Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Well, today I am joined by Andrew Reed, who's the Director of ABM at AVEVA. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – No problem. Nice to be on, Declan.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Well, just for full disclosure, rather, for the audience, AVEVA actually is a client at strategicabm – at the agency – and we've worked together now for a number of years on kind of building your ABM muscle and delivering some great strategies together on that. So, that's just one full disclosure for the audience.
And equally, we did a piece – an 'ABM Heroes' piece – a little while back that I'll share with people that they can read about Andrew, and the, kind of the origins of the ABM program at AVEVA.
So, just perhaps before we start, Andrew, AVEVA may not be a well-known name for a lot of people. Perhaps you could tell us something about the company that people don't know, and just tell us something about what makes you different.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah, so AVEVA is an industrial software company. We're a wholly owned subsidiary of Schneider Electric, a massive French conglomerate in the energy space. We are actually born out of Cambridge University. We're a spinoff from a Cambridge University dissertation, I believe, in the '70s that then turned into a commercial project, that then led to a commercial business. And yeah, we've been operating for many years, many acquisitions, but yeah, we're industrial, software over about 200 different products.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And how many people work for the company now?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – It's about six and a half thousand people in total, globally.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So, a sizable affair.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah. Yeah.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Okay. Well, let's – we're in 2025, let's rewind back a couple of years. And if you remember, we delivered a joint presentation at the B2B Marketing, ABM conference, when you were pioneering your kind of One-to-one ABM program. And I think you were targeting or engaging with one of your customers, GSK, at the time.
Perhaps you can share with the audience a little bit about that, those efforts? And a little bit about the results that you achieved at the time?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah, so the program for us was, you know, our North Star. We wanted – we'd just come together as an ABM team about six, seven months earlier – and we wanted to kick it off, really, with doing true One-to-one ABM; really going out there and trying something new.
And we wanted to do that with an agency. That's why we came to strategicabm. And we wanted to follow a proper process, go through everything and, internally first, we made sure we picked the right account. We wanted to focus on an account where we had the best chance of success. So we looked at all of our top-tier accounts, at the time called 'global Accounts', 45 accounts – and GSK seemed like the most applicable. It had the highest growth potential. It wasn't a huge account for us, but it had the biggest potential.
GSK is a massive company. We had a lot of opportunity to make ABM work in that account. The objectives in the account were something ABM would actually have an impact on. And finally, the Sales team in that account were really cooperative and wanting to engage with marketing and saw ABM as a great tool, essentially. So that's how we got GSK chosen out of the 45 accounts, as a priority account.
And then, you know, we kicked off the process with strategicabm, did a huge amount of insights – a massive amount of insights – lots of interviewing the CSM, the Account Manager, the Sales Director, multiple people within the account. There's a lot of other research happening as well on top of that. And then that's when our value proposition was created. And this was, for me, was the biggest eyeopener for that program, as that's something we hadn't done before – build a true value proposition rather than speaking about us first!
We really tailored that value proposition to what GSK were trying to achieve and what we were trying to achieve in GSK. So it was a really, really tailored value proposition. And from there, we built out a whole digital experience, really, to get that value proposition in front of key stakeholders within the account. We used a tagline of 'Power Players' and this was really to get visibility in front of the biggest players, essentially, in the pharma industry – GSK. And sort of call them the most important people in that industry, and use that sort of compliment to get their attention, and to cut through the noise, essentially.
Instead of saying 'AVEVA's great in pharma!' we talked about 'You're great! You guys are great in pharma! And we are here to be your strategic partner to grow together!' essentially. And I think that was a really effective means of doing that. We built a micro-site, we did a lot of direct advertising, very highly targeted advertising. We built custom content around, you know, partnerships that made significant step strides in the past. We did a huge amount of activity there and drove that awareness and that was the key challenge, that the objective in the account was.
