The Ad-vantage of Top Performing Enterprise AEs | B2B Rocks

[Music] hi everyone see many familiar faces at this point we've been together for almost a day uh to all of those who I haven't had a chance to meet yet I'm Anastasia thank you for joining me on this session about tough life of being in account executive uh the good news is we're not going to talk today about the challenges but also solutions to those challenges now here's a brief slide about me and uh my success as an account executive in the past seven years in B2B Tech sales but you know it hasn't always been like that I actually um worked from very fast sales um selling cocktails as a bartender at a bar um about 20 years ago to then selling dutyfree uh watches and perfumes being a flight attendant to selling Exclusive Furniture and everything in between and then seven years ago I ended up in B2B in it and what I noticed is the further you go the

longer the sales the more complex the sales and the lonelier you feel actually I think I'm going to talk on behalf of all the account Executives that despite the fact that we talk to people every day we interact with prospects with clients we are a pretty lonely Bunch let me explain currently B2B sales cycle leaves within the funnel and based on which stage of the funnel is certain count is in the account executive interacts with different stakeholders of the GTM go to market team now if we look at the pre- opportunity stage uh also referred to as pipeline generation there is a whole variety of team members involved whole variety of tactics strategies and channels all of that to help generate Pipeline and you know it's understandable as the saying goes the hardest part about closing the pipeline is Gen generating it so then when we

look at the deal one stage or when the contract is signed again there is the party going on here right everything is working together to implement um to on board the client get them trained um make them happy and make them stay forever but what's happening in between it feels like from the moment the opportunity is opened there's nothing to do as a team a county executive can just jump on a couple of Zoom calls answer a couple of emails sign the contract and take the money right well not quite this stage which mind you often um lasts months to years depending on um the type of deals whether it's mid Market Enterprise um and this is what an AE has to change in the current environment in order to meet their quarter so these are stats from Pavilion um on how the deal value decreased the win rates decreased increased and sales cycle being lengthened and that's the DAT the data

just from 2021 to 2022 the big the bigger picture is even more dramatic I think you might find different data online from different sources but everyone will be talking about exact same Trend um which is how difficult it is to get new business these days now why is this actually happening well these days companies have being more protective of their budgets than ever um because the times I guess when you could connect with a couple of Champions um and get the deal similarly signed uh for the most part gone no one wants to take the responsibility for making decisions um to bring in new vendors because their job is going to be on the line if in case they do fail and um companies overall with getting their budgets locked are looking at new vendors at new techn Technologies is not something that they want to test it's something that they want to definitely

work they look at new technologies as strategic initiatives that have to bring value that have to align with their objectives that have to be built into their processes so as a result buying committees grow they grew to power um it's not individual decision makers that are that are um right now bringing in new vendors it is groups of people known as buying committees or buying groups and the more robust the buying committee the lengthier the sales cycle is the more layers of approval there are the lengthier the contract views so let's take a look at the numbers shared by Gartner that say that from 2021 to 2023 within just two years the number of average uh buying um people involved in a buying committee Grew From six to 11 to 14 to 23 and that's quite a big jump

in just two years so who are these people who are these new people so these days uh Enterprise deals are often cross functional meaning involving people from different departments so for example I myself um working at influ usually um talking to marketers and salespeople now more and more often I get involved into conversations with the it teams because they want to know how exactly the product will be implemented they also um I also get to talk to people from um Finance teams more than ever CFOs are very protective of their budgets and they want to make sure that the ROI is going to be po positive also at the same time I talk to Legal teams more than ever um I mean we are in the midst of the jdpr uh paradise and I don't need to kind of tell you more about it so essentially these days I get to um involve so many more people in order

to win a certain deal but I cannot be in direct contact with all of those people I need to find other ways how to dominate those conversations that happen within that within that account that I am not part of at certain point in time and me relying on my Champions like it was three four years ago is more of a wishful thinking rather than a good strategy because yes my Champion might be excited about the technology but they might not be able to deliver the value and answer all the questions from all the buying committee members um additionally they might be overwhelmed by the chaos of information they also might simply be limited in their understanding of the value of the Technology based on what they do at the company so in addition to all that um I think that the buyers have become more more independent like these days they resist the hard sale approach and they want the

