Name: Roundtable: Role of Sales in ABM
Uploaded: 2025-03-27T17:16:06.524Z
Duration: 52 min 28 s
Description: Roundtable: Role of Sales in ABM

Transcript for "Roundtable: Role of Sales in ABM": Hey, everybody, and welcome to the last, session or more precisely, last, roundtable from our full final summit as promised. We made a special session for everybody. We invited enterprise tech leaders. We have Sam, enterprise account executive, Raf, as well as account executive and P.T. VP of sales. And, for everybody, it would be a fantastic corporate unit to to learn from experienced sales reps what is the role of sales and account based marketing. We're gonna ask straightforward questions if you are in marketing, how you can get, sales by in. Right? So all of this. And I think I will pass microphone to Vlad. Vlad can start with the interest. So thank you so much for taking the time, and joining. I would just like to ask everyone, to give a quick intro of yourself, your role, and and the company, and we can start with the questions. But, I also like to ask the audience, don't be shy. Post your questions in the q a section. We'll bring them up. We did prepare a few of our own, but we always prefer to offer the audience the chance to interact. So let's start just in the order that you you appeared here. Sam, would you like to give a quick intro of yourself and the company you work for? Everyone, Samuel Adu-Febiri here. Yeah, I'm a part of the team called Certn. We do background checks and preemployment screening, and I am on the enterprise account team here at Certn. It's nice to meet you, Bryce. Thank you. Raf, would you like to give a quick intro? Yeah. Sure. My name is, indeed Raf. I'm based in Belgium. I'm a part of the sales team at Customs4trade. We sell software to automate customs processes to to enterprise companies. Alright. Thank you, Raf. PT? My name is P.T. Vineburgh. I am the, founding partner at CHARLESGATE, which, is based in Boston, Massachusetts in The US. We do primarily property management and new development marketing, so leasing up big apartment buildings or selling out condo projects. Awesome. Thank you. I think it's really good to have three very different actually cases. We have Samuel from Certn, which is kind of like broad market, a lot of different companies that need background checks. We have Raf from custom survey, quite a niche market, and then PT even in a way more niche and being, focused on a very specific market in even, like, a specific geography where you are. So I think we'll we'll get a good mix. So let's start with the first question. I as they say, like, hindsight is twenty twenty. We always, know best when we look at the best. And from the perspective that you have right now, having been a part of a successful ABM program, how would you describe the benefits of this kind of an approach, account based marketing approach for sales specifically? And maybe this time, let's start with PT. What from your perspective, what is the advantage of ABM for sales? I mean, I think the advantage that that I found with ABM is it it really kept you focused. Right? Like, we have such a broad range of prospects and kind of really peeling it back a layer and saying, okay. You know, instead of just going for projects, like, let's look at who's doing these projects. Let's get a consolidated list of accounts of the the people we wanna cultivate relationships with, and then let's attack them, you know, on an account base basis versus, again, just kind of, you know, looking at different news sources and different, data sources to to identify projects and really focus on the on the accounts themselves. And that really helped, you know, narrow scope and and and, again, create a a level of of focus that that enabled a better process. Absolutely. Samuel, do you wanna chime in? Yeah. I mean, a lot of what P.T. said and then alignment. Honestly, like, alignment with marketing was really huge for us. We were pretty much siloed, as crazy as that sounds within our our structure. Everyone was doing their own thing on the marketing side and then the sales side. So it's good to just connect, frequently with each other and understand, like, hey. What are they actually doing their day to day and understand? And then you actually have, like, like, an understanding of, oh, this is why they did things and pivot. And it actually has changed a lot of how we do things today, and there's more collaboration going on. And then even just the new tips from types of outreaching and then the focus on specific industries and being able to specifically track that in a time period, that really helped too. And I wonder just sort of your perspective, how did that alignment help the sales in terms of results process? Yeah. I mean, a lot in terms of process. There's a lot of processes that were, like, within our CRM that were actually not even really connected that we thought they were. So it actually brought things back and really just, like, honed down on, like, okay. We weren't even tracking this specific piece, and there's so much inside out to it, especially with some of the other tools that we had. It helped us, like, actually use get more out of the tools that we had, by having that alignment too. Okay. Raf, do you have some thoughts on the benefits of ABM from sales perspective? Yeah. I think from my point of view, it helped to get a sort of a new angle to to target sort of the very high level enterprise companies that we're targeting and also the high level people within those organizations. So we already had a an outbound cadence that we were doing heavily personalized. But by doing the ABM approach, I think we we we realized or we saw actually that we were able to connect to some some very high level, people in the companies that we were targeting, who weren't answering to any of our, outreaches before just because we took a sort of another angle to it. So I think that was, yeah, very great, to see. And I think additionally, because you sort of start building a building an audience, it's sort of compounding and and you get a a broader reach, much quicker than than you would do when when doing your