How to improve your account based marketing results an interview with Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio

B2B lead generation has had to reinvent itself over the last
decade.


Sales have always used an account-based approach. Now,, marketing
is adopting account-based marketing. But it’s not an easy road.


Here’s why:


In B2B, you’re never selling to an individual. He or she is
almost always part of a buying team. Moreover, the bigger the
potential deal, the more people, departments, and functional
areas get involved.


For this reason, many B2B marketers using a leads-based approach
hit a wall with their account-based marketing efforts.


ABM isn’t just about marketing. ABM works best in companies where
all revenue-generating areas are closely aligned as one team.


So, how can you improve your account-based marketing results?


To help, I interviewed Jon Miller (@jonmiller), CEO and
Co-Founder of Engagio. Jon and his team just released the
Second Edition of The Clear and Complete Guide
to Account-Based Marketing. He brings a fantastic
perspective on how to complement a leads-based approach and adopt
account-based marketing.
What inspired you to start Engagio?

Jon: Great.  I’m excited to be here and to have a chance to
hang out with you again. It’s been a while since we talked.


So, my background: I’ve been in marketing technology almost my
entire career. My undergraduate degree is actually in physics,
and when I was coming out of college, I ended up doing a lot of
work with companies that were trying to take advantage of all the
customer data they had [in order] to make decisions.


Because I came to marketing with that quantitative and analytical
background, that led me into a series of marketing technology
companies that were basically all about really trying to use all
that data to drive better customer decisions and one to one
interactions. You know, very much inspired by the Don
Peppers and Martha Rogers book The One to One Future.


I worked at Exchange and then as an early employee at Epiphany,
which was probably the leading marketing technology company of
the mid-’90s.


After we sold Epiphany, I co-founded Marketo, along with Phil
Fernandez. And I think that’s arguably, or maybe not even
arguably, the leading marketing technology of the last ten years
or so. Recently, it was sold to Adobe for just under 5 billion
dollars.


I had a long career in marketing technology, but one of the
trends I think is always true is marketing is changing all the
time, and the underlying technologies are changing all the time.


I just felt about four years ago that Marketo wasn’t, frankly,
moving fast enough to kind of keep up with all the new trends and
changes in how marketing was done.


I was inspired to start a new company that would be seeking to
build out the next generation of marketing products that could
really take advantage of all these new trends.


One of those significant trends is what’s now known as
account-based marketing. And so, that’s where I decided to start,
to focus, to have Engagio be a platform for account-based
marketing.
How do you define account-based marketing?

Brian: Well, there’s a lot of definitions out there about
account-based marketing, and I’ve talked with CMOs and VPs, and
they see account-based marketing as just good marketing.


But I’d love to ask you: you just had this new book come out, The
Clear Complete Guide to Account-Based Marketing and you’re on
your second edition, so how would you define it?


Jon: Yeah. So, first of all, let me just say, really excited
about the book. You know, it is a second edition; I wrote the
first one about three years ago. I’ve learned a ton more about
ABM in the last three years.


I’ll start with a colloquial definition of ABM then I’ll give you
my formal one. I think the colloquial one I like to use is a
comparison back to the kind of marketing that we did with
Marketo. And that is the marketing that I like to describe as
fishing with nets.


When you’re fishing with nets, you run your campaigns, and you
don’t care which specific fish you catch. You just care– did I
catch enough? That you can then do lead nurturing, and lead
scoring to kind of run it through the system.


But when you’re going after bigger or more strategic accounts, or
maybe because you’re going after your existing customers for
expansion, or you’re in a narrow industry.


Any time you have a specific list of named accounts, you don’t
want to wait around for those big fish to swim into your net.
You’re going to find ways to reach out to them proactively. It’s
much more like fishing with a spear. And so, to me that’s the
simple definition of account-based marketing: it’s spearfishing
as opposed to net fishing.
A breakout of account-based marketing

Jon: My formal definition is that account-based marketing is a
go-to-market strategy that will coordinate personalized marketing
and sales efforts to land and expand at target accounts. Can I
just explain what some of those words mean?


