When people think of ABM, they often believe they need $200K in technology and an additional $200K in media spending. The good news is that this perception is completely inaccurate. In fact, you shouldn’t invest a dime in either of these without a concrete strategy and a proof of concept. Join us this week as we invite Mason Cosby to the show. He will delve deep into how to initiate ABM and execute it effectively, even on a budget.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome back for another episode of Digital Banter Live. So, James, we’ve talked about a BM in the past on a bunch of different episodes, and we’ve, we’ve crapped on it, we’ve vented about it. We’ve talked about the struggles with it, right? Uh, yes, we have. I mean, I remember some of those episodes pretty well.
Uh, we had some disagreements. We went off on tangents, but the, the setup here is we decided to bring on somebody else to join us in this conversation. One of those guys that’s been in a BM for a long time. Mason Cosby. So Mason, welcome to the [00:01:00] show, man. Thank you for having me. Excited to, uh, help set the record straight on a BM and maybe
I don’t know, depending on how you feel about it. Have some nice banter and disagreements. Banter, disagreements is what this is founded on, so let’s see. Right. We’re gonna convince him today that he needs to spend, was it $20,000 a month on 6 cents and I don’t know, probably an extra 200 K in ad spend to go with that to have any sort of
Success. Who are we convincing? Brought a garbage can to vomit . Who are we convincing though? Me? No, Mason. It’s the scrappy guy, right? So yeah. So let’s use that as a segue. So you started your own consultancy, scrappy A BM. Now what made you start that endeavor? So as you mentioned, I came up through the A BM space and everyone and their mother talks about the concept of the crawl, walk, run approach.
But as you look at the actual service [00:02:00] providers in the space, nobody does the crawlspace. So as I was talking with people about how do you get started with a BM, somebody did say to me, and I, I honestly want to steal it and put it on the website, and I’m, I just might, but it’s, he just said, yeah, it really feels like when you’re starting a B and your options are, I’ll download an ebook or I’ll buy 6 cents.
And like there just has to be a middle ground to actually getting started. So that’s the goal of scrappy A BF is how do you actually get started building an account-based marketing program that you can inevitably scale up, but like, it’s not a ebook. You don’t have to go buy the tech. It’s actually the, the Goldilocks middle ground that helps you get started.
I feel like that’s just like, I mean, to your point, it’s a great positioning piece of things and a great niche to create yourself in, but I feel like that’s just the struggle of so many brands, even those that we work with that are enterprise behemoths that think they’ve been doing a BM for so long. But it’s this misconception and misperception that it’s a tech first world and it’s really not, like Texas is just an enablement to allow you to get [00:03:00] in front of the right people, hopefully.
I think hopefully a great place to start. ’cause a B, let’s be honest, A BM is kind of a buzzword. It’s like a huge buzzword. You know, it’s funny in, I think my post promotion to this, I got a couple extra likes and comments because a BM is just like one of those people that, things that people search LinkedIn for so that they can be an a BM expert and comment on LinkedIn stuff, which, sorry, if anybody listening was one of those people, I’m very happy you’re here.
But, uh . It’s a huge buzzword and I feel like nobody really knows what it means. So I think let’s start with the definition and then maybe go into some of the common misconceptions from there. So it may seem, yeah, define it for us. Uh, I’m gonna actually start with misconceptions ’cause I think it’s easier to define what it is when we understand what it isn’t.
So for a lot of people in the Google A BM or if they’re searching a BM, they’re going to land on probably the misconception that a BM equals ads. So again, you’re doing a basic search and. The [00:04:00] primary tactic that a lot of these A BM platforms started with was display advertising through the Google Ad Network directed to your target accounts.
So people Google A BM and they actually just think it’s account-based advertising. I’m like, cool. So I just gotta like spend ads and get in front of my target accounts and then magically they’ll just suddenly show up super ready to buy from our sales team. Totally makes sense. And that’s like. Sorry, the Mac update happened, so I keep getting things that like, just had a thumbs up bubble, which is awesome.
We may see some fireworks and balloons anyway, um, but again, at the core. That’s like a tactic within an account-based strategy, not a BM in, its in its entirety. So the true definition from my perspective is account-based marketing is a B2B growth strategy that aligns marketing and sales around a set of shared target accounts.
I have a love hate relationship with the term A BMI think it actually should be like account-based strategy. ’cause it’s not just about marketing, it’s also about sales. The core challenge though for people when they just read [00:05:00] that definition is they’re probably reading it on an account-based marketing platform website, and then the right underneath that definition, it’s like if you wanna implement a BM, schedule a call.
