Speaker 1: This is the Full Funnel B t B marketing podcast,
Speaker 1: brought to you by full Funnel dot io.
Speaker 2: Let's start. Hey everyone, and welcome to the new episode
Speaker 2: of Full Funnel Life. I'm really sorry for everybody who
Speaker 2: giant has life that we are going late. Will literally
Speaker 2: start in one minute as team just has joined us,
Speaker 2: and anyhow, as promised, we're going to chat today about
Speaker 2: building a global AI native ABM function. We've been working
Speaker 2: with back based team for more than six months, working
Speaker 2: with multiple regions, and during this time we were really
Speaker 2: amazed with the way how they integrated AI and ABM
Speaker 2: process and the way how they are sinking in terms
Speaker 2: of building the global function.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: While we are waiting for a team, I'm just curious, guys,
Speaker 2: who has attended team's session on our full final signed
Speaker 2: in March a few months ago Type plus. Please if
Speaker 2: you have attended on minus. If you haven't, a lot
Speaker 2: of course you have, let us know, guys who has
Speaker 2: attended that session. Well, you're typing just to give some
Speaker 2: background Team Sam I didn't. Okay, I'm just curious because
Speaker 2: there isn't my masking because it's it's just good to
Speaker 2: know how much we should repeat ourselves how much you
Speaker 2: re present from that session, but just maybe to set
Speaker 2: up the expectations. What we want to chat today is
Speaker 2: basically goes through the process of developing the global function,
Speaker 2: sharing the step by step process, explain how the team
Speaker 2: was structured, explained the challenges and how they were tackled,
Speaker 2: and then the last part touched basically the AI system
Speaker 2: that team and his team created and how we have
Speaker 2: integrated this into account based marketing. I see that what
Speaker 2: and team IREDI saw. Gentlemen, Please join me on stage
Speaker 2: and we can kick it off.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and you're waiting for a team to find
Speaker 1: there you go, it.
Speaker 3: Will here you go.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: So we have all three Bold Dad marketing. That was
Speaker 2: a special bonus for everybody who is joined in US Life.
Speaker 3: It's a rare occasion.
Speaker 2: You can listen to the three Bold bidding the marketers
Speaker 2: in one place but jobst site. We have the last
Speaker 2: episode of Full Final Life before the summer break, and
Speaker 2: I'm really excited to bring our long term connection and
Speaker 2: friend Tim Ruden, who is CMO and back base to
Speaker 2: our podcast. So team fest of all, thanks a lot
Speaker 2: for joining us today.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Andre and Flood longtime listener fans,
Speaker 4: so very privi leuch to be here myself.
Speaker 3: Cut good, So I think.
Speaker 2: We don't need to kind of prepare long inter for
Speaker 2: this episode. We've been working together on building a global
Speaker 2: ABI and function, integrating it with a systems right, another
Speaker 2: project that you were building as well in parallel, and
Speaker 2: for I think what we can do, you can just
Speaker 2: make a priefint of what back Base is doing so
Speaker 2: and who is your target audience. I think that would
Speaker 2: be beneficial for everyone, and then we'll dive deeper in IBM.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, no, happy too. So yeah, first of all,
Speaker 5: good to meet you.
Speaker 4: Also, my end steam rot and zero at back Base
Speaker 4: since one and a half years. At this moment in time,
Speaker 4: I've been of a BACKLACEE for twelve years. So it
Speaker 4: gives me the benefit of knowing the markets to customer,
Speaker 4: the technology, the value proposition inside and out. And as
Speaker 4: the let's say first step of the CMO coming in,
Speaker 4: I concluded, I need to really understand the man gien
Speaker 4: properly and I need to bring a vision to life
Speaker 4: that really works for our target audience, which is give
Speaker 4: or take two one of thousand to three thousand banks
Speaker 4: globally mid to larger sized, not the system banks but
Speaker 4: just one click lower, and not the smallest banks because
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have the budget to actually digest the product
Speaker 4: of back base. Basically, with those three thousand accounts, what
Speaker 4: we are offering is a white label AI native banking
Speaker 4: operating system, which is essentially a banking platform stack that
Speaker 4: allows the bank to completely modernize their complete operation. In
Speaker 4: the past, that would be to become omnichannel, have a
Speaker 4: nice mobile application, have a nice application, give it to
Speaker 4: your customers, clients, members, but also to your bank employees.
Speaker 4: They all need to operate in the digital world. And
Speaker 4: you know, in the past five to ten years, there
Speaker 4: was very much to get into a platform setup. And
Speaker 4: as we all know right now with the AI hurricane
Speaker 4: going through the industry, banks also need to embrace appropriately
Speaker 4: those new technologies, those new capabilities, and it's very challenging
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 5: And what is.
Speaker 4: Really cool and interesting is that for most SaaS players
Speaker 4: it's a real problem the fact that AI is now
Speaker 4: there and that you can easily build on your own
Speaker 4: or build certain capabilities and actually dethrown certain applications that
Speaker 4: you have contracts with.
Speaker 5: It goes to the back it's a bit less obvious
Speaker 5: to do that because self.
Speaker 4: Building a complete banking platform or a banking operating system
Speaker 4: is quite a heavy lift because the architectural layering is advanced.
Speaker 4: You have regulatory complaints to go through your running literally
Speaker 4: the bank that runs the country. So it's not something
Speaker 4: that you fight code if I may, nor is it
Speaker 4: something that you self built because it's just way too costly.
Speaker 4: It's going to take you too much time. So as
Speaker 4: back base, we repositioned last year, I say, three or
Speaker 4: four months ago, to be honest, all the way into
Speaker 4: becoming an a native company on how we run ourselves
Speaker 4: internally and being an AI native banking os towards the
Speaker 4: industry as a first mover, so as a category leader
Speaker 4: of the previous category, we moved all the way onto
Speaker 4: the new one, which is quite bold. I think that
Speaker 4: also as a testament to the work we've been doing.
Speaker 4: It together, bold not bald, to go and completely transform
Speaker 4: the way we think about our marketing function and how
Speaker 4: it collaborates with sales who, in the context of backpase
Speaker 4: are of course selling a strategic piece of software that
Speaker 4: runs the complete banking operation.
Speaker 5: So that is not a point.
Speaker 4: Sell it is a platform cell, but it's also a
Speaker 4: highly enterprised, high ACV long sales cycle cell which will
Speaker 4: take around one to two years on average. So that
Speaker 4: is not something that works with the typical high volume
Speaker 4: SaaS type of playbooks. If anything, it's relationship building, it's
Speaker 4: being very aware and while creating a lot of awareness
Speaker 4: all the time, a lot of thought leadership. So in
Speaker 4: a way, it lends itself perfectly fine for what these
Speaker 4: fine gentlemen wrote down in the book, which is what
Speaker 4: I woke up to one and a half years ago
Speaker 4: and have been implementing ever since.
Speaker 3: That's an awesome introduction.
Speaker 1: I think also the way that you are describing your ICP,
Speaker 1: we have three thousand banks very precisely the bucket or
Speaker 1: the segment that you're targeting. I think this is a
Speaker 1: perfect example of somebody of a company that needs to
Speaker 1: implement a count based marketing. But I think it would
Speaker 1: be interesting for the audience or context to understand the organization,
Speaker 1: the marketing team, or the function how it's organized, because
Speaker 1: it is not your standard let's say small to medium
Speaker 1: SaaS company with one marketing department. You have different regions,
Speaker 1: you have different functions within marketing and as you're kind
Speaker 1: of like letting us know how that structure, like, what
Speaker 1: is the role of ABM. Obviously giving your market, giving
Speaker 1: your ICP, given the long sale cycles, complexity and all that,
Speaker 1: it's clear that it's a good fit.
Speaker 5: But how does it.
Speaker 1: Fit within your organization? How would you position it as
Speaker 1: the roll of ABM for pipe base.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so classically ABM is like a team or a
Speaker 4: function that runs a law side all of the other
Speaker 4: parts of marketing. And I figured out that that's not
Speaker 4: very much what you would like to be doing. Why
Speaker 4: in emotion that we are running everything is ABM. Literally
Speaker 4: from start to finish, we just do the work for
Speaker 4: the accounts that we have in front of us. That's
Speaker 4: three thousand that I mentioned. They're not all in market,
Speaker 4: they're not all buying, but they better be aware of you.