Brian: Yeah. If you could break that out that would be great.
It’s a strategy

Jon: First of all, I’m very precisely calling it a strategy. ABM
is a way of running your go-to-market. And how your sales and
marketing and customer success teams work. It’s not a campaign or
a tactic. So, you really do need to kind of say, “We use ABM as
our go-to-market strategy or at least one of our go-to-market
strategies.”
Personalized to the right people and accounts

Jon: Second, ABM is really all about being personalized. There’s
so much noise in the market today; if you’re spearfishing and
you’re trying to reach out to the right people at the right
companies, somehow you’ve got to break through all that noise and
the best way to do that is with relevance, resonance, and
empathy, which I know we’ll talk about.


ABM is a misnomer because we’re saying it’s account-based
marketing but right there, in my definition, I’m talking about
marketing and sales. And let’s talk about that a little bit
later.
Landing and expanding revenue

Jon: ABM is about landing and expanding. I think that especially
today, so many companies earn revenue through subscription and
recurring revenue models.


Just focusing on that new business, which is what the net fishing
is all about, is a minimal myopic focus, and ABM expands, or
changes, the marketer’s mindset to focus on the entire revenue
journey:


landing/creating new pipeline

accelerating existing deals

expanding and retaining existing relationships.



ABM plays across all that. So, that’s why I chose that
definition.
From leads-focus to account-focus Source: The Clear &
Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing (p. 132) How is ABM is
different than demand generation?

Brian: Well, it makes sense, and I appreciate what you’re talking
about, just the overarching trend.


CEOs focus on lifetime value (LTV) and CAC (customer acquisition
cost). And so, ABM is providing answers to that.


There still is so much confusion out there, and you say, ABM
isn’t just about marketing. How do you mean?


How is it different from demand generation? Because I still think
people out there, even though we’ve just talked about the
definitions, yet are getting confused.


Jon: Yeah. Well, so I always thought it was ironic that we called
the category Marketo played in marketing automation. People think
marketing automation means that you have fewer humans doing less
work. The reality is the exact opposite.


When you buy a tool like Marketo, or any marketing automation
platform, it requires work. People have to do stuff.
ABM is not just about marketing; it’s about everything

So, in many ways marketing automation is a misnomer in the same
way that ABM is a misnomer because ABM is not just about
marketing.


If you’re focused on the entire revenue journey (creating new
pipeline, accelerating existing deals, expanding and retaining
relationships) that can’t just be marketing: it has to be an
orchestrated business initiative between the different functions.


And frankly, if it’s just marketing, it’s not a strategy; it’s a
campaign.


At Engagio, a lot of our customers have their strategies, and
they’re not called ABM.


They call it something like account-based everything. Or the
account first initiative, or something as simple as account-based
sales and marketing.


I’ve seen all of those at play, and I think it really is the
right way to think about it because otherwise, as I said, it’s
just a campaign.
Unteaching that it’s about leads

Brian: Well, I think that’s a vast distinction, especially as
people are considering the future. I liked in your book, as I was
reading it, you have a quote, “Salespeople never talk about how
many leads they close, they talk about how many accounts they
closed.”


And do you find that marketers see this differently, and why?


Jon: Well, yeah. I mean this is my fault, and a little bit your
fault.


Brian: Sure.


Jon: We taught marketers to talk about leads.


Brian:  Right.


Jon: Literally, we called it lead nurturing, and so on. And the
technologies that we use, like Marketo for example, they were
built to be really lead-based systems.
Marketers focus on leads. Salespeople care about accounts.

Which, almost by definition, meant they were not on the same
page. And that’s not the only reason marketing and sales have
trouble getting along, but it certainly didn’t help.


I think a big part of ABM really put is merely just marketers,
frankly, adopting the language the salespeople use. And just,
again, being on the same page.


Brian:  Yeah. I think salespeople have practiced, in some
ways, the very things that you’re talking about in your book.


They may have called it strategic account selling, major account
selling, and target account selling.


But they did focus on these accounts, and as you talked about,
now marketers are coming alongside salespeople and working on
these accounts together. So, we’re going to talk about some
process steps, but I wanted to step back to something you said
earlier.
How does customer empathy fit together with ABM?

We have more channels, content, and technology to reach customers
than ever before, but connecting with customers has never been
harder.


I am of course a big proponent and fan of customer empathy.


How do you see building empathy for our customers to bridge that
gap of connection and trust and account-based marketing fitting
together?


