From Data to Deals: How ABM and AI Are
Transforming B2B Marketing in 2025

Featured Speakers:-

Links and Resources

• How To Become An AI-Ready Organization
• Breaking Down Barriers: AI Tools and the Democratization of Data Analysis in B2B Marketing
• How AI will EEAT traditional SEO?

Transcript

0:11:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the revenue Focused marketer, where we discuss anything and everything related to marketing as well as data.

0:21:
Our topic today is a really special one.

0:23:
We’re kind of going from dealing with data and kind of going deeper into ABM and how AI is really transforming.

0:31:
The B2B marketing space.

0:34:
And since 2025 is approaching shortly, we want to kind of use this episode to make sure that our listeners are prepared.

0:44:
So to help me and really like, you know, diving deeper into this topic, I have two very special guests.

0:51:
, so far up, we have Joel, who’s a seasoned marketing operations leader and expert in ABM orchestration.

0:59:
Joel, I’d love if you could just, you know, introduce, , a little bit about yourself and let others know.

1:06:
Absolutely, excited to be here.

1:08:
, you know, and just share some thoughts on these topics that we’re going to discuss today.

1:13:
I’ve been in marketing automation operations for, I think for more than the past 15 years, you know, started off in India, currently based here in the US.

1:24:
I’m a director of marketing operations at Realtio, you know, over the course of my career, you know, I’ve had the chance to implement.

1:33:
A lot of the marketing technology, you know, , kind of customize and tweak those the technology and the process to drive business outcomes, especially revenue and bookings.

1:46:
, so, so what we’re going to share is that sort of, , you know, lessons we have learned through that, through the experience.

1:54:
Awesome.

1:55:
Thank you so much for the introduction and for being with us here today.

1:59:
We’re really excited to learn from you.

2:02:
Joining Joel is also one of our in-house experts.

2:05:
So we have Arpit, , Arpith, if you could introduce yourself, maybe just quickly for the audience.

2:12:
Yeah, hi everyone.

2:13:
This is Arpit.

2:15:
My career has been like a mix of a lot of things, so it’s very difficult to book what like what walks to it.

2:23:
, so it started off with like more on the performance marketing side and that was the first half of my career where I was working with a couple of tech companies, , running their digital marketing and analytics practices, and in the later half, I sort of pivoted to more on the consulting and digital transit of the house.

2:42:
So it has been a mix of marketing and data and now more recently, I’m Really working on a product which is all about data and marketing.

2:52:
So excited to be here.

2:53:
Joel and I have actually worked together in CI, so some great memories and some good lessons that we shared together.

2:59:
So hopefully the entire audience will find some value out of this.

3:04:
That’s awesome.

3:05:
Thank you so much for sharing that.

3:07:
I think you guys are a dynamic duo and we’re definitely lucky to, you know, be here and get this advice from you guys.

3:14:
So I think for our audience, we can maybe start off with just, you know, setting up the foundation for ABM.

3:21:
So Joel, what do you think marketing teams can really do to set up an effective ABM program in 2025?

3:29:
Yeah.

3:30:
, it’s a, it’s a very common question that, you know, , last couple of years we won an award for, , , for our ABX transformation.

3:39:
So some of the key lessons, you know, we learned along the way in, , in that award winning program, you know, if I were to kind of say what’s the most important one, I’ll say it’s getting alignment with sales, , leadership.

3:55:
Many times, like I think a lot of us have done ABM in the past.

3:59:
It ends up being something marketing is doing, but in terms of how ABM is driving the end outcome, which is, , you know, revenue and bookings, you know, there’s always seems to be a disconnect.

4:13:
For some people, there’s a disconnect, you know, for some people, they’re seeing success, but so I think the key ingredient there is having the alignment with sales leadership.

4:23:
About, , about a joint ABM approach.

4:27:
, if what we, what I’ve seen in the past is if we try to do it just with marketing, sales just treats it as just another MQL, but the premise of ABM is that it’s not an MQL.

4:40:
Terminology here, which is common in the marketing world.

4:42:
So if something is not clear, feel free to, you know, , I don’t know, slack or I mean, just put it in the chat or something and we’ll try to respond, .

