Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) - So today I'm joined by rachael Tiow, Director of ABM at Auth0. Rachael, thanks so much for joining us today.
Rachael Tiow (Auth0) - Thank you so much for having me Declan. And it's been such a pleasure that we've been going back and forth. So I appreciate your patience with my schedule.
Declan (strategicabm) - No, not at all. Just obviously, Rachael is based at the moment out in Hawaii and obviously I'm based in Madrid. So it's about 12 hours difference between us. So it's been quite difficult trying to coordinate a time and I'll say, I think it's early morning for you and it's late evening for me. So that's the beauty of being able to connect and this kind of, you know, podcast series is just great to kind of meet people like you, Rachael. So thanks for being so generous and agreeing to take part.
So let's just kick off with a question Rachael, I believe that, you know, as you mentioned Hawaii, I believe that you're a keen surfer and we were talking earlier about Mick Fanning, who's quite a famous Australian, I believe, surfer. So let me ask you a question. You meet him in a lift or as you Americans say an elevator, how would you explain to him, in between two or three floors very quickly, what Auth0 do?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah, so I follow him on Instagram, so I'm sure he logs on to Instagram cause he's quite active on there. And I'll just say to him, Auth0 is a tool that makes it very simple for you to log into any application and to keep your identity safe because ultimately Mick Fanning doesn't want to lose his credit card information to a malicious actor.
Declan (strategicabm) - Well, that's a very simple, beautiful way of explaining the company and your kind of unique selling proposition. And in terms of the kind of clients that you would go after and the customers that you have, who is your ideal customer?
Rachael (Auth0) - I would say our ideal customers are in the B2B, B2C, also government or public sector. The way I like to think about it is as long as you have a login box, we ought to be having a conversation.
So yeah, I guess the whole entire world, pretty much at this point, in a very digital world that we have. Anyone that has any trouble with trying to figure out their login authentication authorization, we ought to have a conversation.
Declan (strategicabm) - And does that span across SME/SMB, mid-market, enterprise, the whole range?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yes. Yeah, the whole range. And I'm not speaking about this because I feel that I feel extremely egotistical about Auth0 or Okta now that we have been, now that we've merged, it's just a very key component to a lot of businesses today.
An example, I just logged on to 'Honolulu Cookies' for any one of us who's listening to this podcast today and they love butter cookies, check out 'Honolulu Cookies'. I don't get paid for them, but I was on there and they have a login box. It's a B2C company where everyday people like us are logging in to buy cookies.
They have a login box and we ought to have a conversation because sometimes the authentication pieces can be so cumbersome for a developer to build that we actually already have building blocks for them.
So again, I'm speaking about it from a perspective of, as a customer of many businesses, I see the value in it, and it's very rare to be working for a company where we're delivering real life value to businesses and their customers as a whole.
So yes, across the whole board, if there's businesses out in the cosmos and the aliens need authentication services, please give us a ring as well.
Declan (strategicabm) - Give you a ring. Okay. So let's start talking about ABM and the ABM program that you run there.
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah.
Declan (strategicabm) - I believe that we were obviously speaking a couple of months back in preparation for this interview. And you mentioned that I think the whole ABM journey started kind of at the backend of 2016. You had a very strong Inbound Marketing machine. You developed an Outbound team and then the ABM was the kind of natural next step for you. Can you talk us through that evolution?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah. So as you've beautifully recapped, Auth0, being a product-led and a product growth company, we spent a lot of time with the Inbound elements of the business and also naturally with the persona that we wanted to work with, they didn't really want to talk to Sales.
And I'm of the belief that if you have something valuable to offer, people will want to talk to you. So I challenged that, I guess, hypothesis and decided let's test Outbound. By Outbound I meant sales prospecting because that's the background that I am very, very strong in. And that's where I started out in my tech career and we started seeing results.
So that then led us to having a deeper discussion with, at that time, Kerry, who was our Senior Director of Demand Gen and my boss at the time to figure out, okay, something is working, where do we go? How else do we evolve?
And Kerry has put together some really beautiful targeted Demand Gen programs where they're very ABM-centric. At that time, we called it 'Direct Mails'. And that's where it all started was I tested out the hypothesis on, nope, it's not correct. If you have something valuable to say, people will take a call with you.
