ABM Done Right - A Personal ABM Podcast

78% of Challenger sellers feel their toughest customer objections are status quo objections. Only 22% feel customer objections to the proposed solution are harder. Status quo objections = customer resistance to changing their current approach for solving a problem. Solution objections = customer agrees they need to change their current approach but disagrees with the supplier's solution for doing so.In this episode of ABM Done Right,  Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) that is filling in for Kristina Jaramillo as host, Jennifer Allen (Chief Evangelist for Challenger) and Michael Randazzo (VP of GTM for Challenger)  reflect on how we need to change sales training, sales conversations, and marketing to beat status quo objections.Conversation #1 - How do we need to shift sales trainingJennifer Allen talks about how the lion's share of seller training is often focused on product training.Growth problem? Our reps must not understand the product well enough.Trouble scheduling meetings with the decision-maker? Our reps must not be explaining the value of our solution well enough.Losing on price? Our reps must not be showing why our product is better than the competition.All too often, we throw product training at the problem and wonder why we don't see results.You'll learn about the shifts we should make in sales training to improve win rates with key, status quo accounts.Conversation #2: The need for more account-based enablementYou'll learn how GTM teams cannot depend on a calendared, just-in-case training plan. You need to provide relevant messages, content, stories, insights, and skills to enable sellers in the flow of work for specific accounts - when they need, and we need to help GTM teams respond with speed and precision as we build situational fluency. After listening to this conversation, you will want to read our article on how sales enablement does not go far enough and the account-based enablement that's needed. Conversation 3: Changing the seller conversation You will listen to a round table discussion on the issues with the current seller conversations (social, email, and live) and why it's not helping them overcome status quo objections. You'll also learn how we should engage in a two-way conversation that helps customers understand their current approach's costs/risks of their current approach?Conversation 4: Changing the marketing conversationYou will see how everyone is fighting for the same small share of the market. The focus is on in-market accounts that are identified by platforms like 6sense and Bombora. But there's 60% of the market that is stuck in the status quo -- it's this market that can provide the larger deal sizes if we can only create the a-ha moment and a buying vision.  You'll see how you need to change your content and your marketing motions to drive engagement with these accounts.You'll also learn how to better support sales with their status quo objection conversations and how to help sales win the internal "status quo objection conversations" that sales are not privy to.After listening to these conversations, check out these additional podcasts with Challenger:How to Use Challenger to Sell and Market Your Way to a Revenue Rebound - A Conversation with Michael RandazzoWinning the Challenger Sales - Listen to Kristina Jaramillo joins Challenger's podcast to discuss how to build credibility on with key accounts

With guests like Jeff Pedowitz (CEO of the Pedowitz Group), we've talked a lot about why 2/3 of ABM Programs fail. In this podcast, Kristina Jaramillo, Eric Gruber and their guest Jess Larkin (one of Okta's top strategic ABM marketers) will talk about the 6 key elements that are missing from most ABM programs:1. A clear understanding of what ABM is.2. An ABM strategy that is not just a list of tactical activities and cadences.3. The right ABM vendors (a partner like Personal ABM) 4.  A balanced approach as only 1/3 of ABM programs are executing 1:1, 1:few AND 1:many.5. An account plan for how sales and marketing teams will prospect, nurture and close tier 1 accounts. 6. Greater relevancy with the human buyers in the accounts that GTM teams want.Listen to this podcast to uncover:How and why  ABM is misunderstoodWhy you need to have an ABM strategy before investing in techWhat needs to be part of your ABM strategy How GTM teams are getting 1:1 ABM wrongHow your GTM teams need an account plan and how they should be aligning with the strategic priorities and business visions of target accounts. Here are the resources that were discussed in this podcast:1. G2 article on ABM strategy2. ABM strategy and account plan template 3. Podcast on why ABM should not be synonymous with ABM tech 4.  Podcast on how ABM should go beyond pipeline generation. 5. Article on how a more personal 1-to-1 ABM approach will help you win with status quo enterprises.  6. ABM Case Study: How an ITSM Used ABM to Drive Stage Progression and Buyer Journey Acceleration