4:53:
, but you know, so we don’t want, we did not want ABM to be another MQL.

4:59:
So I think that is the biggest one.

5:01:
So getting that alignment on what is, what is the ABM program going to do?

5:05:
Why is it different than an MQL?

5:07:
I think aligning all of that talking points and .

5:11:
, you know, all of that with sales leadership, I think it is a key one as an outcome of that.

5:18:
And naturally, the discussion with sales will move into what are, you know, what are our best accounts, what is our ICP?

5:25:
What are the personas we should be targeting.

5:27:
So it’s a natural flow.

5:29:
Because you’re going to start at the top with strategy and then you’re going to get into what are the tactical things we can align on across marketing your BDRs or SDRs or whatever you call that team, and then the sales, right?

5:42:
So they’re they’re key players across the ABM program.

5:47:
I think that is, we should not lose sight of that when we say it is, you know, I know the terminology says account based marketing because it started off as a marketing initiative.

5:57:
But I think the lesson that we’ve learned is if you want to be successful, it’s, it’s not just marketing, you have to bring your partners along the journey.

6:06:
Definitely.

6:07:
I think that’s such an important point that you’ve touched upon and maybe Arpit, you can help us in understanding, like, you know, how can marketing operations ensure that this alignment with sales has been achieved.

6:21:
So are there like, you know, maybe some tips, tricks or tips that you can, you know, share with our audience?

6:27:
Yeah, definitely.

6:28:
I think pretty much in line with what Joel mentioned.

6:31:
Let’s see, at its core, account-based marketing is all about having that personalized conversation with your target persona within the companies probably that matter most to you.

6:43:
And then obviously there’s a rule of The alignment across department it could be sales, marketing, and even the customer success, call it like a revenue team and then have an ability to sort of a process that can monitor what’s working and what’s not, and then an ongoing sort of optimization.

7:02:
So I think the biggest thing is, is, is around data.

7:06:
That is the key thing.

7:08:
And each of these steps that I mentioned, whether it’s about identifying the right accounts, so you’ve got to know like what has worked in the past, you should have like the right data in terms of the phonographics, technographics, you should have insights around what kind of accounts attributes have actually led to higher deal size or a faster closures.

7:30:
See, you will always start with some of your own hypotheses that these are my right accounts and this is how we should go, but data should ultimately define what has worked.

7:39:
So that is the critical piece.

7:41:
And the same goes as you go to the next level, which is identifying the right contacts, really defining that buying committee.

7:48:
You have some preconceived notion about the buying committee, but as you gather more data, as you speak to more people, as you’re monitoring what’s working, you really understand who are the users, who are the influencers, who are the actually decision makers, and what are their specific objections, challenges, and sort of cater that to achieve that personalization goal and also the goal to have.

8:11:
Like more meaningful conversation.

8:13:
And then when it comes to the alignment which you touched, again, the key is to have like a centralized standardized view that , both sales and marketing and even customer success have access to, and they know where we are, , we really getting the targets.

8:31:
Is it that we should focus on existing pipeline or really build new pipeline?

8:35:
And what is the definition of all these terminologies?

8:37:
I think you, you mentioned MQL and there could be like 10 different definitions of MQL if that standardization is not in place.

8:45:
So all in all, I think those foundational steps are required.

8:49:
And it always kind of starts with the strategy and alignment, so that’s how it should be.

8:55:
Definitely.

8:56:
And I think a lot of people are also sort of prioritizing this.

9:01:
The CRO roles has become something that I’ve seen has become common now, just to help with this alignment, because there is someone now present in leadership that is focusing on this aspect.

9:14:
So I think it’s huge that you mentioned this.

9:16:
And then, , you kind of talked about data there also.

9:20:
So maybe one of you could also share like what do you think are like, you know, some of the common challenges that businesses do currently face when managing their ABM data?

9:31:
Yeah, I mean, what the touched on on data is, is very important, right?

9:35:
Like in the past, we would do nominated list, right?

9:39:
Either sales nominated, marketing nominated.

9:42:
But you just have a team that’s doing their hypothesis and they would say these are our best fit accounts and you know, but today, there’s, there’s a lot of data you can gather for each of your accounts.