We'd only really been seen as one product there, and it wasn't AVEVA's product. We'd recently bought a company called OSI PI and that was a product in that. So they didn't actually know AVEVA, because the product they were using was called something different. So there was a huge amount of engagement and awareness needed from the start. And that's what this campaign's objective was: to get our awareness up and visibility, and then ultimately use that and then extend. Now that they know it's AVEVA, how can we get our wider portfolio in? And we did that through exec engagements and created a huge amount of awareness.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, I mean that's an awful lot to share with the audience, because you, as you said, there was so many elements to it. Just, I want to pick up, Andrew, on just two things, if I may. One, obviously you just mentioned that it was a real eyeopener – the value proposition. And I think, you know, very often when we're talking to the market about value propositions, people may well say, 'Well, we have one already. We have a brand value proposition, we're very happy with it. It's been signed off by everybody. Why do we need another value proposition?' Right? So, how do you answer that question?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – We had the same problem, internally, you know? The program – because of resources, we used agency and internal resources together – and that was one of the biggest challenges. The agency, you guys, came up with such a great value proposition messaging, but it was like a salmon swimming upstream trying to get that implemented into our own branding. Because I had that same sort of thing. And I think it's just because it's a very new concept. It's a new concept to us as an ABM team, but then taking that to our internal brand team, essentially.
So we just have to really build that sort of education and awareness, and talk about it as though 'We are not breaking our own value proposition!' We're just reframing what our customers see and we're focusing on one customer. And don't worry! This is not going to be sent out to the masses! This is gonna be sent to very, very focused individuals at a very focused account. And it is about speaking about those first.
And what helped, actually, at the time and the reason why we wanted to do this program to be very customer-centric is that our CEO created these new pillars and customer-centricity was about that. And he articulated about: 'It's about talking about them first and understanding about them first, and then talking about us.'
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – So I think that helped my case. It wasn't like it was me against the world, in that case. So yeah, it's a bit of education and a bit of, you know, just keep pushing, essentially.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – No, it's a great, great way for people to hear what steps you had to take internally. The fact that there's gonna be resistance and that's normal. And how you can overcome that resistance. And I think the fact that your CEO was, from the top down, was saying that customer-centricity was really important, I think actually helped your case as well.
And just one more thing, you mentioned there that the use case there obviously was that AVEVA had acquired another company; with that company came GSK; they were buying one product from you, they weren't aware of the whole range that you offered. And so ABM was a great use case there to change the brand perception, right?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah, very much so. And the perception, actually, in the people that we did speak to was quite sort of... not negative, but quite neutral. It wasn't sort of really bad or really good, essentially. So we wanted to improve our reputation with those to show us as more than just that, just that one product.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah. Now, if we fast-forward to today, we're halfway through 2025. And you mentioned there we started with one single One-to-one ABM pilot, and now I believe you're running ABM across, is it 87 accounts globally?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah, so we evolved as a company from having 45 'global accounts' – which were a dedicated global team – to now 87 what are now called 'enterprise accounts'. And those are run in-region, but still operated globally, essentially. And we don't do exactly what we did with GSK 87 times, just to clarify that – we don't have the time and resources, but we take a sort of a light approach to that. And take the best parts of it, and the bits that we can scale.
You know, technology has improved significantly in the last couple of years, through the vendors that we use. AI has enabled a lot since those, so that's how we're able to have some elements of what we do with GSK – have done with GSK – and use that as a sort of blueprint to scale to 87 accounts.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So I suppose just to add to that, in terms of the mindset – because obviously people often talk about ABM requiring a different mindset in a company – the mindset, the muscle and the model that you're using. What do you think has… in those 24 months or so, what's changed internally to develop that muscle, that mindset, that model?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – I think it's having always that vision to start with. Knowing, you know, having something that was achievable, like GSK, and going, 'Well this; this we can do!' And then looking at it piece by piece and going, well, actually, this landing page, for example, you know? What elements of this landing page could we do more and more times?
So then we scaled it to 10 accounts. And we were actually, OK, now using technology we can scale that to 20 accounts. So it, kind of, we just focused on bits at a time and didn't try to boil the ocean, let's say.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – We just picked bits, worked on those, continuous optimization on those bits, and whatever. So it has taken a couple of years to get to that point and it's just by picking them off, you know? Like 'eating an elephant' – whatever the analogy is – you just do it bit by bit, and keep moving forward, right? But always with the vision of what you're trying to achieve for everything, the whole experience.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So, maybe leading on from that; I think you, the way you referred to this program is One-to-one ABM at scale, and you mentioned that you can't deliver the same approach that you did with your kinda 'white glove' One-to-one approach with GSK.
