Interview With Leslie Alore

hi this is Bob Samuels founder tech
connector tech connector is a
marketplace in 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 Leslie allure director
of regional marketing at Iron Mountain
Leslie is asset ejek marketing leader
with the strong marketing technology
knowledge and a passion for driving
measurable business results Leslie it’s
a pleasure to speak with you how are you
today I am doing great I’m looking at
the beautiful Mediterranean Sea from the
South of France I am so jealous I think
that’s all sexy send pictures if you can
so thank you for the thank you for
sharing your time with us and I wanted
to start by if you can give a little bit
of a background you know what your
perspective as far as ABM the b2b
marketing opposition where have you been
what are you seeing where you what’s the
perspective yeah sure so my perspective
hasn’t wavered a whole lot since the
hashtag ABM trends emerged a few years
ago and from my point of view ABM is
really a foundation of b2b marketing in
fact if you’re not doing account based
marketing you’re probably missing a tick
when it comes to b2b because that’s just
the nature of the business working yes
that make sense so you you have a
different different roles in marketing
you’re marketing yourself you’re your
consultant that’s right so coachable
Unum sure uh well I’ve been fortunate to
see a marketing evolution and the
technology evolution from many different
angles
I’m currently leading a demand marketing
team based in Europe
I came in right at the introduction of
GPR and all the work being done in the
year leading up to that going live I
previously was leading a global
marketing operations team so that role I
was responsible for implementing the
actual technology stack that supported
all of our marketing and demand
strategies including our ABM strategy
and on the side as you mentioned I also
take my my expertise on the road and I
do consulting with other other b2b
organizations who are looking to bring
best-in-class
marketing automation marketing
operational processes measurement and
strategies to really optimize their
technology stack and demand for revenue
generation beautiful beautiful and when
we talked earlier you you mentioned
which I think can’t be overlooked is the
importance is the planning and the
upfront work involved with an ABM
campaign it’s not a matter of just going
out and buying some ABM tools you know
you’re totally right so account based
marketing is really a strategic approach
to demand generation which means you
need to do a lot of homework working
with your sales team understanding the
the companies are going after in their
book of business doing market research
to understand the market opportunity to
really hone in on an understanding of
who are you going after specifically the
companies but also who within those
companies are the people that you’re
most likely to be engaging and you you
need to understand the key attributes
and triggers and narrative that will
captivate the attention of those
audiences and that all all of that
homework needs to come before you start
putting campaigns out the door or buying
a bunch of technology because at the end
of the day the technology that you bring
into your organization should be
supporting your strategy not driving it
forward
very good so a lot of the planning is
figuring out who do I talk to and what
do you want what are going to be the key
messages you’ll want to be presenting
yeah that’s exactly right and in create
a you know all b2b marketing is
essentially that really all marketing is
you know talking to the right people
with the right message at the right time
and ABM is just a fine-tuned approach to
that as the other the other benefit of
account based marketing is it can help
marketing organizations better align to
their sales partners I’m a big believer
that marketing is an incremental revenue
generating function within a business
which means that we we don’t just serve
sales but we absolutely need to be
aligned to sales because no deal is done
without their involvement so showing
that your marketing is being positioned
in front of the target audience that
they’re going after and ultimately
driving leads that you give the sales
team that’s in the book of business they
want to talk to will only go to serve
you and the sales team yep okay
beautiful and so as far as messaging
goes that that’s one that seems to be
challenging because there’s no real
technology or software or anything that
can help you figure out what your
messages are that a company will need to
figure it out for themselves
well yes so there’s there’s a few
approaches to this right so the the
traditional approach is go to a fashion
market research and that’s really
important but it can take a long time
and cost a lot of money to Commission
research and and then get all of that
back and then craft into messaging
narrative and put it into the market
which is still something that you should
do but supplemental to that nowadays
there are technology that almost serve
as real-time market research validation
through tools like intent monitoring
so if you look at a piece of technology
that is monitoring search terms and
topics that people are using in in the
real world to find information
ultimately resulting in them buying what
they’re seeking that can go a long way
to help you understand how to craft the
messages to the audience’s that you’re
going after make sense okay so how do I
be seeing the coordination in
collaboration with sales working and who
takes the lead and making sure that
everybody gets to buy in so um it’s kind
of a it’s kind of a two-way street you
need to have a really strong
relationship with sales and and show
them educate them on your marketing
strategy in your approach so they
understand and they believe in what
you’re trying to do so when you ask them
to do things like verify a target
account list or provide a target account
list there they’re much more likely to
be responsive because we know our sales
teams have a lot on their plate and
sometimes it can be hard to get their
share of attention
similarly you you probably need to think
about how much information you actually
show to the sales team so one of one of
the learnings that I had early on when I
started working with it
Kent data was it sounded like a really
cool exciting idea to show all of the
intent topics and all of the signals and
all of the activities to to the sales
people because the thinking was oh
they’ll look at this whole list of
things that they’ve been doing through
you know our behavioral data tracking
our marketing automation system that we
passed with our CRM and the list of it
of intent signals and topics that we’ve
