Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So today I'm joined by Eric Martin, ABM Leader, formerly of Amazon Web Services and SAP. Eric, thanks so much for joining us today.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – My pleasure, Declan.
Declan (strategicabm) – Well, as I mentioned at the top, there, you know, your CV – I went through just before we joined the call here – Deloitte, SAP for three years, Hackett Group for three years, went back then again to SAP for 15 years – ending up as the VP of ABM.
You then spent the last three years approximately over Amazon Web Services heading up much of their ABM efforts. So, to say that you are a veritable B2B marketing expert and an ABM expert is an understatement!
I'm delighted to have you on the show, and we'll spend the next 30, 40 minutes going through some of your experience and I'm sure you'll be able to regale us with lots of insights on Account-based Marketing. And some of your thinking about what's worked at SAP and at AWS – two absolutely huge companies working in the enterprise sector, who've been pioneering Account-based Marketing strategies.
So let's kick off, then; about that experience, I know that when we were talking previously, you were saying to me that you were running, I think it's One-to-one at SAP and you were doing more of a kind of a One-to-many, I think, at Amazon Web Services.
Can you kind of talk us through those, if that's correct? Can you talk us through those two approaches a little bit? Talk a little bit about your work at SAP, the One-to-one, really kind of 'white glove', and then talk a little bit about, a bit more about the wider approach, perhaps at AWS.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Sure. So, at SAP, the company was over 50 years old, fairly mature sector that they were in, and SAP had a recurring revenue stream from strategic accounts that was crucially important to the company, year over year.
And so ABM there was applied toward their strategic accounts: How do we maintain that revenue stream? How can we grow the existing spend with those accounts? How do we make sure that they don't move to other competitors?
At AWS, the contrast was a much younger company in rapid growth mode – rapid market share addition mode. And the role there was, as we add companies, how do we make sure that they're the right ones? And how do we make sure that they have a great customer experience?
So at AWS, the ABM application was much more toward companies we don't know, and how do we gain more of them? And scale that effort, and do it in a customer-friendly way? So very different from what we were doing at SAP.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – As you said, two very different companies. SAP, as you said, has been around for 50-odd years. And AWS, I know, is an offshoot of Amazon and, as you said, it's, I saw an interview the other day with Jeff Bezos, is it? And he was saying that, you know, it's grown incredibly quickly over that period since they launched. And obviously AWS has cemented itself as one of the forces in that kind of whole web…
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Sure.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – ... web hosting service. And does it mean that, was Amazon not doing any kind of more One-to-few, One-to-one? Or were they kind of focusing much more on the kind of wider net or, what was the take there?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – That's a very good question. There was a One-to-one effort, and it was happening from a small global marketing group that was looking globally at the most strategic accounts – and how do we give them special attention?
So that was happening kind of separately from when I was brought in. It was: Take a look at the Americas. Here's how we've segmented the Americas. Where would you apply ABM to those segments? And the one that I was immediately positioned to was the greenfield segment, the non-customer, or net new segment.
And that seems perhaps a bit of an odd choice for Account-based Marketing. But the idea was: How do we become more efficient with that segment of the market? How do we apply ABM learnings to that segment? So that we spend less and gain more from this pretty big area of greenfield?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So, that's a complete, if you compare SAP to AWS – SAP growing, retaining existing customers, customers who had a large spend with you. Customers who were buying some of your solutions, and you were trying to obviously introduce them to more – SAP being a very acquisitive company – with also bringing on new solutions, introducing new solutions into those companies, and saying: 'Hey, you probably didn't know, but we can also do this… ' et cetera.
Whereas obviously with AWS, you were in net new mode and you were using ABM to win new companies to bring them on board to the services offered by… and when you compare those two, if you had to choose one, which one do you choose?
I don't mean which company! But which – do you stay with the One-to-one? Or do you think there's a real benefit for companies to look at that net new ABM approach? Which one do you, which horse do you back?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It's a great question! And let's assume that, you know, a genie came out of a bottle and said you could go to either place, and drive an ABM function there.