personalized outreach just person to person. Thank you so much. Before we'll actually move forward to our other questions, I have already seen this fantastic question from Sally. So when you were first approached with doing ABM at your company, were you skeptical? And if so, what changed your mind? Let's start with you, Samuel. Yeah. That's a that's a good question, Sally. Was I skeptical? Of course. As a salesperson, I was just skeptical, and I was like, hey. Rory doing so many things. Like, hey. When are we gonna have time to do this? But, honestly, like, I was like, we need to try something different too, because there's so many things that have changed in the market, especially, like, since like, even the last two years, things change faster than ever. So I had to be open to it, and I was open to it. And then the big thing is you have to find that one person that was actually responsive in the sales org, and then that really will help. I'll facilitate everything as, I guess, stakeholder, but you do need to find that at least that one person, on that sales team. And once you do, just, like, hang on to them, and and that person will reap the rewards of it too. Thank you. We were so lucky to have you as that person. Thank you, Samuel. Raf, what would you say? What was your experience? Yeah. I think I'm I'm a bit maybe the exception to the rule here because I was very much involved in bringing ABM in. I was a sort of a from a sales point of view, really pushing for it and actually trying to, yeah, to to bring it in quite quickly because I realized, of course, we we all try to find ways to to build pipeline on a daily basis. And we were doing whatever we could, but I think there were possibilities to do it in a more creative way. And I know we're in in a in a very niche industry where there's a lack of, information available for for potential buyers to to get. So if we would take that angle to to to become to do these thoughtful posts and then to comment and really bring value to that community, I saw it as a way to to expand our reach and our brand awareness and hopefully get some, some meetings in. So, yeah, I think, I try to bring it in, from a sales point of view, definitely. I think after your reply, lots of people who are listening to us live will just pick up your profile and send to executives saying, hey. Can we get more people like Raf in our organization? But jokes aside, P.T., what was your experience? Yeah. I mean, I think a little bit like Raf, I wasn't I wasn't overly skeptical. I thought it was a really good concept, and it's something we had talked about for a while before we, you know, teamed up with fullfunnel. And and as we started to really execute on it, you know, we were really lucky that we had pretty immediate results. And, you know, I think Samuel mentioned it too, but it really helped us align marketing and sales. And and and I think that that was really critical in our ability to kind of, execute on the ABM and and and really, again, get get quick results, and those results have continued, you know, through the first quarter of this year too. So, yeah, I was I was all for it and, you know, it again kinda proved its worth early on. Alright. So if I'm thinking about ABM, it's even in the name. It says marketing, account based marketing, which is probably unfortunate because it's definitely like all of you shared. It is a joint effort between marketing and sales. But what would you say to folks? What are the actual activities and responsibilities of a salesperson within an ABM, ABX, whatever we call it, within such an account based program? And I just want to start with Samuel because I know that, Samuel, you're also involved not only in doing it yourself, but also involving new colleagues from your team and kind of like, you know, passing on the knowledge and teaching the others. So I think you have also that that kind of perspective. So I would like to hear that from you. Yeah. So, Vlad, from, like, my perspective, like, actually doing it's like data in, data out. Right? So from our perspective, the sales team actually has to be doing the work of personalized message of actually DMing people of if there is insights or comments on some of the posts that we've been doing, engaging with them, starting conversations on LinkedIn, making sure it bubbles up. Like, that it's almost up to the point of, hey. We keep on seeing the sky everywhere. We keep on seeing certain or what's happening with that. So actually putting in the work of commenting on, things, like, not just saying, hey. Nice post, but, like, insightful, actually providing, like, something, or some feedback, or even sometimes something controversial, and then putting them into a cadence where you're actually following up properly and not just asking for something, but also providing just, kind of like Rafa saying earlier of just, like, providing some different type of, kind of value rather than this the typical one or call to action that you've had in the past. So my thing is just, like, data and data out from the sales team, like, actually putting in the information and tracking those. So when you say data data in, data out, or is it also about just the effort in, the results that Totally. You you will get as much as you thought as the the effort you put as a salesperson, really. How how does that look like from your perspective, PT? So the activity, like, let's say day to day okay. So, yeah, practical day to day sales activities, that maybe you didn't do before ABM that you're doing more of right now part of Yeah. I mean, I think there's quite a few, but, you know, I think the one thing that has helped us is again, we have a pretty large range of accounts to attack. And so what we would do is we would set, you know, a number, whether it was 10 or 15, as a goal for the week to really go after and connect with. And then we would, you know, leave those in the pipe you know, in the focus pipeline, if you will, for, you know, maybe up to two or three weeks. And then we've either gotten a successful connection or we realize that, you know, maybe we need to put some on the back burner and bring new accounts in