ABM Planning: What Makes a Great Vendor Discovery Call?

Yes, it is that time of the year again. It’s budgeting time for 2017 marketing technology & programs at many B2B companies. Your time is short. You don’t want to waste your colleagues’ time either, setting up ABM vendor calls that bomb. What can you do to keep the discovery process tight? What can we do as ABM tech providers to make it easier for you?

Here at Kwanzoo, we are talking with customers every day, and in constant touch with our partners and industry analysts. So we thought, why not share back a bit about what seems to make a Great ABM discovery call for us and our clients? A call where both parties come out feeling like it was time well spent. Where we hopefully want to continue the conversation, but even otherwise, wrap up on a positive note with the possibility of working together in the future.

Pre-Call: What You Should Expect From Us

Here are a few things you should expect from our team even prior to our meeting with you.

Quick Response: Should you reach out to us, expect to hear back either the same day or next business day

Be Clear On What We Offer: Our note back should make it very clear as to what we do, and where we fit in the ABM space. Our <6-Minute Video> should tell you that we are focused on delivering  “Best-of-Breed” ABM for Display solutions.

“48% of all B2B marketers are building out their ABM tech stack using ‘best-of-breed’ providers.” – Scott Brinker, ChiefMartec (www.chiefmartec.com)

FREE Account Coverage Report: If you were to provide us target account lists (we’d be glad to sign an NDA if you’d like) we will run a Free Account Coverage Report for you even prior to our live meeting. You will have complete and clear answers on the reach and engagement we expect to be able to deliver for you, by serving highly targeted display ads.

Pre-Call Questions: You will receive a set of questions from us, to help us understand your current state around B2B retargeting and ABM display programs. We like to get a sense of your current marketing tech stack as well, as well as broad goals that are driving potential investment.

Pre-Call: What We Like To See

We love it if you’ve done your research on the ABM space in general before you meet with us.

SiriusDecisions, Forrester and Gartner: Hopefully you’ve had time to review what Matt Senatore and Megan Heuer have been writing about on the SiriusDecisions blog. Laura Ramos, Steve Casey and Allison Snow at Forrester have also recently written about the ABM space. Gartner is just gearing up, and getting ready to publish an ABM vendor landscape soon. Scott Brinker’s 2016 Marketing Supergraphic has an ABM category carved out, though it does not break down the ABM vendors by where they specialize.

David Raab’s ABM Guide: While the guide was sponsored by a couple of ABM vendors, David (we think) maintains his editorial integrity whenever he puts out any type of industry guide or ABM vendor comparison. We think you will find it quite useful. Buy your copy here

Full Disclosure: Kwanzoo was ranked in the Top 2 for ABM Display (alongside Demandbase) with 4 of 6 ABM capabilities. (And no, we were not a sponsoring vendor).

ABM Investment Areas: We love it if you are clear that kicking off any kind of ABM initiative requires investing in 4 key areas: Content, Programs, Data and Infrastructure. You have ideally been investing in new content, and maybe even formed a theses on your “best fit” target accounts or “ideal customer profile (ICP)” even if you don’t have the exact accounts identified yet, when you reach out to us. We can work with that, and help you map out your ABM display programs, that integrate with the infrastructure that you have in place at your Company. 

ABM Strategy and Goals: Are you able to clearly articulate the ABM goals for each of the folks who may come on the call with us? Field Marketing will care about Prospecting for their specific region. Customer Marketing will want to boost up-sell and cross-sell. Does your Company have the will and appetite for kicking off programs across regions (e.g. North America, EMEA). Or would you want to pilot in one region and take the learnings across regions? The more clear you are, within your team, and able to share with us upfront, the better we can help you quickly determine the solution that will fit your needs.

During the Call: What Makes It Interesting For Us?

In a recent call, within a minute of kicking things off we heard this: “We’re already working with <ABM Display Provider name>. We’re looking at Kwanzoo to see if we get greater account reach for the same display program budget.” That was perfect! We were able to quickly compare and contrast for this customer how Kwanzoo is different from this other provider.

We focused on several case studies of other mid-to-large enterprise customers who had recently moved display program budgets from this other provider to Kwanzoo. The entire latter part of the meeting was all about how we could extend and expand their reach and engagement across geo regions and use cases (prospecting, customer up-sell/cross-sell) while delivering in-depth, real-time reporting to their sales teams.

We’d rather that you’re upfront with us on the other vendors you have spoken with, any budget constraints, what would constitute a “win” for you or your boss, and what would be seen as “real value” from your investing in an ABM display program. The more clearly we can align on measuring value from the program, the better it would be all around.

We’re also happy to share best practice examples of ad creative (creative examples). We can provide guidance on account-level engagement (from ad clicks and website visits) for different ABM display programs. Finally, time permitting, we can even model out a specific customized Program Budget for you, depending on your goals, where you will see all costs broken down between media+data fees, tech fees and services, on a quarterly basis.

Post-Call: What’s Next?

Budget & ROI Model: We can typically send over our Budget and ROI model for your further review internally at your Company. We can show you key numbers, such as Cost Per Account, Fully Loaded CPM, and expected ROI in terms of Number of Engaged Accounts and Potential Pipeline Contribution based on your product or solution Annual Contract Value (ACV).

Start Where You Want, Scale Over Time: We’d expect you to start on one or more of our ABM Display and B2B retargeting programs, depending on what’s seen as critical for you to move on immediately. It’s also quite typical for us to see customers add new programs into the mix 1 or 2 quarters down the road.

So what are we missing? What makes for a Great ABM Discovery Call for you? Please let us know in the comments below, or write to us here.

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