You know, at SAP it was really the traditional use of ABM, as I had grown up to think of it. It was One-to-one marketing. It was treating each customer as an individual audience. It was growing that relationship and making it even closer than it was.
At AWS, really, the ABM function was, as we grow, how can we do this more convincingly? More closer to customers, as we go? And again, how do we do it more efficiently?
I think to answer your question, Declan, which is a really good one, I would choose perhaps the SAP start. And, you know, not unlike I did, but to cut my teeth there and then to take those learnings to other organizations, to other functions, to other needs within that organization.
And apply ABM learnings in a way that's not restricted to just a small group of several dozen companies. But what, in a way that you could spread it out to many other accounts, and to scale that. But to do that in a way that is built on those learnings from what you did with a smaller group of customers.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And with those two enterprise companies, one where you were doing One-to-one, one where you were doing One-to-many, obviously the success, the way that you measure success is very different. Right?
So what were you being held to account for, perhaps on the SAP side versus the AWS side? If you were presenting your success to leadership, what were the kind of two or three things that you would talk about when at SAP, compared to when you were at AWS?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It's a very good question, and it really gets at the crux of the different applications of ABM. And it goes back to what the objectives were: Why did you roll out ABM at SAP and at AWS?
At SAP, it was because of the small group of customers, because they were existing customers. So much of it was about revenue and working backward from revenue. And the challenge there is to show the incrementality of the value that you're providing. So how is Marketing adding to this? More specifically, how is Account-based Marketing ensuring that we grow the revenue from this group of accounts?
At AWS, it was a little bit more about, it was much more about traditional Marketing measurements. What does the, er, what does the conversion rate, what does the acquisition rate look like throughout the funnel? And are we improving that from the very top of the funnel to midway, to the bottom?
And I think a better way to measure it in that kind of environment is to look at a similar group of customers who are non-customers, and what are your historical acquisition rates there? And how does that change once you apply Account-based Marketing activity to that same group of accounts?
And so you should see a noticeable difference at scaling ABM in that second instance. Whereas the first one is much more about individual outcomes; it's about safeguarding revenue and pipeline, and ensuring that that gets brought in when it's forecasted. Whereas the second, the instance at AWS, is much more about: How do we grow our capabilities overall in reaching that segment?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And just on that point then, two, like I said, two enormous companies, multi-multi-billion-dollar companies. What, from working for those companies for 20-plus years, what's the lesson perhaps you've learned about doing ABM in such large, complex organizations? What's that lesson you take away, that you can share with the audience?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – There's a number of lessons, but one of them is that there are dependencies for ABM. In the case of both of those companies, there were fairly mature Marketing functions that were standalone functional areas that a good ABM function has to depend on.
For instance, the Events team, the Advertising team, the Content Marketing function – all of those things are dependencies for you to execute ABM at a high level, and to use all of those tools. So, if those things have been introduced, matured, developed, and they're now at a point where they're ready to give some other capacity to ABM, that to me is ideal. If all of those things are still somewhat growing, you can do ABM, it's just not… your ability to execute is still growing at the same rate that those other functions are still growing.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Mmm. And one of the things that, I mean, a recent guest I was talking to on this podcast, Nora Conklin, who's an Analyst over at Forrester, she was saying that some of the research that she's been doing there has been looking at companies changing their North Star.
And a lot of them, a lot of companies now are focusing on lifetime value, customer lifetime value as their ABM North Star. As opposed to, as you were saying there with Amazon, thinking about conversion rates, acquisition rates, et cetera, average order value, annual contract value, NRR, ARR, et cetera – all those wonderful acronyms that us marketers love to create, right? Just to confuse people!
And whereas the North Star of lifetime value, customer lifetime value, is something that a lot of companies are looking to shift towards… What do you think? How does that impact perhaps some of the work that you've done in the past and you will do in the future?
