Sales and Marketing Success: Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Growth

 About the Guest

Amy Vosko is a results-driven marketing leader who drives revenue growth and creates successful marketing strategies. In addition to aligning Go-To-Market teams, her expertise lies in building high-performing Demand and ABM teams as well as Business Development teams. She has over 25 years of experience in MarTech and AdTech. Currently, she is the VP of Revenue Marketing at PathFactory, a company that accelerates pipeline and revenue growth through content intelligence.

Connect with Amy Vosko

Key Takeaways

• The main obstacles for sales and marketing organizations include tight budgets and resource allocation
• Alignment between teams and proving ROI are key challenges
• Technology can bridge the gap between teams and improve organizational grouping
• The relationship between sales and marketing is crucial for success
• Technology can bridge the gap between sales and marketing
• Account-based experience (ABX) is important for rallying sales and marketing together
• Data validation is key in identifying the right accounts to focus on
• Alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success is important in targeting these accounts effectively
• Developing a campaign and orchestration plan is just as important as personalized messaging
• Employing smart signals can help organizations make strategic decisions with limited resources.
• ABM is about understanding account needs and using technology to become smarter
• ABM tactics can help understand customer interests and create bespoke conversations
• Streamlining data is a challenge, but keeping it simple is key

Quote 

“Aligning on revenue goals and focusing on the right accounts at the right time can bring teams together. With the right strategy, we can move accounts further into the buying stages and achieve success.” – Amy Vosko

Highlights from the Episode

What are some of the main obstacles that sales and marketing organizations are currently facing? How can they overcome them to achieve greater success in what is such a tough market today in 2023?

Amy explains that sales and marketing organizations are currently facing several obstacles in the tough market of 2023. The main challenges include understanding where to allocate time, money, and resources between different teams, such as sales, marketing, product, and customer success. It is also essential to align goals and target audiences and to prove that the strategies are meeting expectations and generating the desired revenue. However, limited budgets, revenue goals, and team morale can make it difficult to achieve success. Amy suggests that leveraging technology to bridge the gap between teams and building an offline organizational grouping can help overcome these obstacles. Despite the challenges, Amy emphasizes the importance of addressing the topic of uncertain times and finding smart ways to achieve success in the current market.

What are your thoughts on the changes in the relationship between sales and marketing, and how it has made selling and driving revenue more challenging today compared to the past?

Amy acknowledges that there has always been a disconnect between these two teams. However, she believes that recent technological advancements have made it easier to bridge the gap and work towards the same revenue goals. For salespeople, the abundance of data and information available can help them understand which accounts to focus on and which individuals to reach out to within those accounts. This personalized approach is a far cry from the “spray and pray” technique used in the past. Nonetheless, Amy understands that with so much information available, it can be challenging to streamline and make sense of it all. She believes that keeping things simple is the key to success, and her team is continuously refining their approach to ensure that they provide the right information to sellers in a way that they can easily understand and take action on.

What is your perspective on companies adopting ABM strategies of all sizes and where do you think that’s headed as we move into the future?

Amy loves the concept of ABM and was pulled into it by default because she was already heading up demand gen teams. She believes that companies should think about ABM more holistically from the very beginning of their strategy, all the way through past acquiring a customer, to keeping them interested, upselling, and retaining them. She believes that ABM is not just about building a one-to-many campaign or throwing a customer’s logo on a webpage, but it should be embedded in the company’s methodology. Amy thinks that organizations should validate which companies they want to sell to through data and other signals, such as buyer behavior signals.

Once the grouping of accounts has been identified, companies should develop a strategic way to aim their arrows in the right direction. For example, if a company is participating in a big industry event, it should identify the right accounts to focus on and ensure that marketing, sales, and customer success are aligned on that group of accounts. Amy believes that developing a campaign and orchestration to get messaging out the door is just as important as putting somebody’s logo or sending a cool plant to a higher-end person. She thinks that organizations should employ really smart signals and layer those signals to get close as a group on where their time and money are best spent. In a world where resources are limited, companies need to be even more critical and strategic.

Could you elaborate on how ABM can be used to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers, which is often overlooked in the ABM journey?

Amy suggests that using ABM to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers can be challenging for many organizations due to limited bandwidth. However, focusing on customer retention and expansion is crucial for success. ABM tactics can be used to understand customer interests, create bespoke conversations, and address issues such as the loss of a champion. ABM is about being heavily focused on the account’s needs, and technology has allowed organizations to become smarter about it.

Can you share some wisdom with our listeners about the support and mentorship you’ve received from your professional community, which has had a significant impact on your career?

Amy expresses gratitude for the mentors who have positively impacted her career over time, although not all of them have been positive mentors. Despite her degree being in art, Amy has had the opportunity to work with people who saw her potential and offered her opportunities that were outside of her field. Her mentors provided her with constructive criticism and encouraged her to stay the course. Now, as a leader and executive, Amy enjoys mentoring and encouraging others in their careers, particularly those in demand generation teams or BDRs. She also values the importance of seeking out communities of like-minded professionals at the same stage of their careers for thought-provoking conversations. Although she finds LinkedIn overwhelming at times, Amy recognizes its value in connecting with others and fostering conversations. Amy advises listeners to not be afraid to seek out mentors or communities for support and guidance in their careers.