That led me to building the first Outbound Sales team at Auth0. That gave me the opportunity to actually pair up with Kerry very closely on the Direct Mail programs that she put together.
And then through a very strange turn of events, I never ever thought that I’d ever end up in Marketing, because I think there's always this, from an egotistical perspective, I believe that we think that Marketing is where all the lousy salespeople end up. And I definitely had my own fair share of identity crises when I moved over to Marketing.
And that's so not true, but just through a very, I guess in a way now, in hindsight, a very serendipitous change of events that led me to join Kerry's team and carrying on the baton for, ‘Hey, let's put together programs for Outbound sales prospecting and Direct Mail over a period of time’ evolved into Account-based Marketing.
Oops. That was the pop of a lid!
Declan (strategicabm) - And just a question I ask a lot of people actually, because there's a lot of talk on, on LinkedIn about this, but in terms of Demand Generation versus ABM, where do you sit? How do you see the two existing, coexisting together?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think we live in a world where people like to draw very clear lines or clear swimming lines as then you stay in lane one and you stay in lane two and you shouldn't be cross-functionally. I mean, yeah, of course that makes sense if we're swimming in the Olympics, but this is work right. It's people.
The way I think about ABM and Demand Gen is it's actually an ecosystem and every company is very different. At Auth0, what we've actually done is Demand Gen is ABM team, we have our Events team, we have Growth, we have Digital and there is a couple more, but those are the big few companies that we have, or sorry, teams that we have. And we collaborate very closely on programs.
The number one thing that we focus on is the regional pipeline number. So then the question is how do we deploy programs or mobilize programs that will generate the outcome? So if Demand Gen is the overarching umbrella, say it's the house that puts all these teams together, then truly we're, it's just a matter of trying to figure out who starts first, where do we then meet up next? Where and when do we pass the baton at the end of the day? How do we win the damn race?
So that's the ecosystem and that's how we've actually evolved at Auth0.
Declan (strategicabm) - Yeah, That makes a lot of sense in terms of being in the game together as a company and obviously the various aspects of Marketing and Sales that are working together. But ultimately we're all trying to win the right type of business, which I think is really important in terms of going back to the ICP question, the right type of business for the company and obviously in the, you know, in the most efficient manner possible and winning, you know, accounts that you want want to win. And then obviously then retaining those accounts, which helps the ABM is, is perfectly suited for.
I know that you're a great believer in experimentation. And I know that you've mentioned before that there's a real culture of experimentation at Auth0. Did that really help you to test and succeed with your ABM program?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yes, it has. Actually before we, if you don't mind, before we dive into the experimentation, may I share a very quick 30 second cap on how ABM actually interacts and collaborates across Demand Gen at Auth0?
So I'll give this example now I'm not sharing this because yeah. I'm not sharing this because we're perfect. Right? I think when we have a lot of people moving with, oh, I love how one of our leaders on the Digital team says we have big brains and big personalities. So when we have big brains and big personalities and thankfully not big egos, we have a lot of ideas and we're trying to figure out what the heck should we do?
And we experimented with this earlier this quarter was, hey, why don't we start with, we use 6sense, love 6sense, again saying this not because I get paid by them, but we have intent data from 6sense. We know what our target accounts are. That's picked by the Sales team. Why don't we kick off with an ABM program, it's specifically targeted to B2B and B2C, and because it's summer - and at that time, a few months back, a lot of States were opened up.
So we actually sent a direct mail of a grill kit to sort of, ‘hey, welcome to summer’, just as grilling, you need to find your right set of tools and gears. You have to do the same with identity as well. So we kicked off the quarter with a direct mail across all these accounts.
Typically what I've observed is when accounts go through a program, they kind of just end, you know, four, six weeks, eight weeks in, nothing happens to those that didn't respond. They kind of just stopped there. So we said, hey, why don't we continue taking these accounts and prospects through our Auth0 program?
So we'd started to collaborate on, okay, what is it that the Events team can do? Oh, let's host an Auth0 hosted event for a grill. We call it the 'Pit Master Class'. So the first batch of people, about 15-20% responded. Great. What about the 80%? We shouldn't leave our prospects hanging. That's how I'm thinking about it.