How does that impact how we should go about choosing the right customers in terms of what our ICP should be? How we should select those accounts based on our ICP? And how we should design ABM programs? How does that LTV, if you're in agreement with that, how does that impact everything you do with ABM?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It really does impact everything, starting with account selection. And it's a much more enlightened way to select ABM accounts. If you look at the instance where I was at SAP, where we were working with existing customers and looking to grow these strategic accounts, there were 200 of those accounts worldwide. Yet my ABM activity was only applied to 50 of them.
How do you select which 50 they are? They're all very big. They're all very important. And so one of the ways that you can look at it is: What's the lifetime value of that account? Are they still growing in their ability to grow their footprint and their spend with us?
And then I think if you look at a situation like at AWS, where so much of it was greenfield, and net new opportunity, the traditional way, I think a lot of us in ABM have been asked to support accounts was based on a forecast for this year, or for the next 18 months perhaps.
But a much more, again, I use the word enlightened way to look at that would be to say: Where do I invest these resources, the money, the people that are used for ABM? Where do I invest them in a way that's going to pay us off on a longer time horizon, and at a higher rate? And if you look at lifetime value, that's a really good application of ABM is: How do I grow these accounts that have room to grow and that are more likely to take us on as their strategic partner?
So for instance, at AWS, one of the things that I really admired about the Marketing there was that they had an estimated spend level for each target account. And that was based on: What industry are they in? What's the size of the company? What kind of complexity do they have? And based on all those factors, here's what they should be spending on cloud computing and our market share of that should be X, Y, Z.
I had peers at Microsoft that showed me that they did the same thing – and Microsoft's a really good example, because they had the desktop business for so many years. So between that and other things like cloud or hosting, you know, how much of a company's IT spend should we have? And then a measurement becomes: How do we grow that spend year over year? That's a much different thing than: How do we get a tail hold within that company?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And also, you know, how do you create customers for life as well, right?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Yes!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – How do you build a model of, you know, customer-centricity? Where you, I think when I was talking to Nora, she was saying that, she had a great expression, which was: 'It goes beyond ICP' – and it's not binary: Are they ICP? Are they not ICP?
But it's much more nuanced, and it's much more: Can they help us be a better company in the future? Can we help them be a better company in the future? Can we work together over, you know, a number of years to become the best-in-class, both as a provider or a vendor, and also as a client?
And I think, one example is… I think I was talking to a guest who runs certain aspects of ABM over at IBM, and I think that they were saying that their oldest client is American Express, which is a hundred years that they've had that customer, right?
So, a hundred years for a customer isn't bad, right?! So, you know, we'd all like to have customers that kind of long! So that kind of LTV is such an important metric when you think about it in that kind of scale, right? Of these large enterprises.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – And there can be different reasons that an account is considered strategic, right?
It may not be about revenue in 2025. It may be: Are they helping me break into a new market geographically or industry wise? It's been one that's difficult for us; is it an account that enables me to partner with a major industry player that now gives me access to that partner?
So there could be other reasons beyond revenue that an account is considered strategic. That's a great point, and it all comes back to: What are my objectives to doing this ABM motion?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, that's a great point, Eric.
Let's just touch on your experience of doing ABM. If you think about SAP, you were doing One-to-one; what are the considerations people should bear in mind to say, well, either going from One-to-many to One-to-few to One-to-one – either going up or, conversely, going down. Where… what are the considerations people should bear in mind?
Because obviously, you know, some people say, ‘Well, One-to-many isn't ABM; that's just Industry Marketing. We don't touch that.’ Other people I talk to say, ‘Actually, the only type of ABM is One-to-one, nothing else exists!’
Other people are a little bit more flexible, and they see One-to-many and, sorry, One-to-one and One-to-few as being the sweet spot where you have ‘white glove’ with certain accounts. And you go a little bit more cluster with others. What's your take on what… how people should consider moving up and down the scale?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – You know, two things I'd say, and I try not to be an absolutist, because there are too many nuances in this business, but two things that I think you must have to consider this an ABM program is: One, are you working with Sales on this? It can't be a Marketing-only function.