captured and they’ll use this to crash
this brilliant message when they go to
call the customer the reality is that
that’s information overload and they
don’t do that if you give them a couple
of points that they can use they
we’ll son well but um you know resist
the temptation to put every bit of
technology and every negative
information right in front of your sales
team instead use it to trigger very
intelligent marketing so by the time
that elite is qualified and get to that
salesperson the original intent topics
and signals won’t really matter as much
because they’ve worked their way further
on through your nurturing in your
journey then you can just show sales
batch all right okay very good so um as
far as the the identifying the target
accounts and so forth
what what’s the best approach I guess
say it like I said sales will come up
with their idea of what they want to
target marking probably has their ideas
and then a matter of and then it’s a
matter of who within the company because
it’s not just one buyer there’s a whole
committee if you will how do you how do
you figure out all that yeah that’s
right so um it’s a similar similar
concept you know you should always be
using data to determine who your target
audience is not just what the companies
are but who you can use your own company
data look at the people associated with
your opportunities in your CRM the
people that are having the most
conversation with sales new sales is is
having success with look at the look at
the demographic indicators of those
people and use that as a baseline to
identify who you should be going after
and and you can use third-party data to
then look to see okay what are the
watering holes of these types of people
right because you can you can get intent
data at a thermographic level it’s
harder and harder especially with data
privacy laws to get that kind of data on
an individual level but what you can get
from at a demographic level to
understand like job titles functions and
your general persona indicators are
things like where are they going to
consume their information are they
active in social
idea are they going to a web-based
publication are there popular popular
conferences and events that they go to
so again going back to it requires a
little bit of upfront homework and some
elbow grease but that level of
understanding and your target audience
is absolutely critical to successful
marketing and successful account based
marketing make sense and then the I
suspect the messaging needs will be
different depending on the different
types of people that are involved in the
on that committee some of them will be
interested in security this will may be
more interested in price and
efficiencies and so the messaging has to
be crafted differently for each one of
those folks yeah that’s exactly right
and this is where you get into that
concept of personalization and when some
people hear personalization they think
you get to a page and it says hi Leslie
we know that at Iron Mountain your CEO
Bill Meany etc etc etc in my opinion
that is a little bit overkill again
going back to we are in the day of
increasing data privacy regulation and
people are becoming more and more
sensitized to how their personal data is
used that degree of personalization in a
business context is probably not
necessary and in some cases might
actually do you a disservice however
understanding the message and orienting
it by using things like dynamic content
on your website in your email that that
hone in on even just a flavor of your
message more appropriate based upon who
the persona is can really resonate with
people beautiful and you mentioned
privacy so that’s a big deal so GDP are
castles and now the California TCPA and
Massachusetts what does this all mean I
mean because this is where this where it
gets tricky because the beautiful thing
is we’re living in an age now where
we’ve got lots of data and lots of
really really targeting capabilities
but then we have these constraints – so
how do you how do you know that line
yeah so I am one of those people who is
a big fat fan of these data privacy laws
not because I personally have any
illusion that any of my information is
private I’m just way too out there in
the digital space for that however I do
think that it is forcing marketers do
better marketing you know a lot of a lot
of the old-school ways of doing things
where you just spotless sent mass email
you know used broad advertising you know
anywhere you could afford to put it I
think that’s lazy marketing and I’m
really glad that these legislations are
almost forcing that that whole thing to
go away however this does mean that the
way in which we think about marketing
does have to change and it doesn’t mean
that we can’t use data to create good
customer experiences it does mean that
we have to think differently about how
we do it
so ABM is probably more important now
than it was before for two reasons first
of all in a lot of these privacy
regulations including gdpr if somebody
is an existing customer of yours that’s
legitimate business interest to reach
out to them so if you are in a business
where you have the opportunity to cross
sell to your existing customer base your
account based marketing programs
targeted at your existing customers just
became gold to you because going after
new logo is harder and more expensive
when you’re going after the new logo
accounts you’re going to be doing a lot
more in Bound marketing and because you
are so is everybody else which means
that people are going to become
inundated with ads which means that
you’re targeting and your thoughtful
messaging matters even more listen
and then as far as the messaging and the
channels I think maybe you gave a clue
before when when you cheat when you’re
figuring out which channels are the best
channels for your outreach I guess it
makes sense to use some of that
listening that you get in the beginning
on the intent information to know what
channels those those clients are going
to for their information yeah exactly I
mean you’re going to have you’re going
to have tribal knowledge within your
organization that are going to have a
clue as to where where your buyers are
going but you know with intent data and
market research you can you can sign
that out it’s also easier than ever with
with tools that allow you to kind of
place ads through through a broker or a
bidding situation if you put a lot of
different tests out there see with
resonate see what resonates and then
move your money around as appropriate so
I’m a big fan of content syndication
because you can create the content
targeted towards your audience define
your target audience including your
target accounts and then you know put it