9:53:
There is no lack of.

9:55:
Intent providers out there, right?

9:57:
There’s just so many sources of intent data that you have.

10:01:
I think going from a nominated list, which is your hypothesis, to a data driven approach where you are taking into account the most recent intent signals again by intent providers.

10:13:
You know, there’s variation about how frequently they update their intent signals or trying to get the freshest, almost, I don’t know if that’s a word, but getting the most fresh, , intent, , you know, signals and gathering and building a data driven approach, you know, so there, you know, there are two aspects to that.

10:32:
, you know, , you know, when in some of my older sort of ABM approaches, I would say, you know, they were not mature enough just because we lacked.

10:44:
, proper data about what happened in the past.

10:47:
Now this is where it’s important to have a good hygiene across your platforms.

10:51:
It could be a CRM, it could be marketing automation, but across your platforms, you need to have good data hygiene because If there’s no good data hygiene about what what are the opportunities that you won or lost, then it’s very hard to build a data-driven approach that will work.

11:08:
You can still build a data driven approach, but the efficiency of the model will definitely, you know, will be showing.

11:15:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

11:17:
I mean like we can even just talk about challenges more like.

11:22:
See if I talk about data, the D stands for actually the the separate systems that we all have like roughly you have 10 to 15 different antigmatic systems.

11:34:
Each of them will have their own definitions, their own way of reporting, and then individuals who are subject matter expert in those systems, right?

11:42:
So again, that standardization is missing and A for me stands for accuracy issues.

11:48:
So like you mentioned, , there could be a lot of even email addresses that are not like delivering, right?

11:57:
And then 111 insights that I got while I was speaking to one of our partners was In the current scheme of things, what’s really happening is you will have to refresh your data not every 6 months, not every 3 months, maybe every 1 month.

12:13:
So that is also an important piece of information, how quickly and what is the cadence that you will have to make in your marketing operations such that your data hygiene accuracy is up to the mark.

12:27:
A lot of these vendors actually cost or the price their platform based on number of contacts.

12:33:
That’s like a good percentage of your contacts are actually bouncing.

12:37:
It’s not good for your ABM program.

12:39:
It’s also a lot of cost for you, and it’s also like a debt that will sort of also build up in your what do you call it a history, and eventually the program will go over.

12:49:
So that, that’s again a problem.

12:51:
And then the third piece, there is a gap in technology and talent.

12:57:
See, we can always blame technology, but if you don’t have a like a good marketing operations person who knows in and out of all the related system and can build that architecture, you’re definitely missing out.

13:08:
You can buy a piece of software, but it will not run on its own.

13:12:
And then finally, the alignment piece also sort of is, is the some of the reporting and the ability to sort of bringing everyone on the same page based on certain KPIs that we have agreed upon, certain SLEs that we have agreed upon.

13:27:
So all that is required and then that’s where I think data is critical in the whole ABM bust.

13:34:
I think that’s huge definitely considering the fact that people are wanting to go and make more data driven decisions.

13:41:
These are certain challenges that, you know, every company might be facing, and I think in the world that is driven so much by data and now the biggest hot topic being sort of AI or AI also, I want to kind of transition now and kind of understanding how maybe, you know, Leveraging AI can help with ABM precision.

14:06:
So, you know, maybe you guys can shed some thoughts on how it’s orchestrating ABM campaigns.

14:12:
Is that something you’ve seen or like, you know, is, are these still things that are going to be pursued in the future?

14:19:
So, , incidentally, again, not to brag, but, , recently we just won an award for using AI for efficiency.

14:27:
So we got the Sixth Sense Efficiency Experts Award here at WTO, and that is for using a conversational AI email platform, which we use to scale our outreach to likes that are in our database, right?

14:44:
, so I would say, you know, in marketing operations, .

14:48:
Yeah, I mean, for the last 2 years you all you hear was AI.

14:52:
Every platform has AI, , and you would say, you know, there was a hype, , I don’t know if you’ve seen the, , the hype cycle, but it just goes like from the top to down, , you know, for every technology, the first few years, there’s a lot of hype and then.