And then secondly, are you doing this with insight and knowledge about the accounts that you're targeting, as opposed to just personalization or other forms of Marketing that lean toward ABM, but are not, you know, ones that work closely with Sales or where you know much about the account. So I think those two things are musts in order to consider what you're doing an ABM practice.
The other things I would look at are scale. If you're going toward more accounts, then obviously you have to think at every stage of the game: How can I grow this from five accounts to 40 accounts to 400 accounts?
And if you're going the other way, you have to think: How do I make this more and more relevant to each of these individual accounts? How can I show up and talk to them in a way that no other provider, no other vendor is doing? Because we've done that much homework, or we have that much intimacy across our company with that account.
So it's an inverse proposition, right? The more accounts you want to scale it to, the less account-centric you have to become. And there's a way to do that in a way that's still ABM-friendly. And then as you go downscale to that, to do it to fewer and fewer accounts, it's: How do we make this really special for that recipient, for that account, in a way that's different from any other marketer coming at them? At them?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah! Yeah. I love that. In terms of four – I was just writing down there – four, 40, 400, which is a great way to think about it. And then obviously as you go down the scale of 400, 40, four, is: How you become more relevant?
And so, conversely as you said, you can't, the wrong way to do it would be to scale with more resources in terms of throwing more people at it. You need to think about how can you get quite clever with technology that AI is helping a lot more these days, et cetera.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Yes.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And then as you come down from 400 to 40 to four, is when you do need more ABM touch, human touch, right? And I think also what you said there, I love the, it makes me think about, you know, the relevancy about the whole kind of value proposition, right? Which a lot of people miss out on. But you know, it's not what you tell the market; it's what you tell the one account, right?
And so, if you have a value proposition for your, all your Marketing or your go-to-market, that's marvelous. But then when you build a value proposition just to your ABM efforts, then that one value proposition is talking to that account, right? As opposed to talking to the market, yeah?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – There was some really interesting persona work being done by some of my colleagues at SAP before I left there. And it was beyond what we all think of persona, which is: How do we speak to a CFO versus a CIO versus a purchasing officer? We typically think of it that way.
SAP, a couple of my colleagues there were going beyond that to: How does that individual make a buying decision for this type of software? How does that reflect their personality? Are they a risk-taker? Are they someone that's looking to innovate? Are they the opposite of those things?
And SAP could mean different things to those individual buyers. It could mean safety. It could mean innovation. And so based on that persona, then there are different appeals, different value propositions that you would have. That's a fairly sophisticated application of ABM, but one that I really like for mature companies.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – No, I love that.
And I think there's that, I don't know if you've used that tool that I think it's called Crystal Knows, which is, which you can plug into LinkedIn and then you can look at a profile and it will tell you how to approach that person, how to sell to that person, how to present to that person. And it, a lot of what you were talking about the SAP work, it's quite an interesting tool that helps you to prepare and to, as you said, to personalize your message.
One thing what you were telling me about, Eric, before when we were chatting, was the importance of trust. And obviously, you know, about how you earn trust over time. And obviously, you know, nurturing those long-term relationships does take time. So what's your take on the importance of trust within the kind of the ABM work that you've done?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – I think that should be the North Star for ABM marketers, is...the most important mission we have is to build, maintain, grow trust in our brand. So if you are doing a One-to-many application to accounts that you don't know that well: How do I create enough trust in this brand, so that we wind up on the short list when they're thinking of services like ours?
At a more mature application like I was describing at SAP, it's: How do we make sure that there is no short list – that it's just us; that they turn to us and say: ‘Help me figure out this new part of my technology landscape that I have to grow.’ That comes over time. Marketing could have a big role to play in that.
I like to think of, and I think I mentioned this to you, Declan, but I like to think about: How do we offer value to these accounts in a way that's non-transactional? So we give them something of value; we don't ask for a sale every time, or even pipeline every time. It's: ‘No, this is a good investment in our relationship. I want you to become better at what you do in X, Y, Z.’
