Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Today I'm joined by Sloan Newman, who's the Manager, ABM Programs, America, at NTT DATA. Sloan, thanks so much for joining us today.
Sloan Newman (NTT DATA) – Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I am, I've been paying a lot of attention to a lot of your previous Let's talk ABM interviews, and I'm very happy to be included in this. I'm very happy to be talking about this today.
Declan (strategicabm) – Well, it's great to have you, Sloan. So I think we'll kick off with a question, actually, we were chatting previously to this recording, and I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, and what struck me was the kind of very interesting and varied career, both educational and also the work that led you and brought you to where you are today. So, could you give us a little bit of a, kind of a summary of your, kind of the journey that you've been on to become an ABMer?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, no, that's, I'm happy to. So as I started off, I started off in Public Relations as a young kid and I was lucky enough that I got a national publication when I was in college and that interested me a lot, which led me down the path of Marketing and I worked in there for a little while, and then went back to grad school in about 2006.
While Bev Burgess – which I know you've mentioned before – was coining the term ABM, I was studying around the ideas of attitude toward segmentation audiences and podcast advertising, stealing some ideas from Colin Anderson, stealing some ideas from Kevin Roberts, at Saatchi and Saatchi's Lovemarks, and basically fell into this idea that better segmentations of audiences led to better interactions, and better long-term results on whatever you do across your marketing or endeavors.
That – fast-forward to working agencies for a number of years – and then as an Account Manager and moving in-house, in both, after leaving Europe and in the Americas, I ended up at NTT Data. Where I would head the, do the Marketing around a different division. And then probably about three years ago, I was contacted by Jen Robinson who is building the ABM division for the Americas underneath the CEO, CMO. And we got on a phone call and we started talking and she's like, ‘You have a lot of insights about how you see these audiences at that smaller scale, in such a way that I haven't talked to a lot of marketers, 'cause everybody else is more like: How many leads can I put into the top of the funnel?’
And so she brought me in about two-and-a-half years ago. I did a course with Bev not long after I started on the team, and we built out an entire sort of division around a lot of the principles of Inflexion, which is her company.
And yeah, and that's where we've been, and that's sort of like how we've been doing that ever since. And it's been great. It's been really eye-opening and it's given me an opportunity to enjoy something that I already enjoyed doing before.
Declan (strategicabm) – Fantastic. And it's interesting you talk about segmentation a lot there and accounts, which I think we'll dive into a little bit more. But you touched on there, Sloan, the fact that you were brought in, or you were already within the NTT DATA, you know, divisions and structure, but they brought you in and asked you to look after the ABM program.
Just a couple of questions about that really. One is kind of, what was the pain, do you think, that they were seeing back then that kind of led them to talk to you about that? So what was the pain and perhaps then, from that pain, what were you tasked with kind of launching at the outset?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, so at the beginning, I guess the pain was probably for about a year prior to me starting in this role. We had been trying to get traction underneath what we were doing around this idea of, we call it Account-based Management, as opposed to Account-based Marketing to simply, really sort of step away from just being classified as Marketing. Because a lot of what we do sort of varies in the teams that we work with.
And I think they just were, we were just seeing a lot of these sort of issues from a COE's perspective. We were creating a really nice model of how to do this. But then the execution on the, on the ground level was difficult. So, you just needed to find somebody who could embed themselves with the Account teams, that could have the empathy to understand the pain points that Sales needed to, that they would understand – that you understood their needs and were able to adapt your pieces for them.
Now, you know, when I say ABM, I'm talking about like the One-to-few or the One-to-one and primarily the One-to-one side of things, where you spend a lot more of that time with the Account team. But I think that they saw that and when they brought me in and we sort of talked about it, I was very intrigued by that idea of being able to, like, how do you message to an account that you already sort of know? And how do you build that portfolio with them, and how do you really create that long-term relationship? And it's not just something that you're, you know, going through those short steps with.