Jon: Yeah, in ABM, once you identified the accounts you want to
go after, and the people at those accounts you want to reach,
you’ve got to kind of find a way to reach out to them and engage
them.


It’s such a crowded, noisy market and people love to ignore
unwanted marketing and unwanted messaging. I think at the core if
you want to cut through the noise you have to find a way to
delight your prospects, educate them, add value to them.


I think empathy and relevance are just two sides of a coin. If
you empathize with your prospects, the people you’re trying to
reach, it means you understand their pains.


And if you understand their pains, you’re going to be in a much
better position to teach them something about their business and
create content for their specific economic motivators, their
particular pains and that is how we stand out.


Jon: I think it’s just very much like The Challenger Sale, which
is so popular on the sales side of the equation, that’s what the
best salespeople do: they teach, and they tailor, and they do
that by having empathy with their customer. So, very much these
things go hand in hand. I’m sure you have additional thoughts on
that because you’re the empathy expert.


Brian:  Well, I certainly do, and for our listeners, we had
Brent Adamson who is a co-author of The Challenger Sale and The
Challenger Customer, so we got Brent’s thoughts about this on
empathy and sales, and I’ll share my perspective.


At a deeper level, neuroscientists have shown is that all our
decisions are based on emotion. So, what we need to do is connect
to, as you talked about Jon, the pains. But also what are
the results people want?
The buying journey is like climbing a mountain

Brian: And we have to think about when they’re making a purchase
where it’s a complex sale and ABM is oriented to that what causes
us to change is that we see something in it for us and what
causes us to stay stuck–it’s like trying to climb a mountain.


Read more on this: Putting Empathy in Account Based
Marketing


If I want to climb and I’ve got to take other people with me,
some of them don’t want to go.


Or I’m concerned about how do they feel about doing this?


How will my team see me?


Am I’m going to be concerned about–is this going to add ten extra
hours to my week, and I’m already maxed out?


So, there’s this personal stuff that’s happening inside your
customer because we’re all customers; we all make decisions
emotionally.


We think B2B buying is less about emotion, but the stakes are
higher, so it’s even more emotional. So, I find that we’ve got to
tune into every stage of the journey and what’s happening.
B2B tends to be more about avoiding negative emotions

Jon: That’s a great point. The only thing I’d also add is I think
the emotions in B2B tend to be more about avoiding negative
emotions.


Whereas B2C might be about kind of seeking aspirational emotions.
Because in B2B there’s such a disconnect between the–if you make
a good purchase your company is a little bit better off. You make
a bad purchase, you can lose your job.


Brian:  Yeah, and often people start journeys by, “Hey I’m
learning about…and I feel inspired and hopeful we could actually
do something.”


And pretty quickly after that, it goes to despair. Like “Oh my
gosh is this even worth it? I want to try to get this into our
company; it’s so hard.”


For that person, they’re really saying, “Do I want to do this? Is
it really going to be worth it?” And as you talked about the
pain, just changing is painful and there’s so much there.
ABM Process Steps to follow

We probably don’t have time to go through all of them, but I was
just going to ask, where do you see marketers getting stuck, or
need to put more attention in those seven ABM process steps?


Jon: Sure. So, just for the listeners, I’ll summarize the seven
steps down and keep it simple, which is it’s only really about
who, what and where and then measurement.


Who do you want to go after? Which accounts? Which people?


What are you going to say to those accounts that are actually
going to be empathetic and relevant?


Where is how do you actually get that message in front of them?


What channels? And how do you orchestrate those
interactions?


And then the last piece is the measurement of the whole thing.
Where do people get stuck in ABM?

Jon: So, regarding your question, where do people get stuck?
The ABM Maturity Curve

It’s really a maturity curve. Obviously, to start, you need to
pick your accounts. That is a process that has to go hand in hand
with sales.


The companies that are less mature can get wrapped up right
around the axle right there. They just can’t find a good process
for how do marketing and sales actually collaborate around an
account selection process.
Picking too many accounts

Once they’re past that stage, I guess the best way to describe it
is sort of the next area I see people get stuck is; frankly, they
pick too many accounts to really be able to deliver the level of
personalization and relevance that’s indeed required to be
successful with ABM.


I’ve seen people pick, they have 200 tier one accounts. And
having 200 tier one accounts means that you are not creating a
bespoke customized interaction with in-depth account-relevant
research at every one of those 200 accounts.


