Explore every episode of the podcast ABM Done Right - A Personal ABM Podcast

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In this episode, Eric Gruber (Personal ABM CEO) speaks to Brian Shea (Principal at Lucrum Partners) on buyer-informed messaging, signal intelligence across the revenue lifecycle, and GTM system design and execution. Specifically, they discuss:

1. How intent (even at the person level) can be a revenue restraint and that deal discounting can be attributed to the fact that teams are using intent data and reacting to predefined needs. 

2. The lack of control that GTM teams have when intent is in the picture - as intent is too late -- and how getting in earlier with the right business shift/change and strategic priority signals can provide the control that GTM teams need.

3. What are the signals that should inform buyer messaging, content, stories and  the interactions that all teams have.

4. How the marketing and sales conversation needs to change to to engage buyers earlier based on the account situation - and the needed content, messaging and story shifts that will win meetings. 

5. How GTM teams can have greater control acoss the buyer's journey to advance the meeting and the account - and to close to the deal. You'll hear how to continue delivering the right content, messaging and account experiences to drive account progression.  

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Gal Aga (CEO at Aligned) joined  Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM - the leading account-based GTM firm that specializes in the post-pipeline to land and expand key accounts) on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss:

1. How and why most teams that are going upmarket now are not ready to sell and market to the enterprise

2. The sales and marketing foundation that teams need before they can go upmarket and the GTM changes that need to happen. 

3. How the enterprise buying experience is broken

4. The support sales needs from marketing in the post-pipeline to unstick enterprise revenue -- and the role ABM should play in driving stage progression with enterprise accounts. 

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Rob Young, CMO of LockThreat GRC and Founder of MarketingHQ, recently joined Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss how the teams are approaching brand and demand with ABM in mind, what ABM is from the perspective of a product marketer, how most ABM programs are nothing more than targeted demand gen, and the content that's needed in the post-pipeline to move accounts to revenue.

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On this episode of the ABM Done Right Podcast, Sloan Newman (North American ABM Leader at NTT Data and author of "The Relationship Revolution) joins Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) to discuss:

1. The strategic ICP - Why it's important, how it's different from the traditional ICP,  how Sloan built the strategic ICP for NTT Data, what he looked at to build it,  and how the strategic ICP should inform the ICP? 

 2. How compensation needs to change 

 3. Why senior-level marketers need to drive the ABM program? 

 4. The role that Challenger should play in ABM.

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Due to the nature of the business, sales cycle time, and how teams buy, when you are in IT services, or you're an integrator, you need to approach ABM differently than if you were a SaaS company. In this podcast episode, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) and David Myer of Clarify (a 1:1 ABM firm that focuses on getting strategic enterprise accounts to the pipeline while Personal ABM specializes in moving pipeline accounts to revenue) speaks to Marc Fuentes (Head of Commercial for Eclipse Automation about his vision for his upcoming ABM program and how it differs from the past where he ran ABM for SaaS firms. 

You'll see how Marc plans on engage and win multi-million dollar deals with life sciences/pharma, industrial, and nuclear enterprise accounts within the Fortune 1000 and Nasdaq.  

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In this podcast episode. Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) and Pamela Velentzas (VP of Marketing at Spreedly) discuss:

1. Why does a strategic account-based enterprise sales and marketing approach require a completely different GTM than the GTM for SMB? 

2. The sales/marketing foundation that needs to be built from a brand, demand, land, and expand perspective before you can effectively do ABM for the enterprise.  

3. How you need to go beyond account-level intent when selling and marketing to the enterprise, and why Spreedly switched to Influ2

4. The enablement that's needed to help sales teams have the right interactions and deliver the right account experiences. Pamela shares the sales enablement processes she put into place, and then Eric talks about the deal-level content and support that will be needed as well. Because of the information Eric shared on the deal level, Pamela asked for a follow-up conversation to see how Personal ABM can potentially support the post-pipeline account experience that Spreedly wants to deliver. 

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In this podcast episode, Mike Randall (Head of Enterprise Marketing at Skillsoft and former demand gen leader at JLL and Red Hat) mentioned that leadership, sales, and other parts of the organization thought that they were being taxed by marketing. The budget was being taken by marketing programs that would only drive account awareness and build a pipeline that, in most cases, went nowhere. Revenue was stuck in the pipeline due to acquisition waste, leakage and sales cycle delay as marketing did not proactively work with -- and support sales. 

In addition to hearing how marketing was a tax, you'll also learn about the changes that Skillsoft is making and the foundation they are building to drive greater enterprise growth. 