So, when we sort of talked about it, that's how it was proposed to me that they wanted me to approach this. And so what we did is we basically took a lot of the, the findings from Inflexion, from Bev's teachings around, you know, her Three Rs, you know, Reputation, Relationship and Revenue. And then we, we expanded on that by building out a very regionalized, personalized to each account's campaigns on the One-to-one side, and then a little bit more verticalized for the One-to-few side.
Declan (strategicabm) – Yep. Well, let's dig into the program, now that you've mentioned it. Can you share with the audience a little bit more about the program? You've mentioned One-to-one and One-to-few; what kind of accounts you're looking to target without, you know, giving too much away. And perhaps, you know, what the ABM objective is in terms of – is it new logo? Is it existing customers? Is it growth? Is it advocacy? Just a little bit of, if you can paint a picture a little bit of what the program looks like.
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, no, no, I love talking about this. So I can, I, I'll be more than happy to try and I'll keep it as high-level as I can for us.
But on the One-to-few side, the easiest way to explain that is creating a number of different pieces of collateral and other pieces that are more verticalized around specific industries and things of that nature. And really creating a nurturing program that can be, you know, a little bit more generic – but also will help to hopefully and ideally feed that One-to-one vein.
Now, in our case, I start off on doing the One-to-one side, and we kind of then went backwards to do the One-to-few by taking sort of what we had created at that very high level, that personalization message of that, here's an account based on the 80-20 rule, right? So, you know, and for anybody who doesn't know, that's just, you know, 80% of your business is done by 20% of your audience.
So understanding who that audience is and saying, ‘OK, we have this audience and we really want to work with this audience, and what do we do to do that? How do we create, for lack of a better word, a ‘white glove’ experience with that account, or that client, or that customer?’ – whatever terminology you want to use for that. And being able to bring it to a level where it doesn't feel Marketing, it doesn't feel salesy.
So, you know, we had to do a lot of A/B testing. We had to look at a lot of things. Our clients and our audience at that C-suite level that we were looking to target, and build out that relationship and the revenue option around, you know, they didn't want to be messaged to, so much. They wanted to be, have somebody who comes to them with the idea of outcomes or solutions.
So we actually started building... and that was us. We listened to the Account team of what they needed first, right? I didn't come in and say, ‘Hey, I'm here. I'm your Marketing guy, I'm here for this one account and I'm going to tell you how to do the stuff instead. We, we had a process that we created where, and we do this as well with the One-to-few where there's a lot of preliminary meetings. We qualify the account first, but of course after that qualification process and we've selected them, we actually have a sit-down, just informal conversation with the Account team to hear them, to see what they want, to understand their needs.
And then we build on, from that basic understanding, and we work with, you know, partners to develop, you know, pillars of messaging and all of those things. And then, you know, create that collateral that just doesn't feel super – it does feel ‘white glove’, it does not, like, we strip down some things so that it feels like it's really coming from the Client Manager. And we put some of that offering into their hands.
I know that's one of those things that some marketers sometimes balk at the idea of, ‘Oh, well we're going to work really closely, or Sales doesn't really, they don't really care about the Marketing and stuff.’ But that's not what we found. Like, we found that every one of the Account teams we've engaged with are massively, I guess what is the book? The Closer Mentality? The Closer Sales Mentality?
Every one of these Account team leads have been of that mentality. Like they challenge me, they come up with, you know, just as intelligent ideas of what we can do to promote this and this sort of piece than I come up with. So it's amazing to work with these people, too.
Declan (strategicabm) – So, with regards to the program you have there, obviously One-to-one, and I think you've got a few accounts in the One-to-one motion and several in the One-to-few. Is that the case?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – So we have several dozen in the One-to-one across the globe. So, and that's very much led by our Rachel Bell, our COE, VP, who is the cornerstone of all of this. She's very bright and she keeps us all motivated.
But yeah, we have several dozen and then in the verticals it can range depending, you know, we try to go, again, a lot of what we do is that textbook concept of what ABM is of, you know, trying not to keep more than 20 to 30 accounts at the most in a One-to-few vertical.
