Forrester x Influ2: Contact level ABM

Thank you so much uh everyone for joining and your interest and your time. We certainly appreciate it. Uh again, my name is Doug Mie. I lead the comm's function here at Influ 2 and uh we're going to be uh hosting a discussion today obviously by uh the slide you can see right now on the strategic advantages for B2B marketers um using contact level ABM. So a few housekeeping uh things right at the top. Uh yes, this meeting will be recorded. So, if you're uh on it right now, uh don't worry, you're going to get an email afterwards and you'll get a recording of the whole discussion. Uh the deck will be available uh as well. Uh if you have questions throughout uh the talk, please feel free to drop them into the chat, but we will be saving all Q&A uh to the end. So, just know that uh if you have a question, uh we will get to it, but we're going to wait for the end of the discussion. So with that, I'd like to um introduce our presenters today.

Uh Dimmitri Litzki, co-founder and CEO of Influ and Norah Conklin, principal analyst with Forester Research focusing on demand and ABM. Dimmitri North, welcome. Thank you for joining us. >> Thank you. Excited to be here. >> Awesome. So, um, Nora, you headed up this research, so why don't you, uh, kick us off here? >> Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Thanks again, and thanks for the the introduction. Um, so I'm here to help and, uh, share some of the the findings of a quantitative survey uh, that, uh, Forester put together. uh Influ had approached us to validate um some of the things that they were seeing in the market which were confirmed uh by some of the things that we at Forester were were seeing in the market particularly that ABM has proven itself to be a successful approach. This is something that we've written about extensively and spoken about at at

Forester that ABM has has proven itself more successful than traditional demand genen programs, but that people are still having challenges in realizing the full benefits of ABM or in putting it into practice. Uh that's something we'll we'll speak more about in a moment. Uh the questions we wanted to see particularly with this survey were did B2B marketers agree that targeting individual buyers within an account uh was critical? Was this something that they thought would pay off in business results? Was this something that they were having challenges with? Um if so, what sorts of challenges? How was it affecting their operations? These were the sorts of of questions uh that that we wanted to ask you know with uh the the observation or assumption that this was a critical element to ABM success and that it would pay off uh in business results to the tune of uh stronger sales alignment, faster deal cycles and higher

ROI. So that's a bit about kind of the the framing or what what shaped this this survey. We received responses from 163 B2B marketing decision makers in the US. And I'll share a bit more about the the firmographics and the the makeup of this audience. So, as we said, all from the US. This was not a a global survey. 100% of our respondents were were US-based um and in B2B marketing. The majority came from small and midsize businesses. Although there was some representation from larger organizations of 20,000 employees or more. Um about 20% of respondents came from from that larger organization size. And we had a a good mix and representation of of industries. You see the relative spread here. uh we did have the most representation about 10% um coming from technology either technology provider or technology service companies

as we said we wanted to hear from B2B marketing decision makers so all of our respondents uh came from manager titles and above um the majority as you see over 60% had a VP or director title although we also had some managers and some seale level uh representation. The majority uh 60% said that they were either solely responsible for their ABM strategy or they were part of of the team or group that shaped ABM strategy in their organizations. And again, we're talking demand and ABM here. So all of our respondents had demand and ABM responsibilities, although we did track their full set of responsibilities. So as you see some also were responsible for digital or or field or or product as an example. So before we take a look at what these respondents told us and and how they thought about th those questions uh that we that we posed, I wanted to share a bit more about the

underlying data and the backstory in terms of how we shaped um that hypothesis and wanted wanted to know more about these these questions. Uh I mentioned the uh finding from from the Forester side that ABM has proven itself to be more successful but is still posing challenges in organizations. Uh we at Forester field a survey on on a bianual basis every two years about the state of ABM to see how ABMmers are are using ABM, how they're using technology, how they're shaping their programs, etc. When we did this survey in 2022, we found that one in four or 25% of respondents were found to be doing what we called in the report ABM in name only. In other words, they said, "Yes, I'm responsible for ABM. I'm doing ABM programs." But when we asked further questions about how they were working internally, how they were putting these programs in place, they were found not to adhere to ABM best practices. Now we