Speaker 4: They need to have a view on your brands, your thought, leadership,
Speaker 4: your point of view, what have you. So, very directly,
Speaker 4: whatever you organize for is what you show up with, right,
Speaker 4: That's one of the typical statements in business. You get
Speaker 4: what you organize for. So when I took over one
Speaker 4: and a half years ago, we had these little siloed
Speaker 4: teams that were each doing their own thing, having their
Speaker 4: own KPI and having their own opinion on how marketing
Speaker 4: should be run or not. There's also some infighting happening,
Speaker 4: of course, because the crafts are not really fully aligned.
Speaker 5: Fast forward to today and I'm actually collapsing.
Speaker 4: I have already collapsed most of these functions into running
Speaker 4: as one like really following the full funnel marketing methodology,
Speaker 4: but even more so bringing everyone close to the accounts
Speaker 4: like full stop. There's no other entity that matters in
Speaker 4: the organization that I'm running, but also the engine that
Speaker 4: I'm running, which is literally an engine, It's a system
Speaker 4: that runs. The only currency that matters is are you
Speaker 4: attacking the right accounts with the right let's say, set
Speaker 4: of programs following the philosophy that we believe in to
Speaker 4: pull through eventually to get a conversation and once that
Speaker 4: conversation happens the highest possible in the organization of the bank,
Speaker 4: are we able to capture a potential qualified opportunity as
Speaker 4: or no? And everyone has the same KPI in that sense,
Speaker 4: so it's not brand versus content versus digital versus the field,
Speaker 4: who all have a little piece to play in account
Speaker 4: based marketing.
Speaker 5: It's all of them working in.
Speaker 4: The same engine against the same accounts, having the same
Speaker 4: things to celebrate, which also relates to how we organize
Speaker 4: ourselves against the sellers. We're organized by regions. We have
Speaker 4: six major territories globally. They all have a sales leader,
Speaker 4: have multiple aees. For all of those, we have one
Speaker 4: and maximum two ABM managers that run the patch and
Speaker 4: they're basically the marketing aes and they are as passionate
Speaker 4: about the pipeline as the sellers. And that's really nice
Speaker 4: to see because the moment that that click happens, I
Speaker 4: don't get escalation calls anymore, as in, hey, your marketing
Speaker 4: team doesn't understand what they need to be doing, or
Speaker 4: miss aligned or what have you.
Speaker 5: I get different calls. I get celebrations.
Speaker 4: I get hey, you really need to look after the
Speaker 4: work that this person did, because it's incredible what they
Speaker 4: pulled off. We've seen a lot of these shifts over
Speaker 4: the past one and a half years just by organizing
Speaker 4: the team towards the currency that matters, which is the accounts,
Speaker 4: and to move very far away of global campaigning and
Speaker 4: universal campaigning and let's just have an awareness layer on.
Speaker 4: That is how we started full transparency, but very soon
Speaker 4: after I figured out that that is not how I buy,
Speaker 4: That is not how I'm even being influenced, being a
Speaker 4: clear target to typical marketing platforms that want to sell
Speaker 4: their licenses to me.
Speaker 5: Right, So fast forward to today. Because of the.
Speaker 4: Advent of AI, and because we were able to build
Speaker 4: our internal go to market operating system, which is literally,
Speaker 4: you know, a complete AI native operating application, I'm able
Speaker 4: to run campaigns at the level of granularity that was
Speaker 4: not even possible two years ago. So division, if you
Speaker 4: guys have had already for ages with full funnel, I
Speaker 4: think it only can now fully get to fruition because.
Speaker 5: The tech allows us to do it.
Speaker 4: I can run fifty odd ICP cluster campaigns against my
Speaker 4: thirty against my three thousand accounts, hitting run thirty thousand
Speaker 4: executives exactly in the sport that matters to them, to
Speaker 4: warm them up, and yeah, like it or not, I
Speaker 4: don't need an army of people to do that every day.
Speaker 4: On the contrary, I think that's massive leverage. Of course,
Speaker 4: the people I do have, they're allocated to other activities
Speaker 4: which are even more strategic and even more human focused.
Speaker 4: So I think what I'm trying to say it's a
Speaker 4: bit of a long win an answer perhaps, but.
Speaker 5: The lines have been blurred consistently this year. I don't
Speaker 5: even gar.
Speaker 4: As much anymore which actual team or craft you are
Speaker 4: part of. You're working in the same engine, and it's
Speaker 4: more about how do we then organize against where's the
Speaker 4: most traction in the market, and how do we optimize
Speaker 4: that allocation so it's not under allocated and hence underperformance.
Speaker 4: I think that's the biggest switch that I've seen over
Speaker 4: the past few months now that with this methodology, with
Speaker 4: the setup, with implementing AI to actually grow, not to
Speaker 4: replace and reduce headcounts, you somehow build a sniper shooter.
Speaker 5: Yeah at skill.
Speaker 2: So basically touch on the last anthems that you mentioned.
Speaker 2: You didn't announce how I replaced my sixth regional team,
Speaker 2: so as AI department's.
Speaker 5: No, I replaced work.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I learned very very
Speaker 4: early from my back end CTO is you have to
Speaker 4: take the work out, and the work is the silly
Speaker 4: work where you're manually going through LinkedIn feeds or doing
Speaker 4: your own Google research to get a few all on
Speaker 4: account by now we all know that that is not
Speaker 4: smart where to spend your time. We also now all
Speaker 4: know where to go to actually get a decent piece
Speaker 4: of research from your favorite choice of GPT. I think
Speaker 4: the next step is to actually have full processes running
Speaker 4: that do this all the time, twenty for seven in
Speaker 4: an economical way.
Speaker 5: You don't want to you know, overspend.
Speaker 4: There either, But that's the next step where you see
Speaker 4: these full agentic workflows that actually make you as the
Speaker 4: market heer, the ABM manager, the content manager, the digital manager.
Speaker 4: It will make you supercharged and it forces you to
Speaker 4: become even more strategic. So for some of it might
Speaker 4: be a little bit daunting or challenging, and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden you needything broader in your role and the
Speaker 4: remit that you have.
Speaker 5: I think it's the best thing that can happen to
Speaker 5: marketers to be honest strategic.
Speaker 2: Obviously, abastrall and some of the kind of overhyped let's
Speaker 2: say concepts that were promoted on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4: As all know, right, yeah, but if we if we
Speaker 4: would believe LinkedIn on the day, we would all not
Speaker 4: have a job anymore, which fortunately is not not the case.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course you mentioned you. In every region you
Speaker 2: have regional VP of sales and we've we've been chatting
Speaker 2: with dozens of B two b cmos who wanted to
Speaker 2: implement account based marketing in any format right, but quite
Speaker 2: often then the desire of the main goal is to
Speaker 2: set up the cross functional collaboration with sales, right, and
Speaker 2: what we have heard that they always faced problems was
Speaker 2: getting internal buy in and problems were setting up this
Speaker 2: necessary cross functional collaboration. So what I would love to
Speaker 2: ask you how did you handle it? And have you
Speaker 2: faced any resistance from the regional sales leader center fis again,
Speaker 2: how did you tackle it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, it is not easy, and it's also not
Speaker 4: that weird like finished, and we have the perfect you know,
Speaker 4: complete setup running where I do see the success already
Speaker 4: or we're getting very close to a tipping points where
Speaker 4: more than half is running in that.
Speaker 5: New complete philosophy.
Speaker 4: I think at the end of the day, you need
Speaker 4: to show results and you cannot be the marketing leader
Speaker 4: or the market here for that matter, in a region
Speaker 4: that just again ponies up a new framework and a
Speaker 4: new slide deck with a new inspiring talk on how
Speaker 4: we're not going to work and change, you know, the
Speaker 4: pipeline impact one. It has to start top down, so
Speaker 4: it's literally CMO and CRO day together conclude we are
Speaker 4: together collectively going to change the way we go to market.
Speaker 5: That is not enough with step two.
Speaker 4: You need an operational layer that drives discipline, cadence, clarity
Speaker 4: and accountability.