So a BM is one of the only marketing strategies that is so directly associated with the technology that people assume that the tech is required. And again, the default when going to implement account-based marketing is not, let’s find a strategist. It’s let’s find a platform. And at the core, the definition that I outlined has nothing to do with technology.
It has everything to do with strategy. So what I’m trying to do through scrappy A BM is actually take the same definition, just cut the tech to get it started so that you can truly align marketing and sales around a set of shared target accounts. You then go and close that you use to grow. Again, it’s not a technology strategy, it’s a growth strategy.
So that is my definition of A BM and how I’m helping people try to implement account based marketing. [00:06:00] No, go ahead. So one of my beliefs, so you mentioned it’s about sales and marketing alignment, right? And I have this kind of core belief that A BM was created as part of . That dispute between sales and marketing?
I mean, in my video promotion, I kind of joked at it a little bit, but, and kind of what happened. Sales, marketing got in a big fight over the quality of the leads and who they should actually be reaching out to, and sales was like, Hey, no, we only want you to market to the people who we are trying to reach out to.
I guess where I’m going with this is like, it seems like it’s a sales driven initiative and. I’m not sure whether or not it should be. It shouldn’t be. Um, I mean, the other question like is it right for all organizations also thought of as like an enterprise thing, right? Like, I’ll tell you this, we see this all the time with clients, right?
They split their business [00:07:00] model between SMB and Enterprise. And that line is always like a really gray, but what it means for advertising is, uh, A BM and then everything else. So, sorry, I’m coming full circle here. My question for you is like, . What types of companies is a BM, right? For what type of organization does it actually work for and what like processes need to be in place for it to work?
Yeah. I’m gonna start with who is a good fit for a BM. So I think I have a bit of a different perspective because a lot of people say you should not do a, BM if you don’t at least already have clearly established product market fit. And as a, as a general theme, I would agree with that. Um. The nuance to that is we’re seeing a significant rise in vertical SaaS.
So again, SaaS companies that are dedicated to serving a very specific vertical or solving a very specific problem. And like another prime example is also to think through. There’s a company that I’m aware of that is building a marketing automation platform within an existing [00:08:00] larger platform. So they can only sell to people that are on this existing larger platform.
So like those are all vertical sass or like integration focused technologies. So like those should all be running a BM, because if you think about vertical sass for some of these companies, their total world of accounts is literally a thousand companies, period. So like that is a manageable enough list that you should probably just be only advertising to them in the first place.
Now, if you wanna get into the nuance of the difference of account-based marketing versus targeted demand gen. Who caress, like at the core, it’s a list of people and accounts that you know you want to go after. It’s like that’s the first thing is vertical SaaS. Honestly, regardless of like anything else, if you have a vertical SaaS company, you already know who you should be going after.
You should probably be running some level of an account-based marketing strategy for other organizations. . That are in the B2B space, you need a dedicated sales team. It’s like I, there are a lot of companies that I think very naively laid off their entire sales team [00:09:00] and then suddenly say we’re going PLG.
I don’t think that move is gonna work if you try to run an A BM program ’cause you don’t have a sales team. And also if you just hold it tangent anyway, need a sales team . Uh, I think you also need in larger organizations in which it’s not vertical SaaS, like a prime example for me, I. I, I’m pretty industry agnostic at the moment.
I’m very problem specific. I solve the problem that you don’t know how to build an A BM program. I help you get started. Doesn’t really matter what industry. But I need product market fit within a specific industry. Why is there a thumbs up? ? I mean, if I need a specific industry product, market fit before I were to go after it, I know that I have what is called problem market fit.
The problem I solve is very viable problem. I have a viable solution, but I have not at, at this stage of my business. I don’t, I don’t feel confident saying like, oh, I crush it in this industry. I know I’m crushing it for specific clients. But I don’t know if that’s a diagnostic of the industry as a whole or that specific [00:10:00] client situation.
So again, product market within an industry, you need to lease an a CV of ideally 50. I think you can get away with it depending on the lifetime value of a client, if it’s anywhere from like that 30 to 50 range. But this is a, a pretty significant time in financial investment, even if you’re doing it scrappy like it’s time.
So you need the A CV to justify the amount of time that’s invested to make this truly work. So again, those were a lot of things. I’ll quickly summarize again, if you’re vertical SaaS, you should be running a BM. If you are another organization that can really sell into any industry, you need clear product, market fit within an industry, you need a sales team, you need an A CV, that’s over 50 K generally.
Or if there’s a high lifetime value with a client, you could get away with like 30 to 50. Um, and so those are the things that I’m looking for as I’m looking at working with clients. I feel like that a CV kind of . Piece of it is important to kind of recognize, because what we’re talking about right now, up to this point, has been predominantly on net new customer [00:11:00] acquisition.
