abm is not that deep: simplifying what actually works

There’s a growing myth in B2B that ABM requires a mountain of tools, a massive team, and a complex orchestration layer to succeed. But what if the real key is simplicity? In this episode, we’re joined by Isaac Ware, Director of Demand Gen at UserGems, to talk about how their signal-driven, two-channel ABM approach outperforms programs that are far more complicated. We dig into what actually makes ABM effective, why creative and outbound alignment matter more than most marketers think, and how to stop chasing platform features and start focusing on strategy.

Podcast Transcript

Andy: [00:00:00] Welcome back everybody for another episode of Digital Banter. Besides the tech issues that we just had jumping in, uh, James, this is what, like our third episode of the season that we’re talking about.

A BM? Yeah. Something like that. Right. Apparently that’s like, uh, a new track except we are talking with a guy that. Apparently runs Demand Gen, however, we’re talking about a BM just because it’s working so well for User Gem. So Isaac Ware, uh, senior Director of Demand, Jen over at User Gems is joining us today.

What we like to ask folks upfront, Isaac, is how did you get into B2B marketing? Because nobody goes to school and graduates, and nobody thinks of, this is my dream job as a kid, or what I wanna grow up to be. So how, what did you want to grow up to be as a kid? And then how did you get into B2B marketing outta that?

Isaac: I love that. Yeah, no, as a kid, I, uh, I’ve always been the one to like kind of bounce around to different ideas. So [00:01:00] I started with like engineering and then I went to, I wanna be a pa and then, uh, you know, landed on the dream of, of Marketer. Um, after, after some time running my own business, I did, uh, ran a longboard company for a while in college.

Um, kind of did everything from the manufacturing bit to the marketing bit to building websites, everything like that. And I kind of figured out that. Marketing was more up my alley of like what I actually enjoyed outta doing all that. Um, landed at an agency. We started with me and the two founders. We grew up to like 30 people and as a lot of, a lot of people on the agency side, do we, we kind of, I kind of realized that I wanted to move in-house, um, and we had never niched down or anything at the agency.

So kind of picked through what. I loved most there, and it was actually surprisingly, B2B of whenever I had e-comm clients. They always seemed to be, uh, very picky in small budgets and B2B tends to have a, have larger budgets and a little less picky sometimes. So, um, got picked up by user gyms, uh, and they [00:02:00] had a kinda a starting a BM program, a great content team, everything like that, but they didn’t have a paid, um, function at user gm.

So I helped build that out. And then naturally with how. User GMs kind of provide signals. We, we were started looping that into our A BM program more and more for ourselves and then our customers as well. Um, and then we kind of found our sweet spot in the, in the market of like really aligning with the sales team, um, and working closely with them.

So even in the demand gen function, working really closely with BDRs,

Andy: I love the track record. Very cool. Of, so I think the big thing then that we were kind of talking about as we were kind of figuring out the through line for this conversation is. A BM gets made out to be this complex o well overly complex, orchestrated kind of system that can break at multiple points.

But over at User Gems, I would say you guys have simplified it down. So describe your approach to A BM, kind of as you’ve embedded yourself into [00:03:00] that aspect of things.

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. So I think everybody on that, that starts dabbling with a BM always has this tendency to either want to. Overcomplicate the program or try and build it out more and more and more, build out trigger based systems and everything like that.

And we had, we had a really good program to start and we’ve kind of fell into that trap of like, we wanted to get it more and more complicated over time, but every single time that we pushed towards more complexity, we never saw the, the, the lift in conversion to opportunity. So we, we had this core program, we kept testing outside of it.

Um, and every single time we saw that and we, we kind of came back and said like, you know, I think, I think a BM does not actually have to be as complicated as is, and it’s, it’s kind of an ongoing test process with that. Um, but yeah, we, we kind of landed on this methodology and roll it out for customers using user gems.

Um, and time and time again it proves out to be some of the highest converting a BM programs. We’ve, we’ve [00:04:00] seen.

James: So I wanna dive into a little bit of the campaigns that you guys are running specifically right now, because I find it.

Extremely interesting. Like the problem that we see all the time, I’ll start with that, is that people, we have larger enterprise clients, they buy contracts with six sense demand base, whatever it is, and then they don’t use it for six months because they’re trying to over complicate a BM. Like it’s way, like almost like trying to focus too much on the signals.

