Go to Market and Named Account Targeting

Himanshu: Hey Priyanka.

Priyanka: Oh, hello. Hi, Thanks for joining in. I'm just checking LinkedIn. People have joined in on. Not. We'll get some confirmation and then we'll get started. Because one time we didn't do that and we were speaking for 10, 10 minutes to everybody else and yeah. Oh, okay. Tech has its own , repercussion times, but if people have already tuned in, can someone tell us if they can hear us properly and see us?

Just fine so that I can get started one comment will be good enough for me to go 

Himanshu: ahead No, it's fine.

Okay

Do you want me to check 

Priyanka: Yeah, I think I will get it on the right panel itself. Yeah. I think Jyoti has shaken. So yeah, we can go ahead now. So thank you everyone. Thanks. Thanks Shubham for the confirmation. You guys are great. So we'll just get started with the proceedings. First of all, thanks Himanshu for joining us today.

We are going to talk about everything GTM and named account targeting. Before we jump into the questions and the discussion a little bit about Himanshu. He is, he's a senior account director of the APAC region at Springworks and he has been in sales for around how many years now?

Four or yeah, seven years. Okay. I underestimated that. Yeah. So around. Today he'll walk us through just a journey and what he has learned, and then we'll jump into the topic as well. So I let him, uh, introduce himself properly, and then we'll get started with the 

Himanshu: questions. Awesome.

Great. Thanks, Priyanka. Thanks for having me and whoever is currently listening to me. Yes, seven years in sales. I have sold to multiple, industries. It starts off with e commerce. Then I was in management consulting for a couple of years. Then I wanted to actually get into the whole startup ecosystem.

So then I started with a startup called Newton School. We were a very small team. So I have a good number of zero to one journeys under my belt now. So I've done three zero to ones. Newton was my first one expanded it in India, and I moved to SAS. Rev was my first journey with SAS specifically.

So I was doing pretty much everything because we didn't have sort of an India team. They were not focused on India. So again, it was another zero to one for me, just go hit the ground and figure it out. So I was my own MRA. I used to, get my own leads then get them on an Excel dial, set up demos.

I shadowed my CEO. I was working with him for a month. And then I just told him that, why don't you let me do a demo? And then that's how my AE journey started without me knowing that I'm in AE now. So I started closing from there on. And then I was at Infido. We were doing GTM for Southeast Asia, again, a very zero to one journey.

And I think now I can just say that I love or get that kick from zero to one journeys, building it from zero to one, especially setting up processes and get the engine, revving up and then it goes from there. So even at SpringWorks now at Asia Pacific, I am managing three of the SAS products where we had a very different motion before I came in and now we are setting it up in a way where, it works for us and again.

Again, a very zero to one. So it's also ATM and named account targeting. We want to go, have bigger tickets and all of that. So that's about me. I think and I love doing that. I love being in sales. It's been so long that I think it's just a part of how I live. 

Priyanka: That's great. That's great. Thanks for the intro Himanshu.

So I, I see you are you have been with sales and you've done so many, I think you've moved up through that entire landscape, right? Yeah. Which is great. And I personally think that just being in sales for a long time teaches you a lot of. Humility and the, and patience most importantly.

Yeah, that's, that is that is great to know. One more thing that we, I want to like stress on is that in this entire journey, right? Like you have laid. The foundation of your GTM. Can you walk us through the key elements of establishing a GTM strategy and why understanding your product, your market, your customer segment is all very crucial.

Himanshu: Yeah. Yeah. I made it very simple, from. sales context. A lot of times what happens is that regardless of where you're working, what your product is, right? When you do your reach outs, right? It comes from the from that place of, I want this. I want Priyanka to come on a call but it's never about that understanding why Priyanka should come on a call.

So the most basic foundation that you can lay first is that understand that you're a human, and Have that help part of it that how I can help this person, right? What's in it for them? Why would this person, come on a call with me or book a slot with me?

When you start deep diving on that's where you understand a product better because now you're coming from that perspective of how the prospect might be thinking, right? Because you understand your product in your mind. You're of course absolutely killer product out there. You can solve everything and whatnot.

And this will enable you to also qualify and disqualify. Because not everyone is your customer. So whenever you're laying out a GTM foundation, of course, the go to market largely for us, you have to identify who am I targeting, right? So it of course starts off with size industry, demographics my personas, and then I have to go and create This whole ecosystem of crafting the messaging around it. And then I come to my, okay, what do I choose to reach out to them? And et cetera. I think for me when, even if you're in Asia Pacific and specifically India, go big on calls, right? Because having conversations in India is not, if the people talk, if you genuinely, are interested this.