Speaker 5: Because even with the CMO and RO concluding yes.
Speaker 4: We're going to do this, or in a smaller firm
Speaker 4: maybe it's the founder or the market leader on their
Speaker 4: own and they run the full patch, you still need
Speaker 4: to day to day drive it home. And that literally
Speaker 4: goes to tracking level, like every week, have you put
Speaker 4: in the work to go through all of these different
Speaker 4: steps to do the depth, to follow the flow to
Speaker 4: eventually get high quality outputs and just make impact. And thirdly,
Speaker 4: are you measuring it appropriately? Which clearly full Funnel has
Speaker 4: a very nice view on how to measure it practically,
Speaker 4: very down to earth. Did we raise awareness yes, no,
Speaker 4: very simple KPIs. Did we get into dialogue with them
Speaker 4: and did we expect insights that whether we could.
Speaker 5: Pursue an opportunity there? Yes? Now, Thirdly, did we get
Speaker 5: a sales conversation eventually?
Speaker 4: Did it materialize into pipeline, did a pipeline qualify get
Speaker 4: into revenue and so forth. There's not rocket science, and
Speaker 4: that's the beauty of the work we've been doing together.
Speaker 5: And also I really like the latest book that you released.
Speaker 4: It's just putting to life the simplicity of the work
Speaker 4: that needs to happen.
Speaker 5: But that's not the real challenge.
Speaker 4: The real challenge is change management, removing old habits, finding
Speaker 4: sales leaders that are equally bought in to change the game,
Speaker 4: to change the way they work and their ease, which
Speaker 4: is not a given because they have their wat they've
Speaker 4: been successful in working you know, the other way, or
Speaker 4: to work the classic way, very heavy ADM or no,
Speaker 4: I don't need ABM. I know all of the people
Speaker 4: in my accounts.
Speaker 5: You know. It's not multy for that.
Speaker 4: Ain't not raising the wardeness in the accounts that you
Speaker 4: don't know. And if you may started all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: it's marketing. So I think there's a lot of credibility
Speaker 4: to be gained by just doing the hard work, like
Speaker 4: literally getting in there. And yeah, I'm not sure if
Speaker 4: it's helpful for this conversation, but I think it was
Speaker 4: you Andrew writing here in the book as a note
Speaker 4: to me, that is quite unique that you have an
Speaker 4: operator that can get into the detail. I think that's
Speaker 4: the main thing as a CEMO to walk away with.
Speaker 4: If you are not in the detail and you don't
Speaker 4: understand how the operation really really works, you're not going
Speaker 4: to get there. You're also not going to be able
Speaker 4: to eventually really move the needle and get to that
Speaker 4: tipping point where they're actually knocking on your door.
Speaker 5: My team also wants to work in a new way.
Speaker 4: Can we please be part of the pilot. The moment
Speaker 4: you get those phone calls, you can start, you know,
Speaker 4: doing an early celebration.
Speaker 5: You're still not there, but it's a good signal.
Speaker 1: We got a question from an audience, which is better relevant.
Speaker 1: I think how were we able to bring the teams together?
Speaker 4: Yeah, to that point, my say, it's myself and the
Speaker 4: CRO being fully on the same page. Then bringing it
Speaker 4: to the operational leader, which is our VP Customer Operations
Speaker 4: called revops. It's the same function here in back base,
Speaker 4: and that lady Joanna is her name. She completely internalized
Speaker 4: how we would like to work. Also added a field
Speaker 4: of the flavors that are specific to back base, and
Speaker 4: then drove the roll out in very high granular detail
Speaker 4: towards all the different regions, all the different territories, and
Speaker 4: all the different accounts with the aes. That translates them
Speaker 4: into reports which have a cadence which are all looking
Speaker 4: the same, which then results into meetings which are happening
Speaker 4: on the cadence they are ran all the same. So
Speaker 4: eventually you get a homogeneous picture where we can literally
Speaker 4: compare notes of the forty aes that we have, of
Speaker 4: the one hundred ABM campaigns that we are running. If
Speaker 4: you score all all of them, where do we see
Speaker 4: the gaps? And is that either a team setup, is
Speaker 4: it maybe a cultural challenge? Is it because we didn't
Speaker 4: properly enable them? We can literally diagnose across all these
Speaker 4: little swim lanes for me in AE is a swim
Speaker 4: lane of pipeline.
Speaker 5: Where is the gap?
Speaker 4: And right now, because we were able to actually build
Speaker 4: that systemically into our own go to market OS, which
Speaker 4: is between app you can go to, we could just
Speaker 4: analyze completely how the market is opening up to us,
Speaker 4: is getting into dialogue and is or is it not?
Speaker 4: Let's also be honest, materializing into pipeline. So getting together
Speaker 4: with the one that runs or the individual that runs
Speaker 4: the actual operation day to day and needs to deliver
Speaker 4: pipeline insight to me with key, so basically convincing her
Speaker 4: and bringing her into the fold. And also, you know
Speaker 4: there are some compromises how your operations team wants to
Speaker 4: look at the business, get as close to the view
Speaker 4: as possible. And when you look at the same picture
Speaker 4: all day long, both both ends of the spectrum, sales
Speaker 4: and marketing and partners, Yeah, you start delivering results together.
Speaker 4: And then lastly, I think the celebration part is not
Speaker 4: to be underestimated. I think the moment you start doing ABM, well,
Speaker 4: you get these surprises in your inbox, like we're doing
Speaker 4: love letters at a pretty decent skill, like ten to
Speaker 4: twenty per week, but they're well prepared, well research, really
Speaker 4: targeted the right icps, and you know, they go out
Speaker 4: there with the center profiles. I think around thirty to
Speaker 4: forty percent converts into a conversation with a set executive
Speaker 4: from that account, which is clearly a target account.
Speaker 5: That's an insane number.
Speaker 4: And people will tell each other like the love letter worked,
Speaker 4: and they're all amazed that the love letter worked, with
Speaker 4: the risk that they think that love letters is what
Speaker 4: full funnel marketing is, which is it's one of the
Speaker 4: many things.
Speaker 5: To get in there.
Speaker 4: But basically the getting the breakthrough moments and getting the
Speaker 4: aha that is where you start getting that fire going
Speaker 4: through the organization and the still it needs meticulous day
Speaker 4: to day management and looking after to continuously move the
Speaker 4: org in this direction.
Speaker 5: Because old habits they die very, very hard.
Speaker 1: Especially when there is whatever reason why people feel pressure,
Speaker 1: things might not work as they expect, etc. People tend
Speaker 1: to revert to their own habits. It's where we feel safe.
Speaker 1: And I think also has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: what you said. It has to do with the incentives,
Speaker 1: how we measure things. Do we have the same view
Speaker 1: on the process and the results and the motion and
Speaker 1: how the accounts are actually going through our motion and pipeline.
Speaker 1: I think you did a lot of things right and
Speaker 1: you started talking about it, and it's something that I
Speaker 1: would like to zoom into because you mentioned pilots and
Speaker 1: you mentioned also you know, starting from the people who
Speaker 1: you know in specific region and starting with people who
Speaker 1: might be might become your change champions that might actually
Speaker 1: spread the world around inside of the organization. And I
Speaker 1: remember we actually had quite a long back and forth
Speaker 1: between us about Okay, should we do the pilot? Should
Speaker 1: we not do the pilot? Because you were definitely already
Speaker 1: doing ABM. You had an internal ABM star who was
Speaker 1: just amazing at her work and the results that she
Speaker 1: was able to achieve, and yet we decided to take
Speaker 1: a step back. I remember you said something like, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that we're running this properly
Speaker 1: before scaling it across the whole organization. And we decided,
Speaker 1: what was it about eight months ago or something like
Speaker 1: that to actually implement the first pilot. And I think
Speaker 1: it's maybe interesting for the folks who are listening or
Speaker 1: live or later to bre break it down for us,
Speaker 1: like how did you define how did you decide which
Speaker 1: region to pick? How did you define the pilots team?
Speaker 1: How did you fund that pilot?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: How should we think about setting up a pilot in
Speaker 1: as concrete way as possible?
