The Future of Selling

Podcast Transcript - Julia Yavin and Peter Dean

Future Of Selling (00:00.562)
Hey, welcome to the Future of Selling podcast. My name is Rick Smith. I'm the Chief Customer Officer at Concur. Concur is a sales communications platform and we work with some of the largest enterprise companies in the world. I've been in or around sales for a number of years now, right? Serving as a Chief Operating Officer and Chief Revenue Officer, CEO at a sales engagement company and now Chief Customer Officer at Conquer. So I appreciate everybody being on the podcast today, but that's enough about me. got a few guests or a couple of guests I'd like to introduce. So today's guests are Julia Yavin and Peter Dean from RenderTribe. So RenderTribe is a B2B, and you're going to tell me more about this, but I'll give the headline at least. RenderTribe is a B2B marketing agency and really, really prides itself on account -based marketing. So glad to have you guys here today.

Julia Yavin (00:35.162)
Thank

Future Of Selling (00:58.425)
Welcome, by the way.

Peter Dean (01:00.632)
Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Julia Yavin (01:00.912)
Thank you, Rick.

Future Of Selling (01:02.184)
I did do a little work, found out a few fun facts about you guys. I like starting with fun facts.

Julia Yavin (01:07.662)
Okay.

Peter Dean (01:08.575)
no, I'm scared.

Future Of Selling (01:10.094)
No, you should be probably Peter. A couple of fun facts about you guys. thought we're kind of neat. Just like starting a speech with a story, right? That's all it is. So Julia, so one, okay, on the serious side, you work with Rinder Tribe's largest clients, right? That's what you do. And you really kind of are that next layer under Peter. Is that correct?

Peter Dean (01:13.39)
Yes, I should and I am. I'm ready.

Julia Yavin (01:24.73)
Yes.

Julia Yavin (01:31.066)
Yes.

Julia Yavin (01:35.898)
Yes, that's correct. Yeah.

Peter Dean (01:36.718)
She is the lair.

Future Of Selling (01:38.104)
She is the lair. Right. You're the lair. like that even better. I understand that you're hilarious and wicked smart is a comment that I got from someone. if you can make me laugh right now, do it. All right. Maybe we'll laugh during the...

Julia Yavin (01:48.795)
Mmm.

Julia Yavin (01:53.208)
It's more of a subtle kind of dry humor. I'll try to work it in. The timing has to be right, Rick. So we'll work on it. Yeah. I am.

Future Of Selling (02:01.106)
Got it. Got it. See you, Drew.

You just did though. That was great, right? also you're a working mom with two toddlers, which I find amazing. awesome. Good for you. That's a busy life. That's a busy life. So those are my Julia fun facts. For Peter, I didn't know Peter

Julia Yavin (02:15.568)
Yeah. Thank you. Yes. It is very busy. Yes.

Future Of Selling (02:26.79)
that you were a mentor for startup founders. didn't know that was part of what you do, but that's really cool. So have you been doing that for a while, I guess?

Peter Dean (02:37.422)
Yeah, for probably 14 years now. I started a long time ago with a venture accelerator. And friends of mine asked, Hey, can you come help out? You know, something that can help them. And I started doing that and then they wrote me and I'm I've been doing it ever since in all different ways. So it's, really fun. You get back more than you give every time. That's what I've learned. So.

Future Of Selling (02:40.698)
Okay. Okay.

Future Of Selling (02:47.09)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (02:57.436)
Yeah. Cool.

Future Of Selling (03:03.794)
Yeah.

Okay, all right, good. didn't, honestly, I mean, I've known you guys for a year, year and a half now, and I didn't know that was part of what you did, I found that intriguing. You're also a lecturer, and you're the co -host of the Founders During podcast, so you've got your own podcast, which is really neat, and I've listened to that a few times, and you guys do a great job. And then, really, the fun fact here, right, those are just facts. The fun fact is that you are super passionate, and I've seen that.

I mean, when you're there, when you're on it, you're on it. You and you've got a point of view and I love that about you. anyway, I've been in a couple of conversations with you pretty passionately. anyway, I did not, I didn't say a word. I just sat back and watched. You know, that was what I, that's what I.

Julia Yavin (03:35.718)
Mm.

Peter Dean (03:45.944)
Cool, thank you. And you're like, chill out, dude, it's okay. Yeah, I get excited about things. Yeah, that's true. You got it.

Julia Yavin (03:52.022)
hahahahah

Future Of Selling (03:59.044)
Yeah, that's good though. That's good. It's great to get excited. So anyway, I appreciate you guys being here and just being on the podcast. So future selling.

