Making ABM Work With Fujitsu ABM Guru Andrea Clatworthy

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript has been created using fireflies.ai – a transcription service. It has not been edited by a human and therefore may contain mistakes.

[00:00:02] DOM HAWES: Unicorns. They're supposed to be rare, but they seem to be everywhere. Now, like you, I suspect I devour business and marketing books, but if you've noticed more and more of them use the same reference material and they retro fit the strategies and tactics they're espousing to unicorns. Well, you know what? I'm bored of reading about unicorns. So what if Amazon thinks back to front? 

Why is it relevant to me that Steve Jobs started with, why? Google, Facebook, Netflix, those guys, you know it's not where I live professionally and it doesn't inform my future. So I thought, why don't I do something about it? Why not create a body of reference material that ordinary marketers like me can contribute to and learn from and that is Unicorny. 

[0:00:53.8] DOM HAWES: Welcome back to another episode of Unicorny and have we got a special show for you today. Now, my cohost today is Renaye Edwards from the multi-multi-multi-award-winning agency, Digital Radish. Good day to you Renaye, how the devil are you? 

[0:01:12.6] RENAYE EDWARDS: Morning Dom, good thank you. Very well. 

[0:01:15.5] DOM HAWES: Excellent. We’re going to talk about ABM today and now, before we came on air, I was saying to Renaye that I sometimes use Belgium to try and explain ABM and she said, “Please don’t”, so I won’t but if anyone’s interested, you can private message me on LinkedIn and I’ll tell you about Belgium. Renaye, do you want to maybe start? We’re going to talk to Andrea Clatworthy today from Fujitsu and she is one of the lading characters globally in ABM so I’m very excited to speak to her but let’s get a definition out of the way first because not everyone listening is going to know what account-based marketing is. 

[0:01:51.2] RENAYE EDWARDS: Well, mine is a lot more simplistic than your Belgium story. Basically, it’s a marketing strategy, that focus on a specific set of accounts, buying units, sectors or personas essentially. Very simple. 

[0:02:05.9] DOM HAWES: Wow, okay. I was just folding my paper, getting ready to go for a deep read there and you’ve already finished. Okay, that’s a good start. Tell me a little bit about Digital Radish. 

[0:02:15.5] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yes, so, Digital Radish, we are a fully integrated B2B marketing agency with a really kind of focus around ABM and brand. Specifically for high growth tech businesses. Particularly those that are going through big strategic changes, they might have recently IPO’d, product launches, launching into new markets and I’m pleased to say some very exciting news that we’ve actually been obviously acquired, you know, this done but acquired by Silvia Anderson, who we very much is a bit of a launch pad for our international expansion strategies. 

[0:02:47.6] DOM HAWES: So, without any further ado, let’s get Andrea online. 

[0:02:53.0] DOM HAWES: Hi, Andrea. 

[0:02:53.8] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Hello, how are you doing? 

[0:02:56.5] DOM HAWES: Well, I’m really well and I’m delighted that we’ve got you here, Andrea. Because, I know that you’ve got some real gold for us later on. We’re going to let you and Andrea riff a little bit later but first, Andrea. Why don’t you tell me just a little bit if that’s okay, about kind of Fujitsu and Fujitsu’s approach to kind of ABM and marketing in general? 

[0:03:15.2] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Thanks for having me and however nice. We’ve been doing ABM at Fujitsu in a one-to-one constructive methodology focus way if you like, since about 2014. Now, we did it before because we’re all about big accounts so we already had key account marketing but we weren’t consistent so we kind of rolled out ABM using the ITS and methodology back in 2014. 

Initially, in the UK and one to one. Definitely one to one. Then, we’ve slowly, over the years, grown our footprint if you like and have adopted one to one ABM in multiple port geographies now. We also do what we call DBM, which is still one to one ABM but DBM because it’s deal based marketing. So, ABM is growing the account and DBM is focusing on specific opportunity. 

We’ve been really successful, the business loves it, they value it and we’re in that really nice scenario where quite often demand from ourselves colleagues outstrips what we can actually provide from a marketing perspective. It’s part of, very much part of the strategy for marketing in most of our international regions. 

You might say, “Well, do you do one-to-few or one-to-many?” Not so much yet. That’s future for us, that’s how we’re going to scale but we’re very much enjoying the success we’ve had with the one-to-one approach. 