Just try and have a conversation. I think half of the time people don't, people are so serious on calls that they forget that I can actually smile or I can actually, laugh about something and I can actually make a joke about, let's say, oh, you're from Bangalore. Not a traffic joke again, but you can find something to talk about, right?

So I think it's very important when you subjectively look at someone's, maybe a profile go go a little deeper. Do your research. Spend five minutes, right? What were they doing 10 years back? Okay. Yeah. Find, see, maybe Bianca was doing something similar to what I was doing. Maybe some similar industry.

There has been times where I still find people who were at COPC. That's my starter. I saw that you were at COPC. I was at COPC too. You're also certified things like those, right? So again laying a foundation first you have to identify A lot of things like size market industry demographics, right?

Personas And then you do your jobs and then there is also like, how do you go back? One week I made, let's say if I'm averaging on 80 calls a day, I should look at the conversations. Am I happening? Am I having then based on those conversations, right? What sort of people did I speak to?

What sort of conversions did I have? And then you double down on what's working. I think that's what works. The more data you will have, the more clarity you will start getting about your outreach with GTM specifically. 

Priyanka: Got it. Understood. So following up on this topic, now you said this in a very individual SDR, uh, point of view, right?

Can you tell me what are the common challenges that companies face? When they're trying to identify the foundation of their GTM strategy. How can they overcome them? Like I've seen that you have gone through multiple companies to where you are now. So what have been your observations on that?

Himanshu: I think first companies have to come with a vision that it will take six to nine months, right? It will at least take six months to figure out GTM because if you look at it in three months, because companies want to want it figured out in three months. You're not going to get it figured out in three months.

Of course, you're not having enough data to speak for itself in three months. There would be so many. So I'll chart out some challenges, right? One of the challenge is how to figure out your sales cycle. You can't figure out your sales cycle in three months because some companies so enterprises average out on six to nine months.

Okay. Your SMVs might take some company might close in one month, but your SMVs on an average takes three months, right? Then there would be certain like mid market, which would be all four to six months kind of site. Even to identify this sales cycle, right? You have to be in the process. What happens is that if someone or a certain rep doesn't close in a certain time, right?

They think that it's the reps issue and it's not the company itself because there are so many nuances in the process, right? It's the buyer circle that is getting involved, right? There are so many conversations happening. So I think what they should focus on is how are my next steps how are certain my deal criterias defined, right?

In the process. When I'm figuring out my GT, because at the end of the day, my go to market is subjective to my, revenue or the closures. How many customers do I onboard at the end of the day? At the same time, how many conversations did I had, let's say demos, versus how many of them converted to opportunities?

That will also define in terms of how are we doing with respect to our product, right? Are they even getting the value preposition out of it things like those? What happens is that sometimes when you look at the number at a surface level, it's just numbers that oh, we did 20 demos Right. We only had two saos it's the accounts executives problem.

No, leaders should actually like when it's a small like early stage startup and you're doing zero to one You should actually be really involved and not push too much because you're a founder Of course, you will have that association with your own product But at the same time when you zoom out a little and you look at it subjectively, you will learn a lot from your demos itself.

You'll start listening to your customers more and more, right? Another aspect of GTM is you can run a few pilots, right? Let's say some customers can be your design partners. Okay. When you have design partners in place, they can use your product, right? They can pay you or not pay you. It's up to you.

Ideally, I never prefer not You know, getting paid. If you're providing a service, you have your resources allocated, right? People are spending time with any particular product or your customer. You should have some nominal, if not, expensive, but they will give you a lot of data because these are the people who are using it.

on ground. And it's a part of their day to day. Like for salespeople, it might be their Apollo or outreach, right? They can absolutely tell outreach where they're lacking. They can absolutely tell Apollo what they want. So I think you should talk to the people, not the higher level, because for high level people, it's the reports.

It's the data. But you should be talking to the people who are using it in their day to day, right? Let's say you have an HR, you're an HR tech company. And if you deal in engagement or if you deal in rewards and recognition, you should speak to HRVP. Which you have to figure out what problems they face.

So these are some of the challenges that are there, because how do I position is the biggest challenge in GTM and the position can only be figured out when you're actually talking to your customers or you're doing, these sort of things in place. You're talking to your sales team because they're upfront.

And then on the high level, you can create a messaging around it and test it out. There's maybe testing always happens. 

Priyanka: Understood. Now before moving up onto the target account list building, I just have one thing to say. If you guys have any questions do put it up in the comments below. We'll take it towards the end of the session for sure.