to focus on. So we had a pretty, you know, set cadence of both number of accounts and time that we would put them in what we would call active focus. Right? And then, you know, again, I think that that really helped us. Some of the the social selling that we brought into this was, you know, certainly new for me. Right? Like, my partner is the one, who has the real big LinkedIn presence. And, you know, we were going through this just yesterday, but it really has enabled us now with consistent social selling to see what works and what doesn't. And it's really interesting that, like, for, one you know, there's kinda three main guys at our company that are out there socially and generating business, so to speak. My posts when you know, certain types of posts were getting tons of engagement, and we were able to identify that other types weren't and, you know, kind of great data because for our third kind of partner, the post that he was getting great engagement on were the same post same types of post that I was getting no engagement on. Right? And so we've been able to identify that, like, hey. For me, the posts about, you know, wins and kinda, like, humble brags were the ones that were getting real engagement and the ones where I was trying to, you know, be more of, you know, you know, add value content. Right? Like, they were getting nothing for engagement. But when Todd posts, you know, the the sort of value add, you know, you know, conversational, inducing posts, he's getting tons of engagement on those. And then when he posts about, like, a win or something, he was getting no engagement. So it's just really interesting, and we've been able to identify that, you know, certain posts work for my profile, certain posts work for his, and then certain posts work for Mike's. And that's been a really valuable piece of this because, obviously, LinkedIn is is just such a huge source of ABM for us, right, and and trying to engage with new new prospects and clients. And so that's something that I would say is a derivative of our ABM campaign that really has helped us, you know, get laser focused on the type of content that we're pushing out individually within our team. This is very interesting. Very interesting. Haven't heard that before. I I just think yeah. I it's funny. I you know, I we always we have a, you know, content director that does a lot of that posting, you know, I you know, on my account, and we work together, and she does the same thing with with Todd. And she was, you know, very, ingrained in the ABM campaign as well even though she's more of a behind the scenes team member. And it was it was really interesting to see how, you know, how the different posts got different levels of engagement. And and, you know, I see someone, Sally, making a comment there, but it it really does. It it's you know, the authenticity, I think Yeah. Is reflective of your personality and those who know you within the professional world. And, you know, it just turns out that my people are way more interested in the stuff we're up to, and, you know, Todd's people are way more interested in, you know, the the the nitty gritty industry insight. So it it's just an interesting juxtaposition that, you know, again, we've been able to now identify, and we're gonna really focus on having those specific types of posts for each of us to, again, just really ramp up engagement. And, you know, we've kind of found what works and what doesn't, so to speak. Awesome. I just like to point to everybody. Like, you're active in a very specific niche. So you're going after developers of pro of new projects. Right? That's already a niche. And by the way, you're active in Boston. So developers are not the people that you would normally expect to be active on LinkedIn. And then you're not, like, internationally or even nationally in your case. Right? Active We're really quasi regional. Yeah. We're quasi regional right now, and, you know, obviously, we had deal with aspirations. It is very local. It is. Yeah. Thing is working for you. So I just wanted to, like, share this with everybody because a lot of people are saying, you know what? You know, but my buyers are not active on LinkedIn, which totally could be the case, and LinkedIn is not the only place where you should be looking at. And I know that you're doing many other things than just the LinkedIn. You have also your local networks and events and all the other stuff. But still, it it is in some cases when you're in a niche, and maybe you think that they won't be active, etcetera. It's actually could be an opportunity because, there's nobody else almost who is doing that in your niche, I assume. Right? So that makes you stand out immediately. That that was just a side comment. We would like to also hear from Raf from your from your perspective, excuse me, what are kind of the main responsibilities and activities, you see sales, should be doing within ABM? Yeah. I I actually agree with lots of the things that have been said already by my seven PT. I think, Indeed, I wasn't I wasn't super involved on on doing the operational day to day, as one of the team here. But it's clear that, of course, the sales team needs to put in the work in in in in building that audience, in in engaging with with your buyers, with the community, and being thoughtful in the way they do this. And we we really seeing the positive outcomes of it. The fun fun anecdotes, we we had a conference. Adalore conference, like, not not not something that we organized, but it was a conference, where our CEO visited. And, and people in that audience were really talking about that we had a superstar in the team who knows so much about about customs, and he was putting out great content while he's actually quite a new joiner in the team. And and so it's, it's very great to see that that it's really spreading, within the community. And I think, also, I think it's very interesting what P.T. was saying. I think one of the tasks that I think sales has to towards marketing as well is coming up with with sort of content ideas, understanding what your community needs, and feeding that back to marketing so that they they are