Now, you know, you can create a global version of that where you have, but each region would only have about 15 to 20 and, you know, trying to, you know, really target down, right? Like you have almost a vertical and then a sub-vertical of what you're, what you're looking at. So, you know, if you're speaking about something like healthcare, you might have healthcare, but then you might have like a nursing hospital side and a pharmaceutical side, type of thing. So we try to go as deep as we can with being aware of, you know, costs and all of those things.
And one of the reasons it's kind of worked for us going backwards is, you know, Matt Preschern, the CMO – er, Preschern – I never say his last name right! Created this concept in our minds of that we would lift and shift a lot of things. So if we create something for one account, for a One-to-one, part of my job is to look at that and say: ‘OK, now how am I going to take what we're doing here and be able to transpose that to a One-to-few down the line so that we have more collateral without more investment, type of thing.
Declan (strategicabm) – Well, I mean that's fascinating, Sloan, that point. So what you're saying in effect is the hard work and the heavy lifting that you're doing at the One-to-one level, which is obviously the higher investment for the greater return, higher levels of ABM personalization as well. You're then looking at that content or that approach, and you're saying, ‘Well, what can I take from here for a One-to-few play?’ Yeah?
Is there any, I don't want to put you on the spot, but is there any, is there any example or any kind of hypothetical example you can share about how that works in practice?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Oh, we've had a couple of nice wins lately and I… alright, so a hypothetical would be what if you had historically done a Marketing collateral piece that may go out through, say, some type of aggregator system and you have always had it be very HTML-heavy. So I think we know what we're talking about, right? We're talking about a, a nurture program, without going into exactly what it is.
So when we did AB testing, 'cause we have more of that freedom, we stripped out all of that HTML. Because we were finding that at C-suite levels, we were hitting firewalls and bouncing and getting no returns. Now we can sit here and we can talk about that we have over a 12% CTR on some campaigns, we have over a 5% open rate, a unique open rate on some campaigns. That is, that makes some big easy wins without that massive investment.
And then on the other end of that, I can talk to you about how yeah, we've actually taken some personalized collateral that we created on that One-to-one. And within less than probably five working days, we were able to strip out that personalization. The, by creating outcome-focused messaging that you looked at that audience level at, we were able to repurpose that for a completely separate campaign, broaden the scope of that audience and successfully run that with both more of a lead gen as well as something that has, that was like, had a historical footprint, but was not a One-to-one site. So like a One-to-few with a little bit of lead gen on the back end of it. So, those are two fairly easy ones that I can sort of talk about.
Declan (strategicabm) – No, a couple of good examples there. And that leads into a question I think about account selection. Obviously, as you mentioned regionally in the Americas and obviously globally, you're running your One-to-one and One-to-few play, a blended play, so to speak. What thinking, what's your thinking around account selection? How do you approach it there at NTT DATA? What do you, what goes through your minds when you're looking at why this account warrants the One-to-one play and why this account warrants a more, as you said, a more verticalized One-to-few play?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, so I, great question! I would say that when we do an account selection, and, and if I get choked up, I apologize – very emotional part for me, which I love these accounts, especially on the One-to-one side.
But for a One-to-one account, we definitely look at, you know, there's a dollar amount, right? There's a pipeline amount of that type of situation. And you know, we take into account the idea of deal acceleration versus the One-to-one. So we do do a hybrid mixture of those types of things. We look at ramp time, we look at existing footprint, we look at the relationship between the Executive and the C-suite already existing. Like, do they know anybody? Is there, you know, even if it's a sort of a formal relationship, is there at least something there?
And all of that said, those are all, you know, key important parts of it. And when you launch a program in this space of ABM, one of the key things – and I will die on this hill – is the Account team, right? They need to not just see the value, but they need to buy in, they need to want to be a part of it.
And sometimes, you know, that means us really, well, like our sort of informal and even our onboarding conversations are at least an hour to an hour-and-a-half long with that team, because we want to make sure that, you know, we're doing a lot of things, but we're also, you're part of this community building this content for your audience. And you have to be willing to put that time in.
