Name: The Reality of ABM
Uploaded: 2026-10-08T17:31:37.110Z
Duration: 46 min 4 s
Description: The Reality of ABM

Transcript for "The Reality of ABM": Hello, everyone. Hey, Josh. Before we get started, I just have to confess that with fourteen seconds before we got on stage, Jess is like, I need to tell you a story. I was at my local arts and crafts store this weekend. And I'm like, we have fourteen seconds, Jess. It would be the quickest story in the world. It was fast. I got it in. She did tell us the. whole story. Some. Michael Jackson related, Well, now I have to tell it. I have to tell it now. The... I was. at the dentist, not a crafts... Arts and crafts store, and they were decorated for Halloween. And on the wall, they had one of those, like, jointed paper skeletons, but it was a skeleton of Michael Jackson in Thriller. So he had, like, the Thriller jacket on and, Half, his hair as a skeleton, and I took a picture of it. And I am absolutely doing, like, a reverse Google image search after this to find it and put it in my home because I need the time when we when. we go to, like, trade shows, people walk up to me and be like, is your relationship with Jess actually the one that you have in the podcast? Like, are your conversations internally as wild as you make them? And the answer is yes. We just spend the last thirty seconds talking about Michael Jackson skeletons. Yes. Okay. We're we're veering way off course here, but Abby wants to see the picture. I gotta give the people what they want. Hold, please. So that you know I'm, like, telling the truth. It's like a work. of art. It is so good. Right? I need that. I need it. Anyway, hello. Let's talk about ABM and the reality. Josh. Hey, Josh. Hey, Jess. How's it going? It's going you... good. Jess, do you remember. that time? Oh, go. Go. Yeah. Go. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. Do you remember the time we interviewed we? We... Classic CEO. We. I had nothing to do with it. Mhmm. Do you remember the time we, meeting Annalisa, our amazing, content marketer, interviewed 239 ABM marketers to find what the actual atrocious reality of running ABM actually looks like. I do remember because it was literally, like, five weeks ago that I was. like, hey, Lisa, I need an entire piece of research, by the time we go to this event, so please begin the survey now. But, yes, it it was... Go ahead. she did the research and got us the results in five weeks. It was thirty eight days from when. I told her we needed it to when we had a printed version in our hands. Yes. Incredible. She is a queen. Yeah. I think what we found out though is, man, we've been doing this ABM thing for, you know, going on thirteen years here, and it is messy. There's a very big gap between what people were sold and kind of told they could do with ABM and what they're actually able to do. So, Jess, this is gonna be... We pull up our slides here because we're gonna walk the the folks through it. This this webinar is gonna be, like, 60 therapy sessions so that you just know you're not alone. You're not the only one over the last thirteen years of running ABM that has not been able to figure out every single piece of it. So we'll all feel very feel very seen by the end of this. But, also, I think we'll walk away some really tactical ways to solve some of the problems we saw in the survey. Yes. 100%. Alright. Amazing. Let's get to it. You know, it feels like ABM sounds simple. Right? We all kind of know the promise is, like, when you find the right accounts, everything else should fall in line. Right? You should be able to reach the right people, act at the right time, and then prove it worked. Like, it just... That is the idea. When you go after the accounts that are going to be of the highest value that are in market for your solution at this very moment, like, all these things should just kinda fall in place for you. And what we found is, like, not a single step came back clean. Like, that just is not... As as as much as we'd love to believe that that's actually what's happening, it... It's not so much. So you're saying when CEOs blame their demand gen or their ABM marketers for ABM not working, it's it's not it's not them? Correct. Yeah. It might actually be you. It probably is. Yeah. I don't know. I don't I don't accept that. But to to that point, I think we wanted to start by just sort of, like, reading the room. Right? Like, for for everyone here, Yeah. we're we're gonna put up a poll on the screen here. It looks like Alex is saying the poll is live. Which part of ABM do you find the hardest for you? Is it reaching the right people, understanding why accounts are moving at all, acting on the signals themselves at the right time, or is it the tried and true proving that marketing is actually moving the needle? We didn't bring our music. always tough. Well, we can vote, Like, Jess. okay. Let's see. What's that? We can vote too. I didn't realize it's on our screen. Oh. Oh, okay. Where's. where's the where's the one that can click that's, like, my marketer is the issue? It's always Yeah. My CEO is all the problems. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, thank you, Eddie. Yes. I'll be here all week or just until 01:15 when this ends. Lily is actually, saying that it's getting sales buy in, and I think that that's super, interesting as well. I think... I'm I'm sure most people have been able to click through, Alex. I would say let's go ahead and close that poll, move that bus, amazing. and we'll we'll see what the results were. Oh, man. While we pull them up, Lily, I... That's what I hear that too. Yes. Right? Which is like, hey. We've built this really. cool program, but getting sales to to actually adopt the signals we're sending over or, you know, do anything with, the results is really, really. hard. Yeah. You know what? I'm supposed to be able to see a polls tab, but I don't think I'm able to see it. Guess what, guys? We're doing it live. We'll send the we'll send the results, after the fact because you all know you're getting a follow-up email after. this. That's just how we roll. Well, I got to the research because we can tell you what, the 230 marketers said, was most difficult for them. And you... I don't know. Maybe you won't be shocked at what the very first thing they said was. One in six marketers said that knowing which accounts to prioritize is their biggest ABM bottleneck bottleneck, which, you know, checks notes, that's the first step. So I think you would accept expect that, like, if that's the biggest bottleneck, like, how how are we even getting through the rest of it? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's... Like, that that. says so much about running an ABI motion. If, like, we can't even get out the gates and agree across marketing and sales and rev ops, like, which accounts we're running ABM for, like, it's it's no surprise that the rest is just an absolute dumpster fire. Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. So, obviously, everything else falls from there. Right? If you're finding the right accounts or not, everything else should technically fall into place. Another one we found was that reaching the right people is really difficult, and this this particular data point is around ads, and so 91, a little bit over 91% of marketers aren't very confident their ads reach the right people inside an account. Man, that's tough. That feels like I'm spending money and just kind of hoping it reaches the right person because they're in the account, but I don't know. Maybe it's just, like, all of the people that work there or... And are they the right ones? I don't know. That's a... Oh, man, that makes my heart hurt think for, these, marketers. not to get nerdy with it, but this is just one of those, like, previous techno... Technical limitations that just still exist in a lot of the ABM tooling that we're using. Right? Like, it used to be, like, all of us sat sat. in offices, like, pre COVID. Remember remember when COVID rolled out and we're all like, if this messes up our Cinco de Mayo plans, like, I'm gonna be really upset. Like, three years later, we were still, like, sitting on our Pelotons. But, like, before those. magical days of COVID, Three more Cinco de Mayo's. Yeah. Right. Like, but before those days, we were, like, sitting in office buildings, which means sort of like the legacy ad targeting technology worked. It was like you, you know, we had all these data providers ripped Clearbit, I missed Clearbit, where they could say, hey, this IP address belongs to this company. And so you could say, hey, put my ads in front of this IP address. And it was, like, good enough at the time. But now everyone's gone remote or, like, some of us have gone remote. And and now being able to guarantee that the ad's actually hitting the right person is really difficult in those platforms, which is a shame because there's all this sort of, like, new age technology to, like, enrich personal email identifiers and mobile ad IDs and hashed emails that allows you to say, hey. My ad should only go in front of this person. So it's a shame that 91% of us are still struggling with this. Yeah. Well... And even now, like, people are going back into offices. A lot of people work from home. Like, my husband and I both work from home. So, like, you could use our IP address, but it might tell you that someone from Deloitte was there when in fact it was me. Right? So it's, there... I think we're just... There's so much of the promise of ABM that the legacy technology could just not live up to. Yeah, which, like, hurts the marketers. Right? Yeah. 100%. Another thing that we pulled from the, the research was we just allowed people to, like, let's get it out. Let's make this a therapy session. Give us your feelings. We asked them and to, like, tell us in their own own words how they felt about these issues. And so a couple of quotes here, just about targeting. Right? You're essentially doing account based marketing. We have no idea who inside that account is actually seeing your ads. You're just hoping the right person is in the audience. Ugh. Worst feeling. And when we ask what would make the biggest difference, removing the black box of a lot of our advertising and increasing confidence that we're reaching the right people. I hear that. I feel that. It's tough. tough. It's tough. Cool. There was one thing, one product benefit, one, capability is the word I'm looking for, that when people had it, it nearly doubled their confidence in targeting. What do you think that is, Josh? Being able to see who it actually is that we care about. Ding. Ding. Ding. Website D and N was, a really big deal in boosting confidence that your ads are going to the the right people. Not only can you then build audiences off of those people, but you can actually see the full loop of, like, someone clicked the ad and they came to the site, and that is actually our ICP and someone that I thought I was targeting with my ads. So, love seeing this that confidence nearly doubles when you can actually see who's visiting. Almost 90% of marketers said that, if they treated website d and on as central to scoring, they were somewhat or very confident that their ads are reading the the... Reaching the right person. So, yeah, Well, Jess, big ups also website that that's, and, everything. a really interesting hot take as well, which is I think most people... You know, we've all seen seen the site de anonymization vendors that are out there. Vector is one of them. But I think most people think about how do I take that signal and pass it over to my SDR team, my BDR team, which is a really good use case. But, like, Mhmm. what you just described is, like, how do I use that