So how do you ensure that, for those accounts, those important global accounts... ? Because I think the kind of profile of each one is a very large company, huge-potential customer, et cetera. How do you ensure that it feels personalized and not perhaps programmatic?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Well, first of all, for those 87 accounts, we don't do true One-to-one to all of them. We actually break them down into 20 priority accounts and then the remainder are core accounts. So we have that sort of One-to-one at scale across all 87. But then we operate sort of that two-tier model to really prioritize and to get closer to that sort of GSK experience, as such.
So that's what we do for the top 20 accounts and we go deep-dive into it, but the core accounts, which is the remainder, of the 67 accounts, is kind of programmatic. It's quite superficial in the personalization, but it achieves, at least, a similar amount of personalization, those kind of things. But those 20 accounts that we have a dedicated team working on – four or five accounts per person, each – that's where we have that really personalized experience. So yeah, we don't have that true 87 accounts, so it is programmatic, probably, across a lot of them. But those 20 accounts, we do have a lot more focused approach.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And is that... ? Because there's something, when we were chatting before this recording, you said to me that you were moving from a digital-first approach to a human-first experience. Is that... does that talk to those top 20? In terms of how you deliver that account experience?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Not necessarily. I think that approach is, over the last couple of years, we've sort of stuck to digital because it's a lot easier to scale, it's a lot more cost effective. We as a team have come from backgrounds with a lot more digital experience. We're in the digital marketing team, as well. So we have access to all the tools as such. But now, we've kind of hit that base level. Not that we've saturated the digital experience as I'm sure there's a lot more improvements we could've done. We're realizing now that, you know, we need to look at it more well-rounded, essentially.
So, we are looking at this from firstly leveraging our big important events that come up. And that could be across all 87 accounts. We've got a major event coming up in Milan, in May next year, and we are looking at how do we engage those accounts pre, during and post the event. Rather than just invite them and hope for the best.
So that's what we're doing a bit of a pilot for this year, the coming year. So that will be targeting all 87, we'll probably prioritize, like we do with those 20, but it doesn't mean that we will... we'll probably have a similar approach, a two-tier model. It's still very much in the works at the moment, but that's something where we're trying to bring that all well-rounded experience from digital to in-person, essentially.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So, you're basically working on an event nine months in the future?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yes. Yeah. And they're already planning it at the moment, so we thought, you know, we are making sure that we are essentially following the timescale of the events team.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – We've thought about this in the past and we've always been a little too late. So now we're getting well ahead of the curve and getting in that, because it does take a huge amount. It's about 5,000 people attend this event. It's a massive... well, for us it's a massive event!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Absolutely. And perhaps on that point, you've mentioned always that one of the most difficult things for AVEVA is kind of cross-selling. Because obviously your buying groups are decentralized, they're enormous Fortune 500 companies, where they're in the pharma space, in the retail space, oil and gas space. So how are you using ABM perhaps to crack that complexity?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – I don't think we crack it, in all honesty! You know, I think that the core thing we try to do with our ABM programs – because we've got so many – is focus on one or two things. And in that case, we look at a large corporate and we go to the Account Manager: 'OK, if there's one thing you want to achieve in this account, what is that?' And it might be cross-selling one product, or cross-selling or upselling a product, or C-suite engagement, or... but we just focus on doing that one thing well, and that way we are not trying to, to learn about the entire British Petroleum – which is a massive conglomerate with multiple companies and stuff like that. We are looking at it and going, well actually, within this subsidiary we need to cross-sell into this area.