And you guys have really like simplified your program. Can you kind of like give some advice on, I would say more or less like where to start before you start investing in any technology or pretty much anything for your A BM program. I.

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. So one of the, one of the main things I recommend PE recommend people starting with is finding a way to align with your BDR team.

And for a lot of BDR teams, you’ll have one or two reps [00:05:00] that are very good at trying to find these signals on their own before you even start talking about an A BM program. So these are the reps that are going after Revive Close, lost. They’re going after previous champions. They’re looking at accounts that have surges and new hires and buying roles.

They’re already doing a lot of these things. So I think the first step for a lot of people, especially on the marketing side, is go talk to your best reps. Like find out what signals are working for them so then you can kind of step in and programatize finding those signals for them through whatever means necessary.

Um, but the big difference here is like you mentioned with like six sense is. It is a black box of intent. Um, and I gave a, I gave a presentation at B2B Max one time with Eric Taylor, who had heads up global SDR at SAP, and he said something along the lines of, my reps have never been excited to reach out to an account because, quote unquote, the account is surging.

Um, and I think that’s a good mentality to go into with a BM of like. Your reps, you want your reps to be [00:06:00] happy with you and you’re not gonna get there by passing the Indonesia accounts, especially if you’re going upmarket and enterprise. You’re not gonna find the two people that are making that account surge at Coca-Cola.

Um, you’re not gonna find those people. So if you’re able to start with contact level intent, that’s gonna be your best path into these accounts where. The account is now surging in your books because you know you have a warm entry into that account. They’ve actually evaluated you in the past. So there’s some of that awareness that you’ve already brute forced, um, you know, that they’re hiring for some of these roles.

Like there’s people level reasons to go be going after these accounts.

James: So with some of that, I feel like there’s technology layered in there. Right. So you’ve mentioned like they’ve engaged with your content before. Um, they change jobs. Like what are some of like the, I know user gems plays a part in this as well.

Yeah. But like, um, you know, what are some of the entry level points I would say that you can get from your sales team as far as signals before you even [00:07:00] go to that step?

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. I think the, some of your best point of contacts are two outside of the sales team. If you can go to your CS team and kind of track down, like talk to your CS team about like, hey, who are, who are five accounts where you just had your champion, leave that account.

Um, that’s a non-tech way to kind of capture that job change sentiment where the CS person knows they left. They might not know where they they went, or that might not be updated in your Salesforce. But at least now you can have a starting point for building out your MVP, where you’re going after these people, finding where they landed.

Is that an ICP account? Adding that to your list. Then you look at that account and you say, is there anybody else here in buying rules that we actually are familiar with, or we do. We have any mutual connections at that account through anybody on our team. So the process initially can be very manual, but again, when you’re building on an A BM program.

I really believe you should default towards a more targeted one-to-one approach rather than going really, really broad, one to many based off a lot of these signals. Because again, you, your, your first a [00:08:00] BM program isn’t going to be a massive pipeline generator. It’s you’re really focusing on buy-in from the BDR team.

And two, you’re gonna be trying to get buy-in from the exec team so you can actually have the resources in the future to do that. And you’re gonna get that by saying, Hey, we targeted these 20 accounts, we converted. Five of them or whatever to to close one or pipeline or whatever that metric is gonna be for you.

Andy: What does scalability look like though, out of that MVP model? I.

Isaac: Yeah, so our process with a BM, so right now the, the MVP that we recommend for a lot of our customers with those 20 accounts is the exact same process that we’re running at user gems for 600 accounts. Um, so. The exact same touch points, the exact same campaigns on the ad side.

Um, the exact same outbound on that side of things. So it is really whoever’s leading that program a lot of the time too, it is a director of marketing or director of demand. I recommend they actually are the one that stands up that program first [00:09:00] and documents every single touch point because your goal is to kind of have a.

A template in crayon so that you can pass that to absolutely anybody. You can pass it to an intern and you, you could execute that program. Um, and eventually you will pass it off and that person will find a way to improve it. But again, you need a really strong starting point before you do pass it off from someone that is involved with your sales team, your CS team that can kind of orchestrate that in the background.

James: All right. So we talked a little bit about essentially how you’re choosing accounts, which you mentioned is like. The most important thing. What’s the next, what’s the next step from there?

Isaac: Yeah, so after you choose those accounts, I would say kind of do a manual review of all the accounts you selected, because I.