And if I go back to one of our previous A BM episodes between just James and I, you know, my argument against the same question he basically posed to me was, you know what? What kind of companies does a BM work for? Well, it can work for. Anybody, if you have an existing target account list and you know who you wanna be going after, through that lens of like, and this typically falls on customer marketing more so than sales driven stuff, but if you wanna upsell or cross-sell or retain in any capacity, I mean, that’s an a BM motion at the end of the day.
Mm-Hmm. , it’s just, you’re not thinking about it because of the conceptions and perceptions that we were just talking about of it being a front heavy net new customer acquisition model rather than a through line. That should be across the entire . Growth strategy to your point, Mason of the business. Yeah.
Um, quick spoiler. Uh, if you come to work with scrappy A BMI. My first questions are almost always around your existing customer base to prove the model of account-based marketing, because we can just view your customer base [00:12:00] as a target account list. Again, you’ve already got great data there. You already know generally the pain points.
You already know the decision makers and the people involved in buying your products and services, and there’s already established trust. So then you can actually focus on do we have the right content? Do we have the right channels? Do we have the right targeting approach? For our account by strategy as opposed to like, who should we be going after because a BM often fails ’cause you even target the wrong people in the first place.
So I think that the, one of the best places to start with a BM is actually customer expansion. Okay. So let’s talk about kind of that one input around who we’re going after as one of those kind of, you know. Rabbit holes that I wanna dive into. Who should be determining your target accounts? Is it sales?
Is it marketing? Is it some guy on the boardroom that says, I want Pepsi? He needs, they need to be working for us. Like who’s, who should be determining the target accounts? I’m gonna give you two answers, so I’m gonna give you the ideal and then the reality. [00:13:00] Okay? So like if sales comes with the Fortune 50 list and you’re selling SMB.
Like that’s just clearly wrong. So like I don’t care who comes back and is like, we want Pepsi. If you are selling SMB right now, you’re not getting Pepsi. Unless again, there are these situations in which that board member happens to know the board member over at Pepsi and can twist an arm and like that’s not really an account-based marketing strategy.
It works if you can do it, but most people don’t have those connections. So how do we do this for like the every man? I think it is led by marketing. But it is a, I hate the word task force, but it’s the only thing that I can think of. It’s like a cross-functional task force. Because from my perspective, what I actually love a BM is it actually in like the most roundabout way, also actually helps with company culture in, I know that’s like a lead.
Let me explain. When you think about strategically and intentionally, who are the best customers that we wanna work with? Who’s [00:14:00] happiest to work with us? Who has the, like the lowest complaint rate, the greatest like value of our products and our services? They’re happy customers so that when you think about a BM, it’s like, who are gonna be our happiest customers?
So from the beginning, that means that they’re actually engaging in marketing content, that they’re actually learning from your brand, that they actually value the things that you put out, even from a marketing perspective, that when they enter into the pipeline, uh, they are actually happy to talk with your sales team.
They recognize they have a significant problem and that you are a solution. And then when you actually pass ’em over to customer success, customer success is not left with a dumpster fire of a customer base. They’re left with a customer base that actually values the products and the services and wants to engage and wants to become power users.
And as a result, throughout that entire process, when you have happy customers, you have happier team members and employees. Oh, and not to mention if you have really, really happy customers that don’t need a ton from the support team or the success team as a like [00:15:00] to keep the customer in place. Your finance team was also happy because you have a larger profitability on your customer base as well, because there’s less headcount in like fires.
So again, I think about it again, cross-functionally and as not just like a marketing strategy and a growth strategy, but like what’s a good business strategy as we think about a BM. So marketing should lead it primarily from like a data-driven perspective of our existing database and the companies that we’re seeing that as we enter into pipeline.
What customer cohorts have the highest close rates for our sales team? I think sales comes in with a very qualitative, not qualitative, sorry. Uh, yeah, no qualitative perspective of like who has been the most excited and like who are the people that proactively rope in other people. So we can more easily multi-thread.
And then your success team comes in with the perspective of who has been with us for a decade. and who has had the highest lifetime value and who doesn’t [00:16:00] constantly reschedule their calls ’cause we’re not a priority. And then your finance team does have the perspective of these people have renewed at a higher and higher rate every single year.
They don’t ask for discounts. They actually are very profitable. So again, you can then create this persona. This filtering criteria for your ICP, that then actually gives you a holistic view as opposed to these people engage a ton in our content or they’re Pepsi like neither one of those perspectives are right.
So that’s the ideal state. Now, sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna just give your jumping off point to what’s reality. Yeah. ’cause like everything I just outlined is very hard and most of the time finance doesn’t wanna join the call ever. Sorry. Um. That’s why I think this is a starting point is marketing and sales, and generally speaking, if marketing goes to sales and says something to the extent of what are your Dream [00:17:00] 50 again, they may come back with a Fortune 50 list, at which point you’re gonna have to say.