approach when they feel seen and valued and understood but at the same time not pressured typically each decision maker will find four to five pieces of information online and you never know what those are about you unless you explicitly take the responsibility of delivering the those pieces of information in front of them in non- intrusive way the way they want it to be these days now here comes additional exciting data right so the deals that go beyond the optimal sales cycle they like the likelihood of them being decreased Falls to um 60% if the deal is um delayed by at least one month and by as much as 90% if the sales cycle ex is extended by at least several months so here we are as account executives with all these opportunities in our pipeline some of those are new calls some of those are deals that are 3 69 12

month into the deal cycle in each of the account there are multiple stakeholders so so the the actual Quest com in how should I prioritize my my time effectively what what should I do today should I Prospect into new opportunity should I work on account progression or maybe I should use my existing relationship to seek for some expansion or upsell opportunities so now let's go back to this slide about the sales pipeline but with with a more realistic view of what a count executive these days has to deal with in order to bring Revenue to the company and here comes the question so why is this happening and who should actually who could actually help AES well the reality is it's is don't have to be on their own there is another department within a company with very similar goals I think you got it right this is marketing and the two teams sales and marketing they go further and faster

when they work together yes marketing usually is involved in sales enablement in creating slides and content that is super helpful for AES but it is simply not enough in the current environment to help them close deals with these large buying committies so let's think about like why why this is happening right so it's not that marketing team doesn't want to support the the AES during their sales cycle it's that GTM go to market teams they face a variety of limitations when it comes to working together so first of all there is no visibility into the sales process for marketing usually second of all it's extremely hard for marketeers to measure impact on the pipeline progression and I think any marketeer in this room would recognize this unfair rule whatever is Touched By A salesperson gets credited to sales and this is the reason why marketers usually

focus on something that they can easily impact and measure which is mqls and on top of that um the the TX stack of two teams sales and marketing they they have been in silos for a while and um it just very difficult to align the two teams so here comes the question right so we have all these challenges life is tough what can we do to align sales and marketing efforts and I'm happy to share with you what we do it in fluu and uh most of our sales and marketing alignment is based on our very own uh person-based advertising technology so let me tell you what exactly it is how we leverage it um how it's built into our processes and what impact we see on the pipeline on Revenue that we bring to the company so what is person-based advertising it is a technology that allows marketeers reach specific people with the content of the choice and then

report on all their engagements without any form fills notifying the relevant sales W about any engagement from their own account let's dive deeper let's break this all down and dive deeper into each of the points first marketing is able to reach spefic specific people through ads what that means is Both of Us sales and marketing we can come together and decide okay what are the accounts that we want to concentrate on and what are the people who are the people within each account that are important for us that we want to influence and then for example the moment the opportunity is open marketing does Not Fade Away In A Deal done fashion as it often happens and again we kind of discussed for which reasons no no pressure on marketing here so the moment the opportunity is open we know exactly who is going to attend the call so what my marketing does is it launches a campaign with my face on it

that targets everyone who's going to attend that meeting in order to create this personalized experience with uh me uh for me with them their IE and for influ too as as the vendor then in addition to that and and I I have an example of that to make it a bit more clear so in addition to uh boosting the show up rates it also helps me stay top of mind when I cannot reach out to them because no matter how much I love their account no matter no matter how much they love me I cannot knock on their inbox every single day right that would be desperate and quite annoying but ads can be shown to these people every single day additionally I can influence all the decision makers because no matter what a great professional AE I am there will always be people who do not attend my meetings who do not reply to my meetings who don't even open my meetings but they're still involved in the buying

process and that needs that means I still need to find other ways how to get in front of them and again ads get very handy here so here comes the first example when I told you my marketing helps me get my face in front of those people that are about to attend the very first schal I truly meant it this is an example of a real ad with a real landing page that shares our team's excitement for that call explains what influ is and basically encourages them to attend that very first discovery call now we can reach the right people what's next if we can control who we can Target through ads we can also control what content we show to these people what that means um is it the content could be different based on stage of the of the sales cycle they're in but also based on the pain points they have for example once I have the very first call I fill out information in Salesforce that um tells

my marketing what kind of challenges that this account has what kind of objectives they have or also I can talk to my ABM team directly if there is a large account and and it needs some special treatment but eventually my marketing team some days later launches a campaigns for the buying group of that account addressing needs and pain points of that account also in addition to addressing pain points you can highlight your strength but again instead of bragging on Nico call how great you are you can show them some success stories or some content that would prove you as a trusted vendor through ads in a non-intrusive way also you can work with OB ctions but again instead of having some sort of fights on a call you can do it in a more elegant less provoking way um through ads on what we call neutral territory and you know the best part about all of this is that you can allow your prospect consume the content at a time when they want in the channels that

