Case Study

The Head Scratcher

Dialpad is a cloud-based business communications platform powered by voice intelligence and used by more than 60,000 companies worldwide. In addition to having to improve overall Sales and Marketing alignment, Dialpad grew quickly in the mid-market segment but was looking to increase growth upmarket. A quick pivot to include ABM was critical to achieving both goals.

When Izabella Bray joined the demand generation team at Dialpad, she faced a series of challenges. Rapid growth and organizational change had left the company with gaps in Sales and Marketing alignment that needed to be remedied. Izabella was soon tasked to spearhead and own a brand-new ABM program.

What’d They Do?

With a pressing need to get ABM up and running fast, Dialpad needed tools that would generate and prioritize warm, marketing-qualified leads for sales and instantly surface priority actions so reps could make the best use of their time. ABM was the strategic choice for building enterprise pipeline, as sales cycles were getting longer and involved more people at target accounts. Simply passing leads to Sales wouldn’t suffice – Marketing would need to stay tuned into tracking account engagement and deal progression. Sharing these insights with sales would be critical, thus improving internal alignment.

As the ABM champion, Izabella initially met weekly with sales reps to go over accounts and help them see how Demandbase could support their success. With its easy-to-use interface, Izabella launched the ABM program with Demandbase as the foundation, followed by promising adoption from sales.

Dialpad initially ran campaigns using Demandbase’s out-of-the-box setup and deployment as a “pilot program” to gain experience and gauge results. Encouraged by early success, Dialpad then moved into an innovation phase with Demandbase’s account journeys and Orchestration product, to re-configure their internal marketing funnel and optimize the experience for sales. These enhancements are a collaborative effort between Izabella, Jared Pleasants in Marketing Ops, and Sonia Lucyga in Email Marketing.

“We have entered the ABM maturation phase; Demandbase is deeply embedded in how we do business. In fact, Jared [marketing ops] and Sonia [email marketing] tell me that without Demandbase they’d feel like we were in the ‘stone age’!” says Izabella.

This internal effort and alignment has allowed ABM at Dialpad to “go from nothing to highly sophisticated in a short time” according to Izabella.

How’d They Do?

Every rep has full visibility into their accounts in Demandbase. When an account crosses that marketing-qualified threshold, reps get an alert summarizing the activity, which provides them with insights so they never miss an opportunity to reach out. Marketing and Sales now share a funnel, and Marketing stays involved after Sales engages their accounts.

Now that Dialpad’s Marketing and Sales teams share a common view, they have smarter conversations about target accounts, says Izabella. When reps can call a decision-maker based on activities, cold calls become warm calls, and conversions skyrocket.

“Enterprise accounts can take several quarters from initiation to contract,” explains Izabella. “And we’ll touch several influencers at that account in the process. Demandbase is a critical part of not only building but nurturing and tracking that complex pipeline. Ultimately Demandbase helps not just with deal creation, but also with deal velocity in all market segments.”