15:07:
People become disillusioned and then it kind of flattens out to a more mature platform and implementations, but I would say definitely we are in the high cycle of AI there’s a lot of hype, there’s a lot of vendors coming out.

15:21:
I think the key is understanding what the technologies do and how it can impact the bottom line, right?

15:29:
Because At the end of the day, if we are not able to show revenue numbers against it, it becomes harder to justify the AI investment as it goes forward.

15:39:
And so that was one of the key pieces of, you know, like a, you know, just like a guide that we took when we were looking at all the different AI technologies in their space, right?

15:50:
And then we said, OK, this, this platform, it could actually help us because it can, you know, help us to reach more prospects.

15:59:
On on an automated scalable fashion without costing the BDRRs and you know, the cost of a BDR.

16:07:
So to augment whatever our BDR team was doing because You know, they want to reach out to the most you know, the most fresh the most recent interactions and people that are going, but there’s a lot of people in the database who would be like, you know, hey, we, I mean, they reached out to us, but they were not responsive when we reached back and they’re just.

16:29:
In the database, maybe something was not right, you know, at that moment in time, but it’s very like, so we want the BDRs to focus on what’s most fresh and then we said, OK, maybe have the AI go after people who sort of reached out in the past but never responded.

16:43:
So that was one of the programs where we saw a lot of success because Then we are, we are not, I mean, the cost of doing that did come down considerably and we were able to generate more responses and more meetings booked for our BDRs, right?

16:57:
And there’s, so yes, there’s that technology, there’s, there’s also pieces about how you implement it, but in general, the closer the technology is to impacting revenue, the easier you’re gonna, , you know, it’s gonna be easier for you to build a case, get the budget, make the justification and all of that.

17:18:
Yeah, totally.

17:19:
It’s all about ROI and I think the one piece that probably we should talk about when it comes to AI, I definitely think there’s a high, but there is a substance as well, and it’s, it’s, it’s getting better.

17:33:
So there could be like people who are still in a deline mode, they still feel that it’s not working because they’re just focusing on what’s not working, rather, we’ll have to focus on what is actually improving.

17:43:
It’s improving very fast.

17:45:
So I think one of the challenges with personalization has been how many variations of a different content experience you will create, right?

17:54:
You know about this account so much, you know about the industry, you know about the technographics, you know about.

18:00:
The demographics, you know more about this person.

18:04:
All these data points are there.

18:05:
You now also have intense signals.

18:07:
You have third party sign signals.

18:09:
You’ve got G2 signals.

18:10:
You’ve got Bemboa signals.

18:11:
All this data will give you something that is meaningful and can be used to personalize.

18:17:
But how many, how many of these variations we can create and how can you make that more scalable?

18:23:
What I really feel is now it is the time that it is actually practically possible.

18:29:
To say that we can have 1000 variation of our homepage.

18:33:
Why?

18:34:
Because now the AI has the ability to generate.

18:38:
There was no generative AI, let’s say 2 or 3 years back, right?

18:42:
But now you have, if you have, you can train the generative AI with some of your content, your industry, your persona, the kind of challenges or objections generally you face when you speaking to your end customers.

18:56:
If he’s aware of that, then generating a meaningful content as we collect more data and sort of aligning it and refreshing it is, it’s not going to be that hard the way it used to be.

19:08:
, the other aspect which is closer to, I would say more machine learning and more towards hypothesis testing, extension to AI, all these personalization ideas to me are just like a hypothesis, right?

19:23:
You, you came up with some idea like, look, they are from this industry, let’s try out this, but whether it will impact the metrics that matter to you and to the original point that Julie, you were mentioning the revenue impact on all that stuff.

19:39:
Again, each of those ideas should have some association of the KPIs that matter to us.

19:45:
For that, I think there’s a, there’s a whole world of AB testing, hypothesis testing, multivariate testing.

19:51:
You can go more advanced and use some advanced algorithm leverage random for a lot of the platforms actually sort of encapsulate all this in the tool itself, and it’s possible to really justify whether the new experience and all that effort that we put into architect the solution is actually.

20:09:
Really creating impact and really moving the dial in terms of higher engagement scores at the account level and eventually bigger deal sizes or with the velocity to close faster is actually on the high like it’s actually a lot more, it’s taking less time.