Today we're really going to focus in on the buyer's journey and kind of what you guys are doing there and how you're impacting that. So talk to me a little bit if you don't mind about, or just describe, when you think about this B2B buyer's journey, what does that look like? What are the primary stages of that? you don't break that down and here's the three, here's the five, however you want to break that down. I'm going to take some notes too, so if I'm looking down, it's not that I'm not paying attention to you.

Peter Dean (04:34.56)
Yeah, I can start and Julie can fix it. it's like this process. You could call it like, we think of it as a buyer's journey. That's very seller centric, right? Because it's really a company or a person trying to solve a problem. And it's identifying what that problem is, realizing they have it, right? And that's that first stage. like, you know, it's a lot of research is going on and maybe you're like, hey,

Future Of Selling (04:38.396)
Ha ha ha.

Peter Dean (05:03.574)
I think there's something we need to fix, right? And that's a company that we call either problem aware or like they're problem aware now, right? They're like, this is a pain, it's real, we have to do something about it, right? And so that's the first step. And that's really, if you look at it from a buyer's perspective, a lot of research is happening then. They're trying to kind of identify what that is. And that would be like the research stage. After they're going through that, they're trying to,

Future Of Selling (05:05.629)
Yep.

Future Of Selling (05:17.234)
Yeah. Right.

Peter Dean (05:33.566)
solve what does this mean to us? And so, like as a marketer, sometimes we are stimulating a thought around a problem to say, hey, this is actually real, we feel it, and we should be probably doing something about it. And sometimes we're trying to get the CEO or C -level person to kind of look at the organization in a different way and do that. And so that's step one. Step two is like, just to simplify, it's like the refinement stage. Like, what is the problem? How big is it? What is the scale of it?

Future Of Selling (05:46.546)
Right.

Future Of Selling (05:52.626)
Okay.

Peter Dean (06:02.978)
What are the potential solutions? What can we do to solve and change to actually have an impact on that? And what is that impact? Could that impact be? And that's that kind of middle stage where they're doing a lot of research. They're engaging with, you know, content and information and people and trade shows or conversations and all of that, where they're trying to solve for that. And then the simplest next stage is, okay, we've defined our problem. We understand the scope.

Future Of Selling (06:23.676)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (06:32.13)
We've looked at some potential solutions. We've kind of started making our short list of what we're going to do. And then they're kind of moving into that purchase stage where it's like, we're going to take an action. There's an initiative. There's a budget may be allocated. If you, if you look at like a band qualification, which is kind of a simple one, I there's a bunch of them, but there's a budget need authority and timeline kind of lining up, which is really kind of sales ready at that point.

Future Of Selling (06:45.746)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (06:48.774)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (06:56.359)
Right.

Yeah.

Peter Dean (06:59.584)
And they're, they're ready to kind of move through that next stage and look at vendors qualify and then make sure it fits to solve that problem. So in general, it is this process of them solving a problem and how are they solving that problem? Cause sometimes it may be just changing what they're doing, not changing a vendor or, you know, from our perspective, someone that's a seller or marketer, we're influencing them to kind of take an action that may not be us.

Future Of Selling (07:05.83)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (07:14.588)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (07:23.228)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (07:27.26)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (07:28.182)
And so that's kind of how we look at it. and you can break kind of all those stages down into other little micro stages, but really those are the three major things that are happening to kind of fit those milestones to get where. You know, we have an opportunity. It's real, versus it's an idea they're thinking about it and they're going through this process to decide if, if it's worth them taking and, know, doing something about it. Right. I don't know. Is that.

Future Of Selling (07:40.988)
Right.

Future Of Selling (07:52.53)
Go.

Future Of Selling (07:55.996)
Got it. it. Okay. Yeah, what do you think? You're the layer. He said you're the figure. So, know.

Peter Dean (07:57.965)
Make sense?

Julia Yavin (08:00.312)
Yeah, I mean, that, yeah, and the layer. Yes. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, that that is I mean, we often think of it from the customer perspective, because we want to mirror that and be proactive one step ahead of them. So that you can anticipate what their needs are where they're going to be. I think the only other thing to kind of add into what Peter saying is, you know, just like

Peter Dean (08:03.021)
haha

Future Of Selling (08:14.909)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (08:29.328)
I was just thinking about as a homeowner, there's always a list of things that are always a pain. Like you're always going to have something that jumps to the top of the list. And it's like that with business buyers too, your organization shifting, it's changing. There's always going to be pain points. so there's that journey is it could be really quick. It could be really long. How immediate is that pain to the organization and how is that pain?

tied to their objectives and goals right now. And so along that journey, you know, we're trying to get in front of them as buyers, as marketers, so that when they hit that point where, okay, this is the biggest pain point right now, and we're ready to tackle this, that we're there, we've set them up. We've gotten to a place where we can be a resource for them and take them along that journey. And, you know, we often think about this as,

only 5 % of people are actually in market at any given time. There's lots of statistics that are out there. And so that point, like Peter was talking about from that kind of problem aware to where they make an initiative within an organization could be 30 days, it could be a year. And so that journey, while it sounds nice and linear, is kind of all over the place. They're going to take two steps forward. They're going to come back.