What are your, like reality 50, maybe not the Dream 50 . Maybe we need to re rebrand this a little bit, but like who are the companies that you’ve been trying to go after that you can’t break into? And can we, in an intentional and specific way try to help you in, support you in that? And I think marketing comes with a list and says, based on our data driven approach and all of our ICP research and all of our closed loss research.
we think that these are great companies that we could go after. And I think then it’s a pretty just simple split of like, you’re gonna see some overlap in both of those lists. Hopefully if you don’t, that’s a massive problem. But if you see overlap, those are the clear people to go after. And then it’s like, okay, what do we have time to bandwidth for to fill up the rest of this list?
And it’s a mix of the two. So again, marketing is committing to sales. We are gonna do everything in our darnedest to help you break into these accounts. And as soon as we break ’em in, what’s ? [00:18:00] Helpful about that perspective is that sales is going to jump on it. They’re not gonna get a lead and say like, ah, that’s not a good, like they specifically by name asked for these accounts.
If you can bring ’em in, they’re gonna jump on ’em. On the flip side, marketing is providing for lack of like lower hanging fruit, but because there’s been that agreement on the front end of who we’re going after, sales should also jump on those accounts. So again, instead of this. Like back and forth. Oh, we passed over the leads.
I didn’t take ’em, we didn’t send the right leads. You’ve all agreed on the front end. These are the best potential customers that we could go after from our knowledge perspective on marketing and sales. Let’s start here. What you then get into is you open, uh, success, you rope and finance, um, but I think it’s probably a phase two for most companies.
Ideally it’s phase one, but again, if you can get it started and prove the value. Then finance gonna say, whoa, we got some really cool customers. How do we get those like that are high profit? Awesome, let’s work together to make sure that we get more of those. [00:19:00] So how do you break into those accounts then?
Because again, the misconception that exists out there is great. I’m gonna go blow some money on a tool and I’m gonna throw some ads in front of these guys and that’s what’s gonna get the job done. Yeah. I think to like add to that too. To make this like a little bit more tactical too. We talked about advertising being a mis, being a misconception.
There is a time and a place for it. But getting started, what are the channels that you’re looking at, right? So you have your list, you know who you’re talking, combination between marketing, sales. I know we have a question here. Why should it not be sales? Maybe we’ll come back to that, but it felt like you did a good job of that.
Um, the, but like what channels do we get started with? Yeah, great question. Um, for a lot of customers and clients that we work with, they have an existing database and they have the ability to send an email. So I know this is controversial, potentially given the news coming from Gmail. Uh, but like if you’re truly intentional and personalized in your [00:20:00] email outreach.
You can probably get some responses from you. Now, is it going to be a 50% response rate? Now it’s like a five to 10%. But again, the goal here is how do we intentionally, instead of saying to our SDR team, here’s a list of like 500 accounts. Go after all of them and just dial down the list. How do we instead say we’re going to strategically go after across our five SCRs, you’re each gonna take 20 accounts, and we’re gonna help you by providing some additional content and support in your outreach that’s curated and targeted for these kinds of accounts.
Because we know the specific problems that the kinds of accounts experience. You are going to then do research that makes the vertical specific or the industry specific problem level content, not just industry specific, but like one-to-one nuanced specific. So again, we’re taking the, it’s not general problem content.
It’s like industry specific content that’s very related to the problems that you solve. And then you give it [00:21:00] to your SDR team or your AE team or whoever’s doing the outbound prospecting. To make it one-to-one to make it super personalized. So marketing’s providing frameworks, templates, content sales is providing research and nuanced outreach.
So again, I think that’s where it starts for most people. Now, I. If you have a psychopath like me that is really engaged, like you can go the podcast route. So again, I use my own podcast as a way to invite target accounts onto the show to then reengage them or to engage ’em in the first place. To build a one-to-one relationship.
Uh, I love a podcast for the opportunity to do pipeline, uh, reengagement and pipeline acceleration. Uh, I will invite people that are actively in a deal stage with me that I haven’t heard from in a couple weeks onto my show. Because they’re gonna say yes to coming on the show. And then I have like 15 minutes before the show to say like, oh, by the way, like how are things going internally as you’re talking through this contract?
And I get 15 minutes before the show to just like catch up. Like that’s an account-based play. You can [00:22:00] do the same thing to get them into the pipeline in the first place. Uh, then also like really scrappy is the community play. It’s like where the communities in which your target accounts are actually hanging out.