So we then move those balance of 80% into the 'Pit Master' event, invited them. All right. Now we have 80%, maybe 20% of that 80% responded. And I know the math is not equal, but let's just say, now we're down to 60%. Well, what do we do with them? Well, we have webinars. Great. Let's invite them to the webinar. Now that part falls under the Events team as well.
Also, I forgot to mention the Digital team is actually involved because they provide air coverage and signalling. Then, Hey, it's Auth0, depending on where they're at in the journey with different contents that we're pushing out at them. So that there's always something valuable for them to learn about Auth0.
So it's a give-get kind of relationship. And then we also have our Developer Marketing and that's something that we're working very closely on. Okay. Well, what about all this stuff that we do with developers? How do we get our prospects? Those from those targeted accounts and targeted doesn't have to be the only ones picked by Sales. We have the intent data, so we have a lot of accounts. So we then move them into different channels of engagements with us.
So that's a concrete way of how ABM has evolved, how we do ABM here at Auth0, which is how do we collaborate? Cause we can't win by ourselves, right? There's a quote or proverb that says, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a team. And I can safely say that the team at Auth0 is here to make a dent in the universe. So that's just an example.
Declan (strategicabm) - That's a great proverb and really explains a lot actually about how companies are trying to bring that alignment together really. And to remove those silos and in particular ABM is a great unifier of removing those kinds of Sales and Marketing, and even indeed within the same Marketing department, removing those silos.
So back to that original question, that was, I thought it was quite relevant really for you, that culture of experimentation, which I know you were very keen to talk about before, that's something that's at the heart of your organization, right?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yes, yes. Yeah. It's deeply embedded into our culture. I mean, I think ultimately in life, if we don't, there's so much that we can translate from life into work. And if we don't try new things in our lives, we kind of stay stagnant. It's the same with a lot of our programs, right?
If I can give an example that we tried was, I'm not sure if there's anyone here listening that are board game, fans of board games. So we thought, Hey, you know what? Authentication is so critical to a business. And so many people are involved on a team when it comes to authentication, it's really difficult to figure out exactly who owns the whole project.
So we then decided, hey, maybe if we go to LinkedIn and we get, you know, some images, we figure out who those developers are and the org chart. And we print out their pictures and we send them the 'Guess Who' board game. And we remove all those - I have never played Guess Who before - but they remove all those individuals and put the company's org chart on the board. It sounds great, that didn't go anywhere. That program failed. Not because the idea's not good. Sometimes ideas are too good for our own good, pretty much.
So we know, we learned, okay, that was a lot of work. It was very complex and people probably thought it was creepy that we print images of their team and put it on the game. So we then try something even simpler. And then we thought, let's send them a lock. It started out with a kind of like a chest that we purchased and it has a little lock on there. And inside that lock was a little bit, was a swag. I can't remember what it was. Yeah. It was a gift card.
And the idea behind this was authentication, to get into your application, which is a swag or something that you want, you have to unlock the box. So you have to unlock your login box. So we thought, oh, that's a great idea. Super simple. It was easy, way easier than the first board game.
And that was a hit. That was a hit, people loved it. So we started experimenting. Okay, what are different ways that we can send locked items to people? So we started with that locked chest. Then it started to change into maybe, what if we packaged our swag in an envelope and then put it in a clear box. So it was kind of like a tease. It was like, I see there's something in there, but I can't get to it, what is it?
That was a hit. And then over a period of time, we started to standardize. ‘Cause I used to work at Apple. And one thing that's super important to Apple is your customer's experience. So then I started to think, Hey guys, this was all fun ideas. How do we make that direct mail piece outside of the fact that we have all that data on targeting, messaging and customer prospect journey, how do we really enhance their experience of receiving the box that is congruent to our brand?
And that's also another round of experimentation. And that just took off over a period of that. This is a span of three to four years. It's not something that just happened overnight, but that shows a lot of learnings like, okay, this is good. That's not good. Let's remove that. Oh, that was really unpleasant. Let's not do it again.
So it was a lot of trial and error. And the good news is because at that time, our VP of Marketing was Gonto (Martin Gontovnikas), and he's huge, coming from a developer background for him, it's all about testing and experimentation.