Future Of Selling (09:40.53)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (09:54.534)
they're gonna see where they're at, take things internally. And so there's a lot of things to consider when we're looking at that. And that's really important for how we approach it from selling as well.

Future Of Selling (09:59.4)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (10:02.941)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like your analogy of the house, right? Because I think about that. look around my house and I'm like, my gosh, it's a list of 20 things I need to do, right? And if I don't get them done, anyway. But really, and I was listening to a sales podcast a few months ago. He was talking about it. said, man, you've got to figure out on that priority list where you're at, right?

Julia Yavin (10:11.024)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia Yavin (10:26.479)
Exactly.

Peter Dean (10:27.309)
Mm -hmm.

Future Of Selling (10:28.904)
If you're not the top one, two or three, just, you know, continue doing what you need to do, right? But you're not getting funded anytime soon, you know, it's just not happening. So I like that list, you got 20 things you need to fix, but where is it on the list?

Julia Yavin (10:37.978)
Nope. Yeah.

Peter Dean (10:38.614)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Julia Yavin (10:46.096)
Exactly.

Future Of Selling (10:47.204)
Has that changed, has that, so the journey, right, as we call it, it's not linear to your point, has that changed any over the last few years? I mean, is it different? it, you talked about Julia's sometimes it's quick, sometimes it's long. I how's it changed over the last, say five years since pre -COVID and you know, the world changed and all that kind of stuff.

Julia Yavin (10:51.216)
Mm

Julia Yavin (11:01.542)
Mm -hmm.

Julia Yavin (11:07.928)
Yeah, I mean, we talk about this a lot and it's something that we think about it. It's in general, for a lot of organizations, the customer journey itself is kind of the same. That length hasn't changed, but the buying journey from the buyer's side seems depending, it seems kind of all over the place. And that's because like Peter was saying earlier, that research phase, that initial awareness, all those that's

stage where people are trying to gather information to determine if it's worth their time and make decisions if the initiative is even going to be created is happening outside of the selling. Outside of conversations with a salesperson. so that's all that content that the consumers are searching after. Whether it's on or offline, there's so much information at a person's fingertips.

that they don't even necessarily need to talk to a salesperson and raise their hand until they've already, you know, lined up. Okay, we're going to look at these two solutions. They tick the boxes, we're ready to talk to someone. And so it could mean that for a lot of organizations that sales process could speed up. What is actually the time in the pipeline can speed up, but the customer journey getting to that point.

Future Of Selling (12:13.938)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (12:19.858)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (12:23.378)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (12:36.487)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (12:38.248)
hasn't changed much. They've just have a lot more time to do that self exploration. And so before they can even raise their hand and let people know that they're in market, it's, you know, it's what I was talking about earlier, we don't, want to anticipate and try to use all these intent signals and, know, third party data to determine, you know, where are they at? How can we anticipate their next move before they're even ready to talk to us?

Future Of Selling (12:39.921)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (13:04.658)
Yeah, gotcha. So it has changed, but the core steps are still very similar, right? So people know a little, I mean, I kind of gave an intro when we started, but just so people understand a little bit more about who you are and how you do it. I mean, you use account -based marketing as a primary tool. How do you guys use that to engage in the buyer journey itself, whether they're at the stage one, which is really, we have a problem. Should we do something about this?

Julia Yavin (13:08.004)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Julia Yavin (13:33.83)
and

Peter Dean (13:34.062)
Mm.

Future Of Selling (13:34.602)
to, okay, now we've refined it, let's get a short list, let's make a decision, because we've got budget, know. How do you guys do that every time?

Peter Dean (13:46.188)
That's a good question. I just want to add one to, feel like I'm at a debate and I'm adding to something that we moved on from, but I just want to add one thing to how it's changed. There's two fundamental drivers that are changing how the buyers act, which changes how we as salespeople get to talk to them or don't get to talk to them. One fundamental change is our buyer is evolving from a,

Future Of Selling (13:49.319)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (13:50.576)
Hehehe.