So we focus heavily on doing that. We do, we go deep and narrow in that case. And we look at the buying groups, the stakeholders, and we go down, really focus in there. And try and achieve, you know, the old analogy of using a spear, rather than a net of ABM. We're going down that, really true to form, and going really focused. So, yeah, we've learned from the past that trying to do everything in one big account, with very little resources and people behind it, just achieves very little.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah. And that's with the... that kind of question about, you know: What's that one thing you want to achieve? That's you asking the Account Director who oversees the whole accounts, is that correct?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah, yeah. So each account has an Account Manager, Enterprise Account Manager, Account Director, who looks at one to two accounts. So they own that. And their boss calls them 'the drivers of the bus'. Everybody in AVEVA can support the growth of that account. Like you could have regional salespeople in China selling into that account, but they own the strategy of that account and everybody is supposed to be on the bus with them, supporting the growth of that account. And we, as the ABM team, are there supporting as well.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Are you upstairs or downstairs?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Ha ha! I think we're just about hanging on at the back!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yep! Like when we were at school – everyone would always run upstairs to get the front, remember? On the front?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah! Yeah!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So, okay. And let's talk about... we've talked a lot about digital, we talked a lot about the human experience. Let's – and you, obviously you're a technology company – in terms of the industrial software that you design and deploy. Let's just talk about technology for a second in terms of how you deliver your ABM. I think I'm right in saying that you use PathFactory and Demandbase. Is that right? Are those two?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah. Yep. Two from our tech stack. Yeah,
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Two of your main pillars. Would you, because obviously there's this whole argument about technology and the use in ABM, and many companies that we speak to kind of come to us and say, 'We've got a technology, but we don't know how to use it' or 'We haven't used it' or 'We've just... it's sitting there gathering dust' or whatever! Is it the case that you've really kind of put an awful lot of effort into those two technologies to make sure that they actually deliver what they're meant to deliver?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Well, let's talk about PathFactory first. Because that isn't a technology the ABM team set out to use. That's being used by our digital and demand gen team, for more nurture tracks, to try and get email nurtures, to try and get lead scoring and that kind of stuff. We just saw the opportunity internally of... we're trying to achieve the GSK, create a landing page and if we'd gone through our web team to do that, it would've taken lots of ticket requests and, you know, hours of work and days, and stuff like that.
And we saw PathFactory as a DIY option of creating content very quickly, very effectively, and we're able to be... we're 250 marketers – everything takes time because of that. We've got all these systems and processes; having a technology like PathFactory is... you just do it yourself and it is a small environment, you know? WYSIWYG editor and stuff like that. You just do it yourself.
And in the time we've been using PathFactory, the last couple of years, they've advanced their technology and we've been part of that and doing beta testing to take these sort of landing page experiences from being, you know, a very basic experience to then a templated experience. We were able to then clone those templates and, and scale them that way to more recently using the personalization sort of feature where you create one master version and then you can create 87 personalized versions of it. A bit like an email, kind of in that kind of 'mail merge'-type format. So that's the journey with PathFactory that's been a huge enabler.
But again, we always started with a vision and then we just found tools around us that could help us achieve that vision. And then Demandbase has been quite a powerful tool in building relationships with Sales, you know? Going to a Sales Manager and saying, 'Hey, you know, you said you wanted to achieve this? Well, you can actually see that there are people in a Nigerian office looking at this particular part of our portfolio, and 'Jill' and 'Bob' both have been viewing a webinar from this buying group and, you know, this is something we can do, something very targeted with.'
Which is, you know, is quite a powerful sort of tool to be able to get buy-in from Sales and act on that together. Right?
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – So let's just carry on talking about technology and just for the audience, Andrew, you're a very, very keen runner, I believe?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yes!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And we were also talk about technology and I think you're a bit of a technology geek in terms of your running technology and I think Garmin – you always, you've always got a great Garmin watch on.
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yes! Yeah.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – There you go! And I've got one... here you go. I think my running days, uh, need to come back! I've got a Garmin here as well.
But tell me, one thing you said to me – I think, hopefully I get this right – but you were saying to me that, I think you were comparing your ABM dashboards to the way that your usual Garmin running data from your watch, or something. There was, we had a conversation about Garmin and watches and data and ABM dashboards that you were obviously obsessed about your running data and you were equally obsessed about the data coming out of your dashboards.
What, from a measurement point of view, what do you... how, I mean, how'd you go about it? And how do you, you know, talking to these customers running campaigns into 87 accounts, trying to go back to the business and say: Look guys, this is what we've done, this is what we've spent, this is the resources we've deployed, and here's what we're achieving. How do you kind of build that kind of dashboard, that 'Garmin dashboard' to kind of sell your story?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Well, first of all, I'm seeing a quote from one of my colleagues, and not calling it a dashboard, but an 'action board'. Because it's not just about looking at data and going, yeah! Well we, that's great! A bit like my watch; my watch isn't just about telling me how great I did on a run. It's about using that data and saying: You need to do less or you need to do more. It's about making actions from that. And that's a learning curve for us because we wanted to create dashboards and stuff in the past just saying how, you know, all these pretty numbers and the stuff like that. And it, you know, the most important part, and that's what we're trying to build our dashboard, is: So, what do we do with this? And that's where we've kind of done that.