So many customers are looking for: ‘How do I gain more expertise? Give me access to the experts that you have on staff’ – and do that in a way that's not going to, you know, turn on the meter every time that we have this conversation: ‘How can I get something of value from you that doesn't result in a transaction?’
That, to me, over time builds trust. So that account is now thinking of you as a trusted advisor and as a partner, as opposed to: 'Let me shop this service with multiple players that could provide that.'
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – I think it's a great point.
There's that whole thing about the trust equation, which I think I'll probably share when we publish and promote this, how you can actually look at, you know, mathematically almost calculating the level of trust you have with a customer, and how, where the gaps are, which I think is really important.
Perhaps linked to that, Eric, was, I think you were a great… go on.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – If we can stop for a second?
I just want to say that really comes back to your earlier point about lifetime value is, I'm sure there's a mathematical equation, but the more I increase trust, the more I increase the propensity of that lifetime value accruing to me as a partner for that customer.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, absolutely. I think that the, I think the trust equation was something to do with the level of your credibility, the level of your reliability, how much they see you as being reliable, how intimate you are with them.
That all comes together to actually say, well look, that's going to almost have a definition of the level of trust I have with you. And if that trust exists, then that means that we can take the relationship to a different level. Right?
So perhaps, Eric, linked to that, what I was thinking was there's something you also said to me which kind of stuck was you said that, well, ABM needs to go beyond a department, and not just even an ABM department or even a Marketing department, but it actually needs to kind of, by osmosis kind of, you know, spread out across the company, right?
I think… have you been able to see that actually work, in terms of that kind of ABM mindset coming in and spreading out?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – I don't know that I've seen the end goal of that yet. I've seen it in motion, and really the vision is there that ABM is something that you cannot scale to every customer, right? Because then it's just Marketing. It's, there's nothing special to it.
But if you can take the full process beyond ABM and scale that to some extent, and also just think about: How do I apportion some of my capacity in each of these areas of Marketing, in each of these areas of Sales, to an ABM motion. That's where I think companies need to get to. Where ABM is not a standalone function. It's not something that we do to 50 accounts. It's something that is a part of our go-to-market.
And it's, depending on your objective, you know, it could be for a select group of accounts, it could be for a much wider group of accounts, but it needs to be a mindset where Sales and Marketing do work together, and they use all the different levels, levers, of both Sales and Marketing to affect that goal.
So that's probably a work in progress for any Marketing and Sales organization. I doubt that anybody would be able to point to, we've successfully done this just yet. But it's always a work in motion.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, yeah. Fair point.
I was just thinking, I launched this podcast about four years ago now. Er, actually, no, it may even be, yeah, maybe even be five years ago, very soon. And I was just thinking that one question that wasn't on my list to ask people like yourself back then was artificial intelligence.
That's not to say that it didn't exist back then, because artificial intelligence in different guises has been around for the last 30, 40 years. But the last six months perhaps have seen an absolute explosion in the use of AI, the widespread use of AI – ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot – all host of things.
And obviously it's impacting ABM, it's impacting the way that we work at the agency, and we're doing some great work around artificial intelligence. It's impacting many of the guests that I've been speaking to recently, about how they're approaching ABM and what they're using AI for.
What's your take, I suppose, in terms of what you've seen in terms of use of AI, and what you predict perhaps for this year? Anything you can, anything there in your magic crystal ball that you can tell us?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – I really think of it in two different ways. One is AI can be an enabler of scale. It can help us do things like personalization or account research in a much more rapid fashion than we've been able to do in the past.
The other way I think about it is marketers and in particular ABMers need to be careful about ABM, excuse me, about AI, in that you don't want it to decrease the customer experience because it's more efficient, because it's easy, because you can do personalization for thousands of companies at the touch of a button. Don't let that lead you to do mediocre marketing...
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) ...that is not coming back to: How well do we know that customer? What's the intimacy there? What's the special value proposition that is for them? And not for any other company that we serve.
