Drew Neisser’s Post

Transcript

Drew Neisser: Hey, it's Drew Neisser with another Wednesday Wisdom. We're talking about ABX and ABM with Jon Russo of B2B Fusion. And Jon, one of the tricky parts of any marketing program is measurement. So give us a tip when it comes to ABM, what are the metrics that matter? Jon Russo: Yeah, the metrics that matter���and the first tip I'd start with is start with the end in mind. Meaning you really have to look at the pipeline and be the steward of the pipeline, look at all your inputs into that pipeline from a volume and velocity perspective: Partners, alliances, SDRs, BDRs, sales, marketing... As CMOs, you should be able to report on volume and velocity and have that end in mind of what you want as a report. So that would be step number one. Drew Neisser: And so I'm just curious, what tools do you need to be able to track all of those because I know, you know, 'marketing sourced' if you will, or even just the fact that this stuff���how are they���how would they have visibility into those? Jon Russo: Yeah, great question. And I would say 95% of the companies that we come across have Salesforce as a CRM, and some sort of marketing automation platform. HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, or flavor du jour, right. The one question that's coming in is, how mature are they in the adoption of an account-based platform, like a Demandbase, 6sense, ZoomInfo, TechTarget, or not. So we kind of see that bifurcation in the market of sometimes companies have that, sometimes they don't. If you have it, your ability to report goes up by an order of magnitude, your ability to scale goes up by an order of magnitude. If you don't have it, there are ways to get there. But it's a much more manual and a much more labor intensive process. Drew Neisser: Got it, so one of the advantages of these tools is that they enable you to see, if you will, what is filling the pipeline. You talked about the marketer needing to be the steward of the pipeline. Is there some guidance you can provide here? Particularly, we're talking about metrics, but what are we looking for? Jon Russo: Yeah, great question. What you're really looking for to be the steward of the pipeline is the underlying process. And the underlying process consists of the definitions of leads and accounts, and how the handoffs go from, say, for example, from marketing to SDR to sales, it's at those intersections where things don't get followed up on, things get dropped. At any intersection, there's always an accident, and you want to try to prohibit or prevent those accidents from happening at the intersections. You want as smooth handoffs as possible on qualified information, you don't want to be wasting your SDR or your sales team's time. So you have to also make sure that whatever is passing through those intersections, meets the right quality check as well. Drew Neisser: Yeah, and one of the things that we've talked a lot about in Huddles is the need to, you know, probably a BDR is at least in marketing, because it gives you one way of controlling what the quality is. But the other part of this is the notion that CMOs need���that it's not a handoff in the sense that it does���if you hand it off, and they don't close it, you lose, right? So it's not���you're continually involved, right, and in the CMOs need to be thinking about, okay, we got this and sales has it, but can we win it? What's our win rate? Can we���what's the size of the deal? And so forth. So I'm thinking that all of that kind of information, also circles back into your your metrics analysis and recommendations. Jon Russo: Yeah, the quality means everything. And you know, getting up front, the definitions, the agreements, the plays kind of understood. And then once that's documented and built into dashboards, that's where the accountability really happens. So you got to have the process first, and then the dashboards. And that's kind of the order of operation to get that done. Drew Neisser: Okay, process in the dashboard. And obviously, in the dashboard, the data has got to be really good. And somebody's got to be paying attention and keeping it up, right. I mean, this is also a compliance issue, if sales isn't inputting the data or something, it breaks down. Jon Russo: Yeah, and the tools aren't valued, nor are the team members if your data is bad. So if you have poor contact quality or duplicative accounts, your investments in your ABX platforms, which are going to be in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars may be wasted if your processes aren't in place, or up to speed enough to take advantage of their capabilities. So you do need to be mindful of that too. Drew Neisser: Alright, so this is not something that you sort of just, 'Hey, today we're going to do ABX!' This is something that you really have to invest time, energy, and ideally bring in some outside counsel. All right, Jon Russo, B2B Fusion, thanks for joining us for today's Wednesday Wisdom. If you're a B2B CMO who can share, care, and dare the best of them, do yourself a favor at check out cmohuddles.com. Not only do we convene the most amazing B2B community, but we also have partners who are bringing insights like the ones that Jon just did. I'm Drew Neisser, that's your Wednesday Wisdom. Peace out!