I think this is also a good, a good time to loop in your sales team as well, because again, when you’re trying to find that alignment, if you start passing over what you thought were a bunch of great accounts to your, to your ADRs and your AEs, I think everybody on the marketing team [00:10:00] knows if you pass over accounts that the, the BDR team or AEs do not like.

Um, those accounts will not be worked, or at least not worked in the way that you want them to be worked. Um, so like getting that pre-buy in is really helpful. So for us, like we’ll run programs with our AE team where we’re saying, Hey, here’s our top scoring accounts. They have these signals. I want you guys to nominate two accounts for each of you AEs, and tell me exactly why you think this account will close at a higher rate.

We’re closed quicker and at a larger deal size, and that gets them more bought into, like they’re already kind of thinking this in the background. It gives them a chance to step in and be a part of that process so that when it comes time for them to start outbounding those accounts, they already have that buy-in in their head of like, I chose this.

This isn’t just marketing throwing a random account at me.

James: So it’s essentially, you guys are agreeing on the criteria. Marketing is the one who is actually sourcing the account list and then they have like a final approval on it.

Isaac: Yeah. Yeah. Get them bought in on that too. And, [00:11:00] and really like, especially in your first few times, like really listen to them turning down accounts and try not to question it.

Um, of just be like, sounds good. We’ll find another account. Um, because as soon as you start pushing back, that immediately puts up, puts up barriers on that side of things.

James: Yeah. Until they replace it with, uh, just their dream list, which is the problem that I feel like is the. I mean, that’s, that’s probably why most, if I was to sum up why most a BM programs fail, I’m sure that’s a subject line people see in a LinkedIn post.

It’s probably that.

Isaac: Well, and it makes sense though, because a lot of the time when people, when a, when sales team, when the sales team is receiving accounts for marketing, like, I don’t even blame ’em. Their dream list is probably better than most of these like black box surging accounts. So like they actually probably do have a better gut around that.

So like as long as you’re aligning, again, like going back to that first conversation you had with your team of like your best reps are already selecting accounts based off of these criteria. That helps them kind of get in the mindset of, okay, we’re on the same page, like we’re going after these accounts because again.

Your best reps know, [00:12:00] revive close loss is gonna close way quicker and usually a higher, higher deal size. And again, if you’re able to say you are, this person already knows this, they might even know the product better than you because they were a past user. Um, they’re gonna be a lot more bought in to go after those accounts.

But

James: yeah,

Isaac: you’re right.

James: For the programs that you guys are running, is it more focused on like. Net new or like, do you have different stages based on, you know, say like account expansion, um, upsells, like is all that built into the program or is it like really focused on net new?

Isaac: For us, our main core A BM program is net new just because of the stage we’re at in terms of like, we’re try, we’re, we’re in hypergrowth mode.

Um, right. We do have aspects of it though that are more of like one to many approach within. Open or active customers of, again, you’re watching for those signals moving in and out of accounts. So if you do have a customer account and CS has flagged it as like an expansion op, and now CS [00:13:00] knows, okay, this previous user just entered into this account at their previous role, they actually used X, Y, Z features.

Now we’re able to expand on those features a lot easier because that person’s already aware of the value there. So any of these signals on the new business side, roll very easily into expansion, cross sell, everything on that.

Andy: How fast do you go from like signal capture, so to speak, to go to market and in in market?

Because that, I mean, what you just described, right? Like if CS is identifying something, like you gotta capitalize on that pretty quickly to make it work.

Isaac: Yeah, and how we, how we view it too is like a two piece approach of like we do have our core A BM, that’s more of an aggregate of signals used to select accounts, and we’re a little less concerned on timing with those.

But then we also run along. Alongside all of these campaigns, one to many, um, where we’re actually going after individual signals. So like a lot of the time we’ll be running ads that say, um, and I could even pull, pull them up on [00:14:00] that side of things like, lemme share my screen.

So we’re running a lot of ads. Can you see my screen?

You’re good now. Okay, cool. So we’re running a lot of ads like this where we’re saying like. As an animation with like fireworks, like congrats to the new role, remind ’em of previous success, um, and then have a softer CTA on that side because we’re running that in parallel with the BDR outbound on that side of things.