There needs to be a human element still to how we do this. Because think about, Declan, you know, we've had telephony for probably 20, 25 years, right? Where if I call the phone company or any other utility, I get into a phone tree for a half hour before I can speak to a live person. Not an optimal experience! All of us would agree on that, right?
So we need to avoid doing that as ABMers, or even just leaning toward that approach where, because it's easy, because it's scalable, because technology exists to do this, don't do it just for that reason. Do it if it improves the customer experience. And if it doesn't, then step back from that because that's not where the ABM special sauce is.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – I love that. Two things I made, well, the last thing, I love that 'ABM special sauce'. I love that! And I love the fact you say, 'Don't do mediocre marketing'! I absolutely love that. And that's a really important message for people to take away.
And I think, I was commenting on a post yesterday on LinkedIn, and people were, there was some advert, some campaign from, I think that agent Fiverr, that kind of online resource where you can go and find developers and designers and creatives. And they did this really interesting campaign saying basically, people don't care. And basically the message was: People don't care whether it's AI or not AI for the creative work. And I actually think people do care. And so my comment was basically: I've got a little bit of AI fatigue…
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Yes.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – ... because I can spot it, I can see it in the artwork, or in, you know, AI comments on LinkedIn. You can see it, you can, you know, spot them a mile away. So I think people, I think none of us are stupid, and we'll, just like we get fatigued about anything, we'll get fatigued if we have this kind of mediocrity, as you said.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It's what the age-old Marketing problem is: How do you break through the clutter and differentiate yourself? If everybody's doing personalized Marketing through AI, you've got to stand out from that. That's a baseline, but it could be just mediocre. And so: How do I break through and do really effective Marketing beyond that? You're going to need some insight from the people in your organization.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, and I think maybe linked to that actually, before AI replaces all of us, and obviously we were all, you know, drinking piña coladas! Or whatever we're doing, and not obviously working, whatever we're going to be doing in the next couple of years!
One thing you were saying to me was that, you know, ABMers, it's...they're not an easy person to find and to hire. So I suppose my question to you is what skillset you're, if you're looking to hire a great ABMer, what are you looking for, when you've hired many of them over the years? What are you looking for?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – I've thought a lot about this, and there are three things that I look for.
The first one is: Do they have a real familiarity with the sales cycle? Either they've been in a Sales role, a Sales support role or perhaps a Field Marketing role, where they've sat through dozens, hundreds of discussions about: How do we prosecute this sales cycle with this account? That's something that you have to just learn over time.
Secondly is: Are they familiar with the different elements of B2B marketing? So that they can apply event marketing to this account, but digital marketing to this other account. So they need to have a real familiarity with the gamut of B2B marketing.
And then the third thing, and this is really, I think, really hard to find, but: Do they have the self-confidence to sit across the table from very successful Salespeople and Sales leaders, and speak on behalf of Marketing and not just be an order taker, right? But to show up and say: ‘Of the people in this room, and you're all super-successful, I'm the Marketing expert and here's how we think we should solve the Marketing portion of this equation.’
That's a little bit hard to find and it's hard to maintain sometimes because all of us, of course, want to be good colleagues. We want to have a seat at the table, we want to be invited to these discussions. And so part of us wants to be agreeable. But to do the best type of work that you can on behalf of the company, and behalf of the ABM function, you need to stand in there and say: ‘Here's what I recommend for Marketing.’ And have that self-confidence to do so.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – I think there's three great points there in terms of the Sales background, the full gamut, as you said, of experience across all kind of disciplines within B2B marketing, so you can run an event, you can do a direct message or direct mail, you can do an email marketing, you can do whatever, intimate dinners or whatever.
And then third, obviously, as you said, is a self-confidence to stand up and you know, I used to run Sales and Marketing teams – both teams – and the Sales guys would very often eat the Marketers for lunch, or for breakfast, or for elevenses…
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – I've seen it!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – ... you've got to have a strong personality, you've got to be able, but also because I had done Sales and I had sold a lot, I had the respect of the audience because they said, 'Well, you've been there, you've done it, you've got the T-shirt, you've got the dirt under your nails; you know what selling is, therefore we'll listen to you a bit more.'