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Eve Chen, CEO of Growth Engine and Fractional CMO for Tech Companies, joined Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss:

1.  How GTM teams and organizations lack the strategic clarity that's needed for ABM.

2. How most GTM teams do not understand their customers enough - even the ones that think they nailed their ICP. You'll learn about the 5 levels of customer maturity knowledge. 

3. The interpretation gap that can be found in AI and all ABM platforms. 

4. The 6 eras of revenue growth. 

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In this episode of the ABM Done Right Podcast, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) and Carlos Araujo (VP of Marketing at Swapcard) discuss the difference between what ABM should be -- and what's being done today by most companies. 

Now Carlos built and executed ABM programs at his previous companies. You'll hear what he's doing today at Swapcard and why he says Swapcard is not doing ABM, even though it sounds like a lot of what most ABMers are doing today. 

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While CMOs, VPs of marketing, and others are concerned that deals are stalling in the mid-funnel and last-mile nurture, they continue not to invest in it. 

In fact, when Eric Gruber, CEO of Personal ABM, talked to Matt Hummel from Pipeline360 (the guest for this episode),  Matt mentioned that he had just spoken with a CMO customer of his on this exact topic.

 Now, the Pipeline360 platform helps with lead generation, automated campaigns. and appointment scheduling. It's an integrated CRM, it does reputation management, and it enables customizable funnels and websites. The CMO customer told our guest that they're building a strong pipeline using their platform, but it's not converting to revenue. Our guest asked the CMO... How much are you investing in the mid-funnel? And she said... We're not.

She continued to invest in building a pipeline, even though the pipeline didn't go anywhere.

In this episode, you'll hear:

1. Why teams are not investing in the mid-funnel nurture and why they should focus more on post-pipeline than actually building the pipeline. 

2. How CMOs and marketing teams think they are investing in the mid-funnel but they're not. 

3.  How we need to be reading the "defense" and paying attention to what's going on in the accounts we want to win -- and how failure to do this will result in low win rates despite investing in the post-pipeline.

4. How we need to go beyond orchestrating technologies and orchestrate the account experience. 

5. How we should be enabling champions

6. How teams are approaching the mid-funnel wrong -- and how to change the account experiences that are delivered post-pipeline.-

7. Why companies like Uniphore struggle with accounts going dark after initial engagement with ABM campaigns.

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In this episode of the ABM Done Right Podcast, Peter Mikael at Globant joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM to discuss:

1. The foundation building that's necessary before you do ABM for services.
2. How execution of ABM for services differ when it comes to new customer acquisition
3: How execution of ABM for services differ when it comes to account retention and expansion 

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The guest on this ABM Done Right Podcast mentioned on LinkedIn recently that in many cases ABM = Almost But Meh. 𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 ‘𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐧’ 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐁𝐌 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤𝐲. 𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐬.

He also said that - Most teams say they “do ABM.” What they really mean is they run a few ads to a named account list, and call it strategy. That’s not Account-Based Marketing. It's “Almost But Meh.”

ABM only works if you’re all in and deeply focused. The end state is that each account becomes effectively a market of one.

- Sales and marketing are aligned on the same few accounts
- Content is built for specific buying committees, not just personas in theory
- Every touchpoint is orchestrated

Brad Fehler, Head of Growth Marketing for Prolific joined Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber to discuss:

1. How and why most ABM programs are almost, but meh.

2: How most teams are not ABM-ready before they launch.

3 How teams are using legacy frameworks and approaches that were created 22 years ago.

4: How teams are trying to scale ABM (even 1:1 ABM) and failing  -- and how ABM cannot be automated even though platforms like Mutiny and Tofu are talking about scaling 1:1.

5. How we need to think about content when doing ABM

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Brandon Redlinger posted on LinkedIn that marketing doesn’t deserve a seat at the table by default. Marketing doesn’t have the respect of the CRO by default. Marketing should have a seat at the table and earn the respect of the CRO and sales, but other members of the C-suite lose confidence in Marketing’s ability to contribute more broadly than just branding and campaigns. They need to see that:

• You develop strategies that directly align with the company’s financial objectives.
• You collaborate more effectively with sales, customer success, product, and finance.
• You drive measurable impact on business, revenue, and margin growth – and not just pipeline.

In this podcast episode, Jayashree Rajan (CMO of Nexla) joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM to discuss:

1. How CMOs need to rethink what ABM is --- and their approach? You'll see how most CMOs and their teams are only doing list-based marketing or account-based demand gen vs. changing the interactions that all teams have and the account experiences that are delivered across the buying journey and customer lifecycle. 