So, you know, we're looking at the Account team, we're looking at that revenue, we look at, you know, the pipeline, we look at what is coming up in the future as well. And you know, we also take some risks, right? You gotta be willing to, you know, sometimes try something that may not perfectly fit your model.
Especially when something like NTT DATA, we have so many different components and pieces that we offer across the IT spectrum. It sometimes makes it a little bit like, one day my audience might be a C-suite group, one day my audience might be a, you know, very small or independent, locational offices that are scattered across the United States that are not centralized at all. And therefore you're not talking to, like, your C-suite's already on board, but it's that smaller, those smaller shops that are actually deciding who they want to work with.
So now I gotta sort of change tack and figure out how to target that audience without it feeling, you know, too much like a directive, but more like a, ‘Hey! Did you know… ?’ type of situation. So it keeps it, keeps it fun, it keeps it interesting, but there's just a lot of different things that we always look at, I mean.
And there's some hard qualifications. Like, you know, we – you know, deal accelerations lend themselves a little bit better towards new logo situations, or new, new accounts. Whereas, you know, we don't usually take on something, we don't have an existing footprint to some degree. And there, there's not an opportunity for growth in share of wallet for the full One-to-one type of accounts that we do.
And then One-to-few, again, not as many qualifiers, but we still have, you know, we want to, we want pipeline, we want to see that there's an engaged audience because, well, you might have more regular meetings with your One-to-one accounts that we like to do on our end. You probably are not going to be able to wrangle 15 Client Managers into a 30 minute meeting once a week. Maybe once a month, but you know, it's a little bit less of those touchpoints. So.
Declan (strategicabm) – Yeah. Good points. So, actually there's something, Sloan, you just said there which made me think, actually. You've talked about, you know, about it being emotional about some of your One-to-one accounts. And I think one thing that you said to me when we were preparing and chatting before this recording, you said that you acted like an, or you felt like you were an ‘embedded reporter’ within these One-to-one accounts.
And that kind of really got my mind whirring about, you know, how these, you know, ‘reporters’ really are, become part of the team or the, you know, the military unit that they're embedded in, so to speak, a little bit kind of Band of Brothers. So, just can you share a story or two about that kind of closeness that you achieve?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, happy to… Um, like you said, it is, part of me is that mentality of wanting in some part of my mind to still be able to write and do that side of it. So I always go back to the reporting and the embedded type of sensation that you get. But you, you will find yourself being an advocate for your Account teams.
Like, I mean, I have gotten up at times and discussed at length that my Marketing counterparts do not understand what the Sales Account teams – not just the Sales Managers, but the full Account teams – are being asked of and what they're going through and understanding their desire and their need.
But beyond that, you create friendships, you create true, caring relationships. We have one colleague that I have worked with probably since the inception of this program. And you know, that person has had some recent health concerns, and we all come together and we're supportive of that person. And it's not, you know, you pick up where the other person leaves off. You're there with them, you're invested with them.
I mean, that client specifically or that account specifically that we worked on, we were asked to come in and work on something in an area that we'd never been asked to work on before. I mean, that was a massive win that we had and we celebrated like a team, even though all I was doing was creating that collateral and giving it to them to both hand out and, and driving audiences there through advertising and other components that we engage with around our One-to-one. But you know, you truly do come to really care about them.
And then, you know, you have these regular cadence with these accounts as well. So you will, you know, you call them, you talk to them; you talk to them, you know, when you're not at work. You talk to them, you know, you, you have their cellphone numbers and you might call them up just to see how they're doing that week, but it does create a true, a true closeness in that relationship.
Declan (strategicabm) – Yeah. And that leads me nicely to another question I wanted to ask you. Another thing you said to me, which kind of jumped out actually when you said it to me, you said to me – hopefully I got this right – but you said ‘All of my team have an agency background’ and that you said that you feel that this is imperative because you have to be nimble.