20:26:
All those things can be actually adjusted and then we can really justify some of these specific areas where we are investing time and money.

20:35:
Yeah.

20:38:
And just to add on that, I think you hit the right points.

20:41:
At the end of the day, marketing, what’s key for marketing is hitting the right person or with the right message at the right time.

20:47:
And I think parts of AI have started helping us achieve some of that, right?

20:53:
Like with, as you said, with general AI we are able.

20:56:
Craft of the right message using all the data analysis and helping AI process we can find out what’s the best time or what’s the best account that we need to reach out.

21:05:
So I think it’s mapping and having that picture, right?

21:09:
How are you contributing to all of that using AI?

21:13:
I think that’s really insightful to hear.

21:16:
Maybe we can learn a bit more about certain technologies that are essential for, like, you know, driving this AI-based ABM approach, , something that you’ve seen or like, you know, hoping to get your hands on experience with.

21:33:
Yeah, I mean, , if I were to, you know, share what’s what we’re doing at the moment, it’s what I mentioned before, there’s a conversation email platform from Six Sense that we leverage today to automate a lot of our BDR team outreach so that helps us.

21:51:
I mean, the good thing about it.

21:52:
it’s gene AI, so the BDR doesn’t really need to craft the email, and they just write a prompt.

21:57:
It’ll generate 35 or whatever 6 email sequence and it can also using NLP, it can parse whether the reply is positive, negative, or if it’s something like out of office.

22:10:
So, you know, it removes a lot of the manual work that’s usually associated in an email outreach campaign.

22:19:
That you would generally have and if the AI is sort of able to handle those, there are always going to be exceptions, but those are more on the lesser side majority it can it can handle.

22:31:
So that is one aspect we are experimenting with our chat platform.

22:35:
Having some AI in people who come to our website and you know, chat with it as I mentioned, we’re also looking at web experiences driven by AI depending on what we know, what is the intent.

22:48:
But you know, I think we haven’t implemented that, that’s something on our radar at the moment.

22:55:
I think the what’s holding us back is sort of like, yes, you can do, you can do a lot of you can do a lot of variations, but trying to get.

23:05:
The light sample size to understand if a test was significant enough, , you know, some some of those things, those are the things we’re sort of dealing with and then the other part is, you know, in, in all of this, there’s a little bit of inputs that you need to give and obviously for the inputs to get, you know, to work correctly, it has to be cleaned.

23:26:
So there’s also that aspect of, you know, you need clean data to drive some of these AI .

23:33:
, initiatives, but those are definitely some of the platforms that we’re using at the moment.

23:38:
But, you know, if you ask me, everybody is gonna come out with something AI and AI is the catchword of this year, right?

23:47:
Definitely.

23:48:
I think that big on even within our company, we always keep saying like garbage in garbage out.

23:54:
So like, you know, the focus on getting that clean data as you mentioned is also heavy and making sure there are tools that are kind of focusing on not just giving you the analytics, but also like, you know, data and.

24:06:
Enrichment, that’s an essential part of, you know, getting that.

24:10:
I, I think I you were trying to mention something.

24:13:
Yeah, I was just mentioning, see, it also depends on the overall maturity that you are in when it comes to the ABM program, ABS program.

24:22:
I would definitely rate very high to whatever Joel has already set up in his organization, given the kind of experience he has and the the maturity he has already set up.

24:34:
But when you’re starting off, I think, , probably you can start small.

24:39:
You don’t really need to invest on a very expensive tool, let’s say 60 demand base.

24:46:
Those are great tools, but then , that they come with a lot of cost, right?

24:52:
So it’s better you start small and maybe even if you’ve got a good marketing operations person in-house and let’s say you just have got HubSpot, for example.

25:04:
Even HubSpot has certain ABM features that you can leverage just to start off, right?

25:09:
If you have good strategy in place, you know, like what are my target accounts, you build that alignment, always start with a pilot ABM campaign.

25:17:
And that doesn’t really require a very expensive tool of like, likes of Sixense and demand base.

25:25:
You rather plan it on one side you have Hubspot to manage email campaigns and ensure that you Really tagging it with right attributes that these are my, let’s say target ABM accounts.