they want and at the speed that they want not when you want to send them an email and share that content with them here comes another example so after the call I fill out the information in the CRM again few days later um if if the let's say paino I mentioned is pipeline acceleration when um an account due to current economy um has bad bad um conversion rates to close one and has very long sales cycle then we launch a campaign that addresses how exactly our product can solve that pain point and help them shorten the sales cyle ccle now we do it in a more um Exquisite way let's say because we have a huge ABM team and we have this great of sales and marketing alignment I understand for teams that need to start somewhere it could be very automated like it could be as simple as after the call account executive selects from the drop down menu a certain paino for that

account and it would automatically enroll them into some advertising campaign related to pain to that paino so there is no need to to make it complicated basically so once we target the Right audience with the right content in the non-intrusive way some of those people will eventually engage with it and the sales team will get notified about it in real time we refer to these insights as person level at intent and this type of data answers holy question of questions for AES what what should I do today what is the best usage of my time what is the activity that will have the highest impact on my pipeline in revenue and the first and uh pillar of that person level intent is who who I should reach out to today that will make the best impact on that deal should that be a champion that

I'm already in touch with based on their level of Engagement or someone else within that account who was not engaged but now they show some interest and it's a sign for me to send LinkedIn request send email introduce myself and eventually start multi-threading within that account also another uh pillar of the intent is what what to talk to them about like what exactly are they engaging with with what content what resonates with their needs and what questions I should ask them in order to bring the evaluation into the right mode and last pieces it this type of intent helps me generate additional touch points so if it's my existing champion and they engage with a certain topic I can just share a webinar on that topic or some ebook or report to keep them excited so they learn more about the technology our success use cases and so on at the same time since we target not just the Champions but the whole buying committee it means that if I see

engagement from the people that um were not involved before that then I can multi threat for example um I had a call uh with one account with Lucas from that account and um after the call marketing launched the campaign there was another person let's call her Mary for the for this example so Mary clicked on ad I followed up with her she instantly was excited to learn more about our technology so guess what now my chances to win this account doubled why because now I have two people within um that company that are excited and engaged and as a result my uh multi-threading guess let's sum it up here so as a result by using person-based advertising daily it allows me to effectively multi-thread and mil build meaningful relationships with the different members of the buying committee it allows me to accelerate the deal velocity it also allows me to

revive stock deals I think if there are any AES in this audience um you know the feeling when you want to follow up with that person who is important to the deal or if you're not an AE you have a certain project and there is silence on the other hand on the other end and you want to send them something meaningful but in the end it turns out to Hi how are you I was thinking we could talk about what we talked about last week so let's talk about it well it can be a bit more purposeful and meaningful and and person level add intent just gives you those insights the best part about it is integrates into my daily workflow so there are a variety of channels for where this data could be delivered I myself get notified about engagement from my prospects in slack um also all the data gets pushed um into our CRM which in our case is Salesforce but it could be hubs sport or anything else and as a result um I can see um holistic

view on that account from different channels different members of the buying committee now you remember we talked about marketing um having hard time measuring impact on opportunity progression well this type of approach allows to solve that challenge because we not marketing won't only reach certain people and engage them it will also be able to accurately measure okay what was the impact on opportunities generated opportunities progressed opportunities closed one so it's a win-win for everyone sales can close better with marketing marketing can prove their success and um I guess the next question is what kind of impact I see on my pipeline so we analyzed the data within the last one year and we saw that 95% of all Clos One deals were impacted by marketing which emphasizes that the more channels you use to engage the buying committee um the more aligned your efforts are the more wins you can bring

in together and also I have some that's on Pipeline progression um so these numbers prove that those opportunities that were touched by marketing they progressed down the funnel at our 2x plus a better rate than the ones that were solely handled by account Executives now on this positive note on the impact of person-based advertising I'd like to conclude my presentation I know we're a bit over time so um for the questions I'd say that um I'll be at the booth number 14 INF flu to Booth um so if you have any questions I'll be happy to address them there thank you thank you so [Applause] [Music] much