So tell me more about, obviously you're talking to me, I'm a CMO of an agency, so I kind of, I know the kind of the DNA of the people who work within an agency – but what, what do you think makes a great ABMer, and what characteristics are you looking for when you're hiring?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, so everybody I work with, whether they all currently have at least a couple years on the agency side, I probably have the most agency background experience. But I came up in an agency and I started off working in agencies, and I always thought I would be an agency person. I never thought that I would be in-house for something like this.
And so I was on the Account Management side of things. And when I look at the landscape of what ABM does, primarily because you know, you don't have a whole team of people that you start off going, you go in sort of either by yourself or maybe with one other person. You meet the Account team and stuff like that, but you're forging that relationship the same way you would with a new client or new logo at an agency, right? You're having to figure out what works, what doesn't, what verbiage do they want to use.
I mean, I know that, you know, I talked about outcomes earlier, but before I started, we always on the Marketing side used the term 'solutions'. But you listen to the Account team and you work with them and you learn to adapt to that understanding of the, determine the verbiage. And you have to be willing to do that, right? You can't sort of always want to be, you don't always want to come in and say, ‘Well, this is how it's done in Marketing’ or something like that. And I think that in-house Marketing people, maybe more so on the B2B side, are a little bit more rigid in that ability to adapt and do that.
So, you want people that are adaptable. You want people that are creative and wanting to learn. I think that's a lot of it. I mean, I can tell you that I have at least one horribly ridiculous idea a month. Whether that's the idea of creating, you know, like I just, like taco trucks at events for trade shows – because then you don't have to have as big of a booth at an event. Horrible ideas! Not, not in any way practical, but I will come up with them and throw them around, and we'll laugh about them.
But you have to be at least wanting to try different things that nobody else does. And I don't see that, I see that with agency guys. I see that with the people that I've worked with in the creative space on advertising and other agencies. And that brings a certain amount of, like, willingness to do that.
So when I'm looking at who's going to be another good ABMer, you know, I have those conversations with them. I kind of gauge them. I say, ‘Well what's the most ridiculous thing that you've ever engaged in for a campaign? Like, what's the most sort of out-there thing that you were super-unqualified for, but you went out there and did it anyway?’ And just to see where they come up with an idea, or what their thoughts are.
And that will allow you, because you'll get faced with things you don't expect, right? You'll, you know, you'll go through changes within both the account or the Account team and you'll, or the client or what the client's needs are, what you're being asked of. Whether that's you're going to an event that you're sponsoring or you're, you know, you're creating a one-on-one, you know, discussion interview. Or you're producing a video for something. Those things change every day within that ABM space, whether it's One-to-one or One-to-few. And so being able to do that, which you can do from an agency side, is important.
And the other part of that is the revenue feature. Like Marketing people tend to get lost in that tunnel vision of clicks, opens, and all of that. And we sometimes forget that, at the end of the day, the Account team you're working with on the ABM side really is focused on where they can make an impact on revenue or portfolio growth. And you have to be able to understand that as well.
Which it lends itself well to people who've done some form of Sales at some point. And you know, a Client Manager in an agency at least knows the idea of having a number they have to hit, you know, each quarter to keep the agency running.
Declan (strategicabm) – Yeah, and a good point. So I think just a couple of things you said there, actually one I think is mostly creativity. There's often… that isn't necessarily normally in-house in a Marketing department. And normally that's why, you know, advertising agencies over the last, you know, Mad Men et cetera, have come into existence, because of the creative’s needed for that.
ABM also, kind of, there's such, there's such a great opportunity to be creative because you've got to be creative with your customers. You've got to be creative with your prospects, with the market. And so trying to have, as you said, taco trucks at an event – I mean, I think it's a bloody marvelous idea to be quite honest! So I think you'll probably get somebody stealing that idea and when you go to the next Forrester event, you'll see a taco truck parked there. And so you want to make sure you get some commission for that!