Julia Yavin (13:57.067)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (14:16.238)
Gen X to Gen Y, right? And so according to Forrester, like over 65 % of the buyers today are millennials, so Gen Y. And so they act differently because they're digital native. They grew up with digital in their life, where I will just identify myself, which is probably obvious. I'm a Gen X. That wasn't

Future Of Selling (14:25.32)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (14:39.068)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (14:45.334)
We adapt, we adapted digital really well, like an evolved and really quickly, but we, but we've also had the experience of that more one -to -one communication. And so we're more comfortable with that because of kind of how we evolved into digital. so that's affecting how people interact with salespeople. And, and some of the stuff that Julia was, was talking about, that's one of the reasons why.

Future Of Selling (14:48.508)
Yeah. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (14:57.116)
Right.

Future Of Selling (15:06.738)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (15:13.326)
we talk less, they're talking less to salespeople and later in that process. And that's really having a big impact on our ability and our expectation for outcomes for what we're doing. The other big thing that's changed and we did it ourselves as marketers is if you were a leading person 10 years ago, let's say in content marketing, you could be the one really strong voice in your industry. Everyone's a strong voice in the industry.

Future Of Selling (15:18.556)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (15:24.22)
Right.

Future Of Selling (15:41.212)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (15:42.424)
Content marketing is table stakes. Having really good content is table stakes. And that content is actually, you marry that with a very agile and very schooled buyer that maybe finds a piece of content that's gated around a topic. They're gonna move very quickly and find one that's not. And so they don't want to fill out forms. They don't want to engage with salespeople.

Julia Yavin (15:45.147)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (16:00.018)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (16:04.648)
Okay.

Peter Dean (16:11.572)
They have a different perspective because of how they are more digital native and their communication is more essential.

Future Of Selling (16:18.746)
They kind of want to stay behind the veil or behind the whatever you want to call that until they're ready to no longer be behind the veil, right? Okay. Yeah.

Peter Dean (16:21.966)
Correct.

Correct. Right. Exactly. And so that creates a different environment and different expectations that leads into actually the question that you had. And I'll start a little bit and let Julia go, but our goal is to activate them in that process. It's less today about generating a ton of leads. We used to do that years ago. We could get a lot of people downloading pieces of content. It's great.

Future Of Selling (16:35.548)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (16:36.305)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (16:53.422)
because of kind of what I said, today it's more, and we have some secret weapons we can use, but we can get them engaged. We wanna get them engaged around that problem. We wanna be aware of that. That's where the secret weapons come in, but getting them engaged and letting them follow that journey and just enabling it. And then instead of waiting, it's a little more.

Future Of Selling (17:12.872)
Okay.

Yeah.

Peter Dean (17:18.986)
ABM's less of a passive approach where we're waiting for someone to say, Hey, call me. I'm interested. I want to buy this. It's more proactive. We're being proactive early so that we're reaching out to them more proactively than we did before. And we're using some of these tools that, you know, we can get into or not that first party and third party intent data that show that they're on our site or that they're potentially in market because they're solving around these problems. And we have data that tells us that.

Future Of Selling (17:24.796)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (17:46.546)
Yeah. Okay.

Julia Yavin (17:46.972)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Peter Dean (17:48.524)
Right. And so we're proactive around those companies that are active on our site or are active in market and trying to be part of that education piece and lowering our expectations a little bit that they're, they're not going to fill out a form as much as they used to because our buyer is different. Right. They're, they're avoided. Yeah. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (17:56.552)
for us.

Julia Yavin (17:58.47)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (18:06.46)
Yeah, because they're kind of behind again behind the behind the veil. Yeah, I see that. Go ahead, Julie.

Julia Yavin (18:09.764)
Yeah. the, I was going to say the reason why it works is because the fundamental principle of account -based marketing is that you've hand selected essentially the accounts that are best fit to you. You've said, I am going to actively pursue these specific accounts because I know I can provide a solution that fits, is going to solve.

one of their problems. And so you can take the time and the dedication to understand exactly where they are, because you have met, whether you have customers that are like them right now and you understand how they got to where they're at right now with your organization. You can essentially build out that journey for them, create messaging specifically for them, to help them along the journey so that you are become this resource. and you can be trusted. And so.

Future Of Selling (18:59.655)
Okay.

Yeah.

Julia Yavin (19:09.776)
Having that dedication upfront and agreement that, okay, we're really going to focus on these set of target accounts makes account -based marketing really a tailored solution that's going to support a more enterprise level sale, something that requires a little bit more time and energy, and really make sure that you have clarity across your sales and marketing team about what you're going to say, when you're going to say it, and who you're going to say it to.