fast forward to our most recent survey which was conducted in 2024 and the number hasn't changed very drastically. It's now one in five respondents or 20% that are doing ABM in in name only. So while that is a modest decrease, we're talking about a pretty long time horizon over a couple of years where there hasn't been a dramatic shift. Um, so we we do definitely see that uh while it's not the majority, there's a a significant and pretty stable uh set of ABM practitioners that are having trouble putting the best practices of of ABM into play. And that was part of the reason that we wanted to look a little bit closer um and and partner on this research to see what exactly were the challenges that that they were facing as as relates to their engagement efforts. Now, I believe this is a photo that our marketing manager here at Influ Dasha

took. So, uh Dimmitri, I think that's my cue to send it over to you and and talk about this that a little bit. >> Yeah. Um thank you. Well, I think um the most important thing that the reason why why this specific uh slight attracted attention of our team at at the Forester summit was but the fact that 80% more than 80% of buyers are not happy with their buyer experience, right? And you know, think about it is like we don't talk about consumer buyers, right? They're always unhappy and they always want to have more and and have better shopping experience. But these are very rational people who are making their decision. This is their job to buy stuff and this is not a fun job. They need to do this and they are very rational about the decision- making process. And still like despite of all the effort that marketing teams put together like like creating content trying to educate their potential prospects, customers all this effort still makes 80% of the buyers

unheavy, right? So I think there's a lot still a lot of work to be done >> right >> and then uh if you think of like coming back to our ABM >> [clears throat] >> uh perspective actually the ABM practitioners are also unhappy right and like you can see that uh you know many of them complain the main complaint about like their programs is is basically they're not seeing like enough engagement from from the kind the accounts they're trying to engage 85 80 sorry 58% of them report moderate worst ability to drive engagements which is very like big number >> yeah and and like basically our answer to this question and I think it's kind of lays on the surface but like if you think of ABM as a strategy uh it's it's it sounds like a no-brainer at this point right I think most people understand that as long as you kind very

clear about or intentional about the accounts you want to go after. You're you have some GTM process that you know establishes who you want to go after, what are the companies you want to build relationship with. It feels like okay there's no brainer. You go go on the market, buy some ABN tools and and execute your program. But in fact account-based approach does not deliver on on on on on technology level um uh what what needs to be to be done because if you think of ABM strategy implemented through traditional ABM technology you would see that you're targeting the whole account and sometimes we talk about tens of thousand hundreds of thousands of people you're targeting and then very few people of those hundreds of thousands are actually the people you care about. So there's very very small group of people and this is buying group this people who are actually involved in decision decision making process and you only care about this small fraction of this huge account. Uh and frankly like account level targeting technology does

not deliver on on this very core need to to be able to engage very small number of people the buying group you care about. And then again like another another slide that uh we really loved and took picture at the forester summit was uh that's like we talk about 15 people out of this 150,000 people inside Microsoft who you probably care about in in the previous example. So there's like very small fraction of the people and also buying groups as you know like we really love for vision about the buying groups and they put this idea to the market like hey guys you need to think about buying groups not accounts there are multiple buying groups inside the same account and you need to be you know put your strategy like in in the way you you execute your programs thinking about the buying groups you care about not the accounts and this is very tiny fraction of of the total account audience or I'd love to get your your take here because Wan Forester puts on very

photogenic uh presentations, >> right? No, I'm glad to I'm glad to see the the real live the real live shots here, but this is um I'm glad this this data point was was one um that that stuck out to you because it was one that that stuck out to us too when we unveiled um the most recent B2B buyers journey survey results at our B2B summit earlier earlier this year, which is where this this uh data was presented. Um, this is an annual survey that we conduct. It's one of the largest in the market where we ask over 20,000 B2B buyers about a purchase they made in the past 12 months and ask all sorts of questions about how the decision worked internally on their team, what led them to make a decision, what sorts of content and channels were they were they referencing, etc. Um, but this uh data point is one where we saw a big change from from year to year. Um in our prior buyer journey survey in 2024, we found then that there were on average eight buying group members within an organization and four buying group

members outside of a purchasing organization. So external buying group members, these could be, you know, uh influencers or agencies or systems integrators or or other uh people who have an influence on the decision but aren't part of the organization that's making a purchase. Uh so as you see in 2025 that number exploded almost doubled from from 8 to 13 members inside an organization and from four to eight buying group members outside of an organization. Um, so this is really changing the the game for for B2B marketing because this is making it very clear that the the lead-based approach is not going to work. It's not just about finding a certain level of engagement or activity from from one individual, one buyer, and sending them down the the assembly line. We have to recognize that there's multiple buyers involved in the decision and that they all are involved in different ways. they're going to have different questions and considerations at