So now moving on to the next segment building your target account list, right? What is the significance of a target account list in a successful GTM strategy? And how do you go about it? 

Himanshu: Yeah, very important. I think if you don't have a target account list, how would you even position yourself?

Imagine you are the most relevant product for 200 to 500 people company, right? And you're trying to sell to 5, 000 above. So you'll fail, right? That's why having a target account list is very important. How significant it is. It all depends on, how do you justify certain criterias, let's say, you'll start with size, then you'll start with industry, then you'll go with location, then you'll go with pain points, and then you'll go with your goals for that specific industry, and also you have to align your goals.

 Because prioritization happens when you have your when you have your goals, very specifically laid out that I want to onboard X customers, right? Then I would have to see in how much time, okay, I want to onboard X customers in let's say three months, right? I would plan accordingly. My target account list would be built accordingly, right?

Because if I want to close, let's say 10 customers in three months, right? I cannot go and chase enterprises. At the same time, if I'm more aware, because I'll have certain customers, right? So you should have a lot of there you can go to G two to identify personas, right? What do they care about, right?

What are your personas goals? What are the usual challenges you can, what do your customer and the one who's managing it. So you can talk to them about it as well. And then accordingly you can figure out that, okay, 200 to 500 makes the most sense. So you have identified the size.

Then now you can identify what's my title? What are the ICP? So there could be three ways three sort of ICPs that can be done. One is that CXO, right? One is like minus one to CXO and then would be your initiator and your, evaluator. Could be that. You can add one more. Let's suggest to get the conversation there.

There have been times where I didn't hear from any of those and I just reached out to someone in certain other department, can build a rapport. And then you can get an introduction because now you have Oh, Priyanka asked me to connect with you. She told me you're the relevant person, things like those.

So you can identify the, title. And then you can have your location defined with where I target Asia Pacific. Even in Asia Pacific, I need to figure out what's my priority, right? I go India. Then I would go Singapore. Then I would go to Indonesia. Then I would go to others other states.

So these three become my priority in terms of location or demographics particularly. And then comes your pain points. What do they care about? Is it time? Is it efficiency? Is it revenue? So you have to figure out because your messaging should be around that. So ideally for target accounts, my main goal is to reach out to my ICPs.

 My target accounts can also be like, do they have money to buy a product? So I would have to put, it was like revenue as well. I can also put a filter like recently raised funding, or maybe it's a series A, series B company. Let's say I want to only chase startups because they understand technology.

So I would put filters like that because they will so sales cycle would be lower because they will send a value preposition that I'm going to quote. So that's why, so that's how you go about accounting. I think I'll just quickly show you even, 

Priyanka: yeah, I was actually going to talk about ICPs.

In my next question. Good that you already talked about 

Himanshu: it. Let me know if you can see. 

Priyanka: You have to present it there. I'll just put it up on screen.

Yeah, I can see now. Yeah, I 

Himanshu: can see it right now. Perfect. So basically for this is a counter. This is basically named account targeting. Okay. So when you account targeting, how are you defining your ICP is one way target accounts and another is your target personas. Okay. So target accounts could include size, industry location, pain points, goals, right?

laRgely it, and then you can also boil it down to specific domains, right? Pain points and goals in HR pain points and goal is goals in let's say accounts or finance department, it depends on what product you're selling. Okay. Then comes your target personas. The target personas largely consists of title, what you have to identify and craft persona oriented messaging for each reach out, or maybe the sequence that you have created, right?

Then your, then the goals can be identified. A lot of times people are confused. Like, how do I know what's a, what's CFOs are? Pick the case studies, go to your competitor's website. Maybe they have better customers right now. Okay. Go pick some case studies from there. Read what your personas are talking about.

Okay. Study similar personas. That's what I mean. Like you can go to G2, right? You can see what people are talking because if someone is using your competitor event. Your competitor is also a very similar product to yours. So why don't you study, what they have and create your messaging and pitch around it.

And then you have to research existing customers that you have in the same industry. So if you have relevant customers, you can also go, always go and speak to them about it. So in outreach, I have, let's say emails, calls, LinkedIn and ABM, okay. Emails largely is like you have to do a target persona, industrial account oriented reach outs, right?

Which you have identified from here. You can craft an email. You can have two sort of sequences and you can A, B test them, right? Then you, then comes to calls. You can cold call, you can track conversations. I can track my conversation versus demo book. And I can track my SQL to SEO conversion.