[0:04:33.3] DOM HAWES: Great and which part of the Fujitsu business is benefiting most from the work you’ve done? 

[0:04:39.4] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: That’s a great question. It’s our services business, you might not know Fujitsu very well. Most people know it’s for product and in fact, we do, do product. The largest super computer in the world is ours for instance and we do desktops and laptops and mainframe and all sorts of things but it’s our services business that benefits mostly from one-to-one ABM and actually is a lot of sense in that. ABM works better when it’s a complex setting and buying environment. 

So, services falls into that category if you like. More than one decision maker in our customer’s ABM’s. Its all about why focusing on what we call the three R’s, relationships, reputation and revenue. Get the relationships right with the right people, position ourselves correctly as a digital transformational partner or whatever we need to be for that particular customer and the revenue will follow. 

[0:05:29.6] RENAYE EDWARDS: I think the three R’s are great way to help align different teams towards common goals and objectives. Not just focusing on those vanity metrics such as clicks and downloads, which we’re all so fixated on. To be so fixated on and in fact, things like how engaged are your sales team, what feedback are you hearing about a program, much more of that kind of qualitative data, which I think is sometimes forgotten. 

Andrea just talking about sales teams, it is no surprise that the biggest pitfall that we see at Digital Radish here is, within account-based marketing program, is that align them between sales and marketing and when I think about the most successful sales and marketing relationships is when they have true respect and trust in one another. 

We’re also seeing things like, which I think will help move the dial a little bit more around kind of the CRO role, chief revenue officer, so straddling both sales and marketing team, which I think is certainly helping to align, sort of focus and efforts in pulling in one specific direction. What would you say makes a successful relationship in Fujitsu? 

[0:06:36.3] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Great question and I think there is two sets relationships that we’re potentially talking about here, got relationship between sales and marketing so internal relationships. And then, the relationships that we’re measuring with the three R’s are between Fujitsu and the customer. 

So take the first one first, so the internal one. You know, sales and marketing got to work together for this to work. If they’re working separately, if we’re working in silos, then ABM is not so successful and you could probably argue that it doesn’t work at all. Getting that right is really important. 

So, that means, when you're thinking about selecting your accounts and assigning an ABM app to work really closely with an account to almost become part of the account team. Then that chemistry piece with the people element is really important and then, build the trust. You used a great word there and I totally agree that relationships are human being to human being aren’t necessarily just focused in the workplace but you got to start there probably. 

Especially now when people are not necessarily colocating in the same office for instance. We’re all very familiar with working from home because we’ve been forced to but increasingly, that yeah, that’s a model that we’re going to have to adopt to and find ways to cope with. Getting that bit right is really important, that internal, I’ll call it the chemistry. 

[0:07:54.3] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yeah and it’s interesting. I think, certainly, when we kind of first started ABM, there was kind of this big thing that you know, you have to have kind of SLAs between you and the sales team and that was the only way that it was going to make it work. I’m assuming you don’t have those in place and no.  

[0:08:09.1] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: No, we don’t but there we go but we do make sure that ABMer is part of the account team and is a valued member of the account team. So bringing value and so, although, we don’t have SLAs, we do have some things that we recommend ABMers don’t do. They’re not the admin person for the account, for example, they’re not the bag carrier. It’s a peer relationship and a great ABM, a great marketeer can absolutely operate as a peer with the other members of the account team and we encourage people to do that. 

[0:08:39.4] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yes, that chemistry piece is just so important. I think some of the best sales and marketing relationships go beyond work and have a proper partnership, a friendship almost. I think something we found really successful, less so, maybe for strategic accounts but more for that kind of one-to-few, one-to-many approach, it’s the dedicated SDR, who potentially would report into marketing. The middle man if you like, who is kind of constantly looking for new contacts to enter the program but meetings, dealing with follow-ups.  

It also means that this dedicated account can pickup on the slack when the sales teams might be focusing on that kind of end of month where we found sometimes where they kind of go a little bit AWOL. You’ve constantly got somebody just dedicated to kind of working those contacts and those leads all the way through and I’d love to know what the setup is like at Fujitsu. 

[0:09:31.1] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: We’re doing one-to-one, so mostly these accounts have got an account team on them, which includes sellers so I’m using sales and account leaders in slightly the same terms there, it’s a bit confusing so apologies for that. So typically, an account team will have an account manager or client exec or whatever you want to call them, so the leader and the person that ultimately owns the PNL for that account. That account leader will have a team of people, which will include sellers and architects and subject matter experts and consultants and things.  