Speaker 4: Yeah, for what it's worth, the approach that I took
Speaker 4: was how do you optimize it for the highest probability
Speaker 4: of success?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: So the story that you're talking about, she would be
Speaker 4: in charge of that pilot.
Speaker 5: To begin with, because you know, the type of talent.
Speaker 4: That you work with that will pull through, will unblock it,
Speaker 4: will give you the right phone, call it the right
Speaker 4: moment in time to make progress.
Speaker 5: So I think that's a key decision.
Speaker 4: Who's actually the one that's going to wake up every
Speaker 4: day to drive it home and does not rest until
Speaker 4: it's driven home and successful.
Speaker 5: It's critical Number two.
Speaker 4: You have to put your bet on the region where
Speaker 4: you know the right talent is there to actually embrace
Speaker 4: it fast, and then there will also be the amplifier
Speaker 4: if indeed it succeeds, which you're practically banking on, right,
Speaker 4: I guess. Thirdly, you want to see a few proven
Speaker 4: people that know what they're doing, be it on the
Speaker 4: digital side, the content side, the ABM side, and similarly
Speaker 4: on the sales side, like who's the BDM and THEAE
Speaker 4: that will be in the little pot that's going to
Speaker 4: prove the point that are changed prone they're aware that
Speaker 4: the old motion is not maybe the best thing and
Speaker 4: that there's another alternative to go for which actually might
Speaker 4: make them way more successful, although initially the investment.
Speaker 5: Is going to be higher.
Speaker 4: So if you just go through that flow and you
Speaker 4: literally ask the right people, Hey, who should we bring
Speaker 4: into the team because they know they're operating on the
Speaker 4: ground each and every day. I think, in five minutes,
Speaker 4: share the right people to work with, they're all going
Speaker 4: to be fired up.
Speaker 5: Offer a fifteen minutes call.
Speaker 4: You send them one of these webinars as an example,
Speaker 4: or one of the courses, and a few of the examples,
Speaker 4: and you start kicking out the work, just getting into it.
Speaker 4: And what I noticed immediately was that none of them
Speaker 4: was used such a good structure and rhythm to begin with.
Speaker 4: That really sets the group free to do their best work.
Speaker 4: I think it's also more lightweight than they expected. Of course,
Speaker 4: the first lift is hard because all these new things.
Speaker 4: You need to fill out a few documents initially and
Speaker 4: what have you. But then it's just logical. It becomes
Speaker 4: all very logical if you apply the mechanic properly, and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden you get the right result, which
Speaker 4: also is a bit of a surprise initially, but if
Speaker 4: you go through the full flow it makes a lot
Speaker 4: of sense. You optimize the probability that you're going to
Speaker 4: get a return, and the moment that the puzzle in
Speaker 4: the formula starts clicking, you're actually done. Because they will continue,
Speaker 4: you keep monitoring it and what have you. But that's
Speaker 4: basically the deciding factor that I put in the way
Speaker 4: to fund it is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very specific to the context.
Speaker 4: Had a big change budget last year because I needed
Speaker 4: to transform the complete org.
Speaker 5: And I made sure to.
Speaker 4: Let's say, backload a serious amount of funding in my
Speaker 4: complete budget delocation so that I could make really bold moves.
Speaker 4: And that was on the ABM side, that was on
Speaker 4: the brand side, that was on the digital side, had
Speaker 4: to make a few very big changes and moves.
Speaker 5: And I think my trick so far for what it's worth.
Speaker 4: Because it's not that decades as being a CMO and
Speaker 4: call the people that know best and just either abstract
Speaker 4: and extract the right ideas and inspiration and take it
Speaker 4: forward or put them with your team for a while
Speaker 4: and see how fast they can change your work. The
Speaker 4: leverage for those investments that you're making is at least
Speaker 4: in the way I've seen it so far.
Speaker 5: Second to none.
Speaker 2: Makes perfect sense and maybe a practical question what expectations
Speaker 2: did you set up for the regional leadership and the team,
Speaker 2: and also what were the results.
Speaker 3: Of the pilot.
Speaker 2: So I think there's one part for this expectations versus results.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's one part before it. One part before it
Speaker 4: also towards my regional leaders.
Speaker 5: Why change, why now? And why this methodology right?
Speaker 4: Because otherwise you can push it through the team, and
Speaker 4: you can you know, allocate you guys as a full
Speaker 4: funnel marketing consultant and just push it through force function.
Speaker 4: I think that's been the biggest challenge to actually convince
Speaker 4: people of a different way of working. And the biggest
Speaker 4: thing I was fighting on the day alot was yeah,
Speaker 4: but we're already doing this, it's just a little bit different. Yes,
Speaker 4: you know we're doing this. No, you're not really doing this.
Speaker 4: By the way, you can only make this statement if
Speaker 4: you went through the full course and then you really
Speaker 4: benchmark your program, and then you can tell me are
Speaker 4: you fully doing this or just parts of it and
Speaker 4: you follow the happy flow of thinking that you are.
Speaker 4: So that was the thing I was fighting, So I
Speaker 4: had to force function it through. I basically just signed
Speaker 4: the guys up set to the team. This is the pilot.
Speaker 4: You have to go now and here are the expectations.
Speaker 4: What I did, and maybe that's even not the best advice.
Speaker 4: I didn't for se put a target on it. The
Speaker 4: only target I put on it is I want you
Speaker 4: to follow the full flow, and I want you to
Speaker 4: report back every other week, and I want to see
Speaker 4: the signal that this is meaningful to continue investing in.
Speaker 4: So eventually you get qualified meeting to target accounts, Eventually
Speaker 4: you get pipeline, and eventually you can say, hey, this
Speaker 4: is a nice benchmark number I'm going to put on
Speaker 4: the next pilot. So I didn't inflate the numbers or
Speaker 4: the expectations by saying, hey, I need ten million out
Speaker 4: of this pilot or one million or two opportunities.
Speaker 5: Who am I to to tell you what it should be.
Speaker 4: I have no idea, But my hypothesis was that this
Speaker 4: way of working was going to be meaningful. So not
Speaker 4: putting the pressure on the team I believe was helpful
Speaker 4: because they were the right people, on the right talent,
Speaker 4: in the right DNA and they would go for it.
Speaker 5: And that's exactly what happened. So they delivered pipeline.
Speaker 4: Sorry, on I don't have the number top of mind,
Speaker 4: but it's been celebrated. It's been a good number in
Speaker 4: terms of breaking into accounts, getting dialogues and actually leading
Speaker 4: to first of all, just pipeline and eventually qualified pipeline,
Speaker 4: which has resulted now in this is the way we
Speaker 4: work full stop, including my CEO making the full goal
Speaker 4: or just supporting the goals that I'm pushing. How fast
Speaker 4: can all of my teams, all of my regions, all
Speaker 4: of our territories work this way, report this way, and
Speaker 4: basically play the game this way? How do we scale
Speaker 4: that most challenging question in the universe of a.
Speaker 6: Am I really like it that you were thinking about
Speaker 6: as well, like, Okay, the team has to do the
Speaker 6: right things that the team can do.
Speaker 1: Let me put it differently, Let the team focus on
Speaker 1: what they can control, right, And I think you did
Speaker 1: that really well. And I do remember the first that
Speaker 1: we ran was in the United States and it's a
Speaker 1: very well known larger European brand still obviously, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to the financial sector, the United States being
Speaker 1: what they are and the banks being there larger, having
Speaker 1: to create a credibility, having to create awareness with those
Speaker 1: target accounts, and I know, like when we started having
Speaker 1: first conversations, you know, with huge names, you know, and
Speaker 1: just imagine the biggest banks. I don't want to name
Speaker 1: the names, but it will be those and I remember
Speaker 1: how much we have celebrated that, And that's why I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you because I know that a lot
Speaker 1: of teams are struggling with this. A lot of teams
Speaker 1: are struggling with and you were talking about at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know, going from kind of broad awareness creation to
Speaker 1: you know, what what we need to do is we
Speaker 1: have three thousand banks and then in the United States
Speaker 1: have these banks and actually, you know what, we are
Speaker 1: going to focus on whatever specific segment, banking segment. So
Speaker 1: we are like narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. We're talking
Speaker 1: about large organizations, you know, very conservative industry. You're talking
Speaker 1: about a relatively new brand for them. So what do
Speaker 1: you think kind of the best practicers the lessons learned
Speaker 1: in terms of actually creating strategic sorry awareness with those
Speaker 1: senior buyers in those strategic accounts that you're after, not
Speaker 1: just let's say global brand awareness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is.