So again, pulling any of those signals you can into the paid portion can be a good always on touch point where you’re pulling those Salesforce reports or whatever you’re using for that data into LinkedIn, target those individual signals alongside an A BM campaign. So they have that kind of account level approach where they’re seeing their.

Account, logo in the ads, everything like that, and then they’re seeing stuff that’s very relevant to them as an individual.

Andy: Have you ever gotten a response or a comment on one of those ads of congrats in the new role and somebody’s like, no, man, I’m, I got fired. I’m [00:15:00] not

Isaac: For us, for us, no. Because again, it comes back to like data quality of like, when you’re running these plays, like you really wanna make sure that, that you’re, you’re qual, you’re confident in your data.

’cause again, could, could go very south depending on what’s going on there.

Andy: Yeah. So let’s talk about data from an attribution perspective, right? So you, you’ve got an outbound motion, you’ve got a paid motion, like. How do you measure the success and the impact and to an extent, influence of those two channels?

Isaac: Yeah, it’s one of the, it’s one of the hardest barriers to breakthrough, especially for teams where, um, uh, BDRs especially don’t roll into marketing. I think it’s becoming more and more common where BDRs roll into marketing, or at least marketing has a large say in what the BDRs are doing. But a lot of orgs, like that’s one of their first questions when I, when I talk through their, their A-B-M-M-V-P is okay, but like what if they come through the ad?

Like, does the. How we approach it is more agnostic of like when no matter what that conversion comes through, whether it’s the ad or direct off of a outbound email set, or maybe that [00:16:00] person saw both of those and converted organically. Like we pay out every single op on that side because of that buy-in.

Um. I think you could get more granular, like the longer and more mature the program is. But again, like your goal is buy-in with these initial programs and you need that. So pay it out. Um, even if it costs you more, like make the BDRs happy, get them bought in on the program, um, before you start, uh, telling them they’re not getting paid on a deal.

Andy: So what do you tell the client side then? Yeah, because that’s a very different scenario when you’re talking about commissions and motivations and sandbagging sales folks and everything else you wanna throw in there.

Isaac: Yeah, we, we say the exact same thing to, to customers too. And a lot of the time though, like that is.

Like, everybody’s stuck on this problem of attribution. And I, I’ve never had pushback on that when I’ve, whenever I’ve told them of like, they’ve been looking for a solution to this, and like, going back to a BM is, it’s, it’s not that deep. Um, like they really just need to pay out the BDRs. Like again, at your org, if a hundred bucks or whatever your commission is for that booked meeting, [00:17:00] like.

If that’s really your, your sticking point, like you probably have deeper organizational problems if, like, that’s gonna be your problem, um, with your program. So again, it’s more of just a simple, like, simple solution. Yeah.

James: I mean, would you say that this rolls under sales then as like an initiative? I know like it’s, it’s very much marketing led, but I mean.

To me, I always think of a BM as like the random buzzword that people came up with. So like sales and marketing get along. Like that’s, yeah, in part what it is, but like if you’re from a compensation standpoint, like favoring sales in that matter, does it make it a sales owned activity?

Isaac: In a way, I guess you could say that again.

It is like no matter how much we, we hate the fact that it is a buzzword to make market and sales get along, you’re, you’re exactly right that that is what it is. Um, so I wouldn’t say that necessarily, but I mean, that exact mindset is like why a BM is so hard. Um, like not to, not to call you out James, but like that exactly is why a [00:18:00] BM is so hard on that side of things like.

You really can’t view it as one or the other. It is like a holistic approach. Um, and for like the deeper you get that into your organization though, the better things go of, like at user gyms all are like 90% of the outbound that ADRs are doing, um, actually is just a BM, like when we hire. ADRs, like we tell them, like, you are, you’re working off of a BM contact or account lists, um, and you’re prioritizing based off of this A BM program.

Um, so right off the bat we’re, they’re kind of bought into that program.

James: Very cool. All right. I’d like to transition a little bit ’cause I think when we first talked, one of the things that I was most impressed with was how you guys tailor your creative strategy. Yeah. To the target accounts. Can you kind of walk us through your approach there and the level of personalization that you get to?

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. So I’ll share my screen here and we’ll just hop into the ad library. If anybody wants to scroll through [00:19:00] thousands of ads, pop into LinkedIn ad library, search user gems, and then, uh, you can always filter by this, but take a look through our ad library and see exactly how we’re doing this.