Cassidy Shield, VP of Marketing and Sales at Narrative Science, says that marketing sourced revenue is a weak metric that sounds trivial and runs hollow in most C-suite conversations. He also talks about how pipeline KPIs can be your north star but it becomes meaningless when your win rate is down, your deal size is down and your sales cycle time is up. Listen to this conversation with Cassidy and Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) to learn:1.  Why you do not want to be part of the  60% of marketers that primarily focus on measuring pipeline KPIs and marketing sourced revenue - and why these marketers do not get the respect they deserve from the C-Suite and the board. 2. How marketing is misaligned with the business.3. How marketing needs to hit re-set, build an operational foundation and earn a seat at the table where the focus is on EBITDA.4. The marketing KPIs that CMOs and Marketing VPs and Directors need to pay attention to if they want to go beyond awareness and leads and actually make an impact.5. How marketing can tie their programs to the fundamentals of revenue with a strong focus on how and where to move the needle?6. How marketing can have a greater impact on sales velocity,7.  The role that marketing can play in helping sales and customer success teams shape and reshape buying behavior so larger deals can be won, revenue can be protected and accounts can be penetrated?After you listen to this podcast, check out theis additional resource that will help you rethink the marketing function:Quick 4 Minute Podcast - How ABM Should Impact More Than the Pipeline

In this episode, Joseph Monastiero from Revegy shares how most companies are just buying churn as sales, marketing, and customer success programs, communications and conversations are disjointed.Within this podcast, you'll see:How the Revegy team is using ABM to drive account acquisition, retention, and expansion.Why teams need to stop handing off the baton as we’re in a relay race and how sales, marketing, and account management/customer success teams should be working as 1, especially when it comes to tier 1 accounts. The challenges GTM teams are having starting with account selection and planning  -- and why these challenges are occurring. How sales, marketing, account management and RevOps teams need to align cross-functionally to create a tailored CX that positively impacts revenue KPIs.How GTM teams should be working together to accelerate accounts to revenue. We’ll discuss why accounts are getting stuck in their journey and what the teams can do together to ensure a win.How the race is not over once a deal is signed and how teams should be working together to retain and expand accounts. After you listen to this webinar, you'll want to check out these additional resources that will help you win, protect and expand key accounts using ABM:1) Why 2/3 of ABM Programs Fail - A Webinar with Personal ABM and the Pedowitz Group2) How GTM Teams Are Winning and Expanding Key Tier 1 Accounts Using ABM - a Sales Hacker article.3) How ABM Should Impact More Than the Pipeline - A Quick 3-Minute Podcast with Kristina Jaramillo

Cassidy Shield, SVP of Marketing and Sales at Narrative Science (who will be on our podcast soon) mentioned that we need to focus our energy on sales velocity and its components including  # of opps, average deal size, win rate, and sales cycle time. We need to be talking about how to drive the fundamentals of revenue. When marketers start talking about these elements, where/how to move the needle, and the result on revenue - you will get the attention of leadership and boards.But we can't be talking about where and how to move the needle and result on revenue because we're not tying ABM to business challenges that are tied to revenue. Most ABM programs are still focused at the top of the funnel, even though analytics show that ABM can have the greatest impact at the middle and bottom of the buying journey. In this podcast episode, Kristina Jaramillo shares how:A fintech firm serving mid-market banks as well as national institutions like Wells Fargo are challenged to drive more deals as they are not using ABM to change sales motions, sales processes and conversations so they can improve their win rates. Currently, the stage 1 to close win rate is 5%.  An AI tech firm is nowhere close to a signed deal with Mastercard and Walmart after 14 months of conversations because the CMO is not using ABM to accelerate accounts to revenue. The CMO blames it on the fact that they need closers, even though marketing can influence both selling conversations and the internal conversations that sales is not privy to.A channel sales tech firm is unable to create wins with large enterprises that continually make the safe, comfortable bet of investing in legacy platforms like Salesforce. Listen to this quick podcast episode to see how ABM should go beyond pipeline and leads and how it should impact win rates, sales cycle time, deal sizes, the ability to go up-market and much more. After you listen to this episode, sign up for our upcoming ABM webinar: Why 2/3 of ABM Programs Fail. You'll learn about many other mistakes that ABMers are making including making ABM synonymous with ABM tech. 

