The Buyer’s Journey is the New Brand

This episode features an interview with Kelly Hopping, CMO at Demandbase, a go-to-market company for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams overcome the disruptive data and technology fragmentation that inhibits insight and forces them to spam prospects. 

In this episode, Kelly talks about her strategy to make sales love the marketing team and to collaborate with sales on their ABM strategy. She also discusses the ROI on retaining a customer, versus getting a new customer, and how the brand is really the full customer journey.  

Key Takeaways:

• Account based marketing only works as a collaborative effort between sales and marketing. It’s marketing’s job to make the sales team love them, providing them with a brand they are proud to represent and high intent leads. 
• The ROI on retaining a customer is much better than on getting a new customer. Taking great care of the customers is not just a sales or customer experience responsibility. 
• Part of retaining customers is building brand loyalty by making sure customers love the product and building community. 

Quote:

“ I have a general belief, I tell my team, my number one goal is to make sales love us. And that doesn't mean that we do all bottom of the funnel, like pipe create, but it means we're going to give them a brand that they're proud to represent. We're going to give them great air cover at events and through social. We're going to give them high-quality pipeline that has good intent. We're going to focus, so we're not going to try to boil the ocean. We're going to be laser-focused on an ICP and we're going to work together on conquering them. We're going to give them content that's usable versus like a thousand pieces and they have to sort through it. We're going to give them five pieces and a really clean bill of materials that they need to close the deal. And we're just gonna be really, really, really focused on those things. So, to me, that's ultimately the strategy is if sales is successful, then we've done our job right.”

Episode Timestamps: 
*(3:53) The Trust Tree: Building sales and marketing alignment 

*(23:26) The Playbook: Your brand is the full customer journey 

*(34:41) The Dust Up: Tensions with sales and ensuring you send them good opportunities

*(37:33) Quick Hits: Kelly’s Quick hits

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for pipeline pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

• Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Demandbase
• Learn more about Caspian Studios