This will define how good my outreach has been. If I'm dialing a hundred numbers, right? And I get 20 conversations and I get two demos out of it. So my conversations to demo book is 20 percent and my demo book to SQL is also 20%. 

Priyanka: These are for the named accounts, 

Himanshu: right? Yes, these are for the named account.

You've already identified these accounts. Yeah. It could be in your sales navigator. You can pull it out from your Apollo. There are tools that you can use to do that, right? This is when you have data, like you already got the data. Now you're doing outreach, right? Then your LinkedIn comes a lot of times.

What happens is people try to sell it on LinkedIn as well, right? Without even having certain interactions. It puts people off, especially, leader, leadership, people off where you directly pitch. So you have to interact on their content, maybe be relevant in their comments or do not sell in DMs.

I get DMs where people are just selling straight up, right? You can actually reach out to them as someone who's a leader. And try and learn from them, you can actually just say certain things that, Hey, I'm very new to this. I'm trying to still learn XYZ. You have been in this space for 20 years. Can you help me?

Or can we block some time where I can take 15 minutes of your time and you can help me out here. So people like to talk about themselves. I am talking here about myself. It's, it goes with your prospects as well. Now comes your ABM. ABM is a very necessary part of you don't have a marketing team, you can just focus on the top three.

But if you have a marketing team, ABM is largely, let's say whatever list you created, right? You can run specific campaigns for your prospects. And in that particular list to create awareness and you can educate your prospects as well, right? Like sharing a certain report that was launched, right? This helps building it over the funnel and definitely plays a very important role.

So yeah, largely this. I Have one more aspect of what tools and everything you can use in your outreach, right? That I can show later as well, but yeah, largely named account targeting has two parts, right? One is your development of an ICP, which goes to target accounts and then it goes to target personas.

Once this is done and you have the data ready, this is the first step, right? Second step is creating messaging and crafting messaging around it. Then now you have to research a little more, go read G2, your customer reviews, competitors on website, understand what your customers are talking. And then you can pick up on those pain points and goals because case studies, I think the best part about case studies is that, Oh, we were doing this.

This was the problem, right? Yeah. This happened. So we solved this problem. You get to, get a very clear picture of what do they care about? Is it the time, efficiency, money saved? What was it? And then accordingly you can, pitch to an HRVP and pitch to a CHR.

And then your outreach comes where you're pitching. 

Priyanka: yOu did share some places where outreach can happen, right? LinkedIn, like cold calling emails, messages. Can you share some examples of within these outreach? Areas itself that have proven to be resonating with the target audience, right?

As a salesperson, as someone who has managed SDRs as well what have you seen is the most effective in all of those segments that you 

Himanshu: mentioned? Yeah. I think it's very, there's a regional dependency on that location.

If you look at India, Actually, just pick your phone up and call people, right? And you'll get a really good conversation rate as well. You can talk, people pick up phone in India. And there's a, of course, I think if you're good at your cold calls, you'll be able to book demos. Booking a demo is not the challenge in India.

Okay. It's closing. In US, it's opposite, right? In US, you'll have because they're so finicky about their privacy that if you put them on their private tumble, they would go mad about it, right? That's why sometimes for a lot of people, emails and voicemails and, voice notes on LinkedIn work for people because you're not, barging into someone's private space or that's how it's considered, right?

You have to figure out where you're selling. Singapore is also very similar to US. But again, they get the point. Indonesia is very similar to India, right? But it's in the tech space perspective, right? They're friendly people. At the same time, they need to have that vote of confidence. So you have to actually go and meet them.

Your physical presence helps a lot. So I think from an outreach perspective, you have to figure out where you're selling, right? What really works for Asia Pacific, you can be big on calls, right? People do talk. And again, like you can figure out two of your best say channels, what works. Every SDR would have and every AE would have a different thing that works for them, what they're good at.

Let's say I'm very good at cold calls, right? Someone might be really good at emails. So I think it, it drops down, there is no magic bullet for what works for everyone. You have to, try it out and test it out enough to know that this works for me. And then you double down on that. That's why it's so important to go back every week, uh, of what you did and look at your numbers.

So as an AE I think this was a great practice that used to happen in my ex company. We do it here as well that you have called listening sessions. Okay. During these call listening sessions, everyone comes along, everyone sits, everyone, SGRs, AEs, ADs, whoever you are even the VP will sit down and we'll play either a demo or a certain number of calls.

It's radical candor. You are not going to get criticized, but you get feedback. Okay. It's a very structured feedback. This helps you know what you did wrong and then you have different perspectives. And then you also, let's say you're an A and I and I see Priyanka demo, I can pick things up from Priyanka demo as well, which you are doing good.