2. How CMOs need to approach ABM readiness and execution.

3. How we should take a data-driven evaluation approach for actual impact

4. How CMOs need to change their thoughts on scaling and AI when it comes to ABM -- and how we should focus on scaling for impact vs. just scaling activities. 

5. How to align your CEO, CRO, CFO, and CCO with marketing when it comes to ABM or a strategic account program. 

After listening  to this episode, you may want to check out the supporting article below:

https://www.personalabm.com/how-cmos-need-to-change-their-thinking-of-what-abm-is/

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In this episode of the ABM Done Right Podcast, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) talks to Rachel Donner at Snyk about their ABM programs in relation to their customer success programs. 

You will hear:

1. How true ABM belongs closer to sales and CS than marketing, and why the CRO and CCO should own it.

2.  What true 1:1 ABM is - and how Snyk is using it to drive adoption, retention, and account expansion. 

4.  The 1:1 ABM content that is needed to protect and expand accounts. 

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A couple of months ago, Gabe Rogl, the CEO of Demandbase, posted:

BGM, or Buying Group Marketing, is the new ABM. Yes, ABM was named wrong in the first place. It should have been account-based go-to market, or account-based experience.  But it's because it's just not a marketing thing. And yes, it's still foundational for businesses that market complex solutions with long sales cycles, but there's been a clear evolution the last 15 years that's led us to the criticality of buying groups. 

It started around 2010, when the lead-based approach reached its endpoint. That led to the decade-plus evolution of ABM as a practice, as a job function, and as a technology. ABM was a huge step forward because it focused resources on accounts that led to the greatest LTV and made sales and marketing alignment a priority. But today, the best go-to markets are supercharging ABM by operationalizing buying groups as:

1.  Not everyone in an account is relevant to the sales cycle.

2. There are more people involved in a sales cycle than ever before. 

3. Accounts can purchase multiple products, focusing on the account alone without using buyer groups as a data object. This makes it very difficult to prospect, sell, forecast multiple opportunities in the same account.

4. Engaging buying groups de-risks every phase of revenue creation. Pipeline, win rates, renewal, expansion. 

5. It is an absolute competitive differentiator right now, because few companies are doing it well.

This is why he says BGM initiatives will drive the next wave of B2B growth. But on this episode, Jessica Fewless at Inverta joined Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber to challenge Gabe's post and thoughts.  

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Everyone makes ABM about accounts - and better account targeting. But ABM is not really about accounts. It's about the buyers inside the accounts you want to land and expand. It's about improving the interactions you have with these buyers and the account experiences you deliver to them. In this episode, Andy Monahan at Yield Group joins Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber to discuss what it means to be buyer-led and how ABM programs should be buyer-led. 

They also discuss:

1. How GTM teams do not understand their buyers -- and what GTM teams are missing.

2. How teams are not looking at buying group make-up fit, strategic fit, or future fit when defining the ICP. 

3. How teams are not looking at the readiness of accounts.  

4. How teams often miss the step of realigning their positioning, messaging, content, and even their pricing with the new ICP.  They are pushing out the old stuff to new accounts and hoping for a better result. But accounts are still going dark because they haven't changed the content, interactions, and experiences to align with the ICP and the buyers within those ICP accounts. 

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On this episode, Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber talk ABM with Aura Lupascu - ABM leader at the supply chain tech company, Icron.   

When you listen to this episode, you'll learn:

1. The collaboration with sales that is needed to drive revenue growth with ABM --- and how ABM cannot be done in pockets and reactive, like ABM was done at one of Aura's past companies.  

2. How your ABM programs should have an impact beyond sourcing the pipeline.

3. The problem with 1:1 hyper-personalization with accounts that haven't proven they are worthy of the white-glove care and attention. You'll learn about an account-based GTM where there is a personalization journey.  

4. The challenges the teams face with 6sense, including the fact that the platform only defines the total relevant market and not your ICP, and that intent data is speculative. 

5. How Icron is lacking POV content and how it's limiting the success of Icron's program. You'll learn how many content marketers are great at creating account awareness, thought leadership content, but they lack the knowledge and know-how to create content that drives stage progression, enables buyers, and supports sales. 

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David Anderson (Co-Founder and COO at SellingInnovations) joined Eric Gruber and Kristina Jaramillo to discuss how GTM teams can drive greater stage progression and avoid accounts going dark - an issue that many companies like Uniphore struggle with today. 

Listen to this podcast to see how you can enable buyers to overcome their fear of risk, failure, disruption and spiraling costs. Learn how you can help buyers become uncomfortable in their current situation -- and comfortable with making change. 