Because B2B buyers only spend 17% of their time with buyers when they are considering a purchase, every interaction must be impactful. Andy Paul, Host of RingDNA's Sales Enablement Podcast (930+ episodes) joined Eric Gruber on the Stop the Sales Drop Podcast to discuss how sales and marketing teams are limiting revenue growth with their volume plays.  How sales and marketing teams are disproportionately investing their time, energy, and resources at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel and how we need more time on the interactions we're having once we capture interest. How we are misaligned with buyers and how this is leading to low win rates.The mindset shifts that need to happen if sales and marketing want to have more meaningful interactions and deliver more memorable valuable experiences.How sales and marketing should be earning selling time with buyers.The key lessons Amdy learned from 930+ episodes with sales leaders like Dan Pink, Tiffani Bova and Jeffrey Gitomer. 

When LinkedIn came out with its report in 2020 that showed that 44% of organizations are facing significant declines in responsiveness, we at Personal ABM mentioned that it was not pandemic related. COVID may have exacerbated the situation but it's because we need a new way to market and sell to prospects. Recent studies from Challenger, support the claims that Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber made last year. Despite many companies rebounding in 2021 and despite sales and marketing teams increasing their prospecting by more than 5%, more than 50% of respondents mentioned that the biggest barrier to getting deals done is getting prospects to respond. On this podcast, Tom Pisello (Chief Evangelist at Mediafly) and host of the Sales Evolved Podcast and Eric Gruber (Personal ABM CEO) discuss:1) How we need to be much more relevant and important to a much fewer set of people than this mass industrial-scale attitude we have today where it's about as much outreach, activity, and opportunities as possible. 2)  How we need to improve messaging, develop new content to present it, and engage with a broader group of customer stakeholders to share it if we want to get greater market access. 3) How marketing can shift content and carry the internal conversation for sales. You must remember that only 5% of the decision-making journey takes place with the seller in the room – and in the room with the seller is a small subset of the buying committee. 4) How you need to build your storytelling and integrate it with your content and messaging to answer the questions "why change", "why now" and "why you."

Carrie Kelly (CMO)  led marketing programs at some insanely innovative places. Cisco, Ericsson, Nortel, CA Technologies, and now CriticalStart, a high-growth, Cybersecurity company that challenges the status quo across the managed detection and response market. Throughout her career, Carrie built global marketing campaigns and demand generation programs that have yielded millions in revenue. She kept customer acquisition costs low and steady, and growth objectives high. And yet, despite constantly being surrounded by technology, Carrie never forgot that we’re all just people trying to connect with other people. And the best way to do that is through a story that’s authentic, compelling, and above all, meaningful. On this podcast, Carrie and Personal ABM CEO Eric Gruber  discuss:1. What's wrong with the stories that sales and marketing are telling - and how we are speaking "at" accounts and "at" people vs. "with" accounts and people.2. How there's more to the buying decision than "how will this solution help my company" -- there's a personal reason behind every decision that we as sellers and marketers need to connect to.3.  Why prospects do not see themselves in the stories that sales and marketing are telling? 4. How we are losing the "selling conversations" in our buyers' minds and how we should be using stories to challenge the status quo.5. How you need stories for each part of the customer journey, including after the close as we work to retain and expand key accounts.6. How we should be teaching for differentiation through our stories, content, and messaging.7. What are the stories and content we should be using in the middle and bottom of the journey where accounts are stuck -- and what are the stories and content we should be using to drive adoption, retention, and expansion.