able to create relevant posts. And I think it's very interesting to see it. So far, we have seen that most posts that work for me also work for other people in the team. I think as a next step, we could be looking to diversify and that our CEO, for example, post different things because he has a completely different network than we have, which is way more business focused, but he's also our target audience. While we may maybe have a bigger audience with the more technical people, so they want we did that nitty gritty. So I think it's an interesting next step to take in in when we are further, developing our ABM strategy. I love how you're learning from each other already. And and the your point about feeding back the information to marketing, we actually had Samuel's colleague from marketing who is a content marketer in certain she did a live podcast with us, sharing her experience. And for her, it was very new and very different way of working and creating content. And the one thing she repeatedly mentioned was how, a, that constant interaction week to week with you and and getting the feedback from you. And also, like, moving from kind of a long planned long term planned content calendar to being more flexible to understanding what what are the accounts that are engaging right now in the pipeline, and how could how could we adjust our content, so that you can basically use it this week on the on the accounts that you have. So this back and forth between marketing and sales, even on the level of content, I found that interesting that you mentioned that, Raf. Raf, and actually, I'll say my colleague. I think if I if I can if I can add one thing to that, I think, we're in a very regulatory space, so lots of things are regulated and it's technical. So, of course, if if you have a new feature or something, it's it's quite obvious that marketing will will start drafting a post on those technical things while we as a sales team, of course, hear on a day to day from our potential clients or clients' real business problems that we can solve. So you also change a bit the way you you the tone of voice and what you speak about really about the business value and things actual challenges that your audience is facing rather than to to be on the surface level on the feature side of things. So I think it's a it's a very good alignment to have. Yeah. I I think that I think Andre Andre, you you did, you called this out like a litmus test for good content is, will your salespeople actually be happy to share that on their profile? If they're not able happy to share that on their profile, maybe you're missing the mark. Yeah. Absolutely, Trisha. It's just literally, it sounds like, will your VP of sales send this piece of content to the key account? Right? Because no VP of sales will ever send piece of content that will kinda position himself or herself as an amateur in eyes of the prospect. Right? That's that's the key. So, you all guys mentioned that, first of all, the way how sales are engaging with the target accounts is different inside, account based marketing programs. Right? And, Raf Schroons, you had an experience you said that you were not active part, which is I mean, depends on how we look at it because you are the main subject matter expert that you, you are doing the kinda, let's say, key key engagement activities. But at the same time, you managed SDR. Right? So in this case, we didn't have typical program setup because you would have in the pilot either account executive or SDR. In this case, we had both account executive sent SDRs. Right? So I would love to combine two things, or, basically, two questions and ask you guys. With the hindsight of running this ABM programs, what would you say is the bare minimum that sales should allocate to ABM in percentage or whatever? And, the second follow-up question, lots of marketers that I know struggle to explain these activities to VP of sales and get buy in for that necessary percentage of time. So how would you say like, let's say, what is the bare minimum time that should be allocated and how to justify this to the sales leadership to get that, dedicated sales rep? Let's start with you, Samuel. Yeah. In terms of, like, a minimum time, I would say, as a minimum, like, an, like, an hour a day. So, like, five hours a week as a at a minimum. And I think that is, like, a a fair, like, starting point, and then it progresses throughout, like, the program and how you feel comfortable. And, actually, at some point, maybe you even become more efficient during it because you, like, learn the pretense of strategies. But I think and at, like, five hours minimum, during the week to to truly get things out of it. In terms of, like, the buy in, like so for in my case, I had to also kinda get buy in for my, VP. And a big thing is, like, this is part of my job already. So this is a different facet of outreach, and it's it's just really impractical to do so since no one else on the team was doing that, type of, outreach and creating new types of content with the help of our marketing team. So it was actually kind of a a win win for everyone because I'm still doing outreach. I'm reaching out to new people, and it's actually more, it's more focused, with that. And then I had that specific time block for just an ABM set, which I think helps you with the bind, and then you can see specifically what was happening from it. Thank you. P.T., what would you say? Sorry. I I wanted to unmute mute there, so no background noise for for you guys. Yeah. I mean, I I would say it's probably really dependent on your industry. Right? I mean, for me, it's a huge part of my day to day, you know, prospecting. I would say I'm, on average, allocating a couple hours a day strictly to, you know, the ABM campaign. And then hopefully, you know, getting the results that I want, which leads to meetings with people via via the campaign. Right? So I I would say day to day, it's probably 25%, twenty % of my time. And from the buying perspective. So let's say if, marketing would come again to you, what can, get your buy in to justify this 20% or 25% of time for the sales rep? Well, I mean, I