In Your demos you might pick something that I might be doing. I might, my opener might be really good, right? So that's why you have to set up processes for your sales teams, which really helps the team all across and then eventually individuals have their own way to go about it.

 How do they approach channels and their outreach? So I think regional and then individuality and then the team learning perspective, three things to take care of each. 

Priyanka: Absolutely. And now that we are at Teams, I'll just have a very small question that mostly what happens with SDRs is that they aren't given a very targeted list, right?

Like they have this very random list and they are supposed to close deals. There might or might not be any intent, right? So what we do at factors is we obviously identify accounts on our website who have interacted with us through factors itself. Then we have a LinkedIn integration where we see accounts, which have Just seen our ad on LinkedIn or they have clicked on our ads, but have not booked a meeting.

So this is how we work at factors. What is your suggestion when it comes to as a sales manager, what do you do to enable your SDR to actually close those deals and not like randomly shoot in the dark? 

Himanshu: I think so when you said about that, they just, get a list of, which is not very targeted, right?

So it's more of a question, right? If there is an SDR, okay, who let's say figured out 10 accounts, which is not clashing, right? There is no messaging or outreach that was done on those 10 accounts and then goes out. And gets conversations, right? Or demos set on those 10 accounts. Do you think any manager out there would say that?

Why did you do that? SO I think, so it's also about what you are doing at your job, right? Do you want to go one step further or are you just going to wait for your company or team to do everything for you? So let's say you want to take an initiative. First do it on a very small level, that initiative, okay?

Drive a certain result. I did this for 10 accounts. I got three demos, right? This is what my process was, right? Can I do it on the side? Let's just, can I split it on 60 40? When you show results, right? When you show that confidence. And show result, no one's going to say no to you, honestly. And then you can go create your own target account unless you have all the tools in place to do that, right?

Then, I have certain accounts where I can get conversations as an SGR. When I was an SGR, I think this is what I did. Let's say I want, I have an idea, right? I want to go with that idea. I would test it first by myself, right? And I would take my numbers. It's, again, it's a very solution based approach.

A lot of times what happens is that people complain. And the point is that when you complain, it starts becoming that you'll only see obstacles, like literally you'll start seeing account list is bad, numbers are bad, numbers could be bad though, yes. But It's a lot about, marketing is not doing enough, right?

This is not happening enough. But when you just take that initiative and do it for yourself, you start seeing the results, because then your manager would also have that confidence with you that you know what, try it. Yes. You did try it? Okay, try it on a bigger scale. It's up to you because at the end of the day, what they want is enough demo set up or enough SEOs in the picture, right?

Got it. Yeah. Actually, you can actually do your account targeting. No, no one's going to stop. You can come up with ideas. I think in last organization we used to come up with, we used to have KPI 3. As like initiative that you want to take. Yes, and then you can take that initiative, which is not hampering the other KPIs, right, which are your relevant KRAs.

And then you roll like that because now you have ownership. So everything boils down to when you don't have, if you're not given anything, if you have enough ownership, you'd be able to figure it out for sure. 

Priyanka: Yeah. I think that's something you follow at Springworks as well, like quite flexible ownerships and yeah.

Yeah. That's the thing with smaller teams and smaller companies. Encourage this sort of if you're good at 

Himanshu: it, you might also take two other people and show them how it's done and, do it 

Priyanka: as a team. Yeah, that's something that we do at Factors as well, so quite relatable. Yeah, one last question before we take all the questions from the audience from my side.

What are the key metrics and performance indicators that companies? Or sales teams should focus on when measuring the success of their Named account targeting strategy 

Himanshu: suRe. I think for SDRs, it should, um, it is largely about how many conversations and conversions are happening.

So let's say I got 20 conversations out of 80 connects that I got. And then out of those 20, I've booked. So one is that a hundred accounts were there, right? 400 ICPs. And I dialed, let's say, 300 numbers, so you have to look at number of dials and number of, let's say, emails and whatnot.

And then you can track every metric based on, let's say, delivery, replies based on emails. For calls, you can have okay, pics dials versus pics versus demo scheduled, right? And then you can look at that number. Now the second part comes into the picture. Out of those demo scheduled, how many were SAO?

So it's accepted opportunities because when you set a demo, it's an SQL, it's sales qualified lead. So you have to also track SQL to SEO because SEO is where the number goes into your pipe. So the success can only be defined based on how much pipe was able to build out of a hundred accounts that are targeted, right?