Uh, two years ago when it was another agency. I joined Peak, which is a community for CMOs, uh, a rising CMOs, and I didn’t sell anybody. I just like hung out, answered questions. It was like the old fashioned, like hanging out on Reddit or Quora and answering all the people’s questions. And oh, by the way, I happened to have a, like, I did that in peak, but because I did it so much every single day.
I ended up selling a million dollars in revenue out of peak because I was just very intentional with the communities that I joined. So it’s a roundabout answer. I think every organization can do outbound email and like there’s a level of effectiveness, but the true answer is a back to the core of a BM, aligned marketing and sales around a shared target accounts.
So who are your target accounts? Where do they live? What’s the content they’re going to engage in? [00:23:00] That’s it. That’s gonna be different for every organization. I wish I had a blanket answer that works for everybody. If I did, I’d make a lot more money. But at the core, that’s, that’s the thought process. And you can then get scrappy in how you actually execute on that.
And I think that’s where it gets bogged down, right? People start to overcomplicate it. They start to create too many sequences rather than just going back to the fundamentals. . And the other thing that I feel gets in their way is this perception of time constraint. Or I’ll be honest, not wanting to put in the work.
Mm-Hmm. . They want it to be easy. That’s why these tech platforms like Six Sense and Demandbase and everything in between exist. Yeah, exactly. It’s the easy button that nobody is willing to push, but they really just want to push it. Mm-Hmm. , um. And then I think, again, going back to something that we harp on too, is like that quick win mentality when a BM takes, I don’t know, Mason, how long to actually start to see results from, it’s a great question.
Um, when I first started a BM, so like [00:24:00] I, I built a literally zero budget, a BM program. For the first time, it was probably three or four years ago at this point, and it took nine months because I had zero budget. And what I did is I just started building a, a profile and a platform on LinkedIn. Uh, I would engage with my target accounts, I invite ’em onto a podcast.
I’d comment on their posts every single day. And inevitably people were like, oh, Mason is a real human being that actually caress about me and has valuable things to say occasionally. Why don’t, like if I need a help with something, I’ll go ask Mason. So again, it was the relationship play. If you have no budget, but again, it’s thinking through the relationship play.
But like, I hate to put it really bluntly. Most of the people that are like my now like close B2B, LinkedIn friends started as target accounts like I hate, and again, it’s blunt, but like . I spent the intentional time to show up on their content every single day because I knew that they were the right fit customers and also they engaged with other right fit [00:25:00] customers because target accounts ha again, B2B is generally fairly small.
Target accounts happen to probably other know your other target accounts too. So like if you can engage with them on social and then they like you back and they engage with you and then you build a case study out of them and then they talk about you on social. Oh, surprise. You now have just broken into other target accounts, so like
Again early. Like if you’re starting from ground zero, it could be three months, it could be six, it could be nine, it could be 12. It also depends on your average sales cycle. Um, ’cause like I have worked with companies, I have an 18 month sales cycle, so I’m sorry I’m not gonna get you results in the first six.
That’s just ridiculous . Um, but that’s like, that’s the unfortunate. It depends answer. Um, I’ll say one other thing on how to make it go faster. Your existing customer database is likely brand aware. It’s like if you start a BM within your existing database and you do an account based program on those that are already brand aware within your [00:26:00] database, you can probably get it to go a little bit faster because they should know that you exist if they’re in your database.
Or if you build an account based program based on pipeline acceleration or customer expansion, those are already likely active deal cycles that you can build around and have a faster win to build the model. So those are how you get it to be less than six months. Yeah, and I feel like jumping off of that then to the one thing that we’ve talked about in the past is how do you use that existing customer set?
That is in theory, ironclad from a data perspective and use that as a jumping off point to understand where the rest of your market likely hangs out because they share similar interests, pains, passions, et cetera. And it’s just more of a proving ground for the concept and the idea that you can get, not quicker wins, but more cost effective wins when you actually go to the larger market.
Yeah. Um, only thought I’ll add on that is like, I’ve got a client right now that happened. I mean, I’m wearing their sweatshirt. It’s, it’s fairly known that I work [00:27:00] with Jay Sch Delson. He is like a behemoth in the like, email marketing space. I, I mean, I, I work really closely with Jay. I talk about Jay all the time publicly ’cause it does two things for me.
One, I wanna work with more people like Jay two. Uh, he’s been an incredible client to me. I really love working with him. And three, to put it really bluntly, like Jay helps me open doors. So like he’s trying to get me more speaking engagements. This year he is getting me on more podcasts, like he’s getting me out there because we have a great relationship and Jay’s friends would be great clients for me.