Um, so again, we’re running 600 campaigns every quarter. Um, and each one of those has five plus ads in it. And we have two tiers of personalization where the core 600 will run on a lot more stuff like this where we are still more broad messaging. Um, where we’re saying want to automate outbound is AI top of mind for your team?

Um, very plain language ads, but we are actually including the logo in the ad. Um. These work for converting about 15% of all the accounts we target into an open opportunity. Um, and it isn’t necessarily the personalization that makes it work, it’s still the account selection process, but it makes this personalization a lot more worth it.

Um, so for us, again, call out that as the scroll stopper, like, I’m gonna interject

James: because everyone’s gonna ask this, uh, [00:20:00] using their logo in your ad, what kind of kickback have you guys gotten?

Isaac: It’s

James: how very

Isaac: consistently it is. One account a quarter will send us some sort of email that says, likes, stop that.

Um, we’ve never, uh, we’re, we’ve been running this for close to five years and it’s usually one account. We’ll even get like a, a sales rep that’ll be like, Hey, do you have permission to use that? And we’re like, okay. Like, we’ll, we’ll turn off the ad, whatever. Um, but it’s never actually been a huge problem.

And I think this does. Technically fall under fair use. Um, here, so we’re not mistaking or like mistaking anybody into thinking that we are Datadog. Um, we are talking directly to them. And again, the ads are serving just to datadog on these. Love it. Yeah, going into the, the two-tier approach though, in terms of like personalization, um, we have these more generic ones.

Um, these still work very well, really high CTRs. And then we actually do lean a little bit more into like, if we have an AE that says like, we really believe this account because of [00:21:00] closed lost ops and how many champions we have at the account, blah, blah, blah. We think this account is gonna close and it’s gonna close for a higher amount than a typical account.

We will actually lean into the personalization a little bit more heavily. Um, and again, not personalization. For the sake of personalization, we, we, we usually recommend personalization for the sake of pulling back the curtain. Um, and kind of like really showing more value there. So for like this, we’re actually showing headshots of people at Datadog that used user gems in the past that were previous champions.

Um, we’re showing the headshots of people that are new hires in buying roles. We’re showing promotions into buying roles. Um, we’re anonymizing site visitors obviously, but we’re also calling out like they have recent funding and they’re hiring for sales and marketing. Um, so we lean more into this side of things.

Um, and then again, on the landing page. We are doing the same thing. We’re showing that score. We’re showing them like an email that we actually sent to somebody at their company in this case, like Sarah, their CMO. We sent this exact email to her. These are the [00:22:00] reasons we’re outbounding ’em. And then we also have, um, a video from the AE kind of walking through, like our approach to their account.

Um, so again, pulling back the curtain as much as possible, being more self-aware, but again, just like keeping it simple, like this landing page is very, very simple. Um, but we’re just trying to quickly drive as much value as possible.

James: So I’ll say it’s very simple, but it’s also very personalized. How, do you have any tips for doing something like this at scale?

I mean, ’cause we’re talking about, you know, if you’re doing 20 accounts, that’s 20 different landing pages. That’s 20 times five different ads.

Isaac: Yeah.

James: Uh. It definitely adds up really

Isaac: quickly. Yeah. Uh, templatize as much as possible. We do this all, so all the ads are still done in Canva. We have one VA that’s actually executing the creation of these.

So we build the templates, the VA goes in, finds logos, puts those in there. So he knocks that out. 3000 ads, 3000 ads out in about a day and a half. Um, it’s, it’s pretty impressive on that side of things. So once you can process things, pass it to a [00:23:00] va, just ’cause you don’t wanna be making 3000 ads yourself.

Um, on the landing page side, we’re using Webflow, the CMS there. So these are all templated out. We pop in the, the blanks basically, and it customizes the page for us. But there’s also tools, I think, uh, user led is doing this with AI right now. Um, in terms of like generating the ads, things like that. So like there is some tooling out there that actually accomplishes what we’re doing more on a AI side of things, I’m partial to VAs like VAs.

Have a human element, they can double check things. Um, and they’re still very inexpensive, even if you’re paying double their normal rate. Um, so I lean that direction with it. But again, it is more about process it first and then go that direction. For us, though, like those 600 accounts, we’re not doing that level of landing page for 600 accounts.

We’ll only do about 20 of 20 at a time with that level of personalization.