So between Gonto and Kerry, their consistent message to us has always been out of a hundred ideas, 99 of them are going to suck. So might as well let's experiment and we're not going to penalize you if your ideas suck. So let's keep on trying until we find that one golden goose egg.
So yeah, so there’s experimentation of new ideas, there's experimentation or evolution of the same idea. So that's why, and I mean, in terms of results, our direct mail and ABM programs as a whole contributes to 20-30% at a minimum of our regional pipeline. So again, we can't do this alone, it's a huge team effort.
Declan (strategicabm) - Well, I mean, that's just the, you know, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and that just shows you that the success through coming through that experimentation it's just showing that, you know, failing is okay, as long as you learn from that failure and how you then take that failure forward. And that's, I think that that developer world, technology world is definitely one where people are more willing to test and to see what's going on really.
Let's talk about brands. There was an expression that when we were talking before, that really kind of captured my imagination when we were talking, which was around, I think the quote that you said was "our job is not to sell, but to make prospects say, tell me more." Yeah. And that was, I just thought that could you tell me a little bit more about that.
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah. It's something that I learned when I first started my career as a Sales Development rep. Our job is not to sell the product or the service. Our job is to pique the curiosity of our prospects to go, "that's interesting" so that I can get their attention because the most important thing that we, if we think about it from a very process oriented journey, what has to happen for a call to take place? We have to pique their curiosity, get their attention in a commit of time.
If I can't get them to commit to a time, no amount of me showing banner ads and Mick Fanning and all these popular people singing the praises of Auth0 is going to make them have a talk or a call with us. So I've, that is something that I've learned from my prospecting days, from my Sales days and how I engage with my prospect, when I was in Sales all the time.
My first thing is, how do I pique your curiosity and get your attention? And once I have it, how can I change your perspective? Because a lot of us show up, I'm confident a lot of people that are listening to your podcast, they have been on both sides of the table. They have been both the prospects and probably somewhat of a seller, right? And we play those roles all the time.
If, for us to show on a call is because something that the Sales person said or something that the Marketing team did, changed your perspective about something that you are thinking about. And that's very important, especially on ABM, or I would even argue all of Outbound, whether you're in Sales or Marketing, it's not to sell the product. It is really to pique someone's curiosity, change their perspective so that we can get them to say, let me commit 30 minutes to have a talk with your Sales team, because let's not all forget, time is not a renewable energy. Time is irrecuperable. So if I'm going to give you 30 minutes of my time, how are you going to make me smarter and make my life better?
That pretty much is like don't ****ing waste my time. So that's how I think about ABM prospecting, outbound.
Declan (strategicabm) - Yeah. And I think the, the whole idea around ABM, which is kind of, you know, raising awareness, piquing people's interest, showing them not to be led by the product, but to be led by the what does it mean for me, you know, to show me you know me, show me that you’re actually able to understand my business, and you're not just saying, Hey, buy the solution, buy this authentication, buy this new technology, but actually, what does it mean for me?
And I think that's something that, you know, with the work that you're doing there and the work that other great ABMers are doing as well is they're definitely moving the dial in terms of each showing that you know the client almost as good as, as well, if not better than the client knows themselves really.
Obviously we mentioned earlier that your ABM program now is around about five years old. It started in 2016 or the tail end of 2016, that's a lot of learning. What do you think has been your greatest learning over that period?
Rachael (Auth0) - I love that question because I don't have a knee-jerk answer to it. So I’ve got to dig in my brain. I would say the first thing is be open to collaboration, be open to listening.
I'm suspecting that perhaps I think there are two paths that a lot of Marketers have. They are purely from a Marketing background. So they have never sold. They haven't had an official title that says that they are in Sales. And then you have those where they did some sales, not for them. They transitioned over to Marketing.
I think one key thing that I've learned despite the fact that ABM is somewhat like my baby, is that you have to really understand that Sales and Marketing are just two wings on a bird and two wheels on a cart. And when you can embody that, you start to realize that for Marketing to be effective and proficient and efficient in what they do, you have to embody somewhat of a sales mindset, whether it's the Sales Rep themselves or the Sales leader.
