Scaling the Enterprise Mountain Using ABM

Shownotes

In this episode of Sunny Side Up, Avishek Chakrobarty, who has well over 11 years of experience in enterprise sales and marketing across multiple industries, joins us to discuss the intricacies of account-based marketing. Avishek discusses how his team navigates large and complex enterprise deals that often span years in their sales cycles. We dive into strategies on how to keep leads engaged and nurtured through these lengthy and layered cycles, how he builds multi-layered, multi-channel campaigns, and pitfalls to avoid when doing ABM.

About the Guest

Avishek is an experienced enterprise sales and marketing leader with over 11 years of experience across multiple industries and currently is working as the Associate Director for Demand Generation in International markets for Yellow.ai.

Connect with Avishek Chakrobarty

Key Takeaways

• Don’t rush into pricing – While pricing plays a significant role, in large deals buyers place a premium on trust, dependability, and quality over price. They’re usually happy to pay a premium over cost as long as they can rely on the seller’s commitment.
• In enterprise sales, your manta is “follow up.” Your success depends on how closely and frequently you are following up with your prospects in your pipeline and building that rapport. Ensure you are top of mind by nurturing your leads with valuable, highly relevant content.
• Whenever you are starting an ABM in any organization, it’s very important to have explicit buy-in from the business leaders, preferably the CEO because it requires a lot of time, investment, and patience.

Quote

“If you find something of value, you will always be willing to spend on that. So it’s also about looking at our customers and target audience and figuring out what can we do more to drive more value in these tough times for them so that we can be not only just a seller or a vendor but a partner.”

– Avishek Chakrobarty

“When it comes to a large deal, what most of our customers put a premium on is the trust and dependability of the vendor.”

– Avishek Chakrobarty

Highlights from the Episode

You’ve got a strong background in Enterprise sales. You were part of the team that closed one of the largest tech deals in history. Can you explain how these large deals are structured and the effort put in by multiple teams?

In large enterprise deals, the first stage is fitment analysis, which entails determining if the prospect’s product or service is a good match for what the seller is selling. Next comes qualification, during which the seller verifies that the prospect has the resources and expertise to carry out the proposed project. Once these two stages are complete, discussions about the deal can begin. The most complex part of any large deal is its negotiation stage, in which both buyer and seller try to determine each side’s needs and wants. It can take months or even years for a deal to be finalized. Once it is, there’s usually a presentation or oral phase followed by final negotiations. Although pricing often plays a significant role in large deal negotiations, trust and dependability are more important factors for buyers.

Enterprise deals are notorious for their long sales cycles and layers of complexity. How do you keep people on the buying side engaged during this long process and how does your ABM strategy fit into this?

In enterprise sales, successful outcomes hinge on following up with prospects and maintaining rapport to ensure that they are top of mind. When deals start to come together, the salesperson is there at the front of the line. To stay engaged, an alignment with marketing is key; through account-level intel and continual content production. There should be a mix and frequency of digital engagements based on where in the deal discussions they are. Keeping in mind legal implications helps avoid disqualifying offers prematurely.

How do you go about building a multi-layered, multi-channel campaign?

Multilayered, multichannel marketing campaigns require a lot of thought and planning due to the shared decision-makers, influencers, and target audience size. The first step in designing or planning a multilayer campaign is identifying who and where your target persons are. Once you have identified your lead’s interests and matched those with the right content or solution, it’s important to determine what you expect them to do on the final step of the journey. By understanding your lead’s journey from start to finish, you will be able to design an optimized multilayer campaign that results in increased success rates.

What are some of the pitfalls to avoid when implementing your ABM strategy?

ABM is a new and complicated program that requires a lot of time, money, and patience to be successful. It’s important to have executive sponsorship and a timeline in place before starting an ABM program. It’s easy to get lost in the first few months of an ABM program if you don’t have approvals or a budget already set up. ABM is not a channel like digital marketing where you deploy leads, but it’s a mindset change that takes time and effort to learn how to use.

How are you and your organization adapting to the current economic downturn?

What businesses can do is be proactive and focus on creating value for their customers even during difficult times. Look for ways to turn any downturn into an opportunity. Businesses should remember that they are part of a larger ecosystem and need to work together with their partners to survive.

Is there a book, blog, newsletter, website, or video that you would recommend to our listeners?

• Masters of Scale Podcast

• A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing by Bev Burgess

• Account-Based Marketing For Dummies by Sangram Vajre

Shout-outs

• Sanjay Sahay – Associate Vice President and Global Head at Infosys

• Surbhi Agarwal – Senior Vice President & Head of Global Marketing at Yellow.ai