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On this ABM Done Right Podcast episode, Eric Gruber sits down with Jodie Lail (Revenue Marketing Leader at GE Healthcare) to discuss why teams need a revenue marketing organization if they are engaging in ABM. 

Eric also digs into the GE Healthcare ABM program and discusses what's working for them - and where there are opportunities to have a stronger revenue impact. 

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Twice in a row, Angie Assennato, Senior Director of Growth Marketing at Signifyd, came into a marketing team that was already doing ABM but was getting limited returns.  In this podcast, she discusses with Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber the challenges they had, the reasons behind the failing programs and how intent data/ABM tech were not effectively being leveraged. As leadership at Signifyd also wants to go upmarket, we'll also discuss the changes that need to be made to engage and close higher-value deals. 

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Marta George, Head of EMEA ABM at Ping Identity, joined Eric Gruber and Kristina Jaramillo on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss the change management that needed to happen for them to win with their big bets, what their 1:few and 1:1 ABM program look like for their big bets and how they select their big bets. 

She also talked about the need to scale back to scale up the impact you have on revenue with your big bets.

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Megan Bowen (CEO of Refine Labs) mentioned  on LinkedIn 

"The most important discipline that mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS companies need to be cultivating is...Change management This is especially true for successful companies that have been around for 1-2 decades, that have been able to more easily manage the recent turbulence in B2B SaaS over the last few years and are still executing an outdated GTM strategy

The relative success of companies at this stage is hiding GTM inefficiencies so many don’t even perceive it’s a problem. This is the biggest risk for these companies - they are not seeing and acknowledging this is a real threat to their long term survival. If companies don’t start to change now, their ability to grow sustainably will degrade with increasing speed"

At Personal ABM, we believe that change goes beyond evolving just the digital marketing strategies and it must include a mindset shift, a measurement shift and changes across the entire GTM strategy and execution. The issue we often see  is that GTM teams retrofit ABM on top of existing sales/marketing processes, content, messaging and experiences. They make it about better targeting vs. changing the account experiences that are delivered. ABM should change...

• How you think about your business
• How you differentiate from competitors
• How you package your solutions
• How you communicate your value
• How you engage buyers across the organization across the buyiong journey and customer lifecycle
• How you structure your GTM teams
• How you win, protect and expand accounts as 1 team
• How you measure success.
• Plus much more...

During this episode, Kristina Jaramillo, Eric Gruber and Joel Harrison (Founder and Editor-at-Large at B2B Marketing) discuss the changes that ABM should bring. 

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In this ABM Done Right Podcast episode, Peter Mollins (a 2X guest on the podcast and CMO of Nooks) joined Eric Gruber to discuss the "signals" that GTM teams should pay attention to that go beyond intent data. 

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On LinkedIn, Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber have been talking a lot about teams not being ABM-ready. They are simply retrofitting ABM on top of existing processes, content, messaging etc -- and they are not making the changes they need to land and expand high-value accounts.  As a result, they struggle with accounts going dark. They struggle with accounts becoming stuck or disengaged,. They struggle with accounts churning. 

Within this podcast, Mark Osborne and Eric Gruber talk about the GTM assessment that needs to be done before you even think about ABM,  

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At Personal ABM, we believe that ABM is not really about accounts. Everyone focuses on tiering, segmentation and prioritization of accounts but ABM is really about improving the interactions that teams have with the human buyers in the accounts we want to win, protect and expand. It's about improving the account experience for these human buyers.

In this podcast, Sal Vilardo at Maverick Solutions talks with Personal ABM CEO (Eric Gruber) on how GTM teams can humanize ABM. You will learn:

1. How ABM programs are going sideways because they focus on the "brand" or the organization (the larger picture) and most GTM teams forget about the people within the account we need to engage. They're missing the human aspect on what the buyers think about, care about, want, need -- and how they interact. If you are not connecting with the people in the right way - you have a great chance of losing despite how aligned you are with the organization.

2. We need to put a stronger focus on "buyer enablement" as teams are losing the internal conversation and it's because teams do not have the right content, messaging, stories or the business case where each buyer sees how the gaps impact them personally, each of the contributors, and the collective business. We need to help buyers evaluate information, prioritize various sources,  quantify trade-offs while helping the buyers come to their own conclusion on why they need you to fix their challenges, fill their gaps, and achieve their strategic objectives. 

3. Teams are not thinking about that month or so where buyers "say" they'll move forward and they are going through legal processes or conversations with the CFO. Too many times, sales and marketing teams go dark during this time or follow up with continual check-ins vs. giving them the resources they need for conversations with the CFO and legal or giving them the resources to help them get things in order for onboarding. Again, it's about enabling the buyers. 