Speaker 4: Such a tough cookie to crack at this level for
Speaker 4: the reason that many answers could work. So you have
Speaker 4: to make a bit of a judgment on what do
Speaker 4: I personally believe will break through and is also still fundable, right,
Speaker 4: and you can also just put all these accounts in
Speaker 4: whatever campaigns and funded for millions. But that's something you
Speaker 4: have to optimize for. So where I am today and
Speaker 4: just hearing it transparenting with the group here, I don't
Speaker 4: really believe in global segment campaigns anymore. And if you
Speaker 4: think about the context and BA base, we service retail banks,
Speaker 4: small medium business banks, commercial banks, private banks, and wealth managers.
Speaker 4: That's five different types of institutions. Whereas one brand can
Speaker 4: have all five of these lines of business.
Speaker 5: So the three.
Speaker 4: Thousand you could on average do multiply them by three
Speaker 4: or four, so there's run ten thousand doors through which
Speaker 4: we can enter with a part of the value proposition.
Speaker 5: Now where we started in the let's say last year,
Speaker 5: was to.
Speaker 4: Have these segment campaigns globally running and allocate those accounts
Speaker 4: based on the segments where they are active, which means,
Speaker 4: if you are Avid m Row, you service all lines
Speaker 4: of business, you're actually part of all the campaigns, and
Speaker 4: all the senior buyers and the VP levels and director
Speaker 4: levels now included, will be exposed to all of those
Speaker 4: campaigns for all these lines of business.
Speaker 5: Quite nice to get started because it's the fastest way.
Speaker 4: However, it is the proximity to the actual account and
Speaker 4: the actual Persona's going to see your auding is not great.
Speaker 5: It's actually it's just not great full stop. So where
Speaker 5: we're moving right now, which I'm really excited about.
Speaker 4: And we'd love to even demo it in the future
Speaker 4: once I get it running. I'm a firm believer that
Speaker 4: within one institution, I have ICP clusters itself. So within
Speaker 4: one bank, there's multiple ICP clusters where I can knock
Speaker 4: on a door and have a different entry or different wedge.
Speaker 4: There's the private banking wedge where they have a relationship
Speaker 4: manager problem to fix and it's actually a funded initiative.
Speaker 4: Maybe through the retail door, there's a conversational banking investment
Speaker 4: that they're looking to make. I can also enter through
Speaker 4: that door. But if those executives are seeing just some
Speaker 4: random campaigns across all the different segments of that base,
Speaker 4: they have no idea that they should pick up the phone.
Speaker 4: So we're now in the middle of an exercise where
Speaker 4: we do very high quality ICP scoring practically twenty four
Speaker 4: to seven. Then we do very the account research on
Speaker 4: all of our accounts where we know they should actually
Speaker 4: be in dialogue with backbase all the time. Based on that,
Speaker 4: I'm able to build out a whole cluster of icps.
Speaker 4: So if ICP cluster buckets and there's dozens like twenty
Speaker 4: or twenty five, I can then allocate titles to those buckets,
Speaker 4: so not accounts, titles, and one account can be in
Speaker 4: multiple buckets. But because it is title driven, all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, the individual, let's say CFO in the bank
Speaker 4: in amy Emro is just getting the operational excellence ICP
Speaker 4: cluster campaign and we're warming up that individual just from
Speaker 4: that angle, and then eventually if that exits, goes to
Speaker 4: future pipeline.
Speaker 5: Answer forth, So what is my current belief?
Speaker 4: Yes, I will have a global brand awareness layer just
Speaker 4: for reaching engagement and mental availability, big friend of a
Speaker 4: Byron shark.
Speaker 5: But that's where it ends.
Speaker 4: The rest is ICP clusters, and that's how I warm
Speaker 4: up all the three thousand accounts and all the I
Speaker 4: think thirty forty fifty thousand contacts that you would like
Speaker 4: to reach in a very granular and suitable way. Primary
Speaker 4: channel being linked in we target in Google thated, what
Speaker 4: have you to raise the awareness and indeed, once it
Speaker 4: access the bucket, we go the future pipeline and other
Speaker 4: sequences start. That's my current hypothesis on how I can,
Speaker 4: in the context of BA base scale this out. And yes,
Speaker 4: this is only possible if you properly run this with
Speaker 4: an AI native setup, which is exactly what we've been
Speaker 4: able to break through into in the past few months.
Speaker 4: So it gets us to dozens of ICP cluster campaigns
Speaker 4: that continuously move accounts and personas across as we see
Speaker 4: fit for what is happening outside into the account.
Speaker 2: And tom Mark Granul level level. If that assigns on that,
Speaker 2: you would add let's say the ABM team saw market
Speaker 2: and let's say ABM leaders you mentioned and sells teams.
Speaker 3: Are there any specific.
Speaker 2: Tactics so that that happened and let's say on one
Speaker 2: of few or one to one level.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so one of the.
Speaker 4: So it sounds a bit hard, but what really works
Speaker 4: with getting into the CXO level is just play into
Speaker 4: the ego of individuals. The majority is looking to build
Speaker 4: their own brand or to be exposed. In banking, you
Speaker 4: don't typically get exposed as the executive because you're you're
Speaker 4: a bank.
Speaker 5: You can't really go out there.
Speaker 4: So we essentially offer the platform for them to look
Speaker 4: incredible just out there, get the exposure and distribution because
Speaker 4: we have quite some reach, and you're next to this
Speaker 4: relatively hip brand in the banking space, not fintech, perche
Speaker 4: but more big fintech, more you know, trustworthy, credible. So
Speaker 4: our podcast program has with a massive success just getting
Speaker 4: entry by just having c xos in the conversation and
Speaker 4: I personally the host, so that means I meet.
Speaker 5: The CEOs all the time.
Speaker 4: They're in my show, and we have a dialogue like
Speaker 4: we have here, and by surprise, it's always with a
Speaker 4: target account, right. That's the strategy, very high leverage, very
Speaker 4: little investment. The second one that to me really stands
Speaker 4: out is just classic events, like if you know who
Speaker 4: you need to meet, then I also know where these
Speaker 4: people are, where they are speaking, or where they are
Speaker 4: showing up to a physical setting, and we make sure
Speaker 4: it to also be there, and there's a whole preflow
Speaker 4: to make sure that we have a meeting with them
Speaker 4: or that we have a certain that's the opportunity to
Speaker 4: connect with them appropriately, and then following that there's follow up.
Speaker 5: The third one I would like.
Speaker 4: To share is a little bit more recent, there's a
Speaker 4: program we run which is called volt which is not
Speaker 4: back based branded, but it's a community for c exos
Speaker 4: in banking which has chapters. The first chapter is Women
Speaker 4: in Banking, where the opportunity there is to actually connect
Speaker 4: them globally and just create a safe space for them
Speaker 4: to connect, compare notes, learn from each other and what
Speaker 4: have you. And at this moment in time, the program
Speaker 4: only runs for three months. We have thirty eight cxos
Speaker 4: female cxos that are in the seat, that are in
Speaker 4: our let's say target account the base who we have
Speaker 4: access to, and they're actually grateful for us connecting them
Speaker 4: and they have these circles where.
Speaker 5: They can communicate and basically have dialogues all the time.
Speaker 5: So in a way, I'm building communities in.
Speaker 4: A very respectful and thought thoughtful way to just connect
Speaker 4: people with people, which is not a given these days anymore.
Speaker 4: So if you listen closely, I'm not as much on
Speaker 4: the thought leadership bumping content and doing a lot of
Speaker 4: AI slob on the channels. Yes, we have a content
Speaker 4: strategy that engine is massively important to just score in
Speaker 4: the LMS appropriately, but to get into the door and
Speaker 4: get the conversation in the future Pipeline bucket, it's very
Speaker 4: little tactics to just get the yes, I'm happy to
Speaker 4: do a podcast with you guys, or sure, I'll show
Speaker 4: up for the webinar without any prep thirty minutes just
Speaker 4: to have the dialogue and be exposed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can go home.