different points of the process. So, for example, at early stages where you're building awareness or or introducing challenging the status quo as our as our buyer's journey research puts it, you might be uh dealing with external influencers or internal champions or sponsors to try to illustrate a challenge or an opportunity or a need versus later on when they're actively conducting research about a solution. looking at features or getting into sales conversations, you might be working more closely with the decision makers and the ratifiers, etc. So, this is showing really that we need to get a better understanding of of who's engaged and how and and when in order to effectively assist those those buyers in their decisions and support the opportunity throughout the life cycle. >> Cool. Thanks. So what we're seeing in our survey is that this is a challenge for a significant share of respondents. Over

40% 42% said that they had trouble identifying and even finding who the right buyers were within the accounts that they were focused on. And it goes beyond that. Almost as many, 37% said that they had trouble engaging the right buyers. And about a third, 31% said that they could not support personalizing outreach at scale. So there is a challenge in a good share of organizations in identifying and targeting the right buyers. And even if they were able to do so, they have challenges in personalizing and engaging those those buyers effectively. Now those challenges could be due for a number of reasons or pointed at many directions. This could have to do with content development or messaging and value prop. It could have to do with resources like budget or or team bandwidth and and and skills and competencies. But at the most foundational level, you need to have the

data and the insights that are tied to an individual and the systems that allow you to act on that data and uh those signals to in or in order to engage those those buyers effectively. As we were saying, you need to in order to find and engage the right individuals. the the foundation or bedrock is being able to collect that data and get visibility into the buyers and have the systems in place to engage them effectively across marketing and sales. And what our survey respondents told us here is that for a significant share of them, they're not even passing that that first step that the data and technology is a challenge. over 40% 42% said that they had limited access to actionable contact data. So this could be that the in other words that the the data relating to specific contacts is not valid or reliable or that they're

not able to act on that data on an individual level. Uh what's more, over a third, 33% said that they didn't have access to the technology that would support an individual level program or engagement effort. Uh this was very surprising for for me to see since at Forester we've done a lot of research and made the observation about not only the evolution of the technology space, but how widespread tech adoption has become in in B2B organizations. But just because people are investing in technology, it doesn't necessarily follow that they're seeing the results that they expect or that they're able to put it in practice in the way that they need to. And so we're seeing again for for a not small share of respondents that um the technology they have is is not enabling them or that they're having trouble leveraging it in a way that would get to specific buyers within accounts.

Now, these challenges are not just challenges for marketers. They are paying off or trickling down, if you will, to pipeline and and revenue goals for the ultimate um objectives that that marketing is trying to impact. We asked our our survey respondents what impact or outcomes they would expect if they remain unable to target and engage individuals. And as you see, 40% said that they would expect their pipeline growth to be stunted. Almost as many, 38% said that they would expect there to be lost revenue. And almost as many, 37% said that they would expect their sales conversion rates to be low. Now, this is particularly important because sales is of course the lynch pin to to pipeline and revenue to to working uh latestage deals and bringing them through to to closed one. And so, while targeting individual contacts is hampering

marketing and has a projected impact on business results, it's particularly important um for sellers as well. And we see in our survey that respondents are aware of this and they're feeling this in their day-to-day. We asked respondents about the challenges or the feedback that they're getting from sellers when they qualify accounts uh for sales attention. What's the the most common uh point of feedback that they hear? And there was a clear winner here. the top answer, the number one response was that sellers said they didn't know who to contact. So again, the ability to find to isolate individual buyers and to share information not just about who those buyers are, but what their what their engagement h has been to give sales a fuller picture about who they are and also illustrate that buying group. what's the teams that they're working with, how how they're connected on the

opportunity at large is really missionritical for sales to be able to accept and qualify opportunities and and work them through um to to close one deal. So, it's it's having impact again not just on the business side but on the the alignment and trust between teams to work together towards a shared goal. Now if we look on the flip side, what what could be a achieved or attained if these challenges were overcome, what was really interesting is respondents didn't just say that they would expect better revenue or or pipeline performance, but they also saw wider benefits from having actionable, clear data around individual buyers and more behavioral data tied to specific individuals. and buyers. The majority, almost 60% said that they would expect a higher level of uh specific buyer and and contact data to

