Using ABM for Growth & Scale — Randi Barshack // Rollworks

Quotes

• “Some companies are more aggressive in their investing than others but whatever your budget looks like, a good marketer is always going to want to be more efficient. I think there’s some sort of hyper-growth stage. It’s an interesting point in companies’ time where sales and marketing can make or break their relationship. I’ve seen sales and marketing turn into silos at that point and then I’ve also seen some really build a company in a coordinated way.” - Randi“What I hear is that after you get into this hyper growth phase, after you get your Patagonia jacket and you’re starting to think about how do we go from, ‘we got product market fit, we’re able to raise more capital, now we need to go on an order of magnitude or two ahead. We need to scale our processes and that is not only adding new software, coming up with new strategies, developing new KPIs, but there’s also an inter-personal and a team problem as well.” - Ben “The core of what drives that alignment is the single target account list rank that gives full objectivity to what your priority should be as it goes to the market machine. If you get that alignment all the tension goes away because it’s really clear cut where the value is and you get offers.” - Randi    “Growth stage companies know that there is a need for our products and services. Now the first step is who are we agreeing that we’re gonna target. Who are we going after? Is it customer-first approach? Who is gonna generate the most value then you’re aligning your marketing and sales teams to actually go and put a plan together.” - Ben“Creating a target list depends on where you are on your maturation stage. If you’ve got a great market fit and you understand the characteristics of the companies that are going to be likely buyers, you got a really strong idea of your ICP (ideal customer profile) then it’s pretty easy to find.” - Randi“The way we treat people who we already have relationships with, or the accounts would be different than the ones that are missing. So for accounts that we’re missing, we may want to start an awareness campaign before the STRs starts picking up the phone.” - Randi “At RollWorks when we look for content syndication, rather than just say we want marketers and companies of this size, we say here’s our target account list. So we’ll pay you more per lead, we want these names and these accounts. It’s a more precise way of going after the marketing.” - Randi“You got your checklist and the checklist should be very much aligned with the level of scale and growth. By that I mean, for some companies the hypergrowth means you go from five sellers to ten, some companies it means you go from 10 sellers to 50.” - Randi“Another misconception I see at the time is that there’s a fixed number, like you should never have more than a 100 top tier accounts. Well if you got 50 sellers, the scope and the size of what that list looks like should be very much aligned with how big your team is because you have the sellers to feed and then presumably if the STRs are going after those accounts.” - Randi“Getting the sizing right is very much determined by how big your growth is.” - Randi“There are all kinds of different channels. It’s almost like you should be looking at different channels and saying, ‘I’m not gonna engage if somehow I can’t apply this account-based lens to the way I engage. So, the backbone of any ABM strategies that we see is account-based advertising and that’s just isn’t broad awareness. So I might wanna have broad awareness of accounts that don’t even know who I am. But then again, I can pinpoint the accounts that are now on my target accounts list and not necessarily advertise to accounts that don’t fit my ICP.” - Randi“We definitely work very clearly on not just helping STRs prioritize their outreach but enabling STRS with programs that have a budget and attach them. For example, we have a campaign that is sort of on auto run right now where if somebody from a top tier target account list has engaged with us previously but for some reason has gone silent, you automatically trigger an email with a gift card.” - Randi“We have a partnership with a company called OpenSense Email Signatures, so even the email signatures going out from our company are going on certain accounts based on where they are on our accounts list. Our email signature dynamically changes.” - Randi“Where they go wrong is when, just because you have a company on your target list, it doesn’t mean they are in the sales cycle. It could take months and months to build awareness, trust, and educate the company to get them to readiness. I think some get patient, like “I think they’re ready therefore they’re ready.” - Randi“Another thing where there is tremendous value is being able to read those readiness signals. So, when you see an account exhibiting intent or engagement? You wanna fast track them to outreach engagement because if you don’t, your competitors will.” - Randi“Another thing that is under-utilized is that ABM is really for full cycle. A lot of fast growing companies have these subscription models and you’re constantly looking at renewals or you got a land and expand strategy. Often times gets so focused on acquisition that they are under utilizing the ABM capabilities to be marketing to current customers and either upselling, cross selling, or just continuing to market to companies that are up for renewal.” - Randi“I think growth companies are often very ambitious. They’ve got a tremendous amount of pressure on them to prove not only the validity of their product but that their business can scale.” - Ben“What I heard from you is that you have to understand that ‘not no’ but ‘not now’ is an acceptable answer and understand how to manage that. When someone raises their hand, there’s a different workflow for them. I think the ABM software and the technology, RollWorks included, have the ability to help you build your processes to understand how to sell for something that’s in-market, how to manage somebody that’s not in the market but a potential candidate and keep them warm.” - Ben“If you’re scaling the size of your target account list or at least the top tier should be scaling with them. Don’t think the size of a target account list is a static thing. It should be growing with the number of sellers that you are supporting.” - Randi