In our organisation, those people will report up into the leadership of that business area, be it public sector or private sector or perhaps a country, you know, a smaller country. Pretty senior I would say, if that answers your question? 

[0:10:15.8] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yes, that does, thank you. I listened to a great presentation that you did, I think it was back in last year at B2B’s ABM conference around how to setup your ABM department. So particularly around setting up to be quick reacting for when new accounts kind of spike and you have to turn around and kind of personalise content and messaging but you also mentioned finding that right balance of making sure that you’re reacting right to the right stuff essentially.  

So I know when I was client side that you could really get easily kind of sucked into, “We need to be doing this particular event and we need to be doing this, this, this.” I think for me, it was very much about kind of asking myself, “Is this really going to move the dial, do we need to be doing this and is this aligned to our objectives?” Are there any tips here on when and how to kind of push back and say no? 

[0:11:03.9] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Totally recognise what you’re saying there, been there myself. So I think, it starts with an expectation setting, right? At the outset, once you’ve gone through an account selection process, you got to be really clear with your account team that this is how it’s going to work and then you jointly work on a plan. Thinking strategically, thinking, “You know, where do we want to be with this account, what’s the story we need to tell?” 

“How do we need to position ourselves and with who?” Then, put a plan in place to do that, to deliver that. You’ve all agreed to that plan and clearly, stuff happens so you might need to deviate from the plan but if you got a plan that you’ve all agreed to and then you get every question, “We need to be here. Oh, I need this, oh, I need that” or whatever, then, you can have that grownup conversation.  

Say, “Well, where does that fit into this plan? What do we turn off so that we can accommodate what you’ve just requested and where is that activity going to move the dial on one of the others?” and if you’ve done that from outset then it makes it a really, you know, grownup conversation really. 

[0:12:06.4] DOM HAWES: Andrea, we mentioned the three R’s a short while ago, reputation, relationship and revenue. Now, am I right in thinking you might be a Guinness record holder? 

[0:12:16.9] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yes, I have.  

[0:12:17.0] DOM HAWES: Come on then. Tell us the story. 

[0:12:21.4] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: So, a few years ago now. So 2017, in fact, time flies, right? One of the things that I put in place in 2014 when we rolled out this ABM approach is to recognising that not all customers are equal, obviously. But also recognising that we as a company, ran some big things, big events if you like. We had a big event twice a year, once in Tokyo and once in Munich, which we called Fujitsu forum. Conference and exhibition, two-day thing, lots of stuff for customers to see, do, hear, et cetera. 

For our VIPs, so my ABM accounts, I ran on day zero so that evening before the full event, a dinner. Nice senior networking, white glove treatment, all that stuff, really lovely. It was working really well, well established and this particularly in 2017, the topic, the theme of the event for the Fujitsu forum was, digital co-creation and in the past previous dinners, I’d had an inspirational after dinner speaker and that sort of thing, you know, we’re used to this format, aren’t we? 

I was thinking, “How do I get the idea of digital transformation across to our audience?” Very senior people go to learn to dinners, “You know, how many do they remember?” was one of my starting points. So two things, making it memorable and evident in some way, this digital co-creation concept. So I worked with a very small agency called Pepper Link, great agency. 

We came up with this idea to, at the dinner, not just have an after dinner speaker, in fact, not have an after dinner speaker but to attempt a Guinness World Record. It’s six months planning on this, right? Part of how I wanted it to run was that our customers who, our VIPs that we’re inviting didn’t know they were going to do that. They just thought they’re coming to a lovely dinner really lovely venue, it’s the BMW museum in Munich. Awesome venue for you if you ever, just as a museum but also, it’s a venue for anything. 

We found these great place, they were very happy to come, we were slightly over subscribed, which gave me a little bit of a heart flutter because “Oh my God, how am I going to run this Guinness World Record with more people?” Anyway, sorted that out. So they all came to this dinner where the Guinness World Record people there who ran the thing for us and they were brilliant.  