help improve customer retention. This I have to say was was great for me to see since at at Forester something we've been really trying to bring attention to and champion in the market is the importance of looking at the full opportunity life cycle. Not just thinking about uh pipeline and and close one revenue, but looking beyond to supporting customers in their meantime to value value realization ultimately setting them up to become advocates and of course seating retention and expansion opportunities. So it's great to see that this is recognized in in the market that uh that practitioners that B2B uh marketers and ABM see that a a greater level of uh data and insights tied to an individual would pay off beyond pipeline and revenue into retention goals. We also saw a good share about 50% say that they would use this data to

optimize allocation of resources and a similar share of 47% said that they would help them align across teams. So this is a another uh great thing to see the recognition that becoming more datadriven and getting more actionable data around individuals would also help their internal operations their decisions about where to focus, where to put resources, how to structure teams and of course being the the glue or connective tissue all across the front line from from sales to marketing to customer success. everyone that is engaging with these buyers working off of the same understanding and being able to coordinate their efforts between each other based on what makes sense for that individual buyer. Really enabling um buyers to take an outside in approach looking at the the market and their buyers to guide what they're doing and how they're focused. So again from from my perspective, city of Forestry, it was

great to see um the recognition that uh this level of data and insights could could pay off in in these ways and have greater benefit beyond just pipeline and revenue. >> Well, I mean, Nora, great breakdown. I'm sure a lot of people were taking some screenshots there hopefully or jotting it down. Um so appreciate that. And I want to shift it now um back to you Dimmitri because I think there are several areas that we want to talk about where contact level um can solve some of these problems. So um why don't we jump in here? >> Yeah. Um thank you. U well I guess uh if if we just make a step back uh before I dive into kind of small details of or specific details of what we could could be done. Uh I think the bigger problem that uh you can see it like probably discussed at every major events every major marketing gathering is how marketing and sales align alignment is not perfect and how people need to work on this and if like funny enough if you

think about this I think both teams always have like very big incentive to work together towards like winning accounts and and and delivering results. So I don't think uh the problem lies in in their desire to work together and and put together the effort and in many cases the technology or execution of of those programs is is a lacking detail that make make this smart set alignment perfect and number one example of of what could be solved with contact level execution is intent right so like intent was like it was a big idea over the last decade and I know Like I think every every ABM program like core of this every ABM program is like delivering high intent accounts to to sales teams. Uh but then the most common you know disappointment and most common question that marketing teams get from their sales counterparts is like okay we got this 10 great you know high intent

accounts. What should we do next? Who to call? What to say? What what what is the best thing we can do with this information? And frankly with with account level execution you you it's like it's you can nothing add to what already happened. And with contact level intent obviously knowing who is engaging who has this intent who like where this intent is coming from like was it search? Was it was it like third party content? Uh was it social? like having all the details about who to call, what to say, what the context of this intent signal is critical to make it work, right? And then that's where you really see like jump in in marketing sales alignment because sales people know exactly what they need to do and how to act on this intent information that marketing team provides. Number two is like again like in many cases um margin set alignment starts with like

okay let's sit together and discuss what are the top accounts we want to go after who who are this what are these companies and like what is the priority for sales team to to close this next year or next quarter and and then um surprisingly it's like it's not enough uh because as as we discussed a little earlier There's very tiny fraction of people inside those accounts who you care about like 10 out of 10,000 people you care about or 10 or 20 out of 100,000 people and and interesting enough if you deliver your ad program on the contact level then you you basically talk to exactly the same people with who your sales people are talking to same prospects and uh this shift we see like huge improvement in in in in in pipeline results and conversion rates by doing so, right? So, I think the missing piece like of of and frankly it's it's not that visible. You feel like you're doing okay by targeting same accounts, going

after the same account that your sales team cares about. You have perfect marketing process, but somehow you don't really feel this impact. And the reason is you still kind of under the hood like you're not engaging the right prospects. notifications, right? Uh people and the your sales team is still call calling. They still calling people who are not never heard about your company, never engaged. And this is a big problem you can address by contact level execution with your advertising programs. >> Um and then uh if you think of the buyer journey, we we started with this idea of kind of buyers are not happy, right? Why they're not happy? And obviously you you you need to build the journey they like they love actually. And uh it's kind of funny because when we we launched our product uh many people assumed okay you can personalize your ad campaigns to the individual level. Let's put the name of the person on the landing page or slide the logo on the company on on on the banner. It's going