Future Of Selling (19:38.754)
Yeah, so definitely not a kind of spray and pray.

approach here, right? It sounds like also from a sales team perspective or a company perspective, guess, ideal customer profile. You've got to know exactly. Here are the 10 or the 20 or the 30 clients that were really going to focus on this thing, And then kind of methodically, but probably also strategically, if that word's okay, making sure that you're getting in front of them at the right time with the right...

Julia Yavin (19:43.759)
No.

Julia Yavin (19:53.744)
Yes.

Julia Yavin (20:11.44)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (20:11.96)
So, okay, got it.

Peter Dean (20:13.996)
Yeah. another reason that's important is because we again, did this to ourselves with content marketing. There's so much messaging. There's so much information out there. there's a reliance on, you know, trying to do this in that spray and frame. There's still people doing that. And so they're getting a lot of kind of watered down, not really customized messaging. And so in order for us to actually rise above from that,

Future Of Selling (20:33.565)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (20:42.2)
kind of everyone saying the same thing is to be very specific about what we're saying to those particular companies that resonates with them is like, whoa, this is different. They actually get me because this is really detailed against my problem because you know it, you already services those types of customers and you live in that with them. You're like, I live your problem every day and they feel it. Then they react and then they, that's what activates him. That that's, it's about

Future Of Selling (20:47.421)
Right.

Future Of Selling (20:56.444)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (21:01.66)
Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Dean (21:11.648)
like really refined, we used to have kind of a general value proposition that we could run with, but now it's like really refining that value proposition for those different types of companies. So that we're like, so we can really have an impact and they, listen, right? Again, self -inflicted, but.

Future Of Selling (21:22.44)
Okay. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (21:28.39)
Yeah, got it.

Julia Yavin (21:28.454)
Yeah. Yeah. I'm, yeah, I mean, just one more thing on that is, we specialize kind of who we're going after because we have these experiences from past clients. you know, for Conquer or anybody else, you know, you can anticipate the needs of them beyond, you know, just the buying journey. They don't have to.

The seller, or sorry, the buyer does not have to educate you on their biggest pain points. And you might even be able to suggest things they didn't even think about because you have some knowledge. And so that's valuable information to them that, you you already know their industry and what they're trying to solve and what's, what you can add to their table is beyond just, you know, the software, the solution. It's the insight, the knowledge. How can they stay ahead of the game?

Future Of Selling (22:03.314)
present.

Future Of Selling (22:07.9)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (22:19.794)
Right.

Future Of Selling (22:25.372)
Yeah, got it, got it. Okay. So did we, so okay, so.

So that's how you're kind of integrating the sales stages or the buyer's journey stages with account -based marketing. And I think we've done it already, but do you mind just giving us the bullet, just hone in on what is account -based marketing? How is that different from other types of marketing that an organization might engage in?

Julia Yavin (22:36.113)
Mm

Peter Dean (22:57.28)
Yeah. So ABM is just a strategic approach. takes very least like all the channels are similar to what we would do. And, you we that we've been doing in the past for B2B and the strategic approach is really kind of what, what are we saying in within those groups? How are we relevant? And then it's, it's more

It's like fishing with a spear versus fishing with a net. And so instead of deploying paid and trying to see what we get, we're deploying paid against a set of companies saying X. And it's, it's a little more refined approach to picking what we're going to say to whom, and then trying to get them to activate on our site. if you said, this is something that gets confused.

Future Of Selling (23:27.664)
It's a really good visual. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (23:42.994)
Good.

Peter Dean (23:51.4)
a lot when we, when we start with a company that's never done it before. a lead is a buying signal to us. And so is, so is visiting the site. And so all of these things are just buying signals to us. One of them, we may know who the person is. Another one, we may not know who the person is, but we know the company. And in, in some cases, like a good tactical example is in LinkedIn paid

Future Of Selling (23:55.546)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (24:00.104)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (24:06.994)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (24:20.234)
A technique is to not have them come to your site, have them download a piece of content on LinkedIn. Right. That's a tactic that a lot of people in B2B do. it's great. But someone that's downloading a piece of content on LinkedIn, if you're thinking this old parameter of thinking about, I'm trying to generate more leads instead of I'm trying to generate meaningful engagement.

Future Of Selling (24:25.895)
Okay.

Yeah.

Future Of Selling (24:44.327)
Right.

Peter Dean (24:45.442)
that could be argued that that's not really that meaningful engagement because they're downloading a piece of content. They're seeing your brand on this, you know, PDF and they're reading and yeah, maybe they are connecting the dots between the brand and the content, but they're usually consuming content for education at that point. They've never been on your site. if someone comes on your site three or four times for maybe a display ad or a campaign in LinkedIn, that's just focused on driving to your site.