4. Why Sal hates intent and why he says it's a lagging indicator. With all the tools that are pulling intent from different places, everyone is using it. You run off the same information that everyone else has and in many cases, the intent is lagging behind action by the time it gets to us. Because the platforms are capturing intent, it doesn't mean that the process stopped between when it was captured and when it was delivered. Also, if they are showing intent, then they most likely have their short-list selected and they have predefined needs which automatically result in smaller deal sizes. Intent is also not predictive of an account landing and expanding with you. We need to understand the account story and the buyers within that account.

5.  Most GTM teams are not thinking about the cohesiveness of the account experience throughout the buyer's journey and customer lifecycle. We have to think about the cohesive experience that Disney provides that makes every touchpoint and interaction feel magical. Disney understands that the experience that one team delivers that will impact the experiences that the other teams deliver. It's the same thing when it comes to ABM. If sales and marketing teams do not create the right account and buyer experience then customer success teams will have a challenging time trying to retain and expand the accounts. 

6. Marketing needs to be able to provide thought processes and insights to allow other teams to further cast the buying vision with target accounts and their buyers. This is where account insights and understanding the account story is important. It's about giving content for specific sales conversations and internal conversations. It's about providing the account POV so teams can come to each buyer interactions with a POV about their business. It's about sharing how we need to reframe the specific thoughts and ideas of specific buyers to get the a-ha moment.

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David Keene, the European CMO for Wipro, recently joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss his ABM hot takes including:

1. How ABM shouldn't replace demand gen and brand marketing pillars.

2. How we shouldn't think so much about MQLs or even MQAs and how we need a narrow view of the funnel where we are focused on accounts that have a very low chance of losing and a very high chance of moving to revenue at a high ACV 

3. How 1:1 ABM is about the people inside the accounts we want to land and expand so it's important to incorporate personality-based marketing into your ABM program.

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Honni Marks (1:1 Strategic ABM Lead at Red Hat) joined Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss:

1. What it means to take a strategic 1:1 ABM approach.
2. The role 1:1 ABM should play in an account-based GTM program and how it should be used to expand key accounts.
3. The executive engagement that's needed for a 1:1 ABM program and how we should enable executive engagement teams.
4. How to leverage data to tell the account story
5. The 1:1 ABM content that's needed.


 

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Intent should not be your biggest factor when it comes to account selection for ABM. In fact, intent-qualified leads tend to result in lower deal sizes as everyone is reacting to the same signals and predefined needs to the point that it becomes a cost-based decision for buyers. 

By focusing on the ICP, you can identify those accounts that are a best fit, match your business problem profile and are most likely ready for your solution even though they may not be showing intent. With these accounts, you can create the need and greenfield opportunity that leads to larger deal sizes.

Adam Schoenfeld (CEO of Keyplay.io) joins Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast to talk about:

1. Intent leads vs.  ICP opportunities -- what is better
2. How teams are ineffectively defining their ICP
3. How the ICP should be operationalized across the organization
4. How we should engage the ICP

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Last time on the ABM Done Right Podcast, when he was at Clari, Tyler Pleiss shared why he was taking a 1:1 ABM approach to penetrate 3 markets that were years behind when it came to RevOps. 

Now, Tyler is at Movable Ink and is shifting the perspective on ABM and the triangle. Listen to the podcast to see how the ABM triangle is no longer relevant. 


 

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Most of the ABM content and insights being shared on LinkedIn, on podcasts and in webinars are redundant so we challenged Lindsay Baggett (ABM leader at Tanium) to address some hot takes that others haven't thought about. 

The ABM hot takes that Lindsay and I talk about are:

1. Most organizations are not ABM-ready when they launch their ABM pilot.

2. ABM is not about better marketing. It's about taking a different approach. What are we doing differently with ABM that other functions can't because they are forced to do things at scale?

3. Your buyers are the drivers -- and GTM teams are the pit crew helping buyers get across the finish line. But too many customers are being left hanging half-way through their journey. 

4. We have to score our GTM teams that will benefit from ABM  just like we need to score the accounts we put into the program.

5. If you're talking about campaigns and plays then you're doing random acts of ABM. 

6. Alignment is not enough - we need integration. We can align on the ICP, account lists, activities etc -- but if we do not have the integration then accounts are likely to go dark. We need to work together to create the account experience that buyers desire so we can speed up sales cycles, increase deal size sizes and drive more closed/wons.  

7. Marketing is often reactive once accounts are in the pipeline -- we need to be proactively equipping sellers and GTM teams to move buyers in their journey and keep them from stalling. We need to think about what buyers need right now to get them to the next stage. This is what Lindsay calls ABM-as-a-Service and what we at Personal ABM call account-based enablement.

