ABM: An Account-based Mindset

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - So today I'm joined by Amanda Dyson, who's the VP Marketing at FourKites. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Thank you for having me. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Well, delighted to have you on the show talking all things Account-based Marketing or whatever flavor you might call it. But let's, we'll dig into that a little bit on the show. 

But one thing we were chatting before this recording, and you know, we were looking a little bit back on your career, and I think you've obviously had a fascinating career in the world of ABM.

If I'm right in thinking, you were running ABM or building ABM programs over at Blue Yonder, then you moved and did the same thing at E2open before moving now to FourKites. 

So perhaps could you share a little bit about that ABM journey and perhaps what your philosophy is for Account-based Marketing? 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, yeah, I would love to. So, yeah, like we were talking about, I spent the majority of my career thus far, at Blue Yonder. So back when it was JDA, we were still sort of Field Marketing, not really even dabbling in ABM right. And I think around 2020, we started to get the itch. And so I was lucky enough to build up that team in North America and, you know, did that for a couple of years. 

One of my probably most satisfying things that I've been able to do in Marketing, I love ABM, which is part of why I'm here today chatting with you. And then moving over to E2open was a lot different, because I inherited a team, right? I didn't build the team, I kind of inherited the team and decided to have two different flavors from Demand Gen and ABM there. Which was, you know, interesting in itself.

I think that there's a bit of a playbook that we kind of had, and kind of we're able to use for our One-to-one campaigns to make them really fresh and exciting. And now, coming over to FourKites, it's all the things, right? So it's not just ABM anymore. We've gotta look at our Product Marketing and our Customer Marketing. And so the thing that I've really been able to carry, I think, with me through those experiences is this Account-based mindset or strategy, if you will. So even if it's not in your specific domain or responsibilities, even outside of Marketing, within Sales, like how do we bring that account focus to really everything that we do? So that's been kind of the biggest change, I would say. But knowing that is my background and sort of why FourKites even came looking for my style of Marketing and Leadership, that's what we try to do over here.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Excellent. Well I like that, that ABM mindset, I think that's really important to have that, and that's something that, you know, many of your previous guests on the podcast have preached as well, so it's great to hear that. 

Now, you mentioned, and I mentioned at the top of the show, FourKites, and you've mentioned it a couple of times in your answer there. But for those who may not know. Give us, tell us, I mean, who are FourKites? 

How would you explain if you bumped into Bill Gates in a lift, which is what we call it in British English or an elevator in US English, right?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. Well, it's the elevator pitch, right? 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Right. 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - So it's a really interesting time for us to be having this conversation because FourKites is undergoing a pretty dramatic, or drastic, kind of evolution of our company. 

So people that are kind of a bit familiar, FourKites founded or created the visibility, transportation visibility category ten years ago. And it was a need that our founder and CEO saw in the market, a gap, right? To have that visibility from point A to point B. Nobody was really doing that. So we created the category. We have lots and lots of happy, happy customers, which is something that actually really drew me to the company. But over the last 10 years, a lot more providers have entered the space. You now have supply chain platforms saying, well, we do visibility too. So, you know, it's been maybe a little bit commoditized. 

So in talking with our customers and talking with our accounts, we kind of learned that we were maybe selling ourselves a little bit short only talking about visibility. We've extended ourselves into the yard, into order visibility, essentially creating digital twins of your shipments and your orders. So your logistics teams clearly benefit, but now your customer service teams are seeing the impact. And really, when you look at the total visibility, we've had these conversations with customers, it's like, hey, you know, light bulb moment, that's actually what control towers are intended to do. But over the years, maybe they've missed the mark, they kind of haven't been able to fulfill that promise. 

So in January, actually FourKites announced our intelligent control tower and digital workforce. Obviously, AI agents are a really big deal, especially in the supply chain B2B market right now. So we're repositioning the company to something a lot bigger with more AI capabilities. That's not just buzzwords and you know, the latest marketing trends, it's really use case driven AI agents that are reducing manual tasks, reducing human error so that people can focus on bigger, much more strategic things. 