think what for us anyways, what could justify is the the results we've had. Right? I mean, you know, we've we've landed a bunch of new accounts through the ABM campaign, and, you know, we've got a lot of, traction on other accounts. So, you know, I I think at least for us, you know, this is something that we've really only been implementing the past few quarters that, you know, it's very clear that it's working and that it should be the focal point of of, you know, what our sales reps, which right now is really just myself and and, you know, one other one other, team member. And, you know, again, I think it's probably somewhere in 25% range of of time. And to me, that's totally appropriate based on, you know, the results we've got. So it's easy to justify to to anyone, you know, that that that's where we should be focused. Thank you. And I'm just wondering what if, let's say, what if you don't if you didn't start the pilot. Right? So, let's say an ABM lead or marketing director comes to you and says, hey. We want to do ABM with you. We have kinda an idea of how that will help us to generate pipeline, and we'll need, like, let's say, a sales rep dedicates, dedicating 35% of user had time to to ABM program. What's, what arguments, would you like to see that could per se to you? I'm sorry. What's the last part? What arguments Yeah. What arguments would per se to you to give, let's say, 25% of your time to ABM? Yeah. I mean, at least for for me, it was, you know, it really wasn't an argument. I mean, I think it was a pretty it was pretty easy to see again why that amount of time is justified based on, you know, the immediacy of the results we were getting during the pilot. And, you know, since then, it's just enabled, again, a level of focus, and, you know, narrowing scope for for me to, you know, continue to to utilize it, you know, through the fourth quarter and through what's you know, first quarter is pretty much over here as well. So, I mean, again, I don't think there was that much persuasion needed and certainly did that see change in the results of, you know, revenue generation in q four and q one is kinda all the persuasion I need to keep keep being motivated to allocate that amount of time to it. Perfect. Thank you. Raf, you're actually involved, SDR. Right? So how what what's what's your experience? What would you say is the bare minimum SDR who became a famous superstar in the custom segment? What's what's the, let's say, bare minimum, SDR should give to ABM, and how how to justify it? Yeah. Indeed. I I think I need to shine the light on my colleague who did indeed most of the work. I tried to back it up, but, it's not always feasible. I think in the beginning, he, it it was a lot of his time in the very beginning because it's still finding your your footing, how does the cadence work, what are the jobs that you need to do, and how do you do them with all all your other work combined. But I think in the end, I think in the end, it was a sort of one hour and a half, two hours a day. I think I think sort of makes, is is is the time he used. And, yeah, complimentary to that, of course, he did some other, outbound work. Yeah, I think that one and a one and a half to two hours a day, is I think a good starting point, especially when you know the drill, you know what to do, you know how it works, then it should be should be enough, I think. And the father is just again the last question. Let's say you don't have any metrics. You don't have any result templates. Say your marketing colleague comes to you and says, hey. I want to do this with you, but I need, a sales rep who would be doing these activities for two hours a day. What's, will kinda change your mind or what will persuade you to approve it? Yeah. I find it difficult question as well because I, again, didn't also didn't really need the the persuasion, to be honest. I think it's very clear if you have a lack of pipeline and and the things that you're doing are sort of working or not completely working, you need to open your mind and try new things. And I think this concept, look good for me. It's bringing value to to your buying, to your target audience, which in our space, there's not many companies doing this. So you're you're you're different than the rest for me. That's a bit that's a bit what you're trying to get at. If everybody's sending out automated sequences, nobody will like it. So try to do something different than other people do to to to target to get their attention and to bring value. So, if you don't have any metrics, I think you need to do something else or you will not get any business. So that's basically, I think, enough persuasion that you need. And I think as an extension to that, it's, of course, critical that you also report back internally in the organization with the with the wins that you're having. And if it's not yet a meeting that you need to look into, what are the other things that you can report on? Are there sort of signs developing that it is actually working, that you're reaching more people than you were before? And if those are there, then monitor them closely and and and see if anything comes out and then be agile enough to change if if not. I think you bring up, bring up the actually, the question that we wanted to ask next. So what's very clear from a sales perspective, you all have clear idea about, what's valuable. It's deals, it's sales, obviously, quotas, right, that you're hitting. But you also mentioned, okay, you know what? We have long sales cycles. I know that PT, you have sales cycles too, sometimes even three years. But even like Samuel, Raf, you have long sales cycles as well. And you know that, you know, if you're running the pilot for the quarter, you can't really expect, and you have sales cycles of at least six months and then more, you can't really expect to see immediate revenue results. And you bring up a really good point, Raf. What are those metrics, kind of intermediate metrics that you think people should be tracking and sharing, like you said, the wins, that maybe you did collect, track, share, or you believe, others should do as well. So maybe Raf, you mentioned