We created a brand-new Guinness World Record and it’s the largest tablet computer mosaic. In order for us to do that, we had to have 220 tablets, our technology as it happened, those I think are iPads but with a Fujitsu logo on and they needed to be in a grid or mosaic and they have to have a drawn-up image running across all of those pieces of the picture to run for at least 90 seconds and we just did a beautiful image and with really loud music and all sorts of things. 

Now, what was brilliant is that every single customer put at least one of those tiles into the mosaic with big grid on the wall. Then it all turned on of course, a couple didn’t turn on so we built up the tension and the tech guy’s sweating in the background, there’s no wires, right? It’s all Internet things if you like and they came into life and then we did a countdown and pressed the button and this big picture went and all these noises and it was brilliant, everyone, just everyone was into it.  

The tension in the room and then the relief when it worked and the euphoria if you like was fantastic. Everyone’s tweeting, people taking pictures and of course, at the end of that evening, everyone there went home with the certificate that they had just taken part and achieved a brand-new Guinness World Record and they’ve got that forever. So, thinking of the three R’s. So relationships, once you’ve done something like that with a set of people, they’re unlikely to forget it in a hurry, okay?  

So we’ve created that bond almost an emotional tie if you like but in a positive way. Reputation, well, we pulled it off, okay? It’s our technology, our systems running in the back of it, our clever people making all these stuff work and we digitally co-created, so we created together this thing and the revenue are, the all-important one if you’re a seller, it was on for a billion euros of influence pipe in that room. Really, really good. Oh no, it was fabulous. 

[0:16:37.1] DOM HAWES: That’s a great story. How did you choose who was going to be in the room? Coming back to the first R, which relationships in particular did you target? 

[0:16:45.9] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yeah, we work with the account teams on this, individually, each time. We only really wanted one person from each of those customers there. Sometimes we had two because actually, if a customer was sending a small party to, for them, then just selecting one out of that group could have been awkward. In some cases, it wasn’t because it was the chief exec for example, so it was a no brainer to take the most senior person in that customer but perhaps where we’ve gone down a level into direct reports and we just had to work that through.  

In a couple of instances we had more than one person from a customer but very much working with the account team and of course, we did the exec engagement as part of that. So our executives were there too, so they were hosting the thing. So we had to – we were thinking through as well, “What are the exec engagement plans that we’re putting in place for these customers, at you know, as to them and where could this play a role?” So individually it is how we went about it really.  

[0:17:42.5] DOM HAWES: I think what’s interesting here Renaye, you may have some experience, you want to chime in as well is that the comments that you are making about relationships coming from human beings and their knowledge of relationships not necessarily data because there’s been this big movement about account selection and intent data and other kind of data tools. Do you use those or do you rely very much on humans? Renaye, I’d love to hear your experience in this area too.  

[0:18:06.9] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: We do use it but more in the one-to-few space ultimately but for these big accounts where we are looking at multilayer relationships, what we’re looking to up-sell and cross sell but that’s not what we would say to a customer. You see, we are looking for ways in which we could help them and encourage them to buy the helpful mask rather than a competitor.  

So those relationships are between the account team members, our executives and the people that deliver for those customers. So there’s multilayer engagement throughout the teams that from particularly that work with the customer and of course, on the customer side too.  

[0:18:45.6] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yes, agreed. I think particularly when doing strategic accounts as in the reliance upon sales insights absolutely imperative. I think there’s too often much reliance on things like intent data is for me, it is a bit more of a nice to have rather than the holy grail in your account selection and as you say Andrea, I think great for one-to-few and one-to-many strategy.  

[0:19:07.6] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yeah, I think it’s great if you are looking to select a target group for example.  

[0:19:12.4] DOM HAWES: Okay, coming back to the theme of the podcast for the people who are listening who probably aren’t doing ABM already because ABM is kind of been the preserve of big organisations because it’s big, right? ABM is big, you may think but I know also Andrea because I have seen you talk also at events where you talk about the ABM doesn’t always have to be massive budget.  

Can you talk to that a little bit because I think the people listening probably won’t have massive budgets, how can they get involved in this kind of one-to-one or one-to-few activity that you guys use?  

[0:19:43.2] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: There’s a few things that you can do that don’t cost anything, so especially with existing customers, much easier to do this existing customers. For instance, you could take a customer down the advocacy route. So a really clever thing to do is to perhaps write a case study of what you’ve done with the customer previously and then of course, you’d better engage with your customer in a non-selling way so that they approve it.  