Future Of Selling (24:52.999)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (25:14.648)
where they're educating there, they're not filling out a form. We don't know who it is. We can have maybe a more meaningful impact on their journey by getting them there. That's where there's confusion. Cause some people think I need just more leads. And what we're thinking is I need really meaningful engagement with accounts that I can measure, which we are secret weapon is tools like Sixth Sense, Demandbase, Roleworks. There's a host of them.

Future Of Selling (25:14.685)
Right.

Future Of Selling (25:23.122)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (25:33.906)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (25:42.866)
Got it. Yeah.

Peter Dean (25:44.728)
to have first party intent data. And we can see a company is active on a site multiple times. Some of these tools can tell you the person in the U S not GDPR compliant outside of the U S. So you can't do it internationally, but you can know the company is active. And so we need to then activate against that, right? Or be aware of what's going on. and then take an action. So that, that's a, that's a nuance where, where some people get lost, I think in the beginning.

Future Of Selling (25:53.448)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (26:01.831)
Right.

Future Of Selling (26:06.792)
Got it.

Julia Yavin (26:06.918)
Thank

Future Of Selling (26:11.452)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it probably takes a fair amount of education on that for new clients as well, right? Because I love this question, you know, what does good look like? Right. And so really what you're saying is you're changing what good looks like. So it's not just, how many, how many, you know, how many leads do I have? many inbounds do I have? Whatever it may be. It's really about because, know, that can be, you know, that's great if you have them, right. But that doesn't mean they're any good. So it's really about changing what good looks like. It's really about quality leads from a

Peter Dean (26:22.136)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (26:22.224)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (26:26.592)
Yes.

Julia Yavin (26:27.098)
Yes.

Peter Dean (26:38.154)
Right. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (26:42.551)
from a set number of accounts that you're pursuing, right?

Julia Yavin (26:46.426)
Yeah, yeah, and it mirrors what we talked about earlier in that customer journey. They're not always willing to raise their hand exactly when they're ready to buy. so Peter likes to say this all the time. Nobody goes to a SaaS company's website just for fun, to poke around, just to see what's going on. There's some intention behind there.

Future Of Selling (27:05.97)
Yeah. I know. I know.

Peter Dean (27:08.439)
Not yet.

Future Of Selling (27:12.967)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (27:13.116)
And so, you know, people that are visiting your website through their current customer, their competitor, or their prospect. so having these tools. Yeah, yeah, those are the other reasons. Yeah. But those are the five. And so, you know, having these tools, like Peter said, and knowing who your ideal customer profile is, you can use that information with account like

Future Of Selling (27:20.797)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (27:22.25)
or they're trying to work for you or they're trying to sell you. Those are the other reasons, but.

Future Of Selling (27:25.2)
Yeah, good point. There's a five, there's a five right there. Yeah, got it.

Future Of Selling (27:38.28)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (27:42.224)
Those are the foundations of account -based marketing. So you say, all right, I'm going to prioritize this account. They're on my A account list. They've been on our website three times. Let's go. That's where you can activate them.

Future Of Selling (27:53.757)
you.

Okay.

Peter Dean (27:56.172)
Yeah. Like in a simple example, like we talked to, you know, sales teams before and, and, and one that was learning, they sold to retail, big retailers and they're like, well, you know, we want to go get Lowe's and Home Depot. And we were like, great, let's go after Lowe's instead of just randomly picking which one you're going to spend your time with. Cause Lowe's was on our site three times. They've, they've been active and we see.

Future Of Selling (28:10.994)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (28:19.026)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia Yavin (28:21.436)
Mm

Peter Dean (28:24.362)
Also other intent signals in market that they're thinking about our problem that we help with. So let's prioritize them today. And then we can chase Home Depot. That's great. We should try to activate them. We'll run marketing campaigns, trying to inform them of this pain that we think they have. but it seems like Lowe's knows they have this pain, so we should actually prioritize them today.

Future Of Selling (28:27.047)
Bye.

Future Of Selling (28:30.556)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Future Of Selling (28:42.268)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (28:47.334)
Right. Yeah, because I mean, can only, you know, can't, I mean, there again, you know.

Peter Dean (28:53.443)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (28:54.28)
time is limited, right? It's, you know, the universe is way of keeping everything happening from happening at once. So you got to figure out, all right, who am I going to pursue? yeah, so prioritization for sure, for sure. Now we talked about the, did you have something, Julie, you were going to add? Go ahead. did. Okay. We talked a little bit about how buyers now, know, Generation Y wants to stay behind the veil just a bit. So that's challenge. Are there other challenges in the buyer's journey

Julia Yavin (29:11.1)
No, no.