But you know, there's no such thing as a bad idea. And I think, you know, I think that's a marvelous approach. And I think, what you also said about the commercial thing, that's interesting 'cause you are right that everyone owns a number in an agency, and that's a lot. They're a lot more hard nosed.
And I think the third thing was also, I suppose this idea of cross-pollination. And I think what you were saying to me before, the way that you are all talking to each other across the globe, sharing ideas about the programs and you telling people within the the ABM team, what programs you are running, what success you are having – that kind of cross-pollination of ideas. Sometimes if you're just working in a Marketing lane, you won't necessarily get that. So I think you definitely get that from agency across to ABM.
Just a couple of questions around the success of your program there, Sloan. What can you tell us about ROI? What can you tell us about results? First of all, I suppose you mentioned the Three Rs – Reputation, Relationships and Revenue – which is kind of a well-established methodology for measuring ABM. What can you tell us about results? What, if anything, can you share about the results you've had to date?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, I mean I think you were talking with Terminus and I think it was Miss Young, I believe her name was? And she was discussing the influenced versus, you know, your pipeline numbers of how you're measuring those types of things. Are you measuring it by, and that is a hard thing to do and I think at some point you have to realize there's going to be trade-offs. And it's like this with Marketing across the board.
I know that, you know, we talk about, you know, Bev created this concept of ABM in 2006 or so. But it, if you think about it, most people probably didn't hear about it until 2016 and now we're only another, you know, dozen years or so past that to try and figure out where we're at with things. And so measuring that is always difficult. And I think you gotta make that call, whether it's sourced or influenced. I think you're going to always have trouble making the argument that you're creating a sourced opportunity there.
But we have a standardized process across all regions and the COE of how we identify and we look at our numbers. And you know, we primarily look at influence, because we realize the reality is, if we try to do it as sourced with the accounts that we're choosing, it's always going to be a battle to defend that number. And so to make our lives easier, you know, we've kind of just gone with that encampment.
But we also do different pieces where we look at the outcomes of the relationships that we're building as well, right? So that's an important part of everything, and you gotta make sure that that becomes imperative when you're looking at all of those other pieces. Because they play a, they weigh that amount; there's a weight to that when you're saying, ‘How much of an influence have we gotten from this sort of senior leader or member within the organization?’
That all being said, as far as our numbers go, to your point of that ABM works 100% of the time, we blew past our numbers this year by, you know, almost close to double digits for some of our influence and/or booked pipeline numbers. And so it, that makes a good showing as well, right? Like, you know, you're showcasing that.
I think it's one of those things that it takes time to get that number correct. How weighted are you saying is, you know, is an opportunity in your CRM 100% influenced by this, or is it really more, you know, a, 78 or 80% influenced by the work you're doing? I mean, very rarely are you going to get that nice win, you know, where you are called in for an RFP to pitch on something that you were putting into your strategy that you had never been considered for before that. I mean, you know, two-plus years in this role, and I've only had it happen twice. So it, you know, it becomes one of those types of situations.
So, you know, you do have to figure out a way to measure it and you, there's a thousand different ways we are still trying to figure out the best way to do it, to be the most accurate. But I think you have to accept, for the most part, at least on the One-to-one side that it's primarily going to be – you're looking at influenced.
And then if you're on the One-to-few side, you know, if you had put in some of those opportunities or, or things like that that were, you know, might be able to get away with an argument for some sort of sourced number. But I think you're still, it's still hard pressed currently.
Declan (strategicabm) – Yep. No, that's a fair point. I think it's also, as you mentioned, it depends whether it's, what's the objective? Is it client expansion, client, you know, client repositioning? Are you new logo acquisition? There's, you know, you've got to, you know, it's horses for courses. You need to know what you're looking to measure. And I think the methodology, the Three Rs – Reputation, Relationships and Revenue – helps very much to kind of put a wireframe around that.