So like I. You can tout it pretty openly if you have the right relationship with your clients. You know what this sounds like, James, you bound , having deja vu of our conversation with Jared for about two weeks ago, . Um, all right, so I got a question. I. Measurement. I want to get into like more of a, a tactical takeaways on the measurement side.
I mean, we can all talk about revenue and time to close and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But [00:28:00] what, starting like day one in a BM campaign, what are the KPIs that you need to have benchmarked and what are the, you know, top three or four that you should be looking at to determine whether or not this is successful?
Great questions. I’m gonna give you like a lot of answers because it also depends on the kind of program that we build. So like, again, we’ll start with customer expansion. Uh, did we upsell? Goodness gracious, I gotta turn this off. Um, like did we upsell, did we, as opposed to just being a renewal, did we actually move into a higher a CV?
Or if it was a customer that was at risk of churning, did we actually lower our churn risk? So again, it’s like, what’s the objective of the campaign? I need to put it that bluntly, but it’s like . If you’re running general A BM programs, you’re not actually running a BM. So it’s like we are running this program towards these accounts to mitigate churn.
Did we see a lower churn rate this year than last year or than we were anticipating in forecasting? Yes or no? Also not successful. We ran this [00:29:00] program towards these accounts ’cause they were happy. They showed in high-end pss and as a result we wanted to expand the relationship. Did we expand the relationship?
Yes or no? Those are like the metrics that are the long-term metrics. And then honestly, like these are consistent. Across everything. A BM is a strategy. So like your channel level metric should maintain the same, like if you’re doing outbound emailing, do you have high open rate and do you have a high click-through rate?
Like that’s pretty standard. Do you have a good click through rate on your ads and a high, uh, cost per or a low cost per click? Not a high or like a decent cost per click because we’re gonna being targeted. But like your channel of metrics actually don’t change. It’s just like what’s the goal of the program that we’re building and how does that relate back to then actually,
And typically speaking, your goal should be either lowering a metric or raising a metric. So I had to put it that bluntly, like that’s it. Your channel level tactics are all the same. They should, they. There’s nothing crazy or new on that front. It’s just like, what’s the goal of the program? Do you measure it by leads?
No. . [00:30:00] Thank you. Okay, moving on. So I mean, like we’re gonna the only, we’re gonna cut out that snippet. I’ll give you a nuance, I’ll give you a nuance. if you aren’t. If you like the lead type approach, there is a value in understanding the number of contacts that are generated from specific target accounts within your database.
’cause that means that you are having buyer committee . Uh, expansion within that target account. So again, it’s not like a lead metric, but it is a helpful understanding of, at this target account we have one point of contact that knows that we exist at this other target account. We have 50. Who’s got the higher propensity to buy based on the data, it’s likely the 50.
So again, it’s not a lead metric per se, but it is actually something helpful to track and to keep note of, of like . Are we generating more contacts from these target accounts? Because let’s think about how you guys buy. If you’re looking at buying a solution and then you get off a call James, and you’re like, [00:31:00] this was freaking awesome.
I gotta tell Andy about it, and you send it to Andy’s and then Andy goes and like registers for a webinar or whatever Andy does. I don’t know, like that’s a helpful metric. That’s helpful to know. Whereas if you weren’t an actual buyer in an actual buying cycle, James would be like. You wouldn’t even talk about it, you wouldn’t even share it.
So again, the expansion of contact within a target account, people may view that as a lead metric, but it’s actually just a helpful indicator of are they actually talking about us internally and are we growing our awareness within these accounts? I think that’s a great explanation because there’s been so many times where we’ve entered client conversations and they are trying to lump in this lead gen mentality and measurement protocol with a BM.
Just from the standpoint of, oh, we captured a lead from these efforts. Well, yeah, you should have. Or why did you need to? Because you already have their information. Like what’s the point of capturing a lead if you already have a database they can go to market with? So I think the way you explain that Mason was [00:32:00] exceptional and help to clear that up.
All right, well, now there’s no thumbs up from Mac. All right, . All right. I feel like we can’t end this conversation without talking about tech a little bit. Um, so I’m gonna kind of keep this one short. I don’t know, it’s not gonna be short and simple at all, but I want you to kind of walk us through some of your favorite tools for, call it entry level a BM, followed by the dream state.
You know, so for every, every client that I work with, like the basics, CRM. Marketing automation. And again, and those are the things that like you really need to just do modern day marketing period. Um, so again, I have clients that I’m working with in which they come to us wanting a BMI ask them like, what’s your C rmm?
They’re like, oh, we’re using [00:33:00] spreadsheets. And I’m like, so we’re gonna do a HubSpot implementation first. So again, from that perspective. I need, I need it to be said. I used to assume, but like, that has to be stated of like, before you should even consider any level of like scalable digital marketing. You need to have any ability to, one, do some level of automation around just the data capture and like the data, um, clean up and segmentation.