Future Of Selling (29:24.334)
that from a B2B standpoint that companies are going to experience and how ABM may be able to help solve those problems.

Julia Yavin (29:37.786)
Yeah, I think kind of if we're going to shift it and look at it from the buying, there's a seller's side of it. There's a lot of things that have to change and change is hard for people. Because of the way that, you know, we were just talking about it there, buyers are staying behind the veil longer. Sellers kind of need to adjust.

Future Of Selling (29:46.023)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (29:51.784)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (29:58.79)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (30:01.872)
But also marketers need to try to adjust. so a lot of this comes back to making sure that your organization is aligned on what the expectations from each side of the business is. What is marketing? What's their goal? What are they trying to produce? And how does that align to what sales is trying to produce? How do they work hand in hand to make sure that you're getting those most qualified accounts across the line into the, you know,

Future Of Selling (30:13.82)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (30:29.906)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (30:31.022)
account reps hand and that comes down to an understanding. we were saying before, Rick, you were saying, you know, maybe that leads, you maybe I want somebody who's on my website three times over somebody who just filled out a form and has no intention of buying. so coming to an agreement, you know, whether that's a sales level agreement or something to say, this is our definition of a marketing qualified account. What's good back to what's good. What is really good looked like? What does that look like for marketing? How is that aligned to what sales?

Future Of Selling (30:32.957)
Right.

Future Of Selling (30:43.783)
Right.

Peter Dean (30:52.652)
What's good, yeah. What does really good look like? Yeah.

Future Of Selling (30:53.948)
Yeah. Yeah.

Julia Yavin (31:00.282)
And how do we know that's going to affect our pipeline? And so we want to create more qualified sales conversations. And so that's the goal of account -based marketing is to create those meaningful conversations. so having an alignment on what is the goal of marketing? What is the goal of sales? How are they working hand in hand? It goes beyond just agreeing upon what are we going to say? Because we can say, all right.

Future Of Selling (31:04.124)
Right.

Future Of Selling (31:21.372)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (31:27.856)
this is the messaging, if they're in this stage, all right, you follow along, like we can have a messaging matrix and you know, know exactly where we stand and everybody can reference that. But that agreement and kind of changing, especially when people come from a different standard of what good is, if they're used to seeing leads as good, it's a big change. know, it's a lot of effort to prioritize accounts properly in an account based program.

Future Of Selling (31:33.074)
Yeah.

Right. Right.

Future Of Selling (31:48.007)
Right.

Future Of Selling (31:56.305)
Okay.

Julia Yavin (31:56.43)
And so having that change and being able to adjust your time and your efforts to give those accounts the time that they need is a change. And as long as sales and marketing can come to the table and say, hey, this is what I need from you. This is what I'm going to give back to you.

Future Of Selling (32:19.196)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (32:20.974)
It makes the things a lot smoother, but it also, you know, it's it's a hurdle to overcome with a lot of organizations just because we all have different experiences we bring to the table. but this is, it's kind of muted a lot of people, even though it's been around for a while.

Future Of Selling (32:34.812)
Yeah, got it. Peter, what do you think?

Peter Dean (32:37.878)
I would say there's another challenge that is facing everyone. And I think this is something that actually falls well into, what conquer offers today. and the challenge is this. The engagement point for salespeople traditionally has been email, that, that has, that was very, very effective for many years. It still is.

Julia Yavin (32:58.342)
Mm

Peter Dean (33:05.4)
but its role has changed because the volume of emails using AI and all these tools and fortunately and unfortunately, depending on who you are, like tech teams that are managing inboxing are trying to reduce all of this unneeded spammy email that they're getting from salespeople.

Future Of Selling (33:32.715)
Yes.

Julia Yavin (33:32.752)
You

Peter Dean (33:32.888)
They're using AI on the other side to combat the AI that's coming at them from this side, because within that same technique that we use in sales is the same technique hackers are using to get access through phishing and all these other things. So there is this fight that's happening. In fact, we have a customer that sells in the healthcare space and you can't get inboxed to hospitals. This is not going to happen. the only way you can reach a person in hospital is through

Julia Yavin (33:37.307)
You

Future Of Selling (33:39.046)
Right.

Future Of Selling (33:46.482)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (33:57.532)
Right.

Thank

Peter Dean (34:01.506)
maybe social through LinkedIn, because they can get an email from LinkedIn saying, I'm reaching out to you on their personal email and then interact there or phone call, right? And so we're seeing a change. the hard thing is how do we get access to a person? They're super active on our site. Maybe they even fill out a lead form and I can't get back. can't get them to engage with me. How do I do that? That's a huge challenge that we have today.