as a marketer to prove that my ads are driving the right people to the website? How do I use it to know that people are engaging with our top of funnel content but not converting? Right? There's all these other use cases that we should be tapping into. Yeah. Totally. Yes. Love that. Alright. Next, was really understanding the why behind an account moving to the next stage. This was a big one, and I think there's so much of, like, the black boxiness kind of built into this data point of most, legacy ABM, platforms. So, 81.6 of the respondents who answered the survey said they can't... And, of of course, this is very, like, we're very good, you know, survey, folks and, you know, use the qualifier almost always. Right? So they can't almost always explain why an account stage or score changed. And this is where so much of that trust is lost in that handoff. Right? Where you're like, no. I'm telling you this account is six QA or whatever. It's like... It feels like you have a magic eight ball just telling you, like, oh, cannot decide if this account has actually moved forward or not. Right? You have no idea, and you're trying to hand it off to your sales team. No wonder they don't put any trust or faith, in it. it is... It brings me back to to Lily's comment earlier. Right? Which is, like, as as marketers, we've sort of, like, lived in this abstract world of, like, open rates and anonymous website visitors. Like, we're really used to not having all the pieces of the puzzle to figure it out. But, you know, our sales counterparts, we love them. Like, we love our sales team. But, like, let's be honest. You have to you have to lean the horse a little bit more to the water, to to get them to drink it. Yeah. So I think historically, what what I saw at my career at Drift and now sort of building vector is that sellers are significantly more successful working ABM motions or working with marketing if you tell them exactly, here's who's here's who's moving. Here's the signal of why they're moving. And so when you send over that six QA or you send over sort of, like, here's the account we should work on, having that next layer of, like, here, go after this person. Here's the signal that we saw. Here's the relevant message. Like, that makes all the difference in the success of an ABM Motion. Absolutely. And I don't know a marketer who doesn't wanna be a good partner like that. Like, we want to give them that context. Until recently, we just were not able to do that. Yeah. Okay. Here's some more quotes. We love the quotes y'all. The product itself is unexplainable when it comes to scoring. A black box. The platform would tell me an account was in the decision stage, and I bring that to sales and they'd say, okay. Based on what? And I had no answer. And that's like, oh, man. That's like... That's a bad feeling too. Right? Where you're like, I I don't know. I'm. just telling you what the machine told me. if I had one piece of hair for every time I heard the term black box, I would not be bald. So I'll say it more for you. there's hope. My wife thinks I should go to Turkey. Get the plugs. Get the plugs. blondes. Yeah. Okay. I think kind of related to this trust idea of knowing why an account is moving in this... Is this idea of signals. Right? We've had signals for a while now. Everybody has kind of all the same ones, and now we're getting to the point where we can actually, like, let's create our own. We know that, you know, when someone puts a suck to page up, like, oh, okay. We can now help them. Right? That's like what our our product is like, a security product, and now that's a great signal for us that they might now be in market. Right? But that's not something that is like a job changer or, an off-site intent. Right? Like, we have to get way more bespoke with signals now, and we need to build a richer picture. So it can't just be, they're looking at a Forbes article that might potentially be about the thing that I do. And I think this this data point was really interesting to me in this regard. So more signals is shocker, more trust and scoring. So teams that tracked 10 or more buyer signals, were, trust their scoring enough to act on it. That was 60% of marketers that tracked 10 or more. And 17 and a half percent of teams tracking one to three buyer signals stay the same. So, obviously, as the number of signals go up, that picture is much richer. The why becomes more obvious, and you just have a lot more trust in the in the actual information that's being fed to you. And, Jess, I I know your philosophy, which is like, hey. When we do webinars, we do events. Like, we care a lot about educating our buyers. We are not plugging commercials around our own products. But I'm the CEO, and we need to make sure that we get some pipeline out of this event. This is what Vector does. Like, this... Like, the... We totally accept the fact that, like, the old ABM platforms track two signals. Right? It was account level website denomization. It was account level research intent. Like you said, are people really going to Forbes to to figure out what they're gonna buy next? I don't think so. Like, we're living in this world where, like, signals are ephemeral. We have to be able to track all of them and we need to be able to put that information in front of our sellers so that they trust the AVM motion. Okay. Commercial's over. You can keep going. I was gonna say, did you get that out of your system? Good good job. Got was. good. I'm done. was great. Okay. generated. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Attribute it to Josh. Josh's pitch. Amazing. Oh my gosh. Alright. Here's another one. Okay. We have signals. Okay. Maybe we actually know who we're targeting. What happens when we get that signal? There's that scene... Okay. That I'm gonna show, like, you know, my, like, movie quotes and, like, reference of... Frame of reference, like, ends in a very certain point in the late nineties, early two thousands. And in Tommy Boy, the absolute cinematic masterpiece, Tommy Boy, there's a theme where he's at the restaurant and he's trying to get the the server, the waitress to, like, turn on the oven and get him some chicken wings. And he goes on this crazy rant about how he... Whenever he he gets the possibility of, like, getting a sale, he goes crazy like Jojo the circuit clown, and he... Circus clown, and he, like, has a role in his hand and he, like, destroys it, he just goes crazy and she's finally like, okay, whatever, man. You're insane. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go get you those chicken wings. And I think part of what he's talking about is, like, he gets so... I have a signal. This this is gonna happen. And there's nothing you can do about it if you don't have the right, the right tools and the right, like, steps in place to actually make it happen. We heard 92 and a half percent of our respondents say that they don't get real time or automatic response to buyer activity. And by the time you're ready to act, it's like the moment's probably passed. Right? Or they're on to something else, and it gets a lot harder for... To get them back. Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. I remember, ZoomInfo used to do this thing. I don't know if they still do it today, but they had, like, an SLA on form submissions. Right? Like, when you filled out a form, they would call you within, like, minutes, which I have I have my thoughts and opinions on ZoomInfo. But I do think that that was... Like, speed to lead was huge. And and I think the same thing is true within our ABM motions. Mhmm. Right? Like, a form submission isn't the only thing that, or the only signal we have to know that marketing is doing the right things driving people across the line. But I think for some reason, like, we still have this over rotation where sales is basically waiting for, like, the ultimate signal, the form submission to go reach out to a customer when a website visit or a social media engagement or a post or something like that. These these are all really important signals. And I don't know about you guys, but it's like when you go to a trade show and someone's like, oh, this is awesome. We should talk about it. Book that meeting because next week when that signal is gone, it's gonna be so much harder to get in front of that buyer. Yes. We just did that. We we were on the road for, like, three weeks straight, and I think one of the best things we did was, like, man, the signal is strongest when they're standing in front of you, and. you're like, let's get this on the books right now because they get back, they get busy. Right? The same thing goes for actual signals that you're picking up in, you know, virtual behavior and and online activity. 100%. Alright. When we asked people what it frustrated them the most about their ABM program, data fragmentation across tools means we can't get a single real time view of account engagement. By the time signals are compiled and actioned, the buying moment has often passed. And misalignment between sales and marketing, hey, this one came up in the chat, that causing... That's causing some signals to go unnoticed are not being followed up on. Oh, man. That's tough too because I feel like as a marketer, like, there's, like, this flicker of, like, the the endorphins that come and you're like, signal or this person moved or, like, someone came to our site and then, like, nothing happens. Man. That's that's tough too to feel like you did all that work to getting there. I'm also just, like, pro marketing having a louder voice. Like, for some reason, every time I hear marketers talk about this, it's always sales that is, like, being a really loud voice in the room saying that, like, marketing is not doing enough. Marketing is not generating enough pipeline. But then, like, you know, a customer will come and install Vector. They'll turn on all these signals, and we'll say, like, hey. Look at all these accounts that marketing's engaging across organic and paid and social, and, like, look how far they are in their buying journey. And yet, sales is kind of raising their hands saying, like, well, marketing's not doing anything. It's like, well, maybe what we need to do is align sales a little bit more with what marketing is doing and say, hey. These are the accounts that, like, again, not a perfect form submission, but, like, they're in market. Like, they're worth looking at. I I think marketing. should start yelling back a little bit here. Okay. Witness. Everyone here is a witness to that. The... I'm just just saying. I'm gonna remember that. our marketing team, but other marketing teams. Alright. Okay. Yeah. Sure. We're the exception. Okay. Alright. Here's one that, like, this, I think, to me is the hardest one for me. I think especially coming from a content background where, like, content gets a ton of shit. Right? For, like, where's the pipeline from this blog post that's very, like, top of funnel? And you're always trying. to prove your value. Like, right. Yeah. Okay. Like, what you actually did actually got somebody interested. But the same goes for even demand gen marketers. We saw that 84% can't immediately show evidence of marketing's pipeline, and this is the most important part that everyone agrees on. There's, like, the sales version of the story. There's the marketing version of the story. There's finances version of the story. Like, how do we get one? One altogether. Yeah. Why is it still. so hard? I I I think the the... Like, in my opinion, the reason that it's hard... First and foremost, like, jokes aside, most CEOs do not understand the value of top of funnel. Right? And and we all know as marketers and and go to market operators, like, that is feeding