How many relevant conversations, because it shouldn't be like you delivered a demo, right? And then because. There were not enough parameters in place. You said that, yeah, I'll just put it in SOS. Now what will happen is that if you have 20 accounts in your pipeline, right? And then out of 20, imagine 12 going unresponsive, right?

That means you didn't have enough parameters that you just. Didn't qualify them. So the metric also speaks for because there is no way and it doesn't make sense to have a bloated pipeline, right? Having a 400, 000 pipe and then closing 40, 000 out of it doesn't make sense. Rather have a qualified, say, 150 200, 000 pipe and close 40, 000.

That's a good number, right? That's 20 percent conversion. So then you track that as well, right? SAO2 conversion. So these are some of the metrics that you can track, but for any campaign to be successful is that we did it right. And we were able to build enough pipe and we did close something out of it, right?

If nothing but something out of it, and you should be very transparent and have to figure out attainable goals. So you have to, this is for founders specifically, right? You have to, when you're running an initiative like NAP, which is Named Account Targeting, you have to not just jump like we'll close 150, 000 because our other regions are doing so.

It's not going to work because your other regions are doing so is because they're expanded and you've already tested and tried it out. You're now doing it for certain other regions. So first, just try it out. Try for two quarters, right? Look at your numbers. How much were we able to grow?

What really worked for us? What sort of personas that we, spoke, converted, what sort of accounts converted, right? And then accordingly go and set a relevant number for SDRs and AEs. You can keep a base number to start with. And then you can increment. If you'll just go and say and do an AE that close 100, 000 in a quarter and we haven't closed anything yet, or maybe you have closed something, but we only closed for one year.

One year is not enough, number to actually say that we have enough data. 

Priyanka: Understood. Thanks. I think that is, that was quite comprehensive. We'll take questions now. The first one is from Shubham. He's asking, drafting on their posts on comments, any suggestion for prospects who ain't much active?

Yeah. 

Himanshu: Okay. Shubham, I think if someone is not active imagine you're calling someone and they're not even picking up. So what's the point of, you would not be able to get anything out of it. So if this is specifically for the people who are active you see them commenting, you see them posting, you see them sharing it could be podcast.

It could be that maybe live sessions, maybe they attended certain conference. This is. specifically for CXOs. You can actually share your relevant thoughts adding to that, right? And then you can go about it. You have to be relevant. And then you can also use the same on your messaging that you might be doing on a call or email that he recently came across your podcast or recently came across your LinkedIn posts, which talked about this.

 Here is what I have to add to that, right? Or what I think based on my conversations with people, leaders like yourself, things like those. So the whole idea is that you interact, but it shouldn't be like, great one, right? It shouldn't be that comment that Oh, great one nail to the head or to the point you shouldn't, right?

So ideally add some value to it, add some, relevant thought to it is what I meant when I said you should interact on comments. They will remember when you frequently do that, they will see you interacting comments and that builds up the rapport. 

Priyanka: And one more thing to add to this is that people who aren't active much, it's, you can take an another route where whatever they have, they must have posted something, right?

Either they have, they would have shared their company post or something. Take that and add it to your email or your. Yeah. So just give that context that we, oh I saw you re shared this company posts and I have been following your company for a long time now do you think we can talk about it on a call, we'd be able to solve this problem, blah, blah, blah.

So yeah. That. That is also another aspect of social. No, not directly, but you got that information from social. So for me, it's social selling, but I think in top voice Himanshu should be at a better place to talk about social selling. No, 

Himanshu: you're absolutely right. Basically. It's the whole idea of that you have to figure out what channel works for which person.

 I'm not active on LinkedIn. Maybe I'm super active on emails and calls. So you rightly said, yeah, pick up, talk about, let's say right now this webinar is going on. You can actually reach out to Priyanka that, Hey, you did this webinar with Himanshu, right? Great points. And I'm reaching out to this because I found my product might be relevant here.

So thank you. I think you can figure out a messaging and craft it around that. 

Priyanka: Yeah, we have another question on social selling itself one more thing about social selling before we go to this question is that people on linkedin who are active are mostly marketers SDRs and some HR people I think if you're someone who's selling like a product a Sprinto, which is a SOC to security compliance product, you don't sell it to marketers or salespeople or anybody who's in the front end of a company.

You go to their technique technical people, their C, CFOs or CTOs or somebody, for that. For them, I don't think social selling works for them. I think you have to go into that traditional route of calling them up and speaking to them on emails and so on and so forth. So that's one aspect that you would consider.