to be amazing. It's going to be personalized. And honestly, no, it's not it's not what they what will make their experience better. Actually, it will make the experience much worse. Uh what you want to do though is to build a journey where you you basically take into account three important factors. One is is like this person engaging? Do they do they or do you have any intent information that tells you this person is engaging? So is that person in market already? Do they know anything about your company? and you already have this information if you execute the program at the contact level. Second, how is this person like this person uh what's this person's role in in the in the buying group? uh who is a persona and you want to adjust your execution based on the persona uh you're engaging and obviously is there no one at fit all like different personas need different approach and different content and and finally what's what sales process is like where where is the bank group in their in their journey to is it

like a sales conversation happening or just completely fresh cold start all these factors are very important and you need to design the buyer journey that needs to be executed in the contact level. It's impossible to provide this experience uh if you if you run your programs on the account level. And finally, I think what was what what struck me is is uh is the fact that 47% of respondents talked about uh and this is the biggest number we got like there like other factors they talked about measuring their success in terms of email [snorts] opens you know like content downloads webinar attendance and I think these are nice leading indicators that sometimes you can yes you can use it to to prove something is happening in your program works. But ultimately for for the marketing leader to to have the voice in the boardroom and uh you know to to make an impact, you really need to think about how much this program helps me to drive you know

sales pipeline and drive actually drive business. And it's impossible to get this information without contact level data, right? So you you need to have this high resolution data to be able to say okay here's the first intense signal we got. Here's the first engagement we got and here's how it turned into meeting booked and this meeting book led to an opportunity one 6 months after. Right. So you you really want to have this high detailed information to be able to to even talk anything about your ROI or revenue input. >> Yeah, sure. >> So to to wrap up, we see that engaging individuals is key to ABM success. ABM is all about uh leveraging insights around accounts to illustrate the opportunities within those accounts. And we know there are multiple buyers connected to those opportunities. And so frontline teams, marketing and sales need to understand who those individual

buyers are and be able to engage them over time appropriately throughout the life cycle of an opportunity. Um, and again, it's not just us at at Forester saying this. um to to the market are our respondents are are recognizing that that this is true and that this is an important piece. Uh almost threequarters 72% of uh respondents to this survey said that the ability to target individual buyers and contacts to identify and engage them would be a key differentiator and difference maker in ABM success. >> Awesome. Well, on that note, I I think we should open it up to some questions. And I want to say thank you, Nora, and and Dimmitri. It's great. And um I'll pause on the screen for a second. Uh that QR code will take you to uh a page where you can download uh the report in full. Um and I do know some questions came in. So, I'm going to stop sharing my screen. I'll leave it up for another

uh 10 seconds or so as we uh get into some questions. Uh I have one and then I'll stop sharing my screen and um I'll just open it up here. So what metrics matter most when proving the ROI return on investment of contact level ABM to leadership? Um Nora, you want to jump on that one first and then uh Dimmitri maybe follow on. >> Sure. Yeah. what um what we recommend in our research on on B2B measurement is looking at a level of what we call marketing sufficiency. So it's it's an engagement level um but specific to not only the the individual buyer but also getting the optimal level of engagement. In other words, it's not an exponential like if we engage them a hundred times, we're going to get a hundred times more, you know, meetings or or pipeline size or or whatever it might be. Um, so what that looks like, as an example, I I spoke with a practitioner that uh was in

charge of of ABM at a large systems integrator. they were working on large deal support like a few you know strategic accounts large deal sizes um but also continuing um in the post sale so that their ABM teams were involved in in onboarding and in kind of white glove customer support to these uh to these accounts and and opportunities and what they found was when they engaged three executives within those accounts their retention rate went up almost 20% I think it was 17% um so That's kind of the the ideal state of what we recommend that you're looking at. Uh not only the the level of engagement with with the buyers connected to opportunities, but also getting a sense of what's kind of our optimal level of engagement um by which you can then guide your, you know, content development efforts, budget, investments, etc. >> Yeah, great. Uh Demetri, anything you want to add here? And again the question was around the the metrics uh when proving ROI of contact level ABM to

leadership. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think I think the best the best uh words that leadership like wants to hear from any marketer is like revenue right and uh that's and basically that's how we think about it to uh ultimately you want to report what what how much revenue you managed to bring on the table with your program. The challenge is like it's very hard to do right. So I think it's very hard to answer this question and sometimes we can we have like especially for bigger customers where we have enough data enough like and enough history of the data it's like we can actually have okay this program actually brought you this amount of extra revenue over the last two years right the challenge with like B2B sales is it takes time right so like to measure revenue impact with 12 month sales cycle it takes at least 12 months right so basically probably plus some engagement cycle. So it's literally like we talk about this kind of you know like