the ultimate thing that turns into demo submissions and forms, and and opportunities. But it's just so easy for maybe, like, a right brain. I always get them backwards. Left brain or right brain. Which one's noncreative, Jess? Noncreative? Left. Left. It's it's easy for left brain folks to just say like, well, you know, the last touch is the form submission. So, like, don't do anything before that. But here's the here's the thing that's really cool is if you solve some of the other problems that were on these these earlier slides, which is if you can get your signals down to the contact level, if you can get your sales team aligned, that these signals are worth following up on, you can also reverse engineers the... Reverse engineer those signals into proof. Right? You can sort of reconstruct a story where it's like, hey. When. this opportunity was open or created, here's all of the touch points we saw, whether it was site de anonymization, interacting with content, you know, impressions on, you know, paid channels. You can actually kind of revert the signal back into the proof story, which is real nice. And I love that once you start doing that for a little while, you can kinda start to see, like, we call it the golden path. Right? Like, the path that most likely leads someone to buy, the the pieces of content, the ad campaigns, the creative, the job titles, the... Whatever. Like, the makeup of the company, the tech stack they have. Like, all of those things together, like, you can find kind of the common denominators that happen most often, and that's like, woah. That's really exciting. Yeah. 100%. I just saw a comment for... Actually, two comments from Allison. She likes to make sure... I'm assuming she needs my shirt, not yours, which, obviously. So we should we should figure out how to hook some of these people up. But but two, I agree, Allison. Like, b to b speed to lead is just atrocious going back to one of those those previous lines. Thanks, Eddie. And and I... It it feels like so simple. Right? But it it is a differentiator. Right? If you can figure out how to align your marketing and sales team together to say, hey. We have an SLA on how quickly we get back to these folks that are showing signals. Like, that one little thing makes all the difference, especially if your competitors aren't doing it. So good on you for figuring out how to get marketing and sales to align and doing that the right way. Absolutely. I think we have some more quotes. Quotes, quotes, quotes, quotes on quotes. And, again, this is about proof. This one, this first one, I actually put this in my, LinkedIn post yesterday because it just like, man, I felt this before. It's so hard. When we asked what frustrated them most about their ABM program, this one marketer said, lack of knowing definitively if marketing is moving the needle toward the... Okay. Toward deal stage progression or if we are just spinning our wheels, which is like, oh, what a dagger to the heart. Like, we put so much time and effort and, like, I don't know, just just passion and everything that we do and then just to not know if it actually worked is horrible. Black map when it comes to full journey data storytelling. That's... And I think we're... Even if we're left brain, right brain, if we're demand gen, if we're content, like, inherently, all marketers are storytellers. We crave that story. We want to know, like, what happened? I think that's why we love the how did you hear about us field on the demo form so much because... And marketers, Yep. by the way, are so good at that. They will be like, I saw you on a Tuesday afternoon at 02:42, on a LinkedIn live thing, and that my brother told me about, that I should join, and I just eaten a tuna sandwich. Anyway, I need a demo. It's true. But we don't... You know, I think we just... We crave that as marketers. Being able to tell a clear story of how an account progressed to close one and all the marketing touches that were a part of that win. And I would actually add add all of the sales touches. Like, I wanna see the full picture. I wanna see how we won as a team, especially in ABM. Yeah. I I totally agree. Jess, I know we're about thirty minutes in. We got fifteen minutes left. So two two things. One is, I noticed some pretty interesting questions come in, in the q and a channel as we went. And also, this was only, like, a scratch of the surface of what Annalisa. built in the report. I know you're gonna be doing a follow-up. But for any of you you that are out there, like, yep. I feel this. This is exactly what's happening in my company. I need, like, the stats. I need, like, all the other details of what was in the report. Jess, we are gonna send that out to them. Yeah? We're gonna we're gonna send it out in our follow-up. It's also... If you click the docs, tab in the little chat, you can actually get to it right from there. It's not gated, Jess? How are we gonna. attribute pipeline to this? I don't know. My lord. What are we gonna do? Amazing. Wait a second. Should we spend some... if you land on the page. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Site team optimization. We we see you. Jess, should we jump into some of this q and a? Let's do it. Oh. Alright. I'm gonna... Alex, right on cue. Carrie Freberg says, how do you hone in your targeting on your social channels for accounts? Oh, good one. Good. Good. Good one. Josh, Yeah. go for it. I I think this is... There's, like, a question here of sort of, like, what technology do you have in your toolbox? Because there's like an old school way and there's a new school way. We all know that on LinkedIn in particular, targeting is not super awful. I would still argue that LinkedIn has some oddities where you know, you can target, like, a demand gen marketer. And if she's also in, like, an investor or, you know, part of some, like, social club, like, sometimes the target gets a little funky or sometimes LinkedIn likes to do a little bit of audience expansion, but we all know it's the other channels that are really, really difficult. Right? Google, Reddit, TikTok, Meta. If you're experimenting any of those channels, it's almost impossible to do b to b targeting in those. And so the the thing that we recommend... And obviously, Vector has this capability, but there's some other ways that you can do this as well if you don't wanna, leverage Vector and not ready to use it, which is you can take the list of contacts that you're actually trying to go after, and you can do some pretty cool enrichment on them. Right? So all of those ad platforms accept alternative uploads for targeting. Right? They accept things like hashed emails, mobile ad identifiers, personal phone numbers, etcetera. And so you can use Vector or you can use a worser, data enrichment, solution, to basically be able to do contact level targeting, which is really, really powerful. This is what we do at Vector, and it makes sure that we're not wasting any ad dollars on folks that we do not want to to put our our investment in front of. I think there's also something to be said to Carrie about, something that we've done is, like, what kind of content are they looking at on the site? Like, if they are coming to the site and we can determine, like, oh, they came to this webinar. Clearly, they're very interested in ABM and kind of all of the pain points around that. Maybe they've been on a couple of ABM blog posts or, they've listened to me and Josh's podcast around ABM. Right? Like, now I know what message I wanna get to them. So not just the targeting, but, like, actually, the messaging based on those signals and behaviors as well as, like, the kind of one b to that, to that list. That's right. Great question, Carrie. Oh, Anonymous. yes. This one... I'm gonna read it, but this is a 100% for you. Okay. What will real marketing and sales alignment look like if we stopped measuring it by how many meetings the teams have and or why should sales trust marketing? I don't know. Bye. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I've, I love this question. I think what... I think something that ABM one has done is, like, obviously gotten us bigger, better, better deals faster. Like, it it has been shown to, like, help us get those better, higher quality deals in pipeline and to close one, at a higher velocity. What I think it has also done is it has made, in theory, should make sales and marketing work as one team. Because there is this idea of, like, we both need to agree on who we're actually going to go after, what that looks like from, you know, kind of an ICP demographic, firmographic thing, but also, like, what's their tech stack? What are they doing? How are they feeling? What's their pain point? Right? And so I think you actually have to bring sales in to what is typically, like, product marketing or, like, almost research. And so you have to bring that in a little sooner. I also think, why should sales trust marketing? I love that. I think we want to win just as badly as they do. Listen. If you're gonna trust anyone, trust the team that's just been shit on forever and still keeps going. How's that for an answer? That was very much like, what's the football movie from the nineties, Rudy? Right? Just like trust the little guy. Right? Like, we. we don't even... We shouldn't even be on this. field, and we're here. Yeah. Absolutely. No. I I think I think that's right. And and I also think, like, at Vector in particular, you know, we we spend a lot of time thinking about, like, vector on vector. Like, how do we do ABM? How do we sort of, like, set an example for the rest of the community that's, like, doing their damnest out there to to. to perform. And I think there's two things that come to mind. One is, like, we don't talk in terms of marketing and sales. Like, instead, we actually think about the jobs to be done by different teams. So for us, we have a group of people that are really interested in generating pipeline, and then we have a group of people that are really interested in closing revenue. Right? Yeah. And and because of that, like, we've recently moved our outbound functions, so BDRs and sales or, SDRs underneath marketing because we realized, like, the job of a BDR is very aligned with the job of marketing, which is generating pipeline. And when you start to think about it that way, generating qualified quality pipeline instead of closing revenue, the way you start to think. about trusting marketing changes. Right? It's not about, like, how do I make as many calls and emails as possible. It's like, how do I do what's right for the customer so that, like, when the time is ready for them, they know that we're the right solution to their problem. So. good. frame and reset. that. I also... We're going to, something that we're we're going into planning right now at Vector and, Heather, our VP of sales, and I are, like, going to go away. Like, she and I are going to have one budget for next year, and I'm really excited about that because what it means is when we present that back to you, Josh, and Nick, and leadership, that she and I both agree wholeheartedly that this plan and these resources are going to get us both to where we need to be, you know, by h two or end of next year. So, I don't know. That's that's one thing for me. Like, it has to start at the very beginning, Yeah. which I love. Yeah. I love that. Alright. Taylor, is it a terrible idea to put it on sales to pitch their accounts for ABM campaigns? We've given them access to our entire tool stack with plenty of intent signal knowledge, lean marketing team here. I love this so much, Taylor. Okay. Here's what I've realized. You can put an amazing list that is, like, to the t on all of the signals that you