It 

Himanshu: depends on the product for sure. And I think now now I feel there is a lot of people who are active specifically. You would go like five years back and you wouldn't see tech folks active on LinkedIn. Now they are. They share their recent projects or they might share just a simple story. They might share something they have.

They are out there now. Same goes. For, even ID and compliance some people are really active. They like to talk about compliance, security, et cetera. There are privacy officers those who post like just for awareness, for the sake of it. So the thing is that it all contextualize, down to who you are selling to, how are they, at certain platforms or maybe someone is not active on LinkedIn, but they might be super active on, let's say.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Also started incentivizing

Priyanka: content very recently. Like I don't think even two years back, we had such content yet some one year old. 

Himanshu: Yeah, no, there are creators right now. There are like other folks coming on. Now they're giving 

Priyanka: badges and all of that, which I haven't

got. But yeah, 

Himanshu: I'm trying to. Yeah, no, that's a good thing, right? Because people try and add value through their stories, through their experiences. And then LinkedIn just recognizing that, oh, you did this. Perfect. Great work. Things like those. Yeah. Okay. This question is 

Priyanka: from Bethany. Can you elaborate on social selling in context of named account targeting?

How do we scale this for a hundred plus accounts? 

Himanshu: Sure. I think you would also have to realize about resource allocation, right? Because social selling takes time, right? If 10 accounts and there are let's say 10 CHROs. I can actually go one by one or maybe, I can create let's say I can block my calendar just to do social selling where I'm indulged in involving in their content or I'm just going and talking about those 10 to 20 CHROs.

So the idea is that if you want to do a hundred plus. Of course you can the whole idea is that it's not the accounts, it's the persona that you social sell to. And then you, once you've identified those personas in those hundred accounts, you make a list out of it and then you have also make make your day structure based on how and where am I interacting I have to go visit their profiles. I might, let's say, send them a text on LinkedIn. I might go and comment on one of the posts. So I think resource allocation one is 200 accounts, SDR sequences might work, calls might work, social selling takes time, right? Social selling is more. Candid in nature and it's structured as well.

 So to answer Bethany's, question, maybe put two SDRs to do that. Identify 50 each, right? And then go by that so that you can also make a list, right? Let's say 50 and then did I interact on posts? Yes. No. Did I message? Yes. No. So that you can circle back. Did I get a reply?

Yes. No.

Priyanka: Things like those. Understood. Yeah. Very helpful. Yeah. 

Himanshu: You can track it like that. 

Priyanka: Yeah. For starters, I think tracking work quite well to instill that discipline I think one more thing to add is that social selling is quite like SEO, I think which takes time to build. Yeah. It takes a lot of time for you to build one.

aCcounts selling that you're saying you sell to accounts and all of that, that is one part. And the other part is where people actually trust you. In what you were writing or what you're saying. So that trust is like every other human relationship. It just grows better with time. Try to put a lot of value in what you write rather than selling your own work, which you should do definitely.

But but one thing specifically is that Try to put a lot of value in that selling that you're doing that selling will come automatically if it is worked for a number of people i've talked to what now four people and I myself have done a lot of social selling so I won't say i'm like an expert or something But whoever has done it if it has worked for a number of people then It must work for you, right?

The intensity might differ but it will take time is one thing that people should remain patient about. 

Himanshu: Yeah, it takes time. I think the whole idea behind social selling is, let's say you're speaking to someone already in the company. Okay. yOu might also start. Even then you can social sell, right?

So let's say this person is somewhere in the hierarchy and then there is somewhere, someone on the top right who might be who could be taking the decision. You can actually just go and acknowledge that, hey let's say, hey Bethany, right? Great initiatives spoke to Priyanka about X, Y, Z, right?

Yeah. Great work by the team. And we are speaking about A, B, C, right? Let me know if you have thoughts, else looking forward if we get to meet in the process, that's it. You didn't, you're not selling, you're not even, sometimes the question is that am I going to cross my POC if I reach out to their senior, right?

No, you just acknowledge their effort. So it's not actually, crossing your POC might appreciate you for doing that. Great conversation with Priyanka, great initiative. And she has very clear understanding of what the team needs and the process needs. So kudos to that. So I think. So again, it, everything boils down to sometimes you just have to be a human first and not a salesperson.

 So I think that way of selling works. Yeah, correct. 

Priyanka: Correct. Now, Bethany has one more question. Any playbooks for ABM? 

Himanshu: I think marketing would be the more relevant domain, but I would just maybe give context for ABM to be done. You already have created the account list and your personal list.