Andy: Going back to, uh, what you were saying when you were talking about like hiring ADRs and that, I’m curious, can you talk a [00:24:00] little bit more about the onboarding process? Because I feel like you, with showing the landing page, you opened up a couple of things, right?

You’ve got essentially a video where an A DR is walking them through what they could do for their account. Like what does that onboarding process look like, and then like what is. How does marketing get involved to make sure it’s not necessarily like saying the right points, but, and still being authentic.

Like there’s a lot I can see that has to get wrapped into that, that process.

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. So even, even in the hiring process, I we’re hiring ADRs right now and I’m, I think touch point number two in that interview process of like a lot of our conversations are around a BM of like seeing if they already have done some research on how we approach a BM, ’cause there’s a lot of content out there.

But then also it’s so baked into our go to market motion. That it’s impossible for them not to just be for a BM, not to be just drilled into their head, um, at that point. So every single piece of it is like when they’re onboarding, like they get assigned, well, once they ramp, they get assigned those a BM, um, accounts.

And we really go through in depth of [00:25:00] like, here’s how you approach this. We temp, we have all the emails templated out. Like a lot of it is just kind of watching what’s going on already, especially when you have a lot of automation in place and learning based off of that. Um, but again, trying to find ADRs that are like naturally curious and have more of a marketing mindset.

I think there is, there’s a lot of value there.

Andy: How often are you meeting with an A DR?

Isaac: Uh, weekly. Um, at least weekly on that side of things. And then we have at least two, I have at least two meetings with my, my A DR or my a DR leader on that side of things.

Andy: So what do those meetings look like? Like walk me through like what the structure of those are because I feel like there’s so many.

Sales marketing meetings that happen out there where nobody’s going and prepared or they’re going and prepared for the wrong conversations.

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. So for us, our, our like core A DR meeting is more around like, are they hitting their numbers. Um, and then whenever we roll out a new program or anything like that, we bring that into the a DR meetings.

So marketing comes in, kind of presents what’s going on. And for us it’s a lot easier just because, again, we’ve been doing it [00:26:00] for so long, but early on a lot of it was sending accounts off like. Y’all have until the end of the week to say no to these accounts basically, or else you’re stuck with these accounts, so you better do it.

Um, and now it’s more like, unless I hear otherwise. Yeah, exactly. Um. Yeah, so a lot of it was was like double checking, checking in, sending stuff over to them for approval and like really getting them bought in on the process. Now the process is nailed down. That’s much less of an issue. So we’ve actually pulled that approval stuff over to the marketing side where we’re confident enough in our data and like the signals we’re using for these accounts that we actually don’t pass over for that type of approval anymore just because we don’t run into those issues.

But early stage you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be sending stuff over and getting half the accounts that you sent over back.

James: Yeah. All right. I’m gonna ask the question directly. How much do you guys drink your own Kool-Aid and use your own tool and how do you use it?

Isaac: That’s, it’s, it’s all of it on that side of things.

So, um, all of my account selection is done in, in [00:27:00] product. Um, all of the outbound is pushed through user Gs on that side of things. So when I, um, am actually looking to select accounts, I’m doing it based off, can you see my screen? Yeah, perfect. So whenever I select my account, it is based off of all those signals.

So like I’m looking through here and filtering based off of like who has revived, closed, lost, who has a customer competitor in there too. We have de anonymization of website visitors, like how many of these accounts have actually been visiting our site already. And then we go down to the contact level and like make sure like we have customer con to previous customer contacts, closed, lost ops, multi through, like everything in there at the contact level.

Um, so yeah, it is, it is heavily like we do drink our own Kool-Aid, which again, makes it, makes it tough not to feel like a pitch every single time, but it’s like so baked into the A BM process. Um, I think no matter what direction you go though, like our best customers are usually people that have tried to do a lot of this with Clay.

And I think there’s something to be said [00:28:00] of like, find some of these tools where you can get an MVP of this started. Um, it doesn’t have to be user gems to start. Try to ba bake it yourself. Do those manual things I talked about. Talk to your CS team, talk to your sales ADRs. Um, go try to automate some of it with another tool to like, get this program started and like, get people on the team thinking about a BM at that contact level, mixed with account level, um,

James: approach.

All right, so besides user gems, gimme the list of tools that you love for a BM and the list of tools that you hate. Kind of think in the mindset of like, you know, we want, we’re focused on people who overcomplicate a BM. So think about for the worst ones, like what are the ones that just make it too much?