In a recent PMA article, Julien Sauvage (VP of Product Marketing at Gong)  mentioned that the top product marketers this year will create a strong connection with sales and measure their success in a tangible way. In many cases,  at Personal ABM, we find that marketing is focused on getting accounts into the pipeline. They aren't thinking about how they can influence each part of the buyer's journey and how they can support sales.  In this podcast, Julien talks to Personal ABM CEO Eric Gruber about the connection that's needed with sales and how everyone should win a complex sale. Listen to this episode to learn: 1. Why most content does not have an impact on revenue growth and why it doesn't make an emotional connection with prospects, customers, and partners. 2. How marketing should shift their content strategy and be provide content that supports sales and their selling conversations.3, How sales and marketing can work together to re-engage those ICP tier 1 accounts that are disconnected and to move accounts that are stuck in their buying journey. 4.  How can marketing influence the conversations sales are having with buyers and how can we influence the conversations that sales are not invited to?5. How sales and marketing need to measure their joint success in a tangible way vs. the squishy metrics that marketing tends to focus on?

Too often, sales and marketing have dehumanized their processes and have dehumanized their social, email, and live conversations with human buyers. Ethan Beute (Chief Evangelist at BombBomb) and Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) discuss how it's time to be more intentional and conscious about how we are reaching out to partners, customers and prospects. You'll learn: How we have dehumanized sales and marketing by system or circumstance -- and how we are dehumanizing experiences with our prospects, customers, and partners. The most important part of the customer experience that sales, marketing, and customer success teams are forgetting and how we are missing emotional resonance by looking at CX from a mechanical perspective.How and why sales and marketing are failing to make a connection with the human buyers.How we should be focusing on better interactions vs. more interactions. How we should truly bespoke with our content and nurturing for tier 1 accounts that can provide the greatest revenue growth.If you like the podcast above, you should also listen to:Connecting with the Disconnected  - A Conversation with Highspot's VP of Product MarketingRebooting the Customer Experience with Vikas BhambriRebooting Sales Engagement and Outreach with Dustin Deno at ShowPadMaking ABM Personal - The Why and the Buy Podcast Featuring Kristina Jaramillo

At its core, Challenger is not about what you sell and market - it's about how you sell and market and the buying experience that you deliver to key accounts.  It's about leading with relevant insights and leading to your solution vs. the other way around which is often the default approach that sales and marketing takes.  On this podcast, Michael Randazzo, the host of "Winning the Challenger Way" joins Personal ABM President Kristina Jaramillo on the podcast to discuss:How we need to complete 3-3-3 research and go beyond industry and persona relevance with our content, messaging, and social/email/live conversations. How we can make a stronger emotional connection, where prospects will see you as a partner vs. be another vendor trying to push to out product. Why prospects should never have to ask sales "how are you different" and how sales and marketing should be teaching for differentiation.Why only 14% of messaging is perceived by customers as unique and beneficial, how we are failing, and what we should be differentiating on. What commercial insights are and how it's not being added in content, messaging, and conversations.Why you need to focus on "unconsidered" gaps and impacts and how we should be sparking, introducing and confronting.If you like this podcast. check out the "Winning the Challenger Sale Podcast" where Kristina Jaramillo was also a guest.