And then two, uh, you need the ability to actually make sure that your sales team can manage their pipeline. And if it’s living in spreadsheets, you have no guarantees that they’re actually effectively managing their pipeline. So that’s a starting point. From there, it’s some ability to do outbound sequencing.
So again, I am a huge proponent of doing some level of outbounding. I don’t want to do, uh, I mean, I was talking with a client in which they were doing like 300 inboxes, emailing 200 people a day, and I was [00:34:00] like, that’s awful, but. What I like from a value of outbound sequencing perspective is consistency in the message.
It is better tracking metrics on our outreach, and there is some level of ability to scale it up and down a little bit, not mass. I don’t want to do the like 200 inboxes, 200 cents, but I do mean like if you’ve got an SDR, that SDR should be able to likely do 50 to 70 in a day. And that, I don’t think that’s outre, I don’t think that’s outrageous.
I think that’s pretty reasonable for a lot of modern day teams. So again, that’s one thought process is like you need some level of outbound sequencing. And then for, for the teams that I work with that don’t have that, I recommend one of two tools. One be Smart lead.ai. So that’s a very inexpensive thing.
It’s like 40 bucks a month. To do, uh, I think it’s like 15,000 emails a month, so it’s like [00:35:00] way more than you would need, but that’s our lowest package is 40 bucks a month. Uh, so, and that’s month to month, unlimited seats, unlimited inboxes, all that kind of stuff. So it’s like really solid on that front.
The other one would be Apollo. Uh, Apollo is 60 bucks a month to month, and you get contact enrichment and you do get outbound sequencing. So again. If you don’t have the contact enrichment, I recommend Apollo. If you do have contact enrichment or a really solid database that you’re prospecting into, smart lead’s gonna be a little bit less expensive.
Um, but, and you’ll have greater outbound sequencing capabilities. Um, the other thing would be using a tool like propensity. Propensity offers free third party intent data and the ability to build target account lists also for free. And you get up to a hundred accounts on a weekly basis that are showcasing intent.
So again, from there, the workflow that I recommend for a lot of our clients is if you don’t have a great database, if you don’t have great segmentation within your existing CRM, because again, I have to recommend starting there, you’re mitigating the number of variables. You likely are brand aware. Again, starting [00:36:00] in your database for prospecting way better opportunity if you don’t have it.
Third party intent data is a great place to start. You build your account list, you then use a tool like Apollo to do contact level enrichment on that account list, do outbound sequencing. And then propensity also has the ability to de anonymize your website traffic at an account level so you then you can do further one-to-one outreach for re-engagement based on those that have hit your website.
So again, like if you’re starting real scrapping. HubSpot Marketing and sales Hub is like two 40 a year and that’s, I mean, that’s what I’m on. Propensity is free. Apollo is 60 bucks a month for contact enrichment and outbound sequencing. So there’s your A BM tech stack to manage everything. And it’s like Apollo, if I’m doing my math real quick, correctly, is like 360 bucks a year.
So you’re at like 600 bucks a year. For everything from a tech perspective. Congrats. You can build an A [00:37:00] BM program that is starter state. So before I go into like ideal state, any thoughts, questions, concerns, complaints, , I’m sure there’s plenty of complaints, but there’s a lot of people googling those tools.
That’s what’s going on. anyway. Vision, state man, vision state. You got, now you don’t have 600, now you got 60,000 or 600,000, 60,000 isn’t even gonna even get you 6 cents. I said 600. Then gimme a break. , uh. I actually do within the 60 I, I actually really like the propensity tool. Propensity is a BM for small teams, so it’s super accessible.
I recommend that it’s kind of your like going from the free tier to the paid tier because you get the ability to do outbound sequencing. Actually within propensity you do get contact Richmond and propensity third party intent data, the ability to build your webs, like your account lists, and they are very playbook focused.
So you build your playbook, you create a, a trigger, and then it’s an always on program and campaign that’s kind of running in the background. So like I’m a huge fan of propensity as far as like, [00:38:00] okay, you’ve built the scrappy version, what’s the next step up? And that scale up for me is propensity. And then again, you can, you can ride with propensity for quite some time.
Um, you may, if you get like really nuanced and really complicated, the terminus of six sense, the demand base, those might be beneficial. But again, for most companies that I’m speaking with and that I know. They actually will be able to do almost everything that they need with propensity alone. It has the, the appropriate CRM integration.