Then of course, you can publish it and you can shatter it and do all sorts of things and get them involved in a conversation if you like, if it is on social media or whatever or find roots where you can use that joint story on a speaker platform or elsewhere. Those things don’t cost anything, so it’s just your time and effort and that’s really powerful. So that’s a really good thing too. We’ll write a case study, get in front and get it approved and you have reminded them of the awesome stuff you’ve done as well.  

Maybe they come up with a benefit from that book that you haven’t appreciated either. That’s a really easy thing to do and especially if that customer is really particularly proud of what they’ve done or perhaps it’s advanced somebody’s career where it’s made them a hero or even better if somebody’s just got a little bit of ego that you are able to capitalise upon and push forward on that but my favourite absolutely free one to do.  

[0:20:57.5] RENAYE EDWARDS: It is interesting because actually underneath the relationship one of the kind of KPIs that we often track is you know, how many case studies, how many speaking slots do you do with a client.  

[0:21:07.5] DOM HAWES: Renaye, what’s the budget range that you see people applying typically to campaigns at the moment? I know it is a big question.  

[0:21:13.8] RENAYE EDWARDS: Oh, it is a big question. We have quite a lot of people sort of coming to us wanting pilot programs off the bag, typically net new accounts. What I would say in those pilots, they shouldn’t just be for month programs, they shouldn’t just be seven touch points in the program as finished. I find this actually quite a big sort of frustration, it is such a waste of sort of time and energy and resource to think that they would come off within seven weeks.  

ABM isn’t the silver bullet particularly when you’ve got sales cycles of see between 12 and 18 months. Yes, potentially it could accelerate it but not within seven touch points. So going back to your question around kind of price from an agency really depends on I guess what our strategy is, so one to many and one to few, one to one, they can all vary in terms of how much resources the client got internally.  

That we can leverage for example how much content is there that we can repurpose and reuse and of course, also down to what’s the size of the prize but as Andrea says, you can be more clever around budget with existing accounts. You know, inviting them to innovation days to your office, collaborating on content, speaking slots, sorry Dom, I have not answered your question price at all.  

[0:22:25.5] DOM HAWES: No, as it happens you haven’t but it make a very good point in there I think though, which is that you know, things are a lot harder if you are looking at that new. You know, new revenue from new clients is a lot harder and I think that is where bigger budgets go, isn’t it Andrea?  

[0:22:41.2] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree on that. You could spend a lot of money can’t you? If you’re really clear with your targeted then you can reduce your spend because you’re not going to waste any and also, if you are thinking if you are starting down an ABM, it may be a one-to-one route, perhaps for your second account pick an account in the same sector perhaps because then you can re-use some of the effort and assets that you put in place for that first one.  

[0:23:06.0] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yeah, I really, really struggle when people are kind of they are setting out to do ABM and they’ll give us kind of ten accounts to go out and their net new, how often I’ll just push back on that and quite often I will always kind of say to them, unless we’re doing one-to-one existing customers, then you’re just sort of starting out. Then I would say, you need to be doing more of a kind of one-to-many approach in order to kind of wiggle down into one-to-one. 

[0:23:29.7] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yeah, absolutely too but if you go in one-to-many then one-to-few then one to one, then you can find an account that you know, intent has driven you there in the first place and then you are getting the great engagement. Then perhaps you want to take it out of your one-to-many programs to one-to-few or even then up to one-to-one because you can see the value in making that investment and because you can see that there is some revenue or at the end of that journey.  

[0:23:51.2] DOM HAWES: If I had any hair left, it would be very grey and wizened but I seem to remember back in the day power-based selling. This important concepts of understand the power base and mapping organisations and Jeffrey Moore’s bowling alley and it seems we’re skirting around those sorts of issues now, which is if you’ve got a customer in one specific sector, make your next customer in that sector because you’ve got loads of case material.  

I think a lot of small companies are nervous about focus because they think they’ll be leaving a lot business on the table but actually, I find the opposite is true most of the time.  

[0:24:24.7] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yeah, I still think there is a big emphasis of flying and I think we’ll see that more once we kind of fully come out of this pandemic mess and obviously hybrid-work. I think some of the things that we did was often was kind of monitor accounts and, “Oh look, this particular account is speaking at an event, at a conference tomorrow. We’ve not been able to reach him digitally, get yourself down there, is it stand 24.”  