ultimate results uh being tracked over the period of couple years but then uh like there's very clear trajectory to this number right so I think there's like pipeline booked and pipeline booked you can measure within like the lifting pipeline book booked you can measure within like three four months six months time frame right so much faster and this is like already provides huge answer to the question. Okay, what how this program was like help help us to get potentially new customers, right? So like the fact that as a result of your program, you managed to bring some extra new meetings booked, new new pipeline opportunities opened is is a huge like result that no one you know should be shy about. And again like ideally you want to answer okay how much extra how much like lift you get because you run this program. And again like with abundance of data it's totally possible to do. And then obviously yes I think some people talk about okay these are all vying metrics like you don't trust

webinar attendance uh you don't trust you know like uh content downloads that kind of stuff. I think these are leading indicators you don't you don't want to ignore that right you just don't want to end with this right. So these are leading indicators to revenue but obviously this is not revenue not what your leadership team asks for but yes as a marketing team you you you kind of connect those data points to ultimately how much pipeline revenue we are getting. So this kind of right hierarchy of of of KPIs that we think about. Cool. Thank you. I want to um there's one question here about behavioral insights. Um Dimma maybe you jump on this one first and Nora if you want to um tag on that would be great. Let me when you mentioned deeper behavioral insights on individual buyers what does that actually look like dayto-day. Well, that's where frankly we like we still learning and I think everyone is

learning because with with with recent addition to of LLM layer into our uh into our products now we can extract this context sometimes like with it can be very unexpected right so just to give an example uh I recently saw a buying group where uh like we saw We saw a leader who was searching for a specific term and we managed to capture the signal and then uh uh their their buy group member uh also kind of uh actually vice versa actually they they we saw a leader who clicked on our ad and then we saw we captured a search of the buying group member who searched for our product. So and clearly there was some conversation within this buying group that led to the search. So these kind of things um it's like I think at this point it's impossible to capture all possible combinations of different contexts and information that

you can get. I mean like search intent is important. Uh social intent is very important. Third party content is very important. Content intent is very important and engagement data is very like is very important element of this. But if you combine those together, you can get like millions of different combinations of what that could mean for different buying groups. And then if you if you just look at the buying group and try to make sense of what's going on here, why this person is engaging suddenly those they never engaged before and why this another person is is uh is is searching for a product or reading articles that again like we capture this information. The combination of those signals provide very interesting context of what's going on in this buying group. And again like LM might help you understand how those signals are connected to each other and what it might mean. In some cases, you need to as a human to think about it and provide and use your own expertise to to make sense of all those signals. But the combination of signals at this point became so interesting that you can

actually make very educated guess about what's going on in the company you never spoke with before. and and initially trying to build a relationship with. >> Thank you. Nora, anything to add on that? The behavioral. >> Yeah. Now the only thing I would kind of highlight um from from what you were saying Demetri is that it is much more of like detective work and kind of and a team sport as well with with this sort of approach where you know you have marketers and and sellers and you know BDRs SDRs or or revenue development reps are also a key part of this where as you're starting to see signals some might be connected to to individuals some might be anonymous you know you're interpreting that data to try to find more information about, you know. So, the goal, even though the ultimate goal is, yes, we want to have a a high level of engagement and confirm these particular buyers to be able to uh qualify an opportunity or pass it through for for sales for for a conversation. Um, more information is

really the goal, especially at earlier stages. You know, can we can we confirm if we see engagement from one person who who is on their team? what uh what sorts what are the leadership connections or the structure of the teams that they're working with. So you're using um some kind of inferences and hypothesis that you're looking to validate. So it's that's why I say kind of detective work. I think it's marketers and sellers and and revenue development teams and sometimes customer success too if you're looking at retention and expansion opportunities kind of working together um to not only share insights but kind of uh validate you know go on kind of different points of inquiry if you will to say you know is is this the right person or are they connected is this the one who's who's engaging so so more signals help um but also more internal uh collaboration helps too. >> Cool. Cool. I'm gonna I think we have time for two more that I'm looking at here. Um maybe just one here. Uh how how do you measure Nora? I'm looking right at you. So let's start with you and go