8.  ABM teams need to understand sales approaches and methodology like Challenger. If you do not know how sales plays the game -- how can you help them win.

9. If you're letting intent data dictate your account selection process and your ABM program, then you're not ready for ABM.

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When you hit the core with the right content and messaging, that's when you'll see win rates jump, deal sizes go higher and the greatest lifetime value increases from your future and existing customers. But most GTM teams do not have a clear understanding of who their core is and why. 

Most ICPs suck as GTM teams do not dig deep enough so that the ICP is predictive of the accounts that will most likely move forward and deliver the greatest revenue growth. As a result, GTM teams are always guessing who to talk to next.

In this ABM Done Right Podcast episode, Jonathan Spier (CEO of Rev Inc) discusses with Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) how to get the ICP right. 
 

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Inside this ABM Done Right Podcast, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) talks to Briana Evans (Head of Global Enterprise Marketing and ABM) about their move from ABM to ABX,  

During the conversation, they discussed:

1. How ABM is not about marketing ownership of accounts -- and it's not about marketing supporting sales. It's a cross functional GTM strategy that stretches across the entire GTM, where all teams are an equal partner in driving account-based revenue growth.

2. How GTM teams should create a cohesive account experience and how teams should unify where they are one company, one team. They share how "one company, one team"  should be represented every time teams show up and engage with future and existing customers. 

3. How we should be nurturing from a leadership, sales, marketing, customer success and product perspective. 

4. The 3 key pillars of Meltwater's ABX program.

5. How Meltwater is taking an account-based GTM approach to ABM integrating 1: many, 1: few and 1:1 vs. just using ABM as a tiering, segmentation and prioritization strategy. 

6. The role that 6sense and intent data should play, 

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While teams are increasing efficiency with ABM tech and AI -- sales and marketing effectiveness have not increased at the same rate. Within this podcast, Erin Mills (CMO of Quorum) and Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) discuss how we should be leveraging these technologies in the right way so GTM teams do not just see efficiency gains. 

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At Personal ABM, we believe that while 1: many and 1: few are an important part of an account-based GTM  - it's not ABM. In this podcast, Kristina Jaramillo, Eric Gruber and Nancy Harlan (former ABM leader at UIPath) discuss what 1:1 ABM is and how it should be used for account expansion. 

Nancy also talks about customer-sponsored 1:1 ABM where you have a champion that will help make the big deal happen and make it as big as can be. 

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Many GTM teams focus on their TAM and ICP but not the winnable addressable market (WAM) that provides you with the greatest revenue growth. At Personal ABM, we believe that your winnable, addressable market is:

1. The percentage of your ICP that matches a problem profile, they have a strategic priority in place and will provide you with the greatest long-term revenue growth.

2. Your *best* customers -- and your next best customers that can provide greater revenue growth if they change how they work with you, use your solution and/or buy from you. 

Edgar Baum, our guest expert, mentions that that winnable, addressable market is the intersection between your valuable customers and your winnable customers  (those that want to buy from you as you would be an ideal vendor). When looking at the ICP, many GTM teams do not consider if they'd be an ideal vendor for those in their ICP.

Listen to this podcast to learn how you can uncover your winnable, addressable market.  

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As most  ABM programs deliver minimal improvement to revenue KPIs, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) and his guest Alex Pappas (Senior ABM Manager for Venafi) discuss how teams need to stop retrofitting ABM on top of current processes. 

During this podcast episode, you will hear:

1. The ABM challenges Alex faced at both Riskalyze and Venafi and how he gave the ABM programs an overhaul.

2. How Riskalyze didn't have the proper foundation for ABM -- and the readiness that was needed before Alex can think about ABM strategy. 

3. How Venafi was treating ABM like account-based advertising and account-based targeting and how Alex evolved it. 

4. Why Chris Walker is wrong when he mentioned on LinkedIn that ABM is a segmentation, tiering, and prioritization strategy and not a GTM motion (which we whole-heartedly disagree with.)  You'll hear how ABM is a GTM motion.

5. How Alex is using 1: many, 1: few and 1:1 ABM and how he's  using intent data. 

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In this ABM Done Right Podcast, Chris Rack (CEO of MRP) mentioned that most intent is nothing more than intent to learn vs. intent to purchase. By listening  to this episode, you will learn how to differentiate between the two different types of intent -- and what you need to do from an ABM standpoint based on where the buyer is in their journey. 