We’ve done this personalised report, he’s not Reddit but kind of get yourself down there and it is that I guess that little bit more of that kind of manual approach that I think we’ve gone so far down the kind of automated road. I think we’ve got to kind of come back to being able to kind of do things offline as well and with that obviously, you know, comes a little bit more of a manual effort.  

[0:25:12.1] DOM HAWES: Let’s change it up a bit, we’ve talked about the present, we’ve talked about how you guys do things, let’s look through our crystal ball into the future because ABM is still in early adopter mode as far as I can see. There are a lot of marketers don’t understand it and already we’ve got ABX, which is like the mutant child of ABM. What is ABX? Is it real and is it a thing even? I don’t know.  

[0:25:39.1] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: It is a great question, what is ABE as well of course.  

[0:25:42.3] DOM HAWES: ABE, what’s ABE?  

[0:25:43.3] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Same as ABX but with an E instead of an X.  

[0:25:45.9] DOM HAWES: Oh, with an E instead of an X.  

[0:25:46.7] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yeah but I think you know, ABM is going to business as usual. You could argue especially in the one-to-many environment, it is just using the tools and the great market that exists now to enable awesome targeting, hyper personalisation at scale. That’s just great demanding. That’s demanding using what is in our keep-back. So I just think yeah, that’s going to be business as usual.  

[0:26:13.8] DOM HAWES: Do you think the cookie-less feature is going to play towards ABM because you can’t just spam people while assuming Google ever does get around to banning cookies. You can’t just spam people, you’re going to have to act off intelligence. It could be a little bit of back to the future, do your marketing strategy properly, target, segment, all of those things?  

[0:26:31.6] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yeah, totally.  

[0:26:32.8] DOM HAWES: Well, one of the odds is relationships, right? It is easy to have relationships in humans. I mean, computer to computer isn’t much of a relationship, it is a data exchange. It is different, it is a different thing entirely. I’m thinking also now the future very quickly. For those people listening, you’ve been in ABM as long as it’s sort of formally existed as a thing and probably have been doing it for donkey’s years before that.  

If there were, I’m going to say the three R’s is one thing, if there are other things that you are going to point people towards, lessons that you could draw that will help them make their marketing more effective, what might those be?  

[0:27:07.5] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Right on the top of my list is collaborating with sales. Sales and marketing should work together. If you are starting this journey even if it is not ABM, you know, then work with sales. We’re buddies, it shouldn’t be siloed. I think that that applies whatever type of marketing that you are doing should be absolutely collaborative. Now, that can be difficult especially if sales and marketing perhaps don’t report into the same person but you’ve got to find a way to do it.  

I’ve heard some wonderful inspirational sales leaders that had an epiphany when they’ve started to work with their marketing colleagues. We know that as sales leaders want their stuff and I appreciate it but they don’t necessarily always immediately think, “I need the marketing support on this.” Now maybe that’s because over the years, marketing has become less relevant to an organisation.  

I really hate vanity metrics because we are measuring clicks and stuff, a sales guys doesn’t care. Sales doesn’t care about these things, so we as a profession I think have slipped down these slippery road and stopped doing things that they value. We need to stop doing that, we need to get back on that bus with them. We need to work collaboratively and have some joint goals from working it together.  

Then if we do that and especially in an ABM world, it is essential to do that. We have a sales leader or a sales guard, an account manager who is internally promoting what they’ve done. “Look at the ABM that we have done. That’s brilliant” part because that is sales and marketing properly working together. My number one thing then regardless of the type of marketing is work with sales. 

[0:28:51.8] DOM HAWES: So you heard it here first, if you’re listening to this podcast and you haven’t spoken to the sales team in the last few days, press pause, go speak to them, come back, start listening again.  

[0:29:03.0] ANDREA CLATWORTHY: Yes.  

[0:29:03.7] DOM HAWES: Right, thank you. Andrea, you know, thank you so much for spending time with us. I know how busy you are and I do greatly, greatly appreciate you coming to join the Unicorny project. Now Renaye, we started out talking about the three R’s, is that kind of a fundamental building block of ABM?  

[0:29:21.5] RENAYE EDWARDS: I think so yes, I think traditionally we are very much focused on as I mentioned before, those really minute KPIs around you know, open rates and click through rates and I think what the three R’s do is kind of elevate that there are much more around yes, you still got those kind of softer metrics, you’ve got the harder metrics but you’ve also got the qualitative and the quantitative metrics as well as a few more of those sort of commercial aspects as well but wider remit if you like.  