So as a Marketer, it's kind of a dream, right? To be able to come in and get to do this and, and see the company through it. And my team is honestly extremely creative and brilliant and completely bringing this vision to life in a very meaningful way for our customers and for our Sales teams to sell it. So it's an awesome time to be at FourKites. I'm really excited for what we're gonna do next.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Well, it's very timely as well. 'cause at at some point I'm no doubt, in this interview, I'm gonna ask you about AI, artificial intelligence and ABM and it's great to hear the way you're repositioning the company, and I'm guessing ABM is helping you also to get that message out there. And obviously AI, and obviously AI agents, is a very hot topic for many people. So we might, I've made a note to touch on that as well. 

So they're gonna keep you busy there, Amanda. I'm guessing, right? Good. So let's talk about that. You obviously, Blue Yonder, and maybe this answer might change somewhat now. But obviously Blue Yonder was, you know, it's an enormous company. One of the largest companies that operates in its space. And then you moved obviously to smaller companies as you moved through your career. And you've moved somewhat, you know, from a perhaps a more specialized ABM focus at Blue Yonder to, as you said, VP Marketing at your current firm FourKites is a much more generalized, you know, general role across all, you know, Demand Gen, ABM, Product, Brand, et cetera. And ABM is just one of the many things that you're responsible for, right? So perhaps tell us a little bit about that evolution. 

When you're coming from the ABM background where you're, you know, obsessed with ABM and you know how much it works, you know the importance of it, and then you move into a wider role. I suppose a couple of questions really. 

What happens to ABM? Does it get orphaned off in the corner? Is it like the eldest child that you say, well, they can make their own breakfast, brush their own teeth, et cetera, while you're busy worrying about the younger children? How does that all come about?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, it definitely is interesting, right? To go from like a big company where you're a specialist, and then actually being in a smaller company. 

So like the sizes of the teams haven't necessarily changed, which has also been interesting. And I think that the ABM piece of it, you know, it kind of gets back to how I started our conversation around this mindset sort of shift. So you've got to have that mentality throughout and, and actually, you know, I was talking with my Revenue Marketing leader who, you know, maybe I wouldn't say she's the oldest child, but I do think that you have to bring in that specialist to kind of run that function. Because obviously I can't give it all the attention that I normally would've been able to in previous roles. But, you know, that constant retraining, we just had a conversation of like, Hey, I think it's kind of time. Maybe we need to do an ABM overview on our next Sales all-hands again, right? Like maybe that's a quarterly thing that we kind of need to do. And then teaching the rest of the leaders on my Marketing Leadership team of like, just being in that mindset. 

And a big part of it, to be honest, is kind of just being very numbers-driven and data-driven. Having similar KPIs, having everybody think in their minds, even though I am a Copywriter, even though I'm in Creative or I'm responsible for creating content, our number one goal in Marketing is to drive pipeline for Sales. So ABM has like a very clear tie there, whereas other functions maybe don't have such a clear tie. 

So that's been a fun challenge, I would say amongst the team. To say, you know, at the end of the day, like they probably get sick of me saying 'pipeline' because that's our number one driver. 

If you ask me any of our KPIs, they all at the end of the day are gonna be around pipeline to help us achieve our ARR goal. You know, we report into the Chief Revenue Officer. So that's a great thing in my opinion. 'cause it helps keep you very laser focused. So I think that your Leadership team is super important. You have to have that very foundational. I learned that from a previous leader. I was very... envious isn't the right word, but I loved her Leadership team and what she was able to do with that. So she wasn't pulled in so many directions. She had complete trust in them. 

And so when I first started at FourKites, that was one of my number one things. I wanted to establish that right away because I feel as myself as a leader, my job, my number one job, is to empower them to, you know, make sure that I'm cascading the information down to them from the ELT. You have to be a good manager both ways, right? Up and down to be in between that strategy and execution. So, you know. 