On this podcast, Jarod Greene, Highspot's VP of Product Marketing shared with Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM and host of the Stop the Sales Drop Podcast) the lessons he learned from being a math teacher on how to connect with the disconnected.  As a math teacher, he needed to re-engage with students that "checked out" and give students that did not "care" about math a reason to get excited. He needed to create an environment where the students will want to learn. It's about the experience and the interactions you have  - and that is what Jarod believes is what many sales and marketing teams are forgetting and they are thinking about scaling to reach more people. They also talk about:How sales and marketing need to elevate their conversations across all channels to make the connection with those that do not see themselves in the story that is already being told. How you will get more revenue growth with tailored content and messaging - and impact win rates, deal sizes, and sales cycle time vs. taking an approach for critical mass. Why there are too many "false positives" and "sand" in the pipelineWhere the disconnect is happening after the signed deal - and why account management and customer success teams are challenged to protect and expand key accounts. Why "ABM" being owned by the wrong "team" is leading to disconnects throughout the buyer's journey. See why demand gen teams should not own or drive ABM. They play an important role but demand gen should be one piece of the puzzle.How sales and marketing should be changing their positioning, messaging, stories and approaches with tier 1 ICP accounts that once showed intent but stopped engaging.Why accounts are lost - it's not because sales and marketing failed to show the right features and it's not because buyers disagreed with the value that can be delivered.How you can influence the "internal" conversations and facilitate discussions that connect the disconnected within key accounts so you can get a buying consensus.How you can meet your buyers where they are at right now and serve the right level of content and messaging that communicates the right differentiation beyond the product.If you liked this podcast, you'll want to check out our other podcasts including an "ABM Conversation with Uniphore's VP of Product Marketing." 

Vijai Shankar, VP of Product Marketing for Uniphore, says that the biggest mistake companies can make when it comes to ABM is to have demand gen and other "marketing areas" drive ABM programs. Account-based sales and marketing is a business strategy where leadership, sales, marketing and account management teams work together to get more accounts to revenue and existing accounts to greater revenue.  Product marketing is the connector between the teams and ABM should be part of their revenue engine. When you hand ABM to demand gen, ABM often turns into account-based lead gen, account-based advertising or account-based awareness programs that focus on the top of the funnel vs. the complete buyer's journey. Vijai,  Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM), Eric Gruber (CEO of PersonalABM) discuss this in greater detail, plus you'll see their thoughts on...Why ITSMA reports that less than 1/3 of companies see significant business improvement with ABM.How companies are starting ABM on the wrong foot and how you should be starting with ABMWhy you should focus ABM on the complete journey and how companies are leaving revenue opportunities on the table by not using ABM for existing accountsThe challenges that Vijai faced while implementing ABM programs for 2 other companies besides Uniphore and why the Uniphore program is workingAfter listening to this podcast with Vijai Shankar and Personal ABM, you may want to check out these additional ABM resources:How to use ABM to open, engage and close accounts - Kristina Jaramillo's DemandGen Summit presentationHow the right ABM approach can create greater wins - Kristina Jaramillo on the B2B Marketers on a Mission Podcast

According to a recent PwC study, 86% of B2B buyers would rather pay more for a better experience. Inside this recent webcast and podcast, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) speaks with Joshua Fedie from Sales Outreach on how sales and marketing teams can increase the buyer experience especially the “in-between stages” and drive greater “digital” engagement with the human buyers:How to bring the human element into your digital-first sales and marketing strategy.How sales and marketing leaders are not making the “connection” with buyers on digital channels and why it’s leading to 44% of organizations experiencing a significant drop in responsiveness.How sales and marketing need to go beyond “personalization” and just infusing our personalities into videos and messaging. You’ll see the element that’s missing in most social, email, and live selling conversations.Where marketing messaging falls short – and how we’re missing stage-appropriate content that supports prospect and customer-facing teams after the qualifying stage. You’ll see how marketing needs to support the complete buyer’s journey.How sales and marketing can drive a memorable experience for the “internal” conversations that they are not part of – and how you can create a buying consensus when sales is not in the room with decision-makers.How sales and marketing’s focus on “scaling” is hurting the buyer experience.

Jeff Sirkin (Sirkin Research) and Eric Gruber (Personal ABM) came together for this Stop the Sales Drop Podcast to show go-to-market teams why they are unable to drive demand and responsiveness with status quo accounts and those stuck in their buying journey. They start off the conversation talking about where content gaps exist and how most content does not support ABM, demand gen,  the buyer's journey and buyer enablement. You'll learn why your prospects and customers do not see themselves inside the stories that are being told - and how we can improve our storytelling using data.