I think yeah, a fantastic place to start with the three R’s and working out what they mean for you most importantly because what they’ll be meaning for one business is not necessarily right for another business.  

[0:30:01.2] DOM HAWES: Well funny you should mention that Renaye because there’s kind of an overlap here. One thing being right for one business but not right for another. It seems a core part of the ABM message that everybody can learn from is this thing of personalisation, make sure you know your audience and personalise or tailor the message that you are giving to that very specific audience.  

Are there any tips that you can give our listeners on how they may be able to gain a better understanding of their audience in order to personalise the message for them?  

[0:30:32.5] RENAYE EDWARDS: So I think it depends on what strategy you’re adopting obviously. For Andrea for example, she is very much focusing on a strategic one-to-one existing account. So for her, the majority of that kind of insight is primarily coming from her sales teams. Obviously when you are looking at more of a one-to-few or one-to-many, you may not have that level of insight from be able to gain from your sales teams.  

You are basically relying what’s on the web, you know, what is out there and so you’re having to kind of use that, using intent tools and things like that in order to be able to personalised but obviously not too much personalisation as well because for one-to-few and the one-to-many, a lot of the times you don’t specifically know whether they are in-market. So it is getting that right level of personalisation that you haven’t got wastage for example.  

So quite there’s a lot of talk around how to scale programs right now and you know there are some great tools out there, the likes of Turtle for example, which is a content personalisation tool. You’ve got Vidyard from a video standpoint as well. You’ve got Reach Desk out there as well, which is personalised virtual DM, so bringing back a little bit more of those kind of automated tools to be able to just kind of scale your program.  

[0:31:46.6] DOM HAWES: I am going to end on this point, it is also super topical because every single guest that comes through these doors was the subject of a very highly personalised approach. The tools you just talked about now, Vidyard and Turtle and I can’t remember the other one but I am sure it’s great, we could wind the tape back at some stage and listen, I’m never going to get around to editing that back in, sorry listener, but those sorts of tools are really accessible and anyone can make use of them pretty much immediately, can’t they?  

[0:32:16.7] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yeah, absolutely. I think again when people are starting out with pilot programs, I think they’re a little bit hesitant to start investing in technology but what I would say is that it does have a place particularly when you are scaling and you are starting out and trying to get that sort of ABM engine if you like working together and again, my point if you are starting out again, I think keep it very focused.  

I think if there is not enough insight within that sales department to do it one-to-one, do not start there. Start with a one-to-many approach, start working that engine, keep it going and then start waiting for that kind of intent and that insight to flow through your business in order to then bring them down into a one to one.  

[0:33:00.4] DOM HAWES: Well, there you go. Renaye, today we had one of the royal family of ABM on and it was a really good chat. Thank you very much for being my cohost on today’s show. I think we need to do something more on ABM.  

[0:33:12.2] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yes, absolutely. I think so, I think you know, this session was actually ended up being very focused around kind of one-to-one and a bit more around that kind of strategic ABM approach but actually there’s a lot to kind of thrash out. I think talking about ABM more holistically in that kind of more around the ABM engine.  

[0:33:29.6] DOM HAWES: Okay and I think what might also be a good thing to look at because you guys won so many awards at the BG Marketing Awards last year, maybe we can unpack one of the campaigns that you did and talk about the lessons that people might be able to draw into those.  

[0:33:44.5] RENAYE EDWARDS: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I would be absolutely happy to do that.  

[END OF INTERVIEW] 

[0:33:49.3] DOM HAWES: Okay guys, if you want to hear about that, please message me on LinkedIn. My name is Dom Hawes and I think for today, Rey, thank you. That’s a wrap.  

[0:33:56.6] RENAYE EDWARDS: Thanks so much Dom. Bye.  

[0:34:01.3] DOM HAWES: Thank you for listening. That is the end of today show. If you would to subscribe to us, please do, go to your favourite podcast outlet and you will find us there. If you want to be on the show, my name is Dom Hawes, look me up on LinkedIn Connect and I would love to talk to you. This show is put together by Selbey Anderson. We find and unlock hidden value and the shows recorded at Terminal Studios, which you can find @terminalstudios.co.uk. See you next time.