No matter what though, I would say big or small companies, they all have their silos, you know, so you have to continue to be an over-communicator and just make sure that everyone is kind of marching to that same beat. I was surprised at FourKites actually that there was any mention of silos even on our Marketing team because we are are smaller. So that was a little bit eyeopening to me of okay, you know, my leadership style of transparency and authenticity and over-communication still applies here.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - No, good point. I think two points I mentioned, I kind of made a note about there. One obviously is about over-communication, which I think is a really important message for the market to, you've gotta keep, you know, there's an old rule about you've gotta tell somebody something seven times I think it is. Yeah. For 'em to remember. Or my wife probably would say it's more than seven times with me. Probably seventy and then maybe I might remember. 

And then the second thing was, you mentioned that you as the VP of Marketing, do you report into the... CRO rather? 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Correct. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - That's an interesting one as well, yeah?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - So. And the CRO oversees all Marketing and all Sales and Account Management, Customer Success, the whole client side basically.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - It's essentially a go-to-market team.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Yeah.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - So I actually really like the model. I mean, my next career move or aspiration would be to report to the CEO as you know, the Chief Marketing Officer. But I think in this particular model in our size company, it works really well with Sales and pre-sales and you know, Value Engineering and Marketing Ops and Sales Ops, all of us are in the same go-to-market bucket. I feel that it helps to keep us again, kind of like moving in that same direction. 
So if I had to pick, you know, sometimes you'll see Marketing in kind of reporting to the CFO or the COO and when they're in those sort of like ancillary areas, I have seen that they seem to perhaps not be valued in the same way as when they are part of the overall go-to-market team.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - No, I can see definitely an advantage. You know, obviously a lot of teams that ABM reports into the CMO. Director of ABM reports into the CMO very often, but when you have the CRO there, obviously they've got a lot of skin in the game to make sure that they can make sure that you can do your job, right? 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - And you know, if Sales aren't aligned, then I'm sure you've got their ear in case you need to have a word. 

Just a question about that kind of journey that we touched on at the beginning of the show. A lot of. You know, when I talk to a lot of people about ABM, one of the things that they say to me is that you have to define what ABM means to your business. It doesn't matter, it's not so much what ABM means when you Google it or you ChatGPT it or whatever, but it's actually what it means to your business. 

What, you've obviously been doing ABM at different companies over the course of the last few years. What's your definition? Well, how do you tell people internally at FourKites what ABM is? First of all, do you call it ABM?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yep, we do.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - You call it ABM. Okay. ABM. So you call it ABM, Account-based Marketing. But how do you, how do you define it?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, so I think kind of a couple of things. And the question you just asked made me think of this too. 

So we do have ABM as campaigns and programs that the team, however, is Revenue Marketing. It's my Revenue Marketing team that runs ABM. And I think names are really important. So I did that very purposefully to continue to drive that tie between Marketing and revenue, right? That's what we're ultimately trying to do. We then have a Customer Marketing team which handles all of our communications, PR, social, and those kinds of things. 

Again, that was very intentional not to be corporate comms or, you know, something in that vein, but putting the customer at the forefront, right? That that's their kind of ultimate goal. And then our Product Marketing team, which is vital to everything that we do. We're a very product-driven company. So super vital. 

Now defining Account-based Marketing. I think in my very first presentation that I gave to Sales when I first started, I put up a big slide that said Account-based Strategy. I just stripped the word 'Marketing' straight out of it because it has to be made very clear that it's not just Marketing's job, it's, it's a Sales and Marketing motion. Again, we're in the go-to-market team, so that's helpful in my opinion. And obviously it's not, it's a buzzword, right? So you really do have to define... people just kind of throw marketing terms and phrases around. 