Talking about results. One thing that I saw when I was doing some, you know, a little bit of investigative work about yourself and NTT DATA and your ABM program, was the fact that you'd won quite a few awards. So that, you know, that can mean a lot to a lot of people, because it kind of shows that you're on the right track. It shows that people are looking at what you're doing and they see excellence there. So tell us a little bit about, just give us an idea about what you've been winning and, you know, obviously, we’d love to hear that.
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Yeah, no, so we recently won an award for Forrester, at Forrester for our ABM program as well as market mix and B2B marketing. So it's amazingly reassuring to be made, to hear this from our peers, that what we're doing is being impactful and it's being noticeable – as far as, you know, how we do that, again, a lot of that is falling under the idea that we keep a consistency across all of our different regions from that leadership of the CEO, from Rachel Bell.
And then on top of that, you know, I've mentioned it before, I've had a chance now to have two courses with the Inflexion group that all of us have gone through so that we're all on the same page. We all have read Bev's books, we, you know, if you want to have a fun time, you put me in a room with Dorothea, Bev Burgess and a couple of other of those people and have them try to teach me something. ’Cause I will debate them all day about it! Because I, I have my own experiences and I'm like, ‘Oh, well what if this happens? Or what if that happens?’
But a lot of the wins and awards that we've had are very much directly related to the fact that we, we basically tried to follow that playbook. We've identified accounts, we've made those solutions, we've gotten Abhijit Dubey – the incoming global CEO, and the CEO of the Legacy Limited division of NTT DATA. He has been a huge proponent of that.
I mean, you know, we talk about, I talk about it at the smaller, like the accounting level, but that senior engagement from that senior level and that being able to be on board with it, you know, being advocates for it – that also plays a huge part of us making it easier for us to do things. ’Cause it means that we can go out there, we can try things, we can sometimes make mistakes and it's not, it doesn't cost us the farm, right?
Because you, the worst thing is you want to try and create an ABM program where you never take a risk on something and you never think, well maybe this will work or not. Because that will hamstring you every time to either playing it safe every time or, or just making decisions that you're not truly vested in believing that they have that opportunity to succeed. Because you're just going off of somebody else's suggestion to you.
So, but yeah, a lot of the awards that we have won, it just, it does make us feel great. It's something we can all hang our hats on 'cause we know we've worked really hard and like for us in the region we've had to, we are able to work very closely with all of our other regions across, not just the CEO, but we also meet with other like UK and Europe regularly.
And the fact that we have this very, you know, happy, open conversational relationship – 'cause we're all going through this process together and all learning together – has made it so that we want to shout it from the rooftops, the successes that we've had. And that makes it easy to also write these applications, which I'm sure you know, can take, you know, a long time to do.
Declan (strategicabm) – They can do. So on that note as well, congratulations. Because they can be quite, they can be quite onerous to fill in. Let's just finish off then, Sloan, with a few rapid-fire questions for the audience.
Learning:. What's been your greatest ABM learning? How would you summarize that?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Oh, I would say… probably, one of my greatest learnings… ? Um, again, it's the comradery. It's this willingness to be a team. It's the eagerness to get up in the morning and connect with your, both your peers and also your Account teams to move forward, and to move forward in ways that make no sense!
I mean, we talked about the taco truck, another fun idea I had was a vertical sliding PDF. You know how hard it is when you come up with an idea that everybody's like, ‘No, we do it horizontally and everybody does it horizontally’ – but what if we did it vertically?
And being able to get, not just, and we're not just talking Account team and COE and senior leadership, but I'm talking about our creative internal division, our web design team. Like, all these people just sort of come along and they go, ‘OK, let's see what we can do. Let's see what we can do to make this happen.’ And we like it and we want to talk about it and we want to chase it.
And I think that that has been my greatest learning is that, you know, we all – and I know like I'm sure you've seen this before – we all know that Marketing guy that will tell you, ‘Oh, well Sales only responds to SPIFFs, or Sales only responds to money.’ And, you know, I, every day I disprove that with any of the conversations I have with the Account teams, and between that and working with all of these other different groups, that's been amazing. So that's my biggest learning.