wanna track, that makes sense firmographically, that makes sense demographically, they have all the right champions. If sales is not excited about going after those accounts, you'll never win as a marketer because your sales team won't be in it all, like, all in. So I think there is, something really beneficial about, one, bringing sales in early on this and making sure they're excited about, you know, the accounts that you're you're telling them to go after and and why. Yeah. I I agree. I I think this is a lot like being a creative in marketing and having an idea. Right? Like, don't ever go to your CEO without the concept of an idea. Right? Because then you're just gonna let them run wild. But I think I think this. idea of, know. like, hey, marketing works hand in hand with rev ops probably to say, hey, here's all the signals. Here's the the accounts that... The subset of accounts that we think would probably respond well to the next quarter or half. of campaigning. You know, sales now take a peek at this. What do you guys think? Right? And if if they say, yep, I love this one. I don't like this one. Or, hey, I've been working this other account that I think we should, like, put some extra dollars towards, like, let them be part of it. It's a lot like a toddler. Right? If they if they think they were part of the decision making process, they're a lot happier that they're going to McDonald's even though that was always the decision for dinner to begin with. So... No. Taylor, I think it's a great idea. you. can. test this out too. Like, Taylor, test this out with an event. You get the attendee list, get... Kind of call that down to, like, your top choices, share it with sales. Like, just do a little small version of it and and see how it goes, and then you can actually move that into your ABM motion as well. Jess, this one's aimed. at. you. Since since Josh is here, Jess, what's the most frustrating question a CEO can ask about marketing's contribution of pipe? I think they're just trying to get you fired, like, on live TV. I think they're just trying to humiliate you. That's. my that's could be it. that's that makes. sense. I love that it got upvoted too. Look at... There's a thumbs up on it. Somebody else was like, hell yeah. I want that question. Okay. Okay. Contribution to pipeline. I think... Okay. Actually, I have two answers to this. One is actually not about contribution to pipeline at all. One... And, Josh, you've never said this to me, so bravo. But I have had other CEOs. say this to me or, actually, CMOs have said this to me too. One of the. most frustrating things that I've ever been asked is, can you remind me why we did this again? And one, it's frustrating because, it means, one, I probably didn't either do a good enough job explaining the purpose of a program or the impact that it was going to have, or that leader just doesn't really understand your function. And I've definitely had that happen before, and that that is so hard. With with regard to, like, actual contribution to pipeline, I think one of the most frustrating questions is how are we going to measure the ROI on this when it's anything that doesn't have, you know, a direct line to, like, like, a paid campaign. Right? Very easy to attribute. A branded podcast that doesn't talk about the product at all? Really tough. So, that to me is the hardest. And again, it goes back to, like, what's the story? How can we tell the full story in a way that's believable by all? And like, yeah, confirmed by all that like this is actually the story that happened. I think I think you and Courtney have... been there she says. Yeah. Yeah. You you and Courtney have reported to the same CEO before, it sounds like. Yeah. Courtney's also my Michigan buddy. So awesome. we we we... Yeah. Oh, the dog. Have we gotten too focused on building the perfect list instead of understanding what's happening inside those accounts? What do you hear from customers and prospects? Well, Josh just abandoned me, so I guess I'll take this one. Yeah. I think there's definitely something to be said about this. And I think it is, again, when you go back to this idea of, like, we were told that if we got the accounts right, everything else would fall into place. And I think this is the exact same problem. We were told that if we got the list of contacts right, everything else would fall into place. And I think that there is something about, I actually read this on on LinkedIn the other day that, like, a a target account list is not a wish list. It is a to do list. Like, it should be so verified that you know that these are the right accounts to go after that you just go knock them down as opposed to, like, oh, I really hope we can get these right. So I I think, yeah, we're we're a little focused on, like, it being a perfect list, and not really understanding all of the things that are going on inside of those accounts, and taking that into consideration. Josh, I do you think? I agree now that my dogs have been politely relocated to another room. No. I agree. And in fact, I... No. We don't think the market's ready entirely for how we think about ABM. But just to give everyone some insight into sort of where we're going as a company with our own ABM motion, we actually think that, you know, ABM should not be one of these, like, sophisticated motions that only big enterprises do. Right? Yeah. The concept of ABM is simply like you treat certain accounts a little bit better because you think that they're going to result in more money or more likely to buy from you. And with that lens, ABM is actually just on the spectrum of demand gen. Right? Like, demand gen is one to many. You do some stuff that's one to few, and then you do stuff that's one to one. And through that perspective, like, going back to to Eddie's point, like, that can change throughout the year. Right? Like, you