And at every place I've worked, it's, it's been really different. I think that at EY at Blue Yonder, it was a lot of One-to-one ABM and our tech. Like that was, that was a big deal when we first started doing it. And then we kind of started to move into doing surveys and things like that to feed our business development team at E2open. We had kind of a One-to-one ABM team and a One-to-many Demand Gen team. Those were like the two arms. 

And then at FourKites, I really feel like, you know, we are still doing the One-to-one and One-to-few and those kinds of, you know, traditional ABM motions. But it's really been a lot more about smart marketing at scale. You know, our MarTech, templates, repeatable processes, tracking. We actually implemented, I've always used a nomination form for kind of the One-to-ones, and you have series of questions that Sales has to answer to have skin in the game upfront. And we, the team was able to build it in Salesforce. 

So from the very first interaction hand raise of saying, I want this account in a One-to-one motion, it's in Salesforce. So it's already starting to be tracked. I think that tracking becomes really big. We use Hockey Stack as well, so we're able to even see like the whole journey of an account and all the different pieces and parts and things that happen to it, to show that full story, to show that attribution, and to get that buy-in of ABM. Because if you just are throwing around the term, I don't really think you're ever gonna get the traction that needs and then the investment that it also needs.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - No, I think I love that where you talked about the use of technology to start to get people to think about ABM. And equally then, you can start to track and see what's going on. Levels of engagement with those accounts. And as you mentioned, use Hockey Stack to that. And I think that's marvelous for, for the listener. 

And I think, one thing you mentioned there about scale, how are you going about scaling? So you mentioned that you're doing One-to-one, are you doing the three programs? One-to-one, One-to-few, One-to-many? Or just, you are running across three programs? 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - And in terms of the scale, how are you... Are you scaling with more accounts, more content, more personalization? How are you balancing perhaps that scale challenge problem of where do you personalize, how do you personalize, and how do you scale? 'cause they don't, they're not normally always necessarily good bedfellows.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. So I think that you, you really, what we've tried to do, so for instance with the launch of our intelligent control tower. We've been able to get pretty granular in terms of the types of industries and titles and size that we kind of need to go after. 

So even though it's gonna be a bigger kind of audience, we then have these packages within our intelligent control tower kind of umbrella that we can break down a little bit smaller. And our leader of Rev Marketing here, calls it like, you know, your overarching campaign and then she calls them your micro campaigns. 

So we go big, and then we get a little bit more granular. You know, the One-to-ones, we are a little bit slower to get going, to be honest. You know, we haven't done quite as many of those here. But we're using things like Marketo for your custom landing page. Our Sales team uses HighSpot to be able to create kind of those personalized pages. We used Papirfly when I was at E2open. And those I think are tremendous just to be able to turn on really quickly. Again, there's a lot of tracking that's in there. So I think those things have been great. 

And then, I mentioned just kind of the skill and creativity on the team. When I first started, we were creating kind of these one-pagers for One-to-ones. That's really time-intensive in some cases. So they actually were able to make a template and it's a Google, I think it's a Google slide template that lives in Highspot that has instructions. It's kind of boxes of content that a Salesperson could go in that could kind of personalize it themselves. And then, you know, we can take a peek, double check, make sure that it's all good. 

But doing those kinds of things that, that again kind of puts it in Sales' hands to show one more time. It's not just a Marketing campaign or motion, it's Sales and Marketing together. Those are some of the things that have, that have helped us scale.

Oh, I can't hear you.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - That example you gave, where the Sales team can go in on their own I think is a great one. It's almost like having a little mini, mini ABM Center of Excellence. 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - And then you can obviously then check it. I think that's a great example for people 'cause obviously a lot of companies, when they're moving through that kind of ABM journey and becoming more and more mature, the kind of the end of the, the kind of roadmap is to have at some point a Center of Excellence. But you need to get a certain size, certain maturity to have a COE.