over to Demetri. How do you measure ROI in an ABM program? >> Yeah, I think in terms of like your specific ABM program, it depends on the goal. If you're looking at, you know, expanding or retaining existing customers, if you're looking at seating demand for new opportunities, you know, the the benchmarks, especially the um you mentioned this a moment ago too, Demetri, like looking at the setting the time horizon appropriately, right? If we're not expecting uh you know, closed one revenue for you know, a year or more depending on your sales cycle, what are the leading indicators of success? Uh partly depends on where where you start from, you know. Uh so for example, if you've got an expansion opportunity that you're looking to maybe sell more uh to an existing customer or sell an additional feature, you know, to something that they already have. So you have some level of engagement with those buyers, but you're looking to position a

different offering, you know. So, it's not just about engaging them and keeping them engaged, but having them learn more about this particular offering and connect in in different ways. Um, contrasting that with say you you're trying to expand, you know, this this account is a client of yours, but you're trying to sell this product to a totally new team, you know, one that you've never had uh contact with before and they don't work directly with the group that you're working with, right? Um, in that case, you might be starting really from scratch. you know, your first step is to start to see are are they doing research? Are they starting to learn more about this space before they even start to correct connect rather directly with us and learn more about um our offering and what we do in the space. So, in terms of like your specific ABM program, it sort of depends on on your starting point, what exactly you're going to look for as leading indicators of success. for ROI specifically. Um what we recommend and and Demetri you touched on this uh earlier too is looking at marketing lift. So not just

what was the overall success rate right the the size of the deal um or the success rate of of deals that were closed one um but looking at when we have that level of marketing sufficiency right that that optimal level of engagement with marketing we saw the performance increase by a certain percentage uh it's amazing how much I hear even from those that are just starting with ABM like how do we know that ABM made the difference right that these that these opportunities wouldn't have closed anyway you know and So isolating to marketing lift really tells that story that that the the ABM focus from marketing is contributing um an additional an additional factor. >> Yeah. Yeah. 100% agree with this. I think uh the challenge is ROI and I think it's kind of somehow it became in fashion to talk about like hey this program provided some 10 10x ROI whatever. I think like throwing this numbers uh make me feel uncomfortable because I have also like a lot of education around like corporate finance

and like we talk about return on investment right this is a corporate finance topic uh and I I think the challenge with this is I mean like how do you define investment how do you define return um and frankly if you can stop at revenue and revenue lift and marketing metrics lift or sales metrics lift This is great. I think this is the best metric where you you don't have a lot of challenging questions associate associated with a with a topic because uh you know like the the definition of of value and and return is very is very unclear for for marketing programs and I can give you a very simple example where you still want to think about ROI. For example, imagine you run a program and you invested like say 200k in this program and uh you see increase in in conversion rates that le leads you to say 200k increase in revenue, right? Which is the same number and that sounds bad, right?

It's like okay like it's like zero like it's one time or like we don't see any return. We basically wasted our money because the amount of increase we we received is the same as as basically the amount we invested. The actually it is not because in many cases really depends on the business situation. But if you think of like broader business context, it could be the case that this 200k in revenue uh drives your uh valuation of the company by this like 10x multiple by 2 million, right? and then uh you basically have 10 x now and not not one xi. So really depends on the business context and it's way beyond the very narrow kind of revenue terms that you think about. Uh so in some cases this kind of program would still make sense right and still and you think of uh companies from consumer businesses where they like companies like Uber or we work they they really invested a lot of they really

burned a lot of you know like billions of cash to to achieve the market position they are in right now but now it's like very established uh market position that enable like basically provides us return after three four five years of their investment. So like in the broader terms this investment paid off while in short term everyone criticize them for like for the bad unit economics and that kind of stuff. So again like ROI really needs like everyone needs to be very careful when you throw this number because it's it's kind of very easy Italy can be challenged by by different perspectives. Uh and frankly I always try to limit the conversation to revenue which is like much much more tangible, measurable and clear. Uh but yeah, in some cases you you might still want to think about ROI because you you need to understand the broader business context of this investment. >> Great. Thank you. And I was hoping someone was going to ask what you're going to be for Halloween tomorrow, but since they didn't, I'm going to end it

there. Uh thank you, Nora. Thank you, Dimmitri. And uh thank you to everyone who joined us today. We appreciate your time. We appreciate your interest. Uh again, um this is recorded. It'll be sent to you. If you joined, you can get access to this deck as well. And um we'll see you on the next one. Thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you guys. Appreciate it.