Why that's the case is because Sales will be your largest internal customer. Then the other thing is for any salespeople or Sales leader listening to the call is, number one, your Marketing counterpart is not your EA. We're not here to serve you. We're here to serve all of our greater good, which is to generate pipeline and to generate revenue. So you have to also contribute.
Now that is two big things that I've seen, I've observed in terms of what I've also learned is, Marketing is also a little bit of this fluff. It's like, you can't go to school for Marketing just as you can't really go to school for Sales, you got to do Marketing, you got to do Sales.
And that's also another big thing that I've learned. And what that means is a lot of people will have a lot of great ideas. A question is, are you going to temper or tame the ego and your pride and just listen? A lot of my ideas are not even mine. A lot of it is I'm cruising at REI, and we have an idea of, Hey, why not, let's collaborate with REI and see if we can do an event, or I'm not a big fan of drinking. So let's not do more cocktails and conversation.
There's got to be people like me. And we started testing out with a terrarium event, or also getting feedback on, Hey, Rachael, your idea is not that great, but we're going to test with something else, but we're going to take one element of your idea. That's fine too.
So I would say it goes back to experimentation. It goes back to team work or collaboration, I would say yeah. So those are three, maybe four or five things that I've learned being in Marketing, not so much specifically ABM.
Declan (strategicabm) - Well, I think there's three or four great learnings, to be honest. And I think, they can be very much used by anybody listening to this podcast on the ABM or looking to be a better Marketer, a better ABMer.
Let's just talk about ROI, which obviously is a hot topic. When, when people are talking about ABM, what do you measure? What do you look out for in your program? What are you looking to measure in terms of looking for the success of your ABM program?
Rachael (Auth0) - Dollar, dollar, dollar bills. So we measure SQL numbers, we measure pipeline dollars, because we have, we know at, by this point, we have a pretty consistent, somewhat predictable, well, I should say pretty predictable at this point, how much of the revenue that we generate or influence will get flipped to revenue. So the eye on the prize is SQO's, SQO's.
Declan (strategicabm) - And that's obviously in terms of both the pipeline and actually the actual invoiced revenue that you're seeing through from the campaigns.
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah. So we do actually look at revenue as well, but in terms of what's the first thing that we have to pay attention to and what we all talk about, you know, we always have vanity metrics, makes us look good, hey...leads. I don't care if you've got me 300 leads from the same damn company, if none of them are going to flip to an SQO who the hell cares, we didn't talk to the right person.
So SQOs - pipeline is key. Once we know that we have again, we have a pretty predictable conversion over to revenue, and we keep track of that too, because we're so closely integrated with Sales. It's impossible to not be focused on revenue.
And I think that's, I don't know if this is something that is unique to Auth0, but it's something that I love, just because I come from a Sales background. Just being at previous companies and I'll hear Marketers talk about leads, leads, leads. That's great. But I find that when teams can actually unite and not measure just on vanity metrics, but really have metrics that both sides of the coin, right, are looking into, it creates more accountability, there's check and balance, and more minds come together. Look at the same thing. You just get better results that way.
So for us, the number one thing is pipeline SQO's and of course, revenue.
Declan (strategicabm) - No, I love that around the vanity, reminds me of an old Chairman of mine used to say, he used to say, Declan. revenue is for vanity, profit is for sanity. And so what you were saying was he says, just don't talk. I'm not interested in revenue. I'm interested in the profit because, you know, they can -
Rachael (Auth0) - He’s taken it one step further.
Declan (strategicabm) - Well, yeah, because obviously there can be sales that are not profitable, and there could be sales that are very profitable, but ultimately the profitability will dictate not the revenue, because revenue can very often be hiding unless you've got an awful lot of control over your margins and you're not going to any kind of discounting, et cetera, et cetera. So that's just always stuck in my head from 20 years ago.
So let's talk about a couple of two or three last questions, Rachael, let's just talk about the building blocks of an ABM program. You know, whether it's, you know, the ICP, the account selection, the value prop, intent data that you mentioned, with 6sense, et cetera, et cetera, all the way through to, you know, the account experience that you actually put the account through. Where do you spend most of your time or a large proportion of your time?