But that's, I think that example there you gave, I think Amanda, is a great example. I was gonna touch on another thing there. You mentioned about the overarching campaign and micro campaign. Tell us more about that.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, so. With our intelligent control tower, we've got kind of a number of playbooks or packages if you will. 

So, you know, the control tower isn't a product. It's an enabling capability with a bunch of other different products underneath it. So they're solving specific challenges, whether they're supplier challenges or customer challenges. So once we launched the control tower, that's a little bit even of an awareness play, right? It's something new. We've gotta go kind of broad. 

We then were able to kind of drill down into our supplier connect AI package, for instance. And market a little bit more specifically to the right target accounts, be it CPG, Pharma, you know, whatever it may be. And then get a little more granular with the titles as well. Because the one thing that happened when we moved and graduated above visibility was we actually accumulated more titles that were relevant to, you know, your Chief Digital Transformation Officer. And you're not just looking at your maybe Logistics and Supply Chain Ops people anymore. You're going above and beyond I mentioned Customer Service teams earlier. We're targeting folks in procurement, you know, making sure that they know exactly who FourKites is when those contracts come across the desk. 

So in doing that we had to go a bit more broad and then the micro campaigns are allowing us to kind of hone that in a little bit further. And we're also doing a lot of things like building ROI calculators, like things that are helping people self-select, you know as they move through their ABM journey with us.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You talked about obviously reporting into the CRO, you also mentioned about working closely with Sales. But one question I'd like to ask you is, what's that one piece of advice you have for that alignment? 'cause obviously you are working there with your Sales colleagues. What is it that gets that... what is it or how are you achieving that kind of synchronization with them, that delivers these compelling results?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. Did I mention overcommunication?

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - You did. You did. And I wrote it down a couple of times.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - I just think that that's the key to all of this, is you say it once, and you say it again and you say it again, and you keep down that same path. 

I think something that's really nice at FourKites. And it may even have a little bit to do with our size. We can be a little more nimble. We have a great Sales Enablement team, so we have Sales all hands every other week and we have a biweekly Marketing meeting and I have a biweekly, you know, Marketing Leadership meeting. They rotate weeks. We've got like weekly one-on-ones and then my Marketing Leaders are having, you know, the one-on-ones with either Sales or product or whoever it might be. 

So I think doing all of that, and then frankly, you celebrate success. Because success begats success, right? So once you start to show, okay, like tell me more, how did that ABM campaign contribute to this deal closing, you know, six months faster? Or growing or you know, whatever the case may be. 

So my team would maybe say even like, I'm an annoying cheerleader, but I celebrate successes, I celebrate when our CRO gives a kudos or something like that. I think that it's really important to, to keep people's morale up and for other people to see that. We talked about just how important it is to communicate these kinds of things. 

But I also call it like 'market the marketing'. It's very important that you market yourselves and what you're doing. And it can feel uncomfortable for people who aren't really used to doing that. But if you're not constantly showing, you know, here's our dashboard, what we're driving at these events and here's how this launch, you know, worked out, then again, people are gonna come to you 'Marketing is a cost center'. We're not cheap in all these things that we do. So they look at you that way. But if they see what you're really driving that's how you get that buy-in.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - No, I definitely agree with you there Amanda. I think I've just wrote down here about celebrate successes. I think particularly early on, I mean if you are a, you know, a well-run, well-oiled ABM machine and people are used to everything you are doing then that's fine.

But at the beginning of that ABM journey, you know, those early successes, which aren't necessarily revenue but may well be, you know, reputation, relationships, contact, C-suite engagement. Get that message out, share it. Some people I've spoken to use Slack groups, other people use other kind of standups to do that. But yeah. And I like the expression about 'market the marketing'.

We forget about the internal marketing. We're worried so much about external marketing that we don't think enough about internal marketing. Right? And you know, we're always used to people saying, oh God, not another bloody marketing presentation. Right? 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - So sometimes we don't do enough of, of saying what's happening really. Which is great. 