But it's hard. It's hard to find those, because...
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It is.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – ... the three things you just mentioned there, you almost need to have a bit of a Frankenstein person, basically, because stitching together, people who don't, natural marketers don't naturally have what you, what you just explained.
And I was talking to another guest yesterday, I was recording another episode with another guest, who comes from a Field Marketing background...
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – You were cheating on me!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – ... I was cheating. Yeah! Well, kind of. Yeah, I was, yes, I was. Kind of!
Yeah, and she comes from a Field Marketing background and she's now heading up ABM, and she was saying how field marketers can make great ABMers because as you said, they've had to A) manage hundreds of accounts, and B) they've had to be spending a lot of time with salespeople.
And so, that transition from Field Marketing to ABM, is it quite an easy transition?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It was my transition. I agree with that completely. I think what you learn through a Field Marketing role, you just boil that down to the ABM need.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Absolutely! Yeah, yeah. You just stood down.
Right, just to finish off, Eric, four rapid-fire questions I ask all guests just to finish off with. I need your quickest answer.
So number one – you've been around the block, 20-plus years in this game: What has been your greatest ABM learning?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – It's really good Marketing; it's not some strange new approach. It's taking the best parts of Marketing and boiling it down for your most important audiences.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – The hardest part: What would you consider to be the hardest part of doing ABM?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Scaling it, which is always the ask once you have some success; your management wants you to bring this to more accounts. It's difficult to do.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yep. Yeah. Success obviously can kill you, so to speak, right? Yes.
And what do you think is the biggest misconception about ABM?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – I think the biggest misconception is it can be a technology strategy.
Technology, of course, is an enabler – makes a lot of things easier. But without the methodology and the mindset behind it, without bringing Sales and Marketing together, then it's just another initiative that's probably not going to last long.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, good point. I think we hear that from a lot of people actually. That they get confused, that they see ABM as being a technology play, when actually it's technology, data enable you, as you said, but it's strategy first, technology second.
Last question, Eric, just to finish off: We're recording this on a Thursday evening for me, Thursday morning for you. Let's fast-forward ’til tomorrow. It's been a tough week there. And you just get a phone call from an old colleague of yours, from your SAP days, who says: 'Eric, I've got to present an ABM strategy to my new boss!' And he or she says to you: 'What's that one thing I should definitely include in that presentation?'
What's that one thing you say to them: 'Make sure you say this'?
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – ABM isn't new. Lean on those who have been making good strides in this. Whether it's an agency, an advisory firm, whether it's hires that you can make, there's a body of work, there's a methodology that's been applied. You don't have to figure this out from scratch. Bring in some experienced hands for this.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – That's a good answer. I think it's the first time somebody's said that, but it's great to think that: Bring people in to help you, whether it's an external agency or hires, or people that have done their 'been there, done it, got the T-shirt'.
Experience is a big thing, right? As you said earlier about the mindset you need and the experience you need to be a great ABMer. Well… Eric, go ahead.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – The other thing I'd add to that – and I'm sorry, I know you were just about to close! But think about it in terms of a roadmap, right?
Your ABM is not going to be, at six months, what it should be in three years. You're going to need to build things over time and you can't do it all at once. So which parts can I adopt in year one, year two, et cetera? And think of it as a roadmap.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, definitely. ABM is definitely a journey. And you can't get to the finish line straight away, so you've got to take those baby steps and have those milestones along the road, and have them mapped out, and you'll learn as you go along.
So, Eric, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your ABM journey. And I wish you every success for the future with your ABM endeavors. And I look forward to following your next step in that journey.
Eric Martin (ABM Leader) – Thanks so much, Declan. It's always a pleasure to talk with you, and to talk ABM.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Thank you.
Check out the next episode of Let's talk ABM: Episode 77 with Cheryl Caudill of IBM