Rachael (Auth0) - I've always hated, despised all those Sales managers I had that when we'd spend time talking, all they do is what's your pipeline. We all have the same damn report. Why the **** are we talking about the same **** that all of us have visibility into?
So what I'm trying to say is, I of course spend a lot of time looking at numbers, but numbers for numbers sake is not going to drive improvement from the team. And because teamwork is so critical to the success of our regional number, numbers is one part.
But if the number, and I don't spend all my time thinking about, are we hitting our goal? Are we hitting? Yeah, that's not productive in my opinion, where I spend a lot of my time is, Hey, what are the programs that we're all focused on for this quarter? Are there any new ideas that we can incorporate for the upcoming quarter or there new things that we should be trying maybe a year from now, and then just kind of jotting those things down depending on time cause sometimes timing matters, right? You can have a great idea, but if we don't have bandwidth in any way, shape or form, it's like, we're not going to execute on that.
So I spent a lot of time actually thinking about what's happening this quarter, what's happening next quarter so that I can be two to three steps ahead in executing on tactics.
There is an element of strategy that's important, but tactics are super important too, because tactics are so fast when you execute it, you know, is this going to work or is it not going to work? And I think we can use tactics to back into strategy. We may have people with great, great grand ideas. And when you test it, they don't work. So I spent a lot of time looking at actually, what are the tactics that we're deploying this quarter? What are the tactics that we are likely deploying in the upcoming quarter?
And in my one-on-ones with the Demand Gen leadership, or even in a team call, is really thinking about, okay, Hey, this is going well, do we want to repeat? That's going well. Hey, how do we think about that?
So I'll give you an example. LATAM - giant giant region, we started out thinking let's do Yerba Mate. That's fun, but Yerba Mate is very Argentinian, not a lot of, I guess it takes a special group of people to really enjoy Yerba. When I talk to people, it's either kind of like it, or they just hate it, but that did pretty decent for our ABM programs and someone new from the LATAM Regional Marketing team joined and he told us, he says, Hey, I'm Brazilian, Brazilians don't really drink Yerba, but you guys have a football, a soccer ABM kit. So why don't we test that for LATAM? And we tested that and it's working.
So now that it's like, okay, how do we maybe use that and integrate it across different programs that we have that may be upcoming. So, I mean, that's all my long-winded way of saying I'm always thinking of programs and tactics. What are we doing?
Sorry, I don't know what's going on. Why is it so loud all of a sudden? Do you hear it?
Declan (strategicabm) - Nope.
Rachael (Auth0) - Oh, someone outside is doing some lawn mowing, but anyway, that's all my long-winded way of saying I spend time looking at numbers, but that's not my number one part because I know when my team or all the other teams that I'm collaborating with are moving in a same direction. We're going to hit our numbers.
I'm not worried about that. I'm more concerned about what are some new things that we're testing? Are we testing new things or are we doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for better results because that's just insane. It's not going to work. How else do we on the ABM side, how do we collaborate with the different organizations?
So right now, one of my biggest teams that I want to incorporate a lot of ABM stuff with is the Developer Marketing team. So I spent a lot of time with them thinking, Hey, what are your plans for your upcoming quarter? Here are some things that we're thinking about. How can we marry our ideas together? That's where I spend a lot of my time.
Declan (strategicabm) - So it's pretty analytical actually in terms of the, emphasis of your time there, which actually is really a lot of ABM is very kind of, you know, I like to think that ABMers are, they're salespeople, they're commercial people, they're data scientists they're number crunchers because there's an awful lot of data to go through, which kind of separates from, in my head, ABM from other Marketing disciplines, really.
Two last questions, Rachael. I'm not sure whether I'm springing this on you, but I'll ask the question anyway. What's been your biggest mistake with your ABM program, you know, cause honestly, ABM, you know, I kind of call it a journey, an ABM journey and on a journey, you know, you take a wrong turn, you kind of come back on the path, you kind of get some blisters or whatever, but what's been that mistake that you've learned from and said, you know what, I'm glad that happened, but it's helped me to be better?