So like that’s, that’s the next stage for me. And then the other piece, I think it’s an incredible play if you do it right, is gifting. Um, so I personally, I’ve done a lot with Send Doso, uh, I’ve worked like lightly with postal. I’m a huge fan of reach desk and a huge fan of lob. So like. I don’t have firsthand experience with reaches and lob necessarily, but I like the people there and I trust them to do good things.
So from my perspective, like if you want the Mason spent a lot of time in this platform, it’s Send [00:39:00] Doso. Um, but I also think that most of ’em are pretty solid. So. The whole holistic tech stack from my perspective. Again, marketing automation, CRM, um, and ideally you’re moving up in tier. ’cause like, I’ll give you a prime example.
With HubSpot Enterprise, you can actually do workflows that automate the enrollment into sales sequences. So you can actually then on the sales enterprise tier. Once somebody’s triggered, you could then kick off Propensity plus kick off the HubSpot sales sequence all at the same time. And it’s all automated in a way that is assigning the tasks appropriately to the sales team and all that kind of stuff.
So like what I wanna do is mitigate the, the duct tape if we’re gonna scale up. ’cause scrappy is super duct taped when you scale up. You should have better automation for tracking and uh, making sure that people are getting routed to the right places. Cool. Awesome. All right, so last question for you.
I’ll pull out my magic wand here. Oh no. So you got a magic wand. What’s the biggest problem [00:40:00] in B2B that you’re solving with it right now?
What’s the biggest problem that I’m solving? Yeah, if you had, if you could wave the magic wand Oh, to solve one thing, what would you solve? It’s gonna be a maybe a little bit outta left field. Uh, I would want to create an environment in which everyone had a base level understanding cross-functionally of what all other teams were doing from like a function perspective and as a result of that knowledge, had a respect for it and could actually then better collaborate like.
At the core, I think the reason we have so many challenges and disagreements is like sales truly does not understand marketing. Marketing may have come up through sales at one point, but maybe their sales experience was being an SDR and that was it. So they don’t truly understand the full function of sales.
Nobody understands what [00:41:00] finance actually does, and then everybody’s just like success is there. And that’s just like . Not the case. And like all roles and functions are incredibly critical for long-term mission success, but I think we actually get in our own way too much because we feel like we’re all credit chasing.
We feel like we don’t have respect for the other functions. And if we actually just understood the role and the purpose of everybody’s job and had a respect for it, I think we could go a lot further, a lot faster. Okay, so you’re solving world peace in the B world. That was deep. That was really, no. He is actually describing an AI tool that sums up all the tasks that finance is working on, marketing is working on, and sales is working on, and then puts it at a board level.
Uh, read this to a 5-year-old. I could do that during check. You know how I know he’s been playing with AI tools recently, just based off of that statement alone. I could do all of that with chat GBT really?[00:42:00]
What are you doing? You could make way more money if you could solve for B2B, world peace. No, I can’t do that. But he’s got too many other things on his plate right now. He can’t, he can’t bother himself with solving B2B World peace. All right, so Mason, bring us on home with three actionable takeaways for today’s listeners.
Three actual takeaways. One. . If you wanna build an A BM program, you don’t need a massive tech stack. You can truly just get started with A CRM and marketing automation platform. Two. Uh, the first step to a BM is actually not a BM. So if you’re trying to build an A BM program, don’t pitch an A BM program Pitch a very short term, very simple sales and marketing collaborative project that generates any level of meetings.
Literally three RightFit meetings will make sales entire month. If marketing could deliver that. A repeatable fashion, just saying. And then third [00:43:00] is after you’ve actually built a good relationship with sales. A pilot, an A BM program with one or two sellers in a very specific vertical industry that solves a very specific niche problem that is largely based out of repurposed content so that it’s not a super heavy lift.
If you can do those three things, you could build a pilot a BM program that will actually have already been launched by like April May. And then towards the second half of the year, you can get further buy-in to do a bigger program. Perfect. Alright man. How can people connect with you or learn more about Scrappy A BM three places and I feel a little bit like Spaceballs when I outline it.
So one scrappy abm.com. Two scrappy abm, the podcast.
Free. Uh, if you just look up [00:44:00] scrappy A BM on LinkedIn, my dumb face is gonna be everywhere. Uh, so those are the three places. Like if you just literally look up scrappy a, BM, anywhere, I should be there. Fun fact, actually, where I came up with the name, I made one LinkedIn Post talking about scrappy A BM. I was like, I wonder if anybody’s ever come up with that idea.
I Googled it. My LinkedIn post was the first organic search result I. Interesting. Nobody’s talked about this. And three months later I launched a company. So literally I made sure that I’m everywhere. If you just look for it anywhere, . All right. Well Mason, thank you so much for joining today’s show. Like subscribe, check out more of digital Banter’s episodes and go check out Scrappy a BM.
Catch you guys next time.