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Eric Dates (Head of Marketing for V Comply)  recently joined Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast. They discussed:

1. Why previous ABM programs failed for Eric Dates -- and what he did differently with his most successful ABM programs.

2.  The questions we should be asking internally before we even focus on building an demand gen strategy and an ABM strategy,

3.  How GTM teams need to change their “mentalities”, “processes”, “interactions” and experiences so they can be more impactful.

4.  How tech should support the ABM strategy vs. drive the ABM strategy.

5. The ABM program that Eric Dates is  envisioning for V Comply.

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Within this podcast, Scott Gillum from Carbon Design joins Eric Gruber (Personal ABM CEO) to discuss: 

1. Why Challenger sales and marketing  and ABM goes hand-in-hand

2. How GTM teams can deliver messaging that resonates - This includes how we should create our POV so we can come to each interaction with a POV about the customer's business, how we should create our account-based value proposition, and how to differentiate value from competitors.

3.  How to connect with the human buyers in accounts we want to win, protect and expand. You'll learn how to shift the status quo prospects' thoughts in a way that leads them back to our solution.

4. Personality-Based Marketing and the role in ABM. You will learn about the  4 different personalities, how 1 personality is most likely to start the process, another one is most likely to advance it, and another one is likely to stop the deal in its tracks. You'll hear how personality drives behavior, how the different personalities interact, and how teams should navigate deals based on the personalities that make up the buying team. 

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In other ABM Done Right Podcasts, including the one with the CMO of Hushly, we talked about the state of ABM in cybersecurity and other industries that are in a crowded, undifferentiated space where transactional sales are prevalent. In this podcast with Michelle Radlowski (Senior Director, AMS & EMEA Regional Marketing and ABM at DigiCert), we explore:

1. Why most ABM programs in cybersecurity are not leading to higher deals and greater ARR, GRR and NRR growth. There are 4 main reasons!

2. Why many cybersecurity firms report 10% YoY drops in enterprise deals closed.

3.  The role field marketing is playing in ABM, especially if you want to move accounts to revenue.

4. How teams should be integrating and taking an account-based GTM approach.

5. How DigiCert is taking a crawl, walk, run approach -- and the testing that the team completed before moving forward with ABM.

6. The account-based enablement that's needed across the board for marketing, sales, field marketing and customer success teams. 

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Most content does not support ABM nor sales and it's because most teams are skipping a very important step that must be done before you even assess your content to see what's missing. On this ABM Done Right Podcast, Tracy Wehringer (CEO and CMO at Moonshot Strategy) and Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) share the steps that teams should take when doing an ABM content assessment -- and what they should be looking for.  They also discuss the content that's needed for accounts that get stuck in the pipeline, for GTM teams that struggle to go upmarket, and for those accounts that continue to choose legacy platforms over you. 

 

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Matt Brown (CEO of CustomerOS) recently joined Eric Gruber (Personal ABM CEO) on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss how to grow your best customers and drive profitability with your next best customers to create a compounding customer growth engine. 

They discuss how customer success teams are still reactionary and playing defense and forgetting the ABM fundamentals that that helped companies drive revenue growth in the first place as there are no processes, frameworks and data visibility to distinguish between a high fit and low fit customer. You will learn how to leverage the right data and ABM to reduce customer retention costs (a KPI that most teams do not track) and increase GRR and NRR growth. 

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Recent ABM Done Right Podcasts have focused on using ABM to protect and expand key accounts as sales teams are struggling to bring in new business. Companies like Commvault report 8-10% drops in enterprise deals as budgets are limited or frozen. To sustain growth, companies need to protect and expand the existing revenue they do have. But because customers are not getting the experience they want with their vendors after the deal is closed, many companies are seeing churn and lost revenue – while not generating enough new revenue to replace it.  

We've had guests like Kristi Faltorusso at Client Success and David Sakamoto (VP of Customer Success at Gitlab). In the podcast below with Peter Armaly (VP of Customer Success at ESG – Customer Success as a Service), we continue the ABM and customer success conversations we've been having.  You'll see how customer success teams need to evolve and grow up from a customer support function to a business relationship management function that drives retention and expansion revenue growth. 

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At the center of each new, retention or expansion deals lies a series of struggling moments that need to be listened to, understood, catered to, reframed and solved. These are moments that most sales, marketing and customer success teams are ignoring as they focus on scaling vs. driving account-based revenue growth with the accounts that matter the most to the bottom line.

On the ABM Done Right Podcast below, Doug Hutton joins Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM.) He and his team at Corporate Visions created learning experiences that give marketers, sellers, and customer success professionals what they need to win each and every customer conversation. He is now the EVP of Customer Experience at Corporate Visions and  he has the privilege of leading all post-sale teams for exceptional delivery of Corporate Visions' science-backed messaging, content, and skills. From Customer Success to Delivery, his teams orchestrate a customer experience that leads directly to revenue growth - their clients first and foremost, and as a result, their own. 