Let's talk a little bit about measurement. 'cause I think that's somewhere, and something that a lot of people find difficult in general with marketing. But particularly with ABM. What are you doing there? 'cause you've built different programs at, you know, at at Blue Yonder and elsewhere before coming to FourKites. What's your experience of measurement? ROI? Is it, are you an Excel queen? Are you, is it all manual? Have you got some amazing technology? Tell me how you do it.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, so we use Salesforce. We are, you know, I think pretty common a last touch attribution model as far as our marketing goes. Which we all know has flaws, right? So that's just kind of, the way it is. The pipeline's not created, a Sales deal isn't a point in time. So it really is hard to kind of measure that way. 

But at the end of the day, you know, we do measure pipeline, you know, creation, acceleration and growth as kind of main drivers for ABM specifically. And it obviously depends if it's a client or prospect, kind of where they are in the sales cycle. But at the end of the day, it's tied to pipeline and closed-won revenue. Those are my team's sort of ultimate goals. 

That said, we've built out a pretty robust kind of dashboard across marketing because again, you get somebody in social media and they're like, well how do I influence that at all? You know, how can I be measured? So we have measurements around our, you know, growing our following on LinkedIn for instance, right? Like that's a, that's a big place that we market, we have our executive team constantly, you know, putting things out there. So like that's a driver. What's our content efficacy? How are people engaging internally on Highspot with the content, the sales enablement side of it? And then how are people engaging with it externally? 

And a lot of those things we are leveraging Hockey Stack to then measure to show which, you know, I hate to take anything out of Salesforce, but it's all using the same data. It's just showing it in a different point of view so that everybody can kind of see that. 

My team again is also getting really creative with like the company that does our win-loss analysis. You know, let's, can we ask some questions in that process of, did you engage with any FourKites marketing collateral or materials or campaign during the process? Like start to get a little bit of that more, anecdotal feedback as well, which I think is really important. And you know, a lot of what we do in ABM is digital. So we did just do a refresh of our website with the whole rebrand, relaunch. So we're continuing to look at stuff there. 

I think something that's gonna be really interesting going forward as we talk about AI is like moving from SEO to, I don't know, they call it GEO now, like this generative searching types of capabilities. So like how is that gonna impact things that we measure, you know, time on page and engagement in our website. So there's a lot of things to, to think about. Again, way more like beyond ABM, but trying to get everybody to focus on that like final number is sort of the north star in terms of pipeline and revenue is still what we're gonna do. I don't know that we've got the golden ticket, right? But I think that there's a lot of good stuff and a lot of good tools that we're using.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - I think you got a lot of things sorted there in terms of the dashboard, the technology, the use of Salesforce and Hockey Stack, et cetera. And also the fact that you mentioned you used an external third party to analyze some of your win-loss, which I think is the first time I've heard that actually, which is fascinating. 

I'm gonna, Amanda I'm gonna put you on the spot. Hopefully you don't mind. Give me an example. 'cause you talked about, you know, how you're measuring, how you're analyzing, how you're looking at wins and losses, et cetera. And you talk about a lot of digital campaigns. 

Tell us, or paint us a picture of something or a campaign that you are very very proud of because of what it did. Whether it changed the conversation, it delivered revenue. Just tell, give us a short anecdotal piece there.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, so let me give you one, 'cause you know, I've only been at FourKites for six months, which is hard to believe. 

But on, let's see, day 12, I think it was, I was in Chicago in our office, we were having an innovation summit with like 60 of our best customers. And one of the RVPs said, “Hey Amanda, I wanna bend your ear about, you know, ABM and we've got this account arrow that we're going after”. And I think that we had, like, they had been talking to 'em for like three years prior. We thought we were out, we found out we were back in. It was like this really cool, interesting, you know, moment in the, in the sales cycle. And I brought my Head of Creative was there with me. 'cause I had some of my team in town and I said, let's step out for an hour and let's like powwow this thing. 