Rachael (Auth0) - Yeah, I would say the first thing that popped in my head was when ABM, when we, when I thought of ABM again, coming from a sales background, we're very lone wolves. So for me, even with my team, it's me and myself and my team, big mistake, big mistake, because a) you're singling yourself out. Not only that, you're singling your entire team out, right?
Target accounts are important, but don't forget the Total Addressable Market is way ****ing bigger than your sliver of target accounts. So collaborating. So when we were very, just when we were super focused on target accounts, target accounts, target accounts, that was just, oh, target accounts.
And at that, that made me felt like, oh my gosh, that shrunk our playground. And that shrunk a lot of our creativity that also singled us out from having collaborative efforts with all of Marketing.
So that's yeah, I would call it that's the first thing, I don't know if anyone has experienced that before. It was like, like what you mentioned earlier, right? They're so focused on that data crunching and there is a place for that. I mean, I spent a lot of time also looking at 6sense data, but what good is your data, if you can't use that to mobilize teams and move the team towards one big gigantic audacious goal, and that requires psychology and relationship building.
So that was my first thing that I was like, damn I'm shooting myself in my damn foot. Not only one foot, both feet.
Declan (strategicabm) - Well, so let's say basically, you're now walking down the road, you've got both bullets and both feet and you're still trying to, but you know, I think as I say, us ABMers, we are quite, you know, pigheaded, very strong willed, we just keep going, keep going, keep going until the end, as you said.
And what would you, you know, you get a phone call, you know, on a Friday night from an ex-colleague or whatever. And they say, Hey, Rachael, I've just joined a new company. I'm going to be implementing an ABM program. And I need a little bit of advice. What would be that one piece of advice you'd give them?
Rachael (Auth0) - I would say, don't think about your ABM programs, figure out what your peers, your colleagues are doing, and then ask yourself, where can you add value from the perspective of ABM?
I think a lot of times people think of ABM as a team. You can, I mean, sometimes I even try to talk myself out of a job at Auth0. Like I tell my boss I'm like, and the Demand Gen leadership. I said, I don't see why there should be a role for me because ABM in itself is not, you, you can hire people. It's a team. And we have also evolved even further and changing into a center of excellence.
But ABM is an approach. It's a mindset. And it's also a program style, which you can integrate across any function from Developer Marketing, to running digital ads, to hosting your own events, joining events, growth chatbots, like, yeah.
That's one thing is like, don't think about your program. First things first, learn what your peers are doing, understand what's working, then you ask yourself, okay, what's the opportunity for us to then put on the lens of, okay, we know your persona types. We know what are the challenges that your product can solve? How can we curate to a very special group of people that as you mentioned, moments ago, show me that you know me, because by nature events are very broad base and by nature, ABM tends to be more narrow.
So how do you then partner with your Events team and say, Hey, let's divide and conquer. We know that out of this 200 list of accounts that are attending this event, 50 of them are aligned super well with our ICP. Where can I step in? Here are some of my ideas, let's go.
So that's what I would recommend.
Declan (strategicabm) - Yep. Great answer. Actually coincides with some other Let's talk ABM guests that have said something very similar around, you need to kind of spread ABM out across the business. And obviously you can have a central team that can be the guardians of ABM, but the the real magic happens when it gets pushed out into the Field Marketing team, and it gets pushed out to the Sales team and everyone can then pull on that ABM expertise, but they've basically been, you know, almost trained how to do ABM themselves.
And but I mean, I would hate, Rachael, for you to be out of a job because you do such an amazing job there at Auth0. So we'll cut this bit out of the podcast, cause we don't want people to be thinking that you're redundant and irrelevant. And you have, so, you know, I want to keep seeing your great work and keep looking at you on LinkedIn and seeing all the great work you're doing.
So on that point, Rachael, thank you for being so generous with your time, for sharing your ABM journey and for giving us an insight into all the great work you're doing and all the best for the future.
Rachael (Auth0) - Thank you for having me. It's been fun and I appreciate you being very patient and persistent, professionally persistent. It's been fun. And I do invite anyone who's got ideas that are different, please, I'm sure Declan is going to share ways to reach me, would love to hear from you guys as well. And if there's anything I can do to help you as well, definitely let me know.
Declan (strategicabm) - Fantastic. Thank you, Rachael.