So, there’s a set of interconnected challenges there. But it
starts with recognizing that you’ve got to be able to break
through the noise and stand out. That requires being more
relevant, and you have to right-size the number of accounts you
pick to your actual abilities to be able to be relevant.
Scaling ABM and automating it

Jon: And then the third challenge that the most mature companies
run into is then scaling the whole thing.


So, great, you’ve identified some accounts, and you’ve identified
things that you can do that are going to really help you stand
out and it worked great in your pilot.


Now, how do you really start to automate some of those steps to
bring it to the next level and make sure that any time a target
account’s doing something interesting, your sales team knows
about it, you’re following up appropriately? It’s really started
to become a machine and not a whole series of one-act heroics.


I’d say those are probably the three if you look across the who,
what, where, the three areas where people kind of get into
trouble.
Checklist for Building an ABM Foundation Source: The Clear
& Complete Guide to Account Based Marketing (P. 139) Tips to do
ABM better

Brian:  That’s really good, Jon. do you have any tips or
actionable advice that you would give to someone just, like, over
coffee, and they said, “Hey, how do I do better?”


Jon: Yeah, a couple tips. I think the first is that I see a lot
of companies start their ABM journey with display advertising.
First, don’t start with ABM advertising

And I think they do that because it’s really easy; it’s an easy
button. You just have to spend some money, give them your account
list, and hey, you get to say you’re doing ABM. But I’ve also
seen that lead to disillusionment with ABM quite frequently
because the reality is, I don’t care if you’re doing account
targeting or not. Ads are ads.


I don’t click on ads. I don’t even notice ads, and I’m sure
that’s probably true with a lot of other executives. So my first
tip is don’t get seduced into thinking that you can really just
start with ads. I think of advertisements as a nice thing you
layer on top of an existing program. But, not your first step.
That’s my first piece of advice.
Second, you can’t be account-based if you can look at accounts

Jon: I think my next piece of advice is that you really have to
think about your technology infrastructure.


At Marketo, I started trying to do ABM with Marketo and Sales
Force and the systems that I had, and it was hard. It was hard
because those are lead-based systems. The data in those systems
don’t roll up into your account. I made my market operation team
crazy just trying to kind of set up the processes so I could even
measure whether we’re also having an impact at the account level.


So, again, if you’re looking to start, I really think it’s worth
considering what is your account foundation? And how do you look
at data at an account-based level?


It’s kind of obvious when you say it that way.
What’s your favorite chapter in your book and why?

Brian:  That’s very good. As I was looking through the book,
this is a 175-page book that you’re offering for free to people
for providing information. You put a lot of effort and energy
into it, it’s very well done. What’s your favorite chapter in
your book and why?


Jon: I’m not going to pick one, I’m going to pick two here.


Brian:  Okay, sounds good.
Different ABM styles and ABM Entitlements

Jon: So, I think first, the whole part two of the guide, which is
all about the different styles of ABM, and the concept of ABM
Entitlements is entirely new in the second edition.


I think I like it a lot because when I go and talk to our
customers about how they take their ABM program to the next
level, this concept always comes up.


The different styles and the entitlements. And it’s related
directly back to the problem I talked about earlier which is
people tend to have picked too many accounts, and therefore
aren’t really able to deliver enough wood behind the arrow. So, I
think part two about the styles of ABM entitlements is one of my
favorites.
ABM Metrics and Measurement

Jon: And then probably the other one I like a lot is this whole
section on ABM metrics and measurements, partly because I’m a
quantitative measurement numbers guy. But it’s really struck me
how different the metrics in ABM are from those in traditional
demand generation.


In a nutshell, the metrics in traditional marketing primarily
focus on quantity, and back to the net fishing, it’s all about
how many leads did I generate? How many opportunities did I
produce? How many people attended my webinar? How many people
showed up at my event? And so on. It entirely misses out on the
much more fundamental questions around quality.


First, are these the right people from the right accounts? It’s
not about counting the people you reach; it’s about reaching the
people that count. And so, are you measuring that?


And even furthermore, it’s about understanding the depth and the
quality of the relationship. How engaged are these people with
you?


Most salespeople would rather have meaningful engagement from a
decision maker at a target account than a hundred random leads
and ABM metrics really kind of embraced that concept.
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