Speaker 4: But there's there's there's many of these tactics that, let's
Speaker 4: say I had to open up the hearts and minds
Speaker 4: of my team to understand that that's actually more than sufficient.
Speaker 5: To just get entry. There's people's business. In this case.
Speaker 2: I have an interesting full up question from MASA. Out
Speaker 2: of three day accounts rather all than that runaware and
Speaker 2: you had to engage them. You had accounts in Future
Speaker 2: Pipeline and actor focus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, there's already a natural distribution, right, So the
Speaker 4: moment you would implement it and you score your accounts,
Speaker 4: you basically see them appear in the buckets. Your actual
Speaker 4: pipeline is already all the way to the right, and
Speaker 4: most likely you're not even activating as much anymore on
Speaker 4: top unless you need to multi thread. So there are
Speaker 4: definitely some some moving there. I would say that the
Speaker 4: if you look at just the target accounts, so the
Speaker 4: earmarked accounts within the three thousand that we need to
Speaker 4: work against, that's the one that I care about most,
Speaker 4: to raise awareness, to bring them into dialogue and eventually
Speaker 4: into pipeline. When we started the initiative a to measure it,
Speaker 4: for which we build a complete signal engine. That's maybe
Speaker 4: for another moment, guys, but we basically saw that around
Speaker 4: thirty percent was either already in dialogue with us or
Speaker 4: in pipeline, and the remaining let's.
Speaker 5: Say sixty to seventy percent was indeed unaware.
Speaker 4: And those are the ones that you are investing all
Speaker 4: that let's say campaigning and awareness building against to get
Speaker 4: them in happy to report it.
Speaker 5: Right now, that number is looking very different.
Speaker 4: So around sixty to seventy percent is now aware, is
Speaker 4: showing first signal, and or is highly engaged. There's still
Speaker 4: twenty thirty percent completely cold. There's also some markets where, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, the digital strategies just don't function, so you
Speaker 4: also can't measure them. So they need to get into
Speaker 4: physical events and there's a bit of data entry and
Speaker 4: then you see it, let's say pop up over time.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I would say the starting position was sixty
Speaker 4: seventy percent was pretty coold, which you don't need to
Speaker 4: warm up and basically get into the next stage.
Speaker 1: You know what I find fascinating about what you just
Speaker 1: shared with us. We spoke about awareness and all the tactics,
Speaker 1: just like almost all of them, were relationship based. They
Speaker 1: were based on creating a community, creating a conversation peer
Speaker 1: to peer, or you being one of the executives. I
Speaker 1: know that your CEO is also participating in a lot
Speaker 1: of those executive conversations. Yeah, I know that you also
Speaker 1: have people subject matter experts who are out there, They're
Speaker 1: sharing their insights, they're educating, but also having these relationships.
Speaker 1: So in the age of AIRE, we're seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of technics for a company that is as advanced as you.
Speaker 1: With AI, we're still talking a lot about relationships. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the exit, that's an excit. I
Speaker 1: think that is actually what you said, what you said
Speaker 1: as well yourself, it's something that we all need right now.
Speaker 1: I think we would be remiss not to talk about
Speaker 1: AI because you mentioned several times. You just mentioned the
Speaker 1: signal engine, you mentioned uh, you know, research mentioned a
Speaker 1: number of processes that are very important for running a
Speaker 1: BM for the operational running of it, scoring, understanding where
Speaker 1: your accounts are collecting all these data, many different processes.
Speaker 1: So could you break it down for us how your
Speaker 1: engine looks like and what are the major processes where
Speaker 1: you saw the biggest bank for your buck in terms
Speaker 1: of AI investment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so happy to share a few thoughts and also
Speaker 4: experiences so to where we are today.
Speaker 5: So last year.
Speaker 4: Around July, we were coming up with the renewal of
Speaker 4: the ABM platform that we had six cents or demand base,
Speaker 4: it actually doesn't matter which one it was. And I realized, like,
Speaker 4: I'm not getting the value out of that particular platform
Speaker 4: because it's lack folks, it's key, we're driven.
Speaker 5: I have no idea what's behind it.
Speaker 4: Of course you do, but like it's very hard to
Speaker 4: defend the value. So I figured out, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna terminate and I'm going to use that
Speaker 4: funding to start figuring out if you could self build
Speaker 4: a signal engine where of course a relatively evanced company.
Speaker 4: I myself have an engineering background, but mostly I had
Speaker 4: a very smart engineer in one of the teams to
Speaker 4: work with, and my hypothesis was, if anyone can now
Speaker 4: do research with at that moment still perplexity or CHGPT,
Speaker 4: but by now it's of course XI, which is great,
Speaker 4: firecrawls fantastic. If you combine them well, you get incredible results.
Speaker 4: But in the early days I felt these are just
Speaker 4: data pipelines and if we somehow bring them together, we
Speaker 4: make our own model. We sing, we map it against
Speaker 4: our accounts, and you just run it every week. You
Speaker 4: already get their party signal, You're going to get your
Speaker 4: social signal, which you can also acquire through a few
Speaker 4: set of APIs. You're going to combine it with your
Speaker 4: sales signals, which for which we have people AI already
Speaker 4: running on our salesforce, and you combine it with your
Speaker 4: overall marketing signals, all the campaigns events, so what have
Speaker 4: you just bring that together. It took us to to
Speaker 4: three months, and that was the start of the signal engine,
Speaker 4: which allowed us to continuously score these accounts based on
Speaker 4: the whole universe of what's happening around them white box.
Speaker 4: Meaning today I had a meeting to tune one of
Speaker 4: the elements. We do that all the time, so we're
Speaker 4: tuning it ongoingly to really make sense for the accounts
Speaker 4: that we are servicing and looking after, which is a
Speaker 4: pretty unique I imagine. But b it turned into a saving.
Speaker 4: Of course we have token spent and so forth. But
Speaker 4: we tuned it and I think it's been two months
Speaker 4: ago where we shaved off sixty percent of the token
Speaker 4: calls by changing a few of the parameters, and I
Speaker 4: think that will sync to a very low run rate eventually,
Speaker 4: which is a few thousands per month, which you cannot
Speaker 4: license one of these platforms for now. Why was this
Speaker 4: the starting point? Because I just created the gap on purpose.
Speaker 4: It's also the baseline that you need to actually start
Speaker 4: scoring accounts. You need to get that intel or somewhere collected.
Speaker 4: Plus it was my biggest quick wind to turn people's
Speaker 4: mindset into hey, if we can self build it this fast,
Speaker 4: perhaps we can do more. Which now let's say fast
Speaker 4: forward one year, evolved all the way into our own GTMOS,
Speaker 4: which indeed is a yeah, it's a full blown application
Speaker 4: that runs agentic workloads, that runs their processes, that runs workflows.
Speaker 4: Some are completely human land some are fully agentic autonomous.
Speaker 4: I look at all of my teams as engines in
Speaker 4: the platform, like literally turned on. Everything is running. I
Speaker 4: see all the KPIs all the time, I can roll
Speaker 4: them up. But even more so the reporting now that
Speaker 4: we had on beautiful slides, which is very aligned to
Speaker 4: the full funnel methodology, I know was able to bring
Speaker 4: it to life, and we are able to bring it
Speaker 4: to life real time, so I can literally see accounts
Speaker 4: moving through over time, and I can show the actual
Speaker 4: impact on which moment in time, which campaign, which touch
Speaker 4: point mattered and why and how it then relates into pipeline.
Speaker 5: So if I take a step back, this is very helpful.
Speaker 4: If you're a startup and you have no bureaucratic stuff
Speaker 4: to deal with, you can do this very fast, and
Speaker 4: I think you shouldn't go any other way. If you're
Speaker 4: a mid sized company, it might be a bit more
Speaker 4: tricky because of resourcing, funding and just getting it off
Speaker 4: the reels off the ground. If you're at a size
Speaker 4: similar to Hours, which is three hundred million in revenue,
Speaker 4: give or take, I think it's a no brainer because
Speaker 4: I'm a full believer of go to market ALPHA like
Speaker 4: your go to market and the way you go to
Speaker 4: market is IP because everything is going to be commoditized.