Inside this Stop the Sales Drop Podcast episode, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM), David Crane (VP of Marketing at Intentsify), and Eric Belcher (Head of Sales at Intentsify) discuss the biggest challenge that 2/3 of organizations have after investing in Bombora, 6Sense, and other intent data platforms.   This challenge is...  how we can activate and leverage the data to connect with tier 1, in-market accounts -- and close them.The conversation starts off with the data that you should be paying attention to. For example, the Intentsify platform gets 50+ billion intent signals per month and 4.2M identified in-market accounts per month. So there's lots of intent data for sales and marketing leaders to act on. You will learn how all intent data should not be treated equally, what we should be acting on and how we should be selecting in-market accounts to target.The conversation then moves to... how, where, and why intent data falls short of expectations - and how intent data is your springboard. You'll learn how sales and marketing teams ineffectively use intent data and how we can make the data more actionable. 

Mark Stouse (technology CMO turned software CEO of Proof Analytics) recently joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) to discuss how sales, marketing, and account management teams need to reboot their go-to-market (GTM) programs, including who owns it.Listen to this podcast to learn:1. Who needs to show up in the "battle" for revenue growth and how we need a one-team culture with the CEO at the helm. See how you need top-to-bottom and left-to-right alignment to achieve GTM goals faster.2. The role Mark Stouse plays in the GTM and ABM programs that Proof Analytics is executing.3. How CEOs, CMOs, CROs, and VPs need to rethink their thoughts about value, how we should innovate it, improve it, protect it, communicate it, market it and sell it.  4. The role ABM should play within your GTM strategy and the shifts that will lead to mega deals and change the growth trajectory of your company.5. How sales and marketing teams are misapplying the idea of personas and making it harder to drive a consensus among decision-makers than if the ABM program didn't exist at all. You'll see how your ABM programs should have decision-makers and influencers think about each other's issues as a team.6. How the analytics show that ABM has a stronger impact in the middle and bottom of the funnel than at the top and how we should focus on getting larger deal sizes and an acceleration toward revenue.7. The metrics you should be looking at to optimize the team's GTM efforts and the interactions they are having.

Dustin Deno recently joined Kristina Jaramillo and Eric Gruber on the Stop the Sales Drop Podcast to discuss the shifts his team made in sales outreach and sales engagement last year due to C-19. In addition to finding out what worked, what didn't work and where the team remains challenged, you will also learn:The critical strategies that ShowPad is using to make every sales experience matter?How can we drive greater engagement with each social, email, and live interaction and create a better prospect experience?How marketing at ShowPad help to improve sales outreach and sales engagement? You will hear about the impact Marketing had on sales at ShowPad, and where he sees growth opportunities for marketing to play an even stronger role in influencing the sales experience?

Vikas Bhambri (SVP of Sales and CX at Kustomer, which is being acquired by Facebook) recently joined Kristina Jaramillo to discuss how to reboot the customer experience. When you listen to this interview, you will learn why Vikas invested heavily in sales enablement as Kustomer expanded and the role it played when it came to improving the prospect and customer experience. You will also learn:* The sales process shifts that helped his sales team align with target accounts so prospects get the experience they desire. * The account management/customer success process shifts that are enabling his teams to give existing accounts the experience they deserve to they'll want to stay and expand with Kustomer.  * How Kustomer provides a seamless & value-driven experience to every customer from initial interest through continued growth.

During this podcast, Cassandra Jowett (Senior Director, Marketing at Path Factory), discussed with Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM and Stop the Sales Drop):1. How content consumption changed in 20202. Where friction in the buying journey exists - and the content shifts we need to make3. How does content need to evolve to support ABM, sales, and the complete buying journey