are enabling
that and understand that and I haven’t
run into this issue at all because gdpr
is really at that contact level right
and what we’re doing is we’re making it
at the top level but we’re making it
very relevant information and targeted
information to where we’re getting that
contact information because they want to
assess because they’re trying to find
more information because we were so
targeted and relevant approach so
because of that because it’s a different
approach more at the account level what
they care about that relevant
information and putting in front of them
we haven’t ran into that issue too much
first of all all of our vendors and
technologies that we that I’ve used is
gdpr compliant we make sure that all of
our programs that’s first and foremost
that they are GBC are compliant and
again because it might be accountable we
haven’t really ran into that issue at
all but it is definitely front and
center priority for us to make sure
everything that we are computing all
vendors onboarding all technologies
everything if DDA compliant good because
California is around the corner so it’s
going to be in the big a shoe I think
yeah exactly and I think and I think we
at least both companies that I worked
for CAA now and for ever since that
happened in Europe that that is how we
operate because we are a global company
because our customers are global
we’re always always making sure that
everything we run is global compliance Z
with GDP are smart you’re ahead of the
curve on that that’s great
so my final question let’s we’ve got
some more more thing to talk about is if
you can flick your crystal ball hat on
for a second you’ve seen some changes
along the way new new technology new new
data new data sources new intelligence
new privacy laws and so forth what do
you see is going to be changing with far
as Aiden and ABN work account based
management in a year and in five years
now what do you see yeah so so great
question you know the market tech stack
has just exploded folks the last last
five to ten years and I’ve seen a
diagram and and such an eyesore there’s
so many technologies coming out to
support and I definitely think ABM in
the next year this is not going there
more positions are getting hired at
companies for this focus on how do we
build this out what does this mean to
our company so it definitely be an
increase in jobs for ABM at companies in
the next year as well as technology
support in the next fought six to five
years I also see not just more jobs and
to support this but this has been going
to become how marketing goes to market
as we as we like to say you know we are
b2b enterprise company marketers to b2b
but you need to act more likely to see
and we need to be more personable we
need to be more relevant to where
they’re at in their journey and at the
end of the day in five years I
definitely see b2b marketing moving more
towards that and that is the norm
instead of
some things that people are trying to
figure out where more people will be
enabled certified and experts at ABM as
that as those roles start to increase as
well as the technology starts to
increase to support that I definitely
see us becoming more of the norm for
account based marketing ‘ to be company
make sense make sense wonderful this is
very good information so anything else
that any other words are Wiggum you can
share everything I missed no this is
this is great I think this is something
that talked about cross collaboration
and a lot of big b2b marketers have an
issue of being siloed and only thinking
of this as marketing and sales this is
able for you to break those silos down
across the different marketing
organization with the digital marketing
team corporate marketing with the events
team with the BTR’s and the customer
success came to where you’re really
running a very strategize program and so
my thing is is make sure that you are
doing that cross collaboration
communication and enablement as much as
possible and will be the more people
that you have in your corner and
understanding it at the end of the day
the better beautiful great advice I
appreciate it
Erika it’s a pleasure thank you for your
time and I look forward to speaking with
you again soon I eat chips in sub thank
you take care