might go to an event in March where someone says, like, you know what? In January, we weren't ready to purchase whatever it is that you do, but something drastic just happened. We went through a round of layoffs or our our... Your competitor had, like, a big outage that's not working for us anymore. And, like, if you think of ABM the old school way, you'd be like, well, they're not in our target account list, so we can't invite them to dinner next week. Right? Like, it's literally just a continuous spectrum of marketing. And, you know, that's the beauty of, like, if you have these contact level signals, you can actually just, like, monitor your entire TAM, your entire ICP and say, okay, as they show more buying signals, as they start to engage with our content, they should move their way up into being accounts that we're willing to invite to dinner that will spend a little bit more money. So I totally agree that, like, we are way too focused on on trying to build the perfect account list instead of just, like, executing our go to market. Yeah. Let their behaviors lead you to the list as opposed to, like, you trying to build it. Right? Just because. it's, like, on... Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Wait. No. Go back to the previous question. It wasn't. a question. I like... was just a compliment. It's gone, Alex says. The moment has passed. How to test. into a one to one one motion? Okay. I love this. One to one is a lot of work, not gonna lie. Even just getting down to that list is a ton of work and figuring out, like, who are the, you know, let's say, 17 accounts we want to we want to go after this quarter or the 90 accounts we wanna go after, and we'll divide it up by our reps. Right? I think to test into that is, like, man, give yourself some time to, like, see those signals come in, really understand, what are these signals telling me? And and which which combination of signals is, like, getting those accounts to closed one fastest. Right? And then you can really start to understand, okay. Those are the kinds of accounts and and context that we want to go after in a one to one motion. What do you think, Josh? Yeah. I think I think that's right. And I would also say to your point about, like, how much work one to one is, I would figure out which channels are we actually trying to do one to one. in. Right? Like, at Vector, because we have really cool technology, we're able to do, like, literal one to to one advertising, which is, like, to your point, Jess, like, pretty sophisticated, pretty advanced. But one to one is, like, significantly easier when you're inviting people out to dinner, when you're trying. to do events with people. There's a really cool company, called Wildcard that does, like, one to one unique gifting where they'll go, like, research, like, your very best buyers and, like, they do crazy stuff, like, send, like, a Hogwarts acceptance letter because they saw some social media posts from, like, your top buyer that, like, she dreamed of getting into Hogwarts as a kid. Like, so there's, like, really cool stuff that's easier to activate one to one, than, like, traditional or, like, digital channels. Like, traditional channels are much easier to do one to one Great point. Great point. Alright. I hear we have one more question. in. Let's see if we can get to it. Do you think the industry's obsession with intent data has actually made marketers less confident in their decisions? I love this. question. Yes. Everyone, thanks for joining us. The answer is yes. Have a good day. I don't know if Dee is still here, but Dee is like a... An industry plant that's been in MarTech for a long, long time. I think he will know the answer to this. But but, yeah, I I think... Like, let's let's be honest. Like, the promise of legacy ABM providers was really, really good. Right? Like, this concept of figure out which accounts are in market, treat them better, they will convert better. It's sort of generic demand gen. Like, that's an amazing promise. And it's still very true. The problem was always the solution. Right? They then said, hey. The way that we'll know that they're in market is intent data. Right? And for for those of you people that are not as nerdy as I am, intent data is like publication, research. Right? Someone goes to Forbes or Wall Street Journal or New York Times, and they happen to read an article about a keyword or a topic or a competitor. And they would work with these publication co ops to basically say, and now we know someone from this account read that thing. I don't know about you guys, but, like, I've not read a Forbes article recently about, like, b to b software or services that I'm going to buy. So I definitely think we over rotated. I don't think it's the way that people buy anymore, and I think we've been... I don't know if snake oil is the right word. I don't wanna get a cease and desist here, Jess. But, like, we've been we've been given a little bit of snake oil. So, yes, I think we've over rotated quite Yeah. I think there's definitely, like, a range of what intent means. Right? And I think it was... There... It was only sold. as, like, if you have intent, that's it. It was never like, there's there's a little bit of intent or there's just interest, right? And then there's, like, there's some version of, like, they're both interested in the solution and they know who you are, right? There's a spectrum, and I think it was treated as, like, a whole... It's just, like, one thing. Amazing. This was amazing. Thank you all for joining. We got a lot of problems with this legacy ABM, you guys. I got a lot of grievances. problems with you people. Got a lot of problems and, definitely check out the report. There's so much more in there, and there's some answers in there that might help you make some make some fixes. Thanks for. coming. Thanks for joining, guys.