Now you are, let's say your campaigns could be around sharing certain case studies. How X company was able to save 40 percent time and X amount of revenue, doing this and because you're running a campaign. So the whole context of ABM is that you're running the campaign for the same accounts that your SGR is trying to.

Have a conversation. What will happen is that if the AVM is done right, and they they got that campaign emails and et cetera. Now they're aware about SpringWorks. So when someone calls them up or someone sends them an email, which is more personalized, and you're just going to say that calling from SpringWorks does that ring a bell, they might already receive, let's say two campaign emails, so when those campaign emails are already there, they might just say that, Oh yeah, I received an email about this. That's the whole context of ABM and you might also have some, someone who's just replying to that, Oh, I'm interested. So that's another part of it, but the whole context is that ABM is done for accounts very specifically to get that foot in the door while you're doing named account targeting.

So your SDRs efforts are anyway there, but ABM just helps them with that. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Bethany, I'll I'll share some of the resources that I have and factors. ai team has, content team has made it on the blog. I'll share it with you or on the comment section right after the call.

Right after the live. And I also hosted a bunch of people who talked specifically about ABM, right? Yeah, you, I can also share the playlist of the lives where we specifically talk about ABM. ABM is one of my favorite topics to speak about. I'm not an expert and that's why I talk to a lot of people about ABM.

So yeah, that is that is something that I can do if there are no more questions and we'll close the session. Otherwise we have time to take two, three more questions, maybe if Himanshu doesn't have to run. Okay. I think Sri has a question. What is the difference in conversion rate for SDRs with ad cover and without ad cover?

Any data in this regard to show the lift from AVM? 

Himanshu: Oh, that's very hard to track. Yeah, it's that's a very great question. I think people are still figuring out that street because what happens is that marketing runs campaigns and they measure their conversion based on MQLs, right? Marketing qualified leads.

SDRs are more on SQLs, right? A lot of MQLs are also SQLs. So I think the only way to track it is there an MQL, which is also an SQL from an SDR, right? And then you put together and then you'd be like, Oh, this was pushed by an A, ABM or lift, there was this lift from that ABM. Yeah, great question, but this is something that marketing and sales are still fighting about.

Priyanka: Yeah. Shri usually has questions that nobody has answers to. But yeah, I think we should we should think about it a little bit. And 

Himanshu: that's a very good thing to think about because everyone is pretty much thinking about how do we. How do we align it? How do we track it? 

Priyanka: Absolutely. Yeah. Correct.

And one more thing with like SDRs and ABM is that there's a lot of gap in between marketing, sales, intent data, customer success, what the client needs, what the, what happened in the sales call, what happened there. Yeah. So that is something that even we at Factors. And we've built on that.

And at that point of time, all our calls, all our sales calls, all our marketing calls happen at once. Also we have the privilege of being. Being a smaller company. So that is one thing, but as much as I've talked to people that is a quite a lot of problems. 

Himanshu: So basically what happens is that even when there would be one person talking to marketing from the sales team.

Okay. There would be one person from the marketing team talking to that one person in sales. So what happens is that sometimes SDRs don't even have a clue what campaign is running. They miss out on it. Because if you don't know which campaign is running right now, and then imagine from that campaign, there is an MQL which comes in.

That's when they realize that, Oh, we are running this case study as a campaign right now. I think absolutely improvement and conversion would definitely thrive from there. If there is a common ground where people know what we are trying to achieve, both departments 100%. 

Priyanka: Absolutely. I think We can end the session right now.

It was a great session. We talked a lot. It's almost an hour. We are talking more. We talk more. The questions are, I consider it a success. So yeah, even if 20 people or 15 people tune in. And if the session is quite long, then that's a success for me. 

Himanshu: No, I don't even, I think I feel like even.

Even if one person takes value out of it and it change something for them as to what they were doing. And now they're doing after the session that's that's definitely success. 

Priyanka: Yes. Yes. Thanks. Thanks everyone who tuned in. Thanks for your questions. A lot of people have joined from us. It's quite early there.

Thanks. And I think Bethany has joined from the U S so thank you so much. tuning in and the recording will be there on YouTube and on factors, AI factors, AI's, YouTube channel, and on my profile on LinkedIn. So yeah, feel free to refer and ask me for the recordings later on. Thanks Iman, you for joining in.

It was a great time speaking to you. Spring Works again, is I've known them for a while now and it is good knowing you 

Himanshu: too. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Priyanka. It was a great session. Definitely talked a lot and I hope I was able to put that value, that we have been talking about.

Priyanka: Thanks. Thanks. Thank you for joining in. All 

Himanshu: Bye. Thank you. Have a good one. Cheers.