25:38:
These are tiers and then on the media activation side, like most of the app platforms will give you an ability to ingest the relevant list of your accounts and contacts.

25:49:
And in a lot of cases they also have some kind of integrations between your system, let’s say HubSpot to AdWords or LinkedIn, there could be.

25:57:
Integrations you can build using Zapier.

26:00:
All that is possible, and which means that you can really activate some personalized ads on those platforms to your targeted accounts.

26:08:
And finally, to measure the performance, obviously you have got tools like G4, your own HubSpot or market.

26:16:
There’s some level of reporting there.

26:17:
You can get a little more sophisticated platforms like Digro that have.

26:21:
Some exclusive reporting on ABM, but all in all, that will be roughly costing you maybe like 1/3 of what probably you will do with some expensive tools.

26:31:
So that is my key, I would say recommendations for someone who, who are actually early in this stage.

26:38:
, they should sort of test the waters and need not spend that much.

26:42:
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s an important point.

26:45:
Like when, so we made the transition from MQLs to ABM, ABX two years ago, the key, one of the key aspects there is we never added anything to our tech stack when we did the transformation.

26:58:
We just rearchitected.

27:00:
What we had to a new process.

27:02:
So as you mentioned, like it’s not about the technology per se, but it’s about how you can do what you want within the framework of the platforms you have.

27:14:
Right That’s really wise.

27:16:
I think sometimes it’s easy to sort of, you know, miss on this aspect and not see the maturity in your current tech stack also before making these decisions.

27:25:
So I think that’s definitely helpful to keep in mind.

27:28:
I think I wanna move to sort of, you know, a different section, , success.

27:34:
Sort of, you know, come and means different things in different situations and different to different companies also.

27:41:
So in your opinion, maybe Joel, you can start us off, like, you know, what metrics do you think matter most when it comes to ABM and maybe, you know, but you can also share your experience after.

27:54:
Yeah.

27:55:
Success, yes, a very important, , topic.

27:59:
I would say it also changes with time, right?

28:01:
And why I say that is because as you’re building out an ABM program, there are some leading indicators that you want to focus on.

28:09:
Those are going to tell you if the program is going in the right direction, depending on your sales.

28:14:
Cycle, which for us is pretty long, takes about 9 months.

28:18:
So you know, we have to wait almost a year to get the the final outcome.

28:23:
So it could be, you know, it could be the same for for different company, I mean, it could be the same for other people as well.

28:30:
So we cannot wait a whole year to say if something is working or not because in today’s world, you got to be able to pivot fast, , right?

28:40:
, see what’s working, see what’s not working.

28:42:
So I think depending on the timeline you are into implementing ABM and ABX, there are different success criteria.

28:51:
I think the first one for us is, are things moving into sales accepted pipeline more and are they moving faster?

28:59:
So I think those were the two aspects that we kind of focused on to tell us.

29:04:
Initially, if these things are working.

29:06:
Now, after 9 months, we would know if that cohort that moved through the ABX process.

29:13:
Is sticking.

29:14:
So that is pipeline stickiness is it is it is it closing out a lot or is it converting to bookings more than the previous cohort?

29:22:
So, but those things you can measure only as you know, time goes on, it’s those are more lagging indicators.

29:28:
The other criteria, and I mean this is not actually a number, but it’s more what we say is qualitative feedback from our sales teams as.

29:39:
Stay, you know, top.

29:40:
It’s very important to get understanding from the frontline teams on what they’re seeing, right?

29:45:
Like if your ABM is targeting the right people, the right accounts at the right time, you should be hearing positive signals or feedback from the frontline teams.

29:55:
So that also, that feedback also helps us adjust as necessary, right?

30:00:
Maybe we said, OK, this is what it looks like, it looks like on paper or on the.

30:05:
Signals when we collect, it looks a certain way, but when they talk to it, you know, , you never knew the signals could be interpreted in a different way, right?

30:12:
So that’s, that’s where a little bit of that qualitative feedback in the early stages are very important because that helps you kind of, you know, tweak the direction your ABM program.

30:23:
Sometimes it’s a very simple tweak that can have a big impact, but I would, you know, I would underscore getting that feedback from the frontline teams.