So a lot of our dashboard is around giving those insights into what I mentioned before, using the Demandbase data, pulling in Marketo, PathFactory, all those things, and showing engagement, of pivoting our campaigns and making them more effective. Or doing something very tactical to reach out to certain things. So that's what we use a dashboard for. But ultimately what our business is looking for is growth and that is in pipeline and closed won business. So the main KPI we get targeted on is marketing-contributed pipeline, marketing-contributed business.
So we always tell a story with our dashboard of ‘How’: How our building our reputation, our relationships, has turned into that revenue. You know, the Three Rs model, we use that a lot. That's always good sort of storytelling. You work back from the revenue, saying, you know: This revenue's been created, and all of these marketing touchpoints. So, the dashboard has really two uses: One, to show how we've achieved that revenue through all the marketing activity. And also the insights into looking proactively at how do we increase that revenue, essentially, through all of the insights and pivoting, or optimizing campaigns, the more effective.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And which one's more accurate? Your Garmin watch? Or your ABM action board?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – I'm not sure! Sometimes my watch tells me I'm doing too little and I'm like: I have just been on a bloomin' run about 10 minutes ago! So, I don't know. I don't know! Yeah, sometimes I think my watch is in control of me, rather than me in control of it. So I prefer my own dashboard, ABM dashboard, I think!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Your ABM dashboard!
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah!
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – I think it's great – that thing you just mentioned there Andrew, about the 'So what?' with the data, it's not necessarily what the data's telling you, it's a 'So what?' afterwards; it's that question about, well, so you know, so what's the next step? What's the next action? What's the next thing we should do? I think that's a really good aide-mémoire for the audience to hear that. And I think the fact that you mentioned about working backwards from revenue, to try to work out the impact I think is great as well. So, I think you went through a lot of great points there.
Let's talk about one thing about support and, you know, people often say, you know, ABM will fail if you don't have support from your colleagues, from your Sales team, from the C-suite. Erm, 2025 – You've been doing this now for, is it two years or three years now, of ABM?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – About three years.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Three years now. So three years into your ABM journey, which is you know for many people, it's significant. Where do you think the business looks at ABM now? And what is the wider conversation perhaps in the business outside of your group? What do they say about the work that you and your team are doing? What do they... how do they look at it?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Well, I think for a start it's around, you know, our most important accounts. That's what we focus all of our attention on. So we can, we've got proven use cases of our enterprise accounts and growing those and contributing to that. So it's pretty much a given that the ABM team is supporting that. We also act as a Center of Excellence to try and take the use cases and the examples of what we're doing for our enterprise accounts and trying to help our regional teams in growing that.
And that's where I think the business is seeing more and more value, is how do we scale what we're doing in our top accounts and take that down the next level to our sort of 'growth strategic accounts', which are in our regions, and enable that. So I think that's the next step really in the evolution of ABM is how do we bring ABM or 'Account-based' as more of a concept to the wider marketing team, essentially. And there's been lots of false starts and, you know, trials and stuff like that, but I think that's where the growth really lies, at AVEVA at least.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – And perhaps linked to that, I think you said to me that ABM when, you know, you kind of started bringing it together, was a disparate set of tactics, and that now it's a systematic go-to-market motion. What do you think perhaps was, for the audience, what do you think was the turning point for you? And perhaps what's that one piece of advice for people who are kind of in that kind of ABM pilot trying to ramp up and scale, for them to start making it a systematic go-to-market motion?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – I think initially, like a lot of companies sometimes is I think somebody somewhere thought ABM was a good idea and let's create some ABMers without any real sort of directional strategy. And that's what happened pre myself joining. So there wasn't a huge amount of sort of cohesion because there wasn't a team per se. There was just individuals doing ABM and then the business decided, well, we need to actually have some sort of leadership and strategy. And then that's where I came in and a couple of other people sort of put it together.