And we all got in the room and the AE was on the phone. And we're talking through this account and that's where we birthed the idea of this awesome, like one-pager, two-pager where we, we were digging into their 10-K and we were looking at their mission statement. 

We're starting to pull out things that was like their language, how they spoke, what was important to them, plus what we had already been telling them in the sales cycle. And we built this thing in an afternoon and went back, and did some iterations, and we used Slack, right? So we collaborated a bunch on that for like a day and a half. We're really happy with kind of where it landed and then followed up with building some custom ads that was again, specific to the pain points we had called out in the two-pager, called out specific audiences. Was it the Logistics guy? Was it the IT guy? Was it your Key Executive? Launched those to that audience. And I'll never forget, like this all happened so fast. 

Two weeks later, I get a call from the AE and he's like, "Hey, you know, I just got a call from their VP over there and he saw these ads, and he's unsure, like, what is this? You have our logo, you're calling us out by name." 

And I was like, okay. This happens, you know, sometimes companies will see their logo with our logo and they get upset or freaked out that it's advertising. So we actually wrote up a whole writeup that like people can use now as the rebuttal when they, when someone sees that to say, you know, 'hey, this is just for you.' It's only targeting your employees, et cetera. They were like, okay, that's all good. They're fine. Nobody's mad. Let's just take it down for right now. So we did. 

And a couple more weeks go by, they have an in-person meeting and the VP's like "That was actually really so thoughtful that you guys went above and beyond and did these things specific for us." and they really appreciated it. We ended up winning the deal and the AE ended up giving a lot of credit to the ABM efforts and the way that we all worked together. 

So that's like a little bit longer of a story than, than maybe you were anticipating. But it just goes to show that that like personalization, the hand-in-hand, that just getting down to business is a lot of what ABM is really about. Which, that's the main reason it's hard to scale, right? Because you can't do that for every account.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - No, I think it's a great story. So I think based on what you said there, it's day 12 in your role and then two weeks later, so basically, you know, in the first month

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yes.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - You and your team pulled together a creative and a display ad that impacted the customer, or the prospective customer and they ended up citing that ad when they were talking to your AE, right?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, exactly.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - That's not a bad story. That's a great ABM story and it's like, yeah. I mean that use of, you know, finding out their pain points and working, just experimenting, which I think is what ABM, a lot of ABM is about, right? It's just having these ideas and, and seeing whether they work or not. So I love that. 

At the top of the show you mentioned about the control tower, AI, AI agents, the whole kind of repositioning of the company, et cetera. So what. Let's talk about ABM and AI. What's your view from how you are working, what you're doing? And has it had any impact to date on where you are working or where you're investing for the rest of this year? What are you doing, and what does your magic ball say about the rest of the year?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah, so I went from, you know, Blue Yonder. We had AI in our product, right? It was like AI and Machine Learning were kind of birthed when I was there. Into E2open where we were like, hands off AI. You know, it's a bigger company, there's risk, you know, so they needed more time to research. To FourKites, which is AI-forward. We are all-in on AI, which has been really fun and at times made me feel old because my teams are just like really good and embrace it and I still write my own emails. 

So it's been kind of this like interesting experience where I actually have to have to challenge myself to use it a bit more and, you know, lean into that because it's where we're going as a company. We do use AI. I think it's great for, you know, content creation I think is is for ChatGPT, right? It'll... my daughter was over, my daughter-in-law was over here the other day and she's like, you know, you can't use AI on your college essays, right? That kind of thing. So content creation, but, but ideation, ask it a question and it can help you come up with ideas. 