30:31:
Yeah, I think you pretty much covered everything.

30:35:
I’ll just add a sugar coat of AI in the whole thing because so one of the things that probably we should consider is what I call predictive scoring.

30:49:
Which means that you, as you sort of get into that AB motion and then you start creating deals and have that pipeline, how good is that pipeline in the real sense and then can you predict the likelihood to close?

31:02:
Because what really happens is you want to hit that benchmark of, let’s say closing 1/3 of all the aposities that you’ve created, but sometimes even 10% of them don’t really close.

31:13:
And it’s a big problem because you have got that that number on the dashboard which you can’t really trust.

31:19:
So how can we bring in some AI insights in the whole measurement framework that can tell me that although I can see 100 million worth pipeline, but I know like just 5 million will close, we should be better prepared with some additional campaigns and some additional ideas to build the pipeline.

31:36:
So that that is, that is going to be one important aspect.

31:40:
And the other one I would say in the whole KPI framework for account-based marketing is your ability to segment the data, which means that by industry, by title, by products if you’re a multi-product company, and then also have an ability to sort of dissect the revenue in terms of the different deal types, whether it’s a new book business or whether it’s a renewal, whether it’s expansion, because each of those deal types will have a different.

32:07:
ABM motion and it’s a different volume and when you when you’re getting started, maybe ABM focus on existing pipeline is going to be more like a low hanging fruit because you will then give the whole executive team a taste of conversion because like you said, Joel, in B2B, the sale cycle is longer for you, it is, let’s say 9 to 12 months.

32:30:
It’s a long.

32:32:
Cycle, right?

32:32:
And then you know the CE executives are impatient.

32:35:
They can’t wait for 12 months to really justify all that investment we made on talent and technology and processes, right?

32:43:
So what we can really do is run some pilot campaigns that are not really geared towards activating a sort of a new net new logos rather helping the whole sales team close faster and focus on some, some renewables and Overall, let’s say expansion revenue, and it’s relatively easier to close.

33:03:
Yeah.

33:04:
I think that is so important to kind of understand and like, you know, these, , aspects of success.

33:11:
I’m glad that we got a chance to discuss this.

33:13:
I would now want to sort of cater the conversation a bit more towards like, you know, the future of ABM, , so, you know, where do you see the trends going?

33:23:
, I have personally.

33:24:
We’ve been seeing a lot, like, you know, people moving from generative AI to what’s now called agentic AI and AI agents kind of, you know, kind of making those decisions for you.

33:35:
So maybe, you know, we can jam upon if that’s something, you know, you guys are seeing in the industry and what, where do you predict the future trends to be in.

33:46:
Yeah, I mean, as, as I was saying before, I mean, this year, if you were at any conferences, any of the big ones, Dream Force or Sixth Sense or any of the other ones, you cannot miss the word agent, AI agent.

33:59:
Everyone’s coming out with that.

34:01:
I think it’s, you know, it’s the the concept, everyone loves it, you know, of having an AI agent.

34:07:
, I think peeling back the layers of, you know, what’s going to be the blocker is going to be clean data, I think as we were mentioning before.

34:15:
So even here at RealTo, we have, we’re starting to experiment with the agents.

34:21:
The, the good news for us is that since we are a data company and we We specialize in unifying and mastering the data from different sources.

34:30:
We are able to build that clean data in-house with our, , you know, with our product.

34:35:
So that helps us build some of those AI agents, I think a little more quickly than than others, even in our own product, , we’re sort of going in that direction, marketing like customer 360, , we’re moving in, moving in that direction, but The whole point is that for AI agents to become successful, it’s it’s very important to underscore the need for clean data.

35:05:
I mean, we had, you know, the way I look at it, we had data for human consumption and as humans, I would say sometimes we are a little bit forgiving, you know, if the data is not in the right format, we’re, we know how to understand that for AI we need the data to be more cleaner, it’s a higher standard.

35:22:
I think driving that approach across our systems, getting our systems ready because the AI agent at the end of the day is sort of an execution layer on the data that you have.

35:33:
So if your foundation is, is not right, then, you know, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have challenges like if you take 6 senses, all of that, all they have all models in the back end which are fed by your data, right?