So that's where we sort of started from a point of, well actually we need to build a process, a systematic process of doing that. And that's where the journey started with GSK, essentially. So a team of five in total. And we operate globally. But yeah, our main focus is, again, enterprise accounts; 87 enterprise accounts and acting then as a Center of Excellence. But yeah, we, from that point of where we were together, we've got stronger and stronger, and trial and error, You know – we always try new things, always develop, optimize things and then optimize and scale; 'optimize and scale' is a kind of methodology we've been building over the last couple of years,
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Which kind of reflects a little bit the kind of business that you're in, in terms of industrial software and that kind of methodology of approaching a problem, probably, I think right?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Yeah, for sure. Very much so.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah. So, 2025 – let's just fast-forward 12 months to the middle of 2026. Where do you want to be with your ABM program in 12 months' time?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – I think going to that sort of in-person; I'd like to be able to see, you know, at the moment, we're almost doing a pilot again – back to the start, we're doing a pilot with a digital experience. Now we're doing a bit of a pilot with that in-person experience. And the challenges I foresee is we were in full control as an ABM team and the digital experience, and now we're involving the Events team, we're involving the Exec Engagements team and there's a lot more moving parts and a lot more people involved.
So that's, for me, what I wanna see success in 12 months' time is that coming together, you know? Giving that full rich experience, that white-glove experience you mentioned before, to our top accounts. So that we can grow them not just through a digital experience, but through a digital and in-person experience. So it's that consistent experience saying that they are our most valued customers, we're a strategic partner to them, and that comes through both the digital and in-person.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah. And obviously in 12 months' time you'll have finished. You'll be sitting down with a glass of Campari, you'll have finished the Milan show – you'll have done the event in Milan – and you'll be having all the feedback and you'll be having the great results from that as well. So, good luck with that. All that next nine months, preparing for that event.
So just to finish off, I ask all guests four very quick questions. So, quick question, quick answer. What has been your greatest ABM learning to date, Andrew?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – I think about the value of a value proposition, really. I think that that sort of creates the baseline or the point of which everything is more effective. Essentially, once you start thinking less about yourself as an organization and more about the customer and in putting yourself in their shoes, that is the biggest learning.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Great! I'd agree about the VP and that's – it's something we spend a lot of time talking to the market about, and trying to make people understand the value of it, so to say, so to speak. But it's great to hear that from you. What about the hardest part of ABM?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – Getting things going? You know, the challenge I found when I first started this is that I get asked by my boss after three months: OK, what you got? You got running and realized nothing. Because, you know, you have to do a huge amount of research and stuff like that, and trying to get buy-in from people the way they want things now. And that's the challenge – is the weigh-up between investing a huge amount of time in the research and the planning, or doing things more agile and more quick.
So yeah, that's the hardest part. It's balancing 'quick and dirty' as my boss used to say, and very intense and very well planned. And getting that balance right, really is the challenge.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, you've just gotta bring people along and make sure that they're aware of what the journey looks like and that they don't have, you know, unrealistic expectations at the beginning. Right?
Misconception – what do you think is the greatest misconception about ABM?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – It's just targeted advertising. That boils my blood! And I actually call it internally Account-based Targeting. Just to disassociate the two things! Account-based Targeting is a very effective means of getting an ad in front of somebody, but it's not Account-based Marketing, which is, you know, looking at research, you know, all the steps that you do.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah. Excellent. Finally, we're actually recording this on a Friday, Friday morning for both of us. Fast-forward to whatever time you're gonna finish today, and you're just about to close that laptop, go put on your Garmin watch and go for a run, and you get a phone call from an old colleague saying: 'Hey Andrew, I'm gonna give a presentation on Monday morning to my CEO who wants us to start an ABM pilot.' And they ask you, 'What's that one thing I must include in the presentation?' What's that answer to that question?
Andrew Reed (AVEVA) – That's a, huh! It's a challenging one, really. I think the value of insight really. I think that's the main thing. And using an example of it. You know, I mentioned before about using sort of the Demandbase example of 'Did you know X people are doing that?' That's quite a powerful story to be able to say is: We know this about our customers and you guys don't even know this about your own customers. You know, that kind of thing.
And using something as powerful about, you know, individuals and what those individuals have been doing, be able to show exactly all the different points and 'If we were to do X, we could get them to buy more!' Essentially, really those insights – drill down into those people – is such a powerful thing to be able to show somebody. Something real that people can get behind as well, not just sort of superficial numbers or as such.
Declan Mulkeen (strategicabm) – Yeah, a great answer, a great way to finish off. Andrew, thank you so much for sharing your ABM journey with us today. Wish you and the team there every success over the coming 12 months. Thank you for.