yourself, so what are some of these metrics that you consider valuable as kind of an early signal? Yeah. I think from our point of view, we didn't wanna overcomplicate it. We didn't wanna track too many metrics, because, yeah, then it then it becomes just a bit more. So we want to focus as well on what what are we tracking. And, of course, the the obvious thing is the meetings and and and and and calls that you book and whatever, and deals that come out of there. But in the beginning, what we saw, and I think you guys helped us as well to see this is, like, what is your status quo? How well is your outbound working in the different channels that you're doing? And then sort of track, like, how is that changing? And from a LinkedIn point of view, it was very obvious that that our SDR was not having that much of success with reaching out on LinkedIn. And quickly, we saw people that started to react. So we were checking that from a from a qualitative point of view, but also from a qualitative point of qualitative point of view. We had accounts that never replied to anything and then started to to reply to what we were doing. So it was very quickly that you could see, okay, there are good signs. I think there was one or two weeks where we were like, okay, in the very early stages, we're not really seeing any engagement here, but then quickly it started to take off. So we were really just checking, the amount of positive engagements that we were having, on LinkedIn, the impressions on our post compared to before, and the engagements on the post that we were doing, and the level of so the quality the quality of the engagement, not just are people saying, oh, nice post or liking it, but also are we seeing the people that we are targeting in enterprise companies, key decision makers, are they really engaging with our posts, and really not overcomplicate it with too many metrics with keeping it simple. I think a final thing that we did and probably, the the others of you did as well is sort of tracking those different pipelines from from, the cluster ICP to to active focus and see how it progresses and sort of builds because that's the compounding effect, of course, if you're building the audience and you're getting more and more people to engage. But, yeah, that those three are basically it, I would say. Okay. Let's so you're a believer. You were the believer. Right? And you were tracking these metrics. So, super super cool that you also realize the value of that. But, Anna, I think she asked a good question very very much related to that. K. So you were tracking even engagement and the views of the post, etcetera. But what at what what point do you believe sales management would start to see the value, of the program? And I know you're still at a kind of a in the middle of the pilot, but what would be your thoughts on this question? I think for us, it it was rather quickly because we just we're booking meetings with with companies that we wanted to book meetings with, and we have indeed sales cycle, which sales cycles always can take up to two years. And and and and even then, after a month, we already had some meetings booked, which was a great result. And on top of that, you were really seeing the quality of the of the collaboration that we had with some some accounts who had never replied to any of our outreaches before and suddenly, they were very open to speak. So I think that the hypothesis that we had coming into this was that we are we are in a and and we have an audience which is underserved, in terms of quality content, and that quickly started showing itself. So I don't know if there was a clear point or was a combination of actual meetings. Of course, that always helps. But together also that the engagement was not just a vanity metric. It was clear that it was quality engagement for quality accounts, and to back that up the quality with sort of the impressions and so on and engagement, I think really, that helped to drive our point point home, I think. I love it. So it was also, like, the combination of setting the right expectations from the start and then being able to show, hey, you know how we talked about this. This is actually what's happening. And by the way, it helps, of course, if you start booking meetings with those high high value accounts. Any other metrics, I mean, Samuel or PT that you wanted to add? I don't wanna put you every time on the spot, if you wanted to add something. Yeah. I mean, we we looked at, you know, obviously meetings like Raf said, but, what we call qualified how many qualified opportunities did we create? Right? So okay. We we reached out to company x. We got engagement. We got a discovery call. Is there a real opportunity there? Right? You know, a specific building that we have an opportunity to get involved with, whether it was on the management side or the leasing side or the sales side. And so that qualified ops was really the next metric that would come from meetings that we tracked. And, again, because similarly to these guys, we have a longer sales cycle, doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna close a qualified opportunity within, you know, a week or something like that. But, you know, we were lucky enough where we we did get some some things that closed within the quarter and then some things that spilled into q one that have closed, some things that are gonna continue that we thought were high intent for q one, but now they're spilling into q two and even q three as far as when we think we can close them. But that number of qualified opportunities was a key metric for us to to keep an eye on because, obviously, it's just, you know, again, the law of averages slash, you know, you gotta execute on your your sales program. But the more of those you have, the more you're gonna end up closing in in more revenue that's gonna come in. So that that metric's really a a big one on our end. And, Sam, with with you onboarding the onboarding or working with, new colleagues from the sales team, helping show to the leadership, but also maybe to the other sales colleagues that, hey. You know, this actually makes sense. It's working. What