35:46:
And if your data is not You know that accurate, that even the agent experience for the customer probably will not be the best.

35:56:
Yeah, , adding to what you said, Joel, I would say that, see, I worked a lot on data side of things and a lot of time was spent on building dashboards, like all those beautiful reports in Tau, Power BI in Adobe Analytics workspaces and GFO and Looker, you name it, and we, we sort of love those things.

36:20:
But I think in the future, what is going to happen, and it’s not very far and it’s right now itself.

36:26:
The new BI is actually in my view, which means that there’s no barrier to really talk to your data, right?

36:36:
As a business person, you always were at the mercy of having that interface of a data engineer or SQL person or a Python guy or a marketing operations with some technical background to, to really understand what what’s working, what, what are the insights.

36:51:
How’s the ABM program going now you don’t need that because the EA is going to probably give you access to all that data in your mobile phone, which means you just type questions that you have that you think are important to get answers for as far as your business strategy is concerned, as far as your goals are concerned.

37:11:
And it will go back and really find out all the data and sites that are sitting in your CRM systems and plenty of other platforms, your data lake data warehousing systems, whatever, wherever.

37:22:
So that, I think it’s a great leveler and then that’s how I think it’s going to make all of us a lot more efficient.

37:29:
And I think that’s, that’s where we’re heading towards.

37:32:
Yeah, you, as you’re saying that it reminded me of something that we’re even seeing from a SEO perspective, right?

37:39:
But what we’re tracking is that, you know, the Google has a new feature where you don’t really need to click on the link and I don’t know if there was a term for a zero click or something.

37:50:
I think that’s what they call it now.

37:51:
Yeah.

37:53:
You don’t need if you search for, you know, LT or any of the things, the AI will generate a snippet, , about, about your company based on data that it can gather from different sources and most importantly your website, right?

38:08:
So I think we are also looking at how is that going to change in the future, right?

38:15:
This is, we are probably at the beginning, but if the AI is like.

38:19:
You know, how many times have you gone to a website and you try to look for the information and then you give up like I cannot find what I need for, right?

38:25:
So how is the AI agent experience going to change that, you know, that’s one of the aspects that we’re also thinking about in, in, in context to all of this.

38:36:
That’s definitely interesting, and I’m kind of excited to see, you know, what really ends up happening in the future.

38:44:
I think it is a great time to be in this field and sort of, you know, being able to be in touch and seeing all these changes on such a day to day basis.

38:53:
, I, I think we’re coming towards the end of our session here today.

38:57:
, and I think I just want to highlight how, you know, we covered ABM, we covered AI and how it’s really transforming marketing, but we were also able to dive deeper into kind of, you know, understanding more about data position, like sales alignment and even hyper personalized.

39:17:
And I loved how we could discuss so much about AI, like, you know, from what’s happening right now and what we are gonna see in the future also happening.

39:26:
So thank you so much, you know, for taking the time today to guide us through this whole aspect.

39:32:
Any last thoughts before we end this session today?

39:38:
Yeah, I think the last thought is, , see, we are living in a world where illiterate are not the people who can’t just read and write, but also people who cannot unlearn, relearn and cannot really adapt to the change.

39:54:
So I think enough of denial mode of AI and data, I think we should sort of embrace it and those who will do it will will succeed.

40:03:
And it it is actually going to apply on your ABM.

40:07:
It will apply on your entire organization.

40:10:
Yeah.

40:11:
I think everything we talked about, if I were to summarize in two phrases, it would be work smarter, not harder, right at the end of the day.

40:20:
So we all have to work.

40:23:
If you do it the old way, it’s a lot of work, but there are tools and process available to work smarter.

40:29:
So to our pits point, you know, learn those, don’t get stuck behind, yeah.

40:34:
And you can shape the future.

40:37:
So.

40:38:
Yeah.

40:39:
Awesome.

40:40:
Thank you so much again, guys.

40:41:
This was such a wonderful session.

40:43:
I know I learned a lot and I hope our audience also got the chance to do the same.

40:48:
So thank you so much for tuning in and hope you catch us on the next episode.

40:52:
Thank you.

40:54:
See you.

See more webinar