Declan (strategicabm) – Moving on, now. Hardest part: What do you think is the hardest part of ABM?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – It's losing. It's always going to… I'm a highly competitive kid! I did High School sports, I did College sports. You lose, it crushes you every time. Like, you have the biggest faith in the Account team. They're the greatest group of people you've ever worked with and everything goes wrong.
You know, like the RFP doesn't go through. You don't get down selected. You do get down selected, but then you get told that you miss the mark. And then you have to move off of that account and you have to say, you know, we're going to, like, it's a hard conversation to have to tell somebody that you're going to have to move them from having this regular cadence and being part of this team, and being with them, to moving them back into sort of One-to-few or something else. And just going to monitor them for a while to see how they do. So, I can talk about all the other things that are difficult to deal with, but really it is losing.
Declan (strategicabm) – That's an interesting, I don't think anyone's actually said that before. That's a new one actually. So we'll be interested to see what the feedback on that is.
Misconception: Obviously there's lots of misconceptions out there about ABM. What, which one for you is the greatest misconception about ABM?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Oh, I'd say the investment. You know we, I talk, I mean I can talk about lots of money I've thrown, we've thrown at the One-to-one side for not just my ideas, but just for in general creating the agent, the vendors that we work with, like you said, the agencies, the creative agencies, and the other things that we work with to help build some of the framework that we build when we start onboarding and building the accounts.
And so there's a lot of money that's spent. But, depending on the size of the organization, ABM can be done by almost anybody nowadays. You have a lot of the tools. You may not have, you know, the Terminus, you may not have the best Google Analytics built platform for you, or whatever. But you can still create a lot of those, like, One-to-few campaigns around different verticals and segment your audience based on, even, B2C, B2B – it doesn't matter.
And people always think you're going to have to do all of this investment and stuff. You need leadership on board. You need buy-in from leadership. You need to have your CEO be behind you. You need to have, you know, people believe in you. And you know, you start building it.
And I think that that's probably the biggest misconception is just how much investment is necessary. ’Cause once you have a couple of those few, One-to-few ones, it makes the argument for the One-to-ones or the more expensive things so much easier.
Declan (strategicabm) – Yeah, I'd agree with you there, Sloan. Final question for you. Advice: What's that one piece of advice you would give anyone looking to start an ABM program, present an ABM program to their CEO? What's that one thing that you say, ‘Make sure you mention this, make sure you include this’?
Sloan (NTT DATA) – I don't know that I could say one thing. I could, I would say two things. And the first thing is, you know, make sure to understand that failure is part of the game. Not maybe failure – maybe you make the argument that you never failed; you just ran out of time. I think that's a quote from Michael Jordan, or something like that, that I like to live by. I've never lost a game; I just ran out of time.
But you have to understand that that is, that is a real thing here. And I mean I can count on, out of the accounts that we have had, I can count on two hands the amount of failures that I've seen.
And I think some of those failures are sometimes the better learning lessons in life than the wins are. Because you win and you move on to the next thing, but when you fail, you have to do a post-mortem and you kind of have to take a stock of that.
The other thing is, you know, the one thing you've got to have is you've got to have a good vision. You gotta have that. You gotta see, you gotta understand that this works. You gotta understand that there is, you're going towards something that has not been done primarily in the past, because you're going away from trying to get as many leads top-of-funnel Marketing that like the lead-gen guy has always done in the company. You're going down funnel, and you can't be afraid of that.
But what you can say is, ‘Look, that down funnel opens you up to a whole opportunity or portfolio that you didn't have before.’ And now you can, you know, you can dig deep, you can create a relationship and, if times get hard, if you've got that stronger relationship with those accounts, that can see you through hard times in a medium-sized company more than, you know, the amount of, you know, pure leads you get at the top of the funnel. So.
Declan (strategicabm) – Well, good advice to finish off with, Sloan. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your ABM journey with us today. And I wish you and the whole team there at NTT DATA every success for the future.
Sloan (NTT DATA) – Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much.