Isaac: I, to be completely honest, I, I just have a hard time getting behind six sense a lot of the time. Um, for me, that’s, that’s just me personally. That’s just because I’m so focused on like the contact level stuff. Um, I know there are people that make that work, especially some of these enterprise orgs that have [00:29:00] it rolled out across every, every team.

But I don’t think it’s a good starting point. I don’t think it’s an MVP. Um, if you’re paying 250,000 for. Six sense. I think that 250,000 would be better spent on, uh, ad spend and an extra headcount, um, is usually a direction I would go with something like that. Um, tools I do like on a bm on the A BM side of things, I actually direct a lot of people towards key play, um, for that actually account.

List building initially, like at user gens, we’re very blessed to have a a, a engineering team that’s, that’s freaks at generating account level and contact level data. So like we have that in our CRM, a lot of people don’t. Um, so key play comes in and helps you look at your existing customers. And then map out all the net new accounts that you could be going after based off of some of like the signals like tech stack and are they hiring for stuff like key play’s?

Very good at that and inexpensive. So that’s actually a good starting point for a lot of people. [00:30:00] Awesome.

James: Yeah, that’s, uh, I don’t know, there’s been, I love the, the take on 6 cents ’cause like. Um, let me put it this way. I have like two clients right now who are like very bought in on Six Sense, like read the CMOs book and I mean Six Sense is a a hell of I know.

They’re, they’re great marketers, I could tell you that much. So great

Isaac: marketers and great salespeople. Yeah. They’re doing something right. Um, yeah, it is interesting. I, and I think too, their approach might have some fit somewhere, but again, like. I talk with enterprise level companies that are trying to figure out a BM still.

Um, and that’s not your MVP. Um, I gave, uh, again, I, I gave a presentation and right before my presentation was Six Senses presentation and their thing was like how to build an A BM program. They had this like 20 person I. A org chart for your A BM team for building out your A BM program. And everybody left that and came to me to talk and was like, that was ridiculous.

Like, I’m not gonna go hire 20 [00:31:00] people to launch an A BM program. Um, I want a two channel approach with like, here’s how we select our first 20 accounts. Like that’s where you should be starting. Um, so I think, yeah, it’s hard for me to get behind on that side.

Andy: So what’s one thing you wish every marketer understood about a BM before ever launching a program besides not wasting money on some fancy platform?

Isaac: Um, whatever your, whatever your initial plan for a BM is, like, cut it in half in terms of complexity. Um, it really does not have to be that. Complex. Um, like especially when you don’t have more than one or two people working on the program, like you really have to yeah, cut it in half, um, and then stop meeting with people about how to do it and just like start doing it.

Um, ’cause a lot of people will come to me and hop on a call with me and like, they’re, they’ve been doing this for months and they’re trying to figure out exactly what it looks like and I’m like, here’s what we’re doing. But at the same time, like your best bet is to go. Go, go fuck [00:32:00] up, basically of like, you’re gonna go try this program and it’s gonna be difficult and it’s gonna be bad at first.

Um, but you’re gonna have a, like a bulletproof process by the time you get done with it.

Andy: I’m glad that we are retaining our PG 13 slash r rating on this show. This is, oh no, this is perfect. That is great. Like, that is perfect. Like, that is, we’re maintaining that, that, that, that, uh. At that rating level. So we’re good.

Good, good. So, Isaac, before we let you go, uh, where can people connect with you and also learn more about user gems?

Isaac: Yeah, definitely. Um, connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, shoot me a message if you do want to chat a BM. Like I, I do a lot of those calls every single week. I will end the call with like, just go do it.

Um, but I’ll show you exactly what we’re doing or if you have something built, I’m happy to audit what you’ve already started to build. Um, no issues on that side. And then go to, go to the user gen site. I think. Um, the top, in the top you’ll see resources. We have a lot of email templates in there of like, I.

When you’re building this [00:33:00] program out, we have all those signals and exactly how to approach them through email, cold calls, everything like that, copy and paste those. You don’t have to buy user gems right away. Go copy and paste those for your MVP to help your BDRs. Basically, I.

Andy: There you go. Awesome, man.

Well, Isaac, thank you so much for joining us today. So until next time everybody, we’ll catch you later on the next episode. Digital Banter.