are maybe some of the early signals or other kinds of metrics that you are focused on or communicating to the colleagues? I think outside of what, you like, Raf and PT said, I think something for us that was interesting is, like, we do background checks, like, globally. So there's, like, always gonna be people looking for background checks, but, it's not often over again, like, the bigger companies, like, the household names that that you wanna see, that we wanted to see and we're targeting. So I found it, like, pretty quickly, honestly, and still now, we noticed, like, bigger companies have been, coming to the website and engaging. And sometimes even, like, putting in, like, links, and maybe they're not reaching out directly to me, but they've seen enough stuff for myself or even our company page that it's actually brought them to the website, and they've never been there before. And they're taking more actions or downloads them, and they're getting warmer and warmer into our, funnel and having other people on our team reach out. And, I think that's what our management saw. They're like, oh, this is, like, this company, and we've never seen this company ever reach out to us in the past or even, like, have any engagement. So little things like that that weren't like, hey. This is, like, a direct meeting right away, but things have, like, bubbling to the surface to even getting into our, like, funnel and in general, we're we're huge for sure. And I remember, like, for you, it was also, like, like, going upmarket, but also coming into The US from the home market in Canada. Right? So which previously is just like proven very difficult, obviously, like for anyone. Yeah. And so now being able to suddenly see those exact ICPs from The US that you were able to start engaging was a big deal as well. Right? That helped. Yeah. Huge. Huge. Like in Canada, it's like we're a household name, but in The US, there's so many major players. And for us, we just need to get our our brand awareness out there, and it it's helped, like, tenfold because so many people are, like, reaching out in different areas or, oh, have you because I would ask, like, how did you hear about us? Or I was get our team to ask how people heard about us. A lot of times they said, oh, I think I saw something on LinkedIn, which was never the case before. Like, that would never have been a a comment. So, like, they're at least engaging, maybe not directly with a post that we sent, but long term, it's just, like, subtly in their head. Oh, yeah. I remember this company does And it's these little things that also, help accumulate, one more time too. Love it. Thank you so much, guys. Basically, all your replies lead me to the next question. And, also, I saw Laurie asked it, so I will just pull it in. What type of account insights will be helpful for marketing to provide you on an on a go ongoing basis? Sorry. And, generally, what kind of help, the sync, or, basically, what kind of help is expected from marketing? So let's start with Raf. Yeah. I think, again, I was I was a bit less involved in the in the operational side of things, but I think, I think it's just important that that you align, of course, very well, with marketing from the get go on what type of, insights you need. You need to be very, aligned on what profiles that that we wanna target, on on what information, we expect to have in our accounts. So I think it's it's mostly on alignment, but I don't think there's anything specific I would like to add here. Okay. And from the, let's say, marketing support perspective, what do you think, kinda key activities how marketing can can support? For us, it was mainly, of course, focused on the on the content creation, part of things. It really, really helped because I think, for example, I was I was convinced of social setting already for a long time, but I I struggled to start to to start with myself, to go up with a good tone of voice with the content itself. It's it's always something that went on the back burner rather than to really do it, and I think working together with marketing helped us massively to to start building a content library with with good quality content, be more flexible on it, and, helped everybody to to to join, in in in doing what we are doing and helping helping us put out the right content. Awesome. Thank you. P.T., what's what do you say? What kind of, insights and help from marketing do you expect? Yeah. So marketing took a real active role in our ABM. I mean, I think, to Raf point, I mean, content, right, is is huge. So they would help with everything from, you know, helping with the framework on posts. Oh, one other thing I didn't mention earlier, which I think was important, is when you asked about different metrics, we had specific LinkedIn metrics in our, in our ABM program. So, you know, how many new connection how many connection requests per day did you send out? How many comments value add comments did you make each day? How many new accounts did you find, you know, in sales navigator each day? Day? So that was just a sidebar, but I I think it was important to mention. Back to marketing, you know, creating one sheeters, that we could send out as follow-up, you know, once we did make a connection. And, you know, again, whether that was content that we thought would add value to our prospects or just, you know, content touting, you know, our track record to to try to, you know, again, entice more engagement from those from those prospects. So, you know, marketing worked very hard, and and still is on a day to day basis with our ABM campaign, and, you know, even revamping parts of our of our website, you know, to to, you know, have case studies readily available and and creating case studies that we could send out to different prospects to that, you know, correlated to what they had going on. So, you know, again, I think that the overall message here and, obviously, Samuel and and Raf being very successful as well is you really need to integrate marketing with your sales efforts, and it just is a an engine that can really drive, you know, help help help accelerate results. Thank you. Samuel, what