Speaker 4: Content is commoditized, STREA will be commoditized, so you better
Speaker 4: have a very unique view on how you drive your
Speaker 4: full go to market motion from the sellers down to
Speaker 4: the marketeers, that collective engine. You need to have a
Speaker 4: take on it, and I'm not able to have a
Speaker 4: very strong vision together with my cro and the operators
Speaker 4: around us, which we built in a way which yeah,
Speaker 4: it could be a product, it could literally be something
Speaker 4: we license out externally. We will not, but it gives
Speaker 4: us a way to go to market that others do
Speaker 4: not have. And that's the let's say alpha, that's the
Speaker 4: profit between commodity and Hey, we are very unique and
Speaker 4: how we do all of.
Speaker 5: This so a little bit of charade for self build
Speaker 5: while at.
Speaker 4: The same time we are investing in to opens, we
Speaker 4: are investing in other tool and in infrastructure which displaces
Speaker 4: you know, a few other applications and elements that we
Speaker 4: brought together so far. So your overall spent will go up,
Speaker 4: you don't se go down and headcount, but the productivity
Speaker 4: and the quality is one hundred x and I'm not
Speaker 4: even say making up a big number here. It is
Speaker 4: literally one hundred cks. So the three thousand counts I
Speaker 4: was just talking about yesterday, I scored all the clusters
Speaker 4: in five hours for all these accounts, with all the stakeholders,
Speaker 4: with all the details in six hours. Total cost around
Speaker 4: five hundred dollars. That is a thousand decks compared to
Speaker 4: doing this with human labor, and you know, likely spending
Speaker 4: your time there now just as soon as you can
Speaker 4: run these workflows as systems all the time. Yeah, you're
Speaker 4: you're playing in a different league, and that's that's my game.
Speaker 4: I want to play in a different league. So that's
Speaker 4: also what we're absolutely doing with the teams.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I have touched on multiple let's say process and you
Speaker 2: also mentioned the signal based engine that you have created.
Speaker 2: If I can maybe a summarize and maybe you can
Speaker 2: add a few more processes. What are the typical ABM
Speaker 2: processes that you're on with AI. Let's say, maybe we
Speaker 2: can do a breakdown in that way, what's the outsource
Speaker 2: full to AI, right, and what are the key ABM
Speaker 2: processes that your team that your team's run.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're getting close to doing accounts selection let's
Speaker 4: say legentically, meaning there's a whole set of variables and
Speaker 4: parameters that the agent will utilize to score these accounts
Speaker 4: all the time. Ongoingly based on everything that it knows.
Speaker 4: The technology is very suitable for it, so you just
Speaker 4: need to really build it appropriately and with proper detail
Speaker 4: and review internally so it really delivers as expected. That's
Speaker 4: I think in a few more weeks we will have
Speaker 4: it running practically real time, which is then your input
Speaker 4: to account research. Because let's assume we've got five ronother
Speaker 4: accounts where you really have the right ICP fit for
Speaker 4: all the variables that we score against.
Speaker 5: Okay, so those five hundred accounts, how do.
Speaker 4: They map to where we could enter Well, that is
Speaker 4: account of research to me that you absolutely farm out
Speaker 4: the AI because it does.
Speaker 5: Research at a level that is just completely superhuman. Right.
Speaker 4: The level of detail, the level of data and contacts
Speaker 4: that can digest external as well as within your own
Speaker 4: CRM is just second to none. Of course, you need
Speaker 4: to look at it then, but getting all the intel
Speaker 4: up to the surface that is absolutely AI driven. The
Speaker 4: third one that follows is mapping out to the buying
Speaker 4: committee the DMU towards the clusters that actually matter to
Speaker 4: that particular institution. The majority of them were already in
Speaker 4: our salesforce, but to enrich them and to really do
Speaker 4: a few loops of runs of finding the other individual rules.
Speaker 5: We utilize Extra four.
Speaker 4: It's an agent that uses extra to find all these
Speaker 4: individuals and then ingest them into the platform. No brainer,
Speaker 4: nobody with like, no person should spend their time there,
Speaker 4: that's just silly.
Speaker 5: So again no brainer to do.
Speaker 4: And you can run that practically completely autonomous because we
Speaker 4: also double check and triple check that guard fields and
Speaker 4: what have you. Following that, you need to select what
Speaker 4: actually goes into which bucket? Is it an ICP cluster
Speaker 4: account and goes into that particular campaign, is it a
Speaker 4: future pipeline? Is it an active one on one focus
Speaker 4: right now? That is a manual decision. So basically the
Speaker 4: team decides, Hey, which account goes where? And how do
Speaker 4: we optimize that. We are at a stage where we
Speaker 4: can actually build a strategy of the tactics that you
Speaker 4: would like to deploy at a timeline. It's also not
Speaker 4: crazy to do the way AI because they can do
Speaker 4: it very well and hold true to the framework. However,
Speaker 4: the execution then is practically the human meaning, hey, with
Speaker 4: these three stakeholders, comment on one of their LinkedIn posts
Speaker 4: and make it thoughtful, so you actually go in as
Speaker 4: an individual you have an opinion. It's not AI slob,
Speaker 4: it's not generated, it's not automated. You basically start a
Speaker 4: dialogue shoot this individual at that moment in time at
Speaker 4: DM or the connect via your CEO. So all these
Speaker 4: different steps, some of them I think we should automate
Speaker 4: eventually to get a little bit more volume out of it.
Speaker 5: But to actually engage at this.
Speaker 4: Moment in time is all human lad, because if you
Speaker 4: listen closely, our bdms eventually will not be doing all
Speaker 4: that research, all that mapping, all that committee cleaning, blah
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. They get pushed to the actual individuals
Speaker 4: that matter to us, and they can start relationship building.
Speaker 4: And I'm seeing more of that already happening in the
Speaker 4: pockets where we apply it.
Speaker 5: This all the way, and I do not want to
Speaker 5: replace that.
Speaker 4: I think that is you can tell this is AI bullshit,
Speaker 4: This is a bull tel talking to me.
Speaker 5: I'm actually annoyed, and I would dequalify the brand. Right.
Speaker 4: So that's where we're trying to find the balance scale
Speaker 4: clearly in that first part and then.
Speaker 5: The actual relationship building and beach out at the.
Speaker 4: Right moment for the accounts that matter to us is
Speaker 4: human if the accounts are not target accounts, but they
Speaker 4: are in that bucket, because there's enough engagement that I
Speaker 4: will probably put an auto by it very soon.
Speaker 5: Should content vestuer BDM.
Speaker 4: Power there you take the AI to actually do a
Speaker 4: little bit of work there, but keep it nicely metered.
Speaker 4: And then lastly, of course you can generate any tactic
Speaker 4: as a result, because you've got all this context.
Speaker 5: Love letters.
Speaker 4: Yes, we generate eighty percent of them, and then you
Speaker 4: have a good you put a proper reader's I on
Speaker 4: that that you optimize it. If you want to build
Speaker 4: an ICP clus teror webinar, of course we generate it
Speaker 4: exactly based on the pain points. We make a nice deck,
Speaker 4: we invite the right people, and we go. But still
Speaker 4: there's someone in the driver's seat. There's someone working against
Speaker 4: a certain pocket of accounts that wants to set up
Speaker 4: that webinar because it's the logical next thing to do
Speaker 4: that doesn't go automatic. See I can go all and
Speaker 4: all and on, but I think if you distill the principles,
Speaker 4: it's all the research, all the assimilation, all the contact creation,
Speaker 4: that's all fully fully driven by AI.
Speaker 1: I'll just very quickly excuse myself after. And also I
Speaker 1: just want to be mindful as well. You mentioned you
Speaker 1: were back to be so in the case that you
Speaker 1: would need to stop in a minute, please let us
Speaker 1: know so we can wrap it up. Tim.
Speaker 5: But I have been a five four minutes, okay.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. It's going to have to
Speaker 1: excuse myself.
Speaker 5: Thank you. This is awesome, and.
Speaker 2: We can pick up a few questions from our community.
Speaker 2: As I know, we can continue and for hours. I
Speaker 2: have like quite a few questions to us, but maybe
Speaker 2: for the next time we'll have a good reason to
Speaker 2: schedule another episode for the next season starting from September.