out there into you know a marketplace or
bidding environment there’s a company
like integrate and then the media
publications that have that things they
have that audience and can make good on
that on that content they raise their
hand and they identify themselves to you
and you get your content where it’s
going to be most effective and then you
know move your money around when it’s
not working beautiful and and along the
way like you said you’re getting more
information and intelligence as you go
so you can continuously make
improvements on both your messaging and
your targeting as far as as far as
what’s working and what’s not
exactly which means having a process and
the discipline to measure what you’re
doing and then pause and reflect upon
your results is equally important
sometimes as marketers we get so caught
up in doing and putting stuff out there
it’s hard for us to slow down and
reflect and say okay what’s working
what’s not working why and what do I
need to adjust cheerful so it’s
continuous learning opportunity that’s
really good so you’ve seen some and
you’d be there directly or indirectly
been a part of some successes on a VM is
there any case that means you can sure
sure so um we we use a target account
list almost exclusively in in channels
like content syndication today and by
doing so we’ve seen a dramatic increase
in our conversion rate and I think that
comes from two things one I think it
comes from the fact that the people that
were getting are people who are
genuinely interested in appropriate for
us to be to be talking to and offering
our solutions to and our salespeople are
converting them at higher rates just
because it’s who they want to be talking
to I mean you can generate all the leads
in the world even if they’re
hand-raisers
if sales people’s like yeah that’s not
really your master and they don’t follow
up them it’s you know it’s not really a
good lead for your business so you know
we managed to increase our conversion
rate such that about one third of all
the leads we generate actually end up in
the hands of salespeople and I it’s
depending upon you know the where that
is in our business particularly for our
core business we see upwards of 60% of
those actually closing two deals so I
think that that’s pretty good for a
channel like content syndication which
is relatively low cost particularly for
the volume beautiful those are great
numbers and like you said the getting
that buy-in upfront from sales this
needs both both and buying into the
program itself and you know they’ve got
a vested interest in on the companies
that you’re going after so – so win-win
I’m not sure why it would be contentious
but I’m glad ya make
a lot of sense that everybody
everybody’s tied into the same goal the
same targets and all that exactly and
you know I’m a big believer in you know
data and measurement but there’s also
just the you know qualitative aspect of
having a good relationship with sales
and if they feel like you know we’re all
on the same page that that makes for a
much better day beautiful
so you mentioned integrate what other
tools technology have you come across
along the way that you find to be super
helpful as far as a VM sure so we have
worked with Bambara for four intent data
I mentioned integrate recently acquired
a company called a crew which is very
interesting because we’re going to be
testing it out to do on-site lead
capture that routes into our system in
real time for gdpr and these new data
privacy laws that’s actually really
significant for us because we’ll be able
to capture people’s consent in real time
on site which is digital which means
it’s defensible and then we can get them
verified into the system right away we
we lose we actually only retain about 10
percent of our total event leads when we
try to get consent after the fact so
that’s huge for us you know and on our
website we’re using tools like
Optimizely to optimize our website and
you know where we’re foundationally on
Eloqua and salesforce.com shop and
actually we started using Einstein with
Salesforce we’re seeing how that
compares to a local lead scoring which
is quite interesting so yeah it means a
lot of a lot of Technology even even
tools like zoom nowadays where these
webcasting platforms can become
integrated right into your marketing
automation system you so you can closer
your lead data in real time and if we’re
petting data from systems like D and B
so that we have as much
information forma graphic information on
every record that we can to enable
further ABM in the future you know all
of this is part of a you know integrated
tech stack that supports our overall
strategy okay hopefully periods on ABM
as far as the tools the privacy laws the
challenges and so forth where do you see
ABM heading what are we going to be
looking at a year from now and five
years from now what is what is going to
be different you know
um the thing that I hope is different is
that people stopped talking about ABM
like its you know some sort of cool new
fancy thing or you know special strategy
I really think that it is it is what b2b
marketing is all about so I hope it just
kind of gets absorbed into the regular
operating rhythms of b2b marketing
organizations and um you know I do think
that we will continue to see more and
more different technologies emerge that
support ABM and other forms of b2b
marketing in consideration of the data
privacy laws we have already started to
see a shift away from outbound as a
mechanism of initiating engagement and
rather people people using inbound
strategies to try to attract the right
audience and it’s interesting for
marketers to to really wrap their heads
around the concept of I have a target
account list of the people I know I want
so why wouldn’t I just go out to them
and really it’s more and more and I
think in the future it’s going to be
about know exactly who you want to
attract and then you know the best
marketing talent in the world will be
able to master the ability to attract
exactly those companies and people
beautiful yeah
ABM is not a separate program it’s a
philosophy it’s just part of everything
that the marketers should be doing
that’s my take on it makes sense to me
so that’s beautiful I this is wonderful
speaking with you is there any other
words of wisdom or thoughts you have
before I let you go I think you asked
all the right questions and we pretty
much covered it um you know I really
look forward to hearing what your other
guests speak about and share as it
relates to ABM there’s always more to
learn and new new methods to try so um
hope we get to speak again beautiful
it’s a pleasure go enjoy France and
thank you for sharing and I look forward
to speaking with you again soon however
Cova thank you