would you add? Yeah. That like, I had a huge help from our marketing team on the content side. We're lucky to have tons of really useful, insightful blog posts. And on our side, our content, person is really good at, like, staging, like, the pulse of, like, current state of events and, like, creating and repurposing, like, some of this content for us. So that was huge. Just, like, make it easy for us to post something, in our own words. Like, provide, like, the kind of content, and then we can put it in our own words to, like, say, like, this is, like, obviously, this is how I would speak towards something about that. I think that was really huge. And then also talking about, like, similar topics or hot topics about the industry at the time, we're really good to roll on, and we'll continue to roll on those. And then also just, like, providing some of the stuff on the CRM just to make it easy for people to, like, actually attack some of it, was also, something where marketing can help a lot too. And they did it on our side. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. And before we move to the last question, we still have a lot of people with us on staying online. Let us know, guys, how did you like the summit so far and this round table? Let us know in the chat. We'd love to see your feedback. How was the how was your experience? What did you learn? Share with us your experience. And let's move to the last question, Vlad. Alright. Let's say somebody considering implementing ABM, and you kinda wanna warn them against maybe some mistakes, maybe some lessons learned or some mistakes to avoid that I'm not saying that you made or experienced, but, maybe I've seen in other teams or anticipated people could be making, especially from sales perspective. What do you believe maybe are kind of a number one mistake to watch out or a pitfall to watch out for, when executing within an ABM framework? Anybody wants to share? Yeah. I'll share. I mean, I think, ultimately, you need to know you need to trust yourself and your instinct and know what works for your business. And, you know, again, all businesses are different, and each individual salesperson is different in their approach, in their, you know, just kind of the way they interact with other people. And so not to compromise authenticity by trying to, you know, automate too much for lack of a better term, and then also not to be afraid to to challenge and or tweak a suggestion. Right? Like, you know, Stoffo had been used to working, you know, in a lot of other industries and and stuff that may work in those industries just wasn't gonna work for us. And, you know, again, we had really good collaborative conversations where we said, okay. Look. I I get what you're saying in concept. That's not gonna work for our audience, but this may. And so we're gonna take that concept and we're gonna tweak it to something that's gonna be effective for our industry. And I think that that's really important. And, you know, yes, you're teaming up and you're getting help and you're getting an awesome platform and framework to to to learn and to implement and go execute to increase your sales. But don't lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, you know your business better than anybody and make sure that, you know, again, you're you're not just blindly following a blueprint that components of which just may not work for your business or just need to be done differently for your business. Awesome. Thank you. Makes a lot of sense. Sam, we have any thoughts of pitfalls and I would just add on to what he said. It's just like, yeah, there's just understand the nuance in your business and, like, knowing that some things are aren't gonna hit or land as well and just be cautious of those type of things and just, like, double down on, like, what you are seeing that is working and also maybe what you're not seeing a lot of on LinkedIn that you'd like to see. Some sometimes things like that too, but that that's it. Awesome. Raf. Yeah. I I agree with what the the other two guys are saying as well. It's indeed really doubling down on what's working, and and don't be afraid to try things out. And if it don't work, fine. And I really know your business and and do what works for you. I think from our point of view as well, I think the team who was who was responsible for the ABM was was aligned on what to expect and what need to be done. I think in the beginning, we could have done a better job to make sure that the reporting that we do internally to sales management and the rest of the AEs could have been a bit better, I think, from the get go, because, of course, it takes a bit time to ramp up. And since our reporting wasn't too clear in the very beginning, it it's sort of kept the skepticism a bit too long, like, it was actually not needed. So I think to make sure that you really align on what metrics that are important for your business and on what you want to report, and and and start from the beginning to to feed that back into the organization so everybody's feeling the positive energy that you are feeling from the program. And that's it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I think it was, all of you provided brilliant replies. Thank you so much guys for coming and sharing, sales perspective about account based marketing. I feel it's, it is often missed, whereas marketers are quite often just stay in our marketing bubble, not looking outside what's happening on the sales. And I can, reflect a lot on this, because I have spent my first five years of my career in sales and then switched to marketing. So kinda know how the things are looking at, two sides. So appreciate appreciate all of your takeaways. And, also appreciate your feedback, guys. Everybody who has attended our assignment, thanks a lot for the questions. Thanks a lot for the fantastic engagement and for the feedback. We appreciate it and happy to hear that you enjoyed it a lot. Thank you so much, everybody. And hopefully, we'll be able to arrange this event in person and invite all of you. Take care. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Thanks. Thank you.