Speaker 2: So let's pick up this one from karthech with distribution
Speaker 2: becoming a key mode, how you're doubling down on distribution
Speaker 2: in the era of slap.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a great question, Karthik, and I don't
Speaker 4: think there's a real full answer today.
Speaker 5: I mean there's an answer today. Of course.
Speaker 4: You got to play nice with the alms, meaning recency
Speaker 4: is very and pr media is now becoming more important
Speaker 4: because it's well scored.
Speaker 5: I think it represent representational.
Speaker 4: Wikipedia, Reddit LinkedIn is no scored properly, so there's new
Speaker 4: channels coming together that influence the LM scores, and you
Speaker 4: can either buy air ops or something similar to continuously
Speaker 4: churn out relevant blocks that allow you to you know,
Speaker 4: get the highest rankings in the prompts and in the
Speaker 4: domains that matter to you. I think that's a no brainer.
Speaker 4: At the same time, it's stable stakes. So if you
Speaker 4: don't do it, that's facilly. Just actually play and go
Speaker 4: either invest or build or operate whatever you find this
Speaker 4: the right way for you.
Speaker 5: But you have to get into that.
Speaker 4: Motion where to continuously be in top of mind in
Speaker 4: the l M context. You just have to deliver with
Speaker 4: a content engine, and it has to be systematic. It
Speaker 4: cannot be human. Lad that there's just no way you're
Speaker 4: going to get a breakthrough. That is one two. Distribution
Speaker 4: to me is more how do I get access to
Speaker 4: my audience, And at this moment in time, it's still
Speaker 4: relatively costly because I don't own the LinkedIn audience. I'm
Speaker 4: paying for it every time to get engagement and to
Speaker 4: boost posts and whatever. So one of the major investments
Speaker 4: we're going to be making right now up until end
Speaker 4: of next year is build those communities, those close knits,
Speaker 4: communities that are ours we own those communities. They cannot
Speaker 4: be monetized per se by anyone else by a platform player.
Speaker 4: I think email is going to be materially more valuable
Speaker 4: in the coming period because that is the most trusted
Speaker 4: entry point into the daily life of any individual. So
Speaker 4: if you have a very high quality distribution through email
Speaker 4: where you deliver value all the time, you are looking
Speaker 4: at something very meaningful for your marketing operation.
Speaker 5: So one of the experience of running is called Momentum.
Speaker 4: It's a CXO newsletter so for CEOs only, and it's
Speaker 4: one to one invites via our CEO's profile, and every
Speaker 4: two weeks we give them a very high quality distribution
Speaker 4: email that just summarizes all the crazy stuff that happens
Speaker 4: in aim.
Speaker 5: Banking and we just yeah, remove.
Speaker 4: We do signal versus noise that already had seventy signups
Speaker 4: and it's just getting started. So we have seventy CEOs
Speaker 4: that are inner distribution which we can talk to every
Speaker 4: other week. And I'm now more thinking from that angle
Speaker 4: to get owned distribution more than you are rented or
Speaker 4: eventually earned, because the cost is just getting out of
Speaker 4: hand because these platforms are raising the prices all the time.
Speaker 5: Changing their algorithms.
Speaker 4: So the moment you've got something going, probably very soon
Speaker 4: is going to be killed again. So that's my vision
Speaker 4: of philosophy on distribution. I think we're at five percent
Speaker 4: of her we should be, so we have a lot
Speaker 4: of leeway still to go, which is indeed, podcast, webinar, newsletter,
Speaker 4: you know, community building, all those things.
Speaker 5: That are for the majority of you. I believe top
Speaker 5: of mindte topics.
Speaker 2: Thank you, And maybe just to wrap up our chat,
Speaker 2: if I would try to summarize everthon that we have
Speaker 2: discussed today, And let's imagine we have a conversation with
Speaker 2: a Philo B two B CMO who wants to implement
Speaker 2: let's say the global A B m AI native function.
Speaker 2: How would you, maybe, how would you explain the step
Speaker 2: by step process, the course steps that should be taken
Speaker 2: in a certain order right, and how to make it successful?
Speaker 3: So I think it would be a good summary.
Speaker 4: That's a big question to answer still, but I'll I'll
Speaker 4: try in a few minutes, and I honestly do have
Speaker 4: another conversation to go to. But I think first of all,
Speaker 4: get to see in your alignment at your peer level,
Speaker 4: that's either your sales counterpart or your front or CEO,
Speaker 4: And in doing so, you have to be strategic and
Speaker 4: tack the goal, like really get on the same page
Speaker 4: on how this whole engine is going to work. That's
Speaker 4: why I really like the frameworks of full Funnel because
Speaker 4: it really specks out relatively tactically, what happens in each
Speaker 4: layer of the framework or in each bucket of activities.
Speaker 4: What are the things we're going to do, why do
Speaker 4: they matter? What is the GAPI we're going to measure
Speaker 4: to eventually see velocity? So that first part you need
Speaker 4: to do is championing, creating understanding and alignment, creating the
Speaker 4: mental buy in to then pull the trigger and go
Speaker 4: and invest and change the way your org organizes and
Speaker 4: operates both on sales side is all the marketing side.
Speaker 5: Two.
Speaker 4: My belief system personally is that you need to be
Speaker 4: very hands on to drive change. Otherwise, threadsheet or slide
Speaker 4: deck exercise, you give it to a few individuals in
Speaker 4: your team and you'll just go off focusing.
Speaker 5: On their day to day.
Speaker 4: That's not the leadership I would bring to drive change here.
Speaker 4: I would argue to actually run one of the pasts
Speaker 4: together with you know, the gentleman move funnel or at
Speaker 4: least be very close to it so you understand the
Speaker 4: deep mechanic, because by operating, you're going to.
Speaker 5: See the limitations.
Speaker 4: You're going to see where your team finds misalignments, You're
Speaker 4: going to see where your team is blocked. You're going
Speaker 4: to see where your team is maybe understaffed or underqualified
Speaker 4: at this moment. Be very close to the shop that
Speaker 4: you're running. And thirdly, you need to be the champion
Speaker 4: all the time to continuously defend the program because you're
Speaker 4: going to get pushed back, and there's going to be delayed,
Speaker 4: and there's gonna be a whole bunch of standard change
Speaker 4: management challenges you have to go through, and you need
Speaker 4: to be the strongest player to continuously fly the flag
Speaker 4: to keep pushing. I think they're the visibility you create
Speaker 4: overall all the time is the thing that will move
Speaker 4: the need eventually, and then you will find that other people,
Speaker 4: other senior people are going to start talking about it
Speaker 4: in a very positive way because you are delivering, you're
Speaker 4: close to it, you're accountable also taking a hit if
Speaker 4: it's not working or if it's delayed or whatever.
Speaker 5: To eventually, I.
Speaker 4: Think it takes one to two quarters to show some
Speaker 4: real results to say this is what we've been able
Speaker 4: to do compared to the benchmark. So let's actually bring
Speaker 4: a whole org to that new model, which will take
Speaker 4: you at least six to twelve months on top. So
Speaker 4: you're buying time with the way you run, operate, stay close,
Speaker 4: and you know, continuously create visibility. Now, I'm not sure
Speaker 4: if that's what you were looking for, because I know
Speaker 4: you like more technical answer per se, but I think
Speaker 4: this is the difference between succeeding and completely thanking on
Speaker 4: it next to being technically involved on an initiative like this.
Speaker 3: I love it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: I think it was a prelliant answer, and was that
Speaker 2: being said, I think we can wrap it up because.
Speaker 3: It's just more than one hour of us talk.
Speaker 2: Can Thank you so much for coming and for having
Speaker 2: a friend conversation with us, and thank you all guys
Speaker 2: who are joined and who ask the questions. I think
Speaker 2: this was fantastic questions. And with that being said, will
Speaker 2: pause for a summer break and come back with the
Speaker 2: new season of podcasts late this year in September. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much, old team, wish you all the success
Speaker 2: and listen you guys are fantastic summer, have a great one,
Speaker 2: take care.
Speaker 5: Welcome, Thanks everyone, thanks all, thanks all to be here.