I've also seen really interesting things with imagery, which you have to, again, you gotta double check everything that comes out of AI, but imagery and ads and videos. There's cool webinar platforms now that can help you take your webinar and turn it into all these different content types. That's a great way to help you scale, right? And then I think it doesn't, I think when you use it, it obviously doesn't remove the need for human intervention, but I think that it can get you started. If you're stuck somewhere and you don't know where to go, I think that that can be a great way to kind of, get you started. It can help you research. And I really do think that it's gonna, you know, Google is probably worried, right? People aren't gonna say 'Google it' anymore. You're gonna say something else that has to pertain to kind of this more generative AI concept.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Well, let's, I mean it's interesting the use cases you mentioned there. I think ideation is a great one. Not, I think a lot of people struggle with a blank piece of paper. And no matter what role you are in, no matter what seniority everyone kind of struggles with that blank piece. So having somebody give you an idea to start with and to develop, I think is a great approach. 
I was reading at the weekend that only one in three, I can't remember if this is a correct stat, but I'll say it. And I'll probably get, you know, shot down for it. But I think it was like one in 329 searches is using a Large Language Model. Which basically means that 328 outta 329 searches is Google. So going back to your point around SEO, which you mentioned earlier, I think the importance of SEO is still there.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah,

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - I think it's interesting really. I was doing some search this morning just for purely personal reasons and I got much better answers using Google Search than I did using... I started with ChatGPT and I wasn't really happy with the answer. And I ended up finding much better things that I needed on Google. So I think horses for courses, as we say, you gotta choose, choose your horse depending on what the race is. 

I've got some rapid fire questions, Amanda, just to finish off with. Quick question, quick answer. That's the plan at least. So tell me what has been your greatest ABM learning?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - I think probably, there's no one size fits all. 

I think that even just the different examples from kind of the different companies. So even if you have playbooks, ABM works because it's impactful and it's different for any account, any, you know, one you're looking at. And kind of like what we also said, try different things. Be patient, try things. If it works, amazing. If it doesn't, you know, quickly move on. But that's probably the biggest thing. ABM is still kind of experimental, which is probably what makes it so fun.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Yeah, I'd agree with you there. And what do you think is the hardest part of this job that you've been doing for a long time?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - The hardest part of ABM is prioritization. Because like I just said, you can't do that, you know, incredible One-to-one for every account. It's not gonna have the same results for every account. So I think you really have to be smart about how you prioritize.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Yeah. And the greatest misconception?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - That it's just Marketing's job.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - It's everyone's job, right?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yep.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Everyone's job. 

And finally we are recording this on a Monday afternoon for me. Morning for you there in, North Carolina, right? That's where you are? North Carolina? Monday morning for you. But let's fast forward to end of the week. 
It's been a tough week, Amanda. You've been doing an awful lot of great ABM marketing, product brand, everything that you are doing. 'cause you're looking after everything in marketing clearly. 

So you've got, you've had a tough whole week and you close down that Apple mac, you've got there. And you think, well I'm gonna take the dog for a walk, or I'm gonna have a glass of something, or a Coke or whatever. And an old friend calls you and they say, listen Amanda, I've got a presentation on Monday to my CEO and they've asked me to present an ABM strategy. 

And they say to you, what is the one thing that I definitely, definitely have to include in that presentation? What would you say is that one thing?

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - From your strategy. I think especially if you're just getting started, you have to start small and celebrate those wins and then use that to shape your strategy. 

I don't think you go to your CEO and say, here's the ABM strategy. It's not gonna work that way. You're gonna have some recipes and things, but you're gonna, every company's gonna be different. Every Sales team is gonna.. and Marketing team's gonna be different. So once you start small, get those wins. Build those wins. And just be realistic. And then try to overdeliver I think is also something that I would say. You know, set smaller goals so that you can just crush 'em,

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Start small, quick wins.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yeah.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - And then, obviously go back and offer some more money, I'm guessing, right? 

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Yes. 

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Alright. Listen Amanda, thank you so much. Great advice to finish off, thank you so much for sharing your ABM journey with us today. And I wish you and the team there at FourKites every success for 2025.

Amanda Dyson (FourKites) - Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - Thank you.