While Doug and Kristina put a strong focus on winning the retention and expansion sale conversations . because they find that many customer success teams are not having the right interactions nor delivering the right experiences to existing accounts, they cover the complete buyer's journey and customer lifecycle.

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Dana Alvarenga (a 2023 Top 25 Customer Success Strategist and VP of Customer Experience at SlapFive: Customer Marketing) joins Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM to discuss:

1. Why customer success teams struggle with the "why stay," "why evolve," and "why expand conversations." 

2. How most customer success teams are taking a piecemeal approach -- and how Dana is building the customer experience and customer marketing function to take a different approach!)

3. Why teams are failing to capture the customer story along the journey and what teams need to be more relevant to future and existing customers. 

4. The role that customer marketing can play in retaining and expanding key accounts. 

5.  What's wrong with most customer stories (case studies) and how it does not influence retention and expansion conversations nor support selling conversations with new accounts.

6. How customer marketing teams should take an account-based approach and enabling customer success teams.

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David Sakimoto (VP of Customer Success at Gitlab) joined the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss:

1. The state of customer success in most organizations -- what are they doing right, where are they getting it wrong, and where do challenges exist. 

2.  Why many customer success teams struggle to keep VP and C-suite engagement after the deal is closed and where the process, conversation, and experience gaps lie that are keeping teams from retaining and expanding key accounts.

3. Why he's pushing for ABM for customer success and what his vision is on how it would help his team retain and expand key accounts. 

4. The account-based enablement that would help his teams improve the experiences they deliver to the human buyers in the accounts they want to protect and expand?

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As ABM has become synonymous with ABM tech, many GTM teams are not seeing maximum returns from their ABM tech investment as they continue to struggle to move high-value accounts to revenue. Many GTM teams are seeing accounts go dark and we've been seeing reports of 10%+ drops in enterprise deals (the ones that ABM should be focused on!) 

In this podcast, Liz Ronco from Madison Logic joins Personal ABM CEO (Eric Gruber)( to discuss why ABM tech clients are failing to get the greatest returns from their ABM tech investments as pipeline accounts go dark. They cover:

• How teams are ineffectively identifying and prioritizing the right accounts
• Why teams struggle with engaging VPs and the C-suite, which is what's needed to drive stage progression. 
•  How teams are failing to get customer-centric and how they are not using data and account intelligence to guide content, messaging, and interactions. 
• The need to go beyond personalization and become personal and how we should come to each interaction with a point of view about the prospects' businesses.
• How teams are failing to optimize for velocity, increased ACV, and stronger ARR, GRR, and NRR as they are looking to ABM to fix the pipeline vs. fixing the experiences teams are delivering across the buyers' journey and customer lifecycle.
   
  
  

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Despite marketers saying that spray and pray is dead, it is alive and kicking -- just in a different form as it's more targeted. Teams are still spraying messages and content out to their ICP hoping that it sticks instead of aligning with future and existing customers. There is no differentiation between a targeted demand gen motion and an ABM motion. 

Deanna Shimota joins Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber on this ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss:

The difference between ABM and demand gen
How the two functions should support each other
How to build a strong demand gen powerhouse that builds a pipeline of strong tier 1 accounts that ABM should move to revenue faster at a higher ACV
How an ITSM firm used ABM to accelerate accounts to revenue

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In this ABM Done Right Podcast, Mandy Cole (Partner at Stage 2 Capital) joins Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber to discuss:

1. How the economy is not the main reason for why companies are seeing 10%+ drops in enterprise deals -- but instead is that GTM teams are not limiting sales execution risk. The economy is only magnifying the issues that exist across the buyer's journey and customer lifecycle and showing the cracks that teams ignore when companies are in growth mode and buying. 

2. Where misalignments are occurring and how sales and customer success teams are not having the right interactions and delivering the right experiences to high-value accounts.

3. How the traditional 1: few and 1: many outbound approach and a company's desire to scale is adding  sales execution risk.

4. Why GTM teams are adding sales execution risk by how they are selecting key accounts to prospect, nurture and close. 

Plus, much more...

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Matt Dixon (Wall Street Journal bestselling co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Effortless Experience, The Challenger Customer and The JOLT Effect, a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and Founding Partner at DCM Insights) recently joined Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast. 

During this podcast, you will learn why ABM and the Challenger Sale go hand-in-hand, why accounts go dark and how GTM teams can win against the status quo -- and indecisiveness.