Future Of Selling (34:03.356)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (34:10.684)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (34:26.002)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (34:29.725)
Yep.

Peter Dean (34:30.894)
And what we're seeing across multiple sales organizations is the phone is working because people kind of abandoned the phone a number of years ago. but you get way less voicemails and, so interacting in this omnichannel way is really that solution. but that phone is really where we're seeing, like we have a customer that 50 % of their

Future Of Selling (34:46.652)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (34:52.189)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (34:59.66)
responses. And this is there in B2B SaaS, where people would say it wouldn't work. The phone is working because they're able to personalize. They know it's a person. Then they go look for the email. And so a lot of the strategies that I think really good SDR teams or inside sales teams are using today is using the email as like that thing where you're driving things to. It's more like we're valuing the email.

Future Of Selling (35:07.89)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (35:08.24)
Mm

Julia Yavin (35:13.979)
Yeah.

Thank

Peter Dean (35:27.488)
and not like flooding it and trying to kind of keep putting it in your face. We are actually trying to use other channels to get you to look at that piece of content or to get you to connect with them in LinkedIn. And then I put a piece of content that I want you to interact with them LinkedIn. That's very personal for me. And so those are the things that again, knowing what conquer does and the history of conquer this voice piece is super important today.

Future Of Selling (35:27.933)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (35:31.197)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (35:37.437)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (35:46.183)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (35:55.152)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Dean (35:56.595)
super important.

Future Of Selling (35:58.022)
Yeah, agree that that's certainly what we're seeing with a lot of our enterprise clients, right? I mean, it is just agree. I get emails all the time, right? So it's it's it's kind of it's it's certainly about multithreading through the omnichannel, right? And so, mean, you know, voices are foundation, right? It's been our foundation for years. And then we've got SMS and email, social and then and then but also being able to use those tools in kind of a multi touch strategy through the orchestration engine, which is we

Julia Yavin (36:10.886)
Yes.

Peter Dean (36:11.458)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (36:18.572)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (36:27.946)
all cadence, right? And then being able to plan those things out, right? But I know for us internally, but also for our clients, it's the multi -thread, right? I got the email, but then somehow, then I got the text approved, of course, they have to opt in for that. But I got the email as well, and now I'm hit on LinkedIn, so.

Peter Dean (36:29.646)
exactly

Peter Dean (36:38.637)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (36:45.932)
Yeah, yeah, but actually, it's really interesting because I, I see text differently, but I am not predominantly the buyer anymore, right?

Julia Yavin (36:45.965)
Thank

Julia Yavin (36:57.532)
was going to say as the token millennial on this conversation right now, I would, yeah.

Peter Dean (37:05.834)
It may be preferred, right? It's more it's quicker, faster and less cumbersome. don't

Julia Yavin (37:11.898)
It seems less invasive to me. mean, I will probably not answer every phone call that comes in, but I will listen to that voicemail. And if it's something that's relevant to me, I can make the connection to the email in my inbox. I would rather text somebody, response, get what I need, make sure that I see them. I hate to admit it, but I have all these pieces of technology that I'm looking at constantly. And so...

Future Of Selling (37:27.229)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (37:39.57)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (37:40.598)
As millennials continue to be the dominant buyer, going to, you know, they might not respond to a text, but they've registered it. The next time you come up, they're going to, you made an impact. They're going to respond. If you're selling something that they're interested in, you're to be at the top of their list when, you know, that list comes up of where do I prioritize things?

Future Of Selling (37:48.274)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (37:48.608)
Yeah, made impact.

Peter Dean (38:02.848)
It's easier to remember that one. Yeah, totally.

Future Of Selling (38:04.454)
Yeah, I agree. the same way, know, and text or SMS, I mean, it's just it's just so much easier to to get my attention that way. Right. And just not to make it about Conquer, but one of the cool things we do is we have a single caller ID. Right. So it really connects our voice and connects our SMS or text on the same phone number, the same caller ID. So it just from a from a kind of friction and flow standpoint, it just takes so much friction out of the process for the seller and for the buyer. So it improves everybody's experience.

Julia Yavin (38:05.115)
Yep.

Julia Yavin (38:10.321)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (38:28.422)
Yeah, it's cohesive.

Future Of Selling (38:34.408)
just makes it easier to do business. So anyway, I won't go.

Peter Dean (38:37.12)
Yeah, that's super important. That friction piece is important because the pendulum has swung because of the changes we talked about. This is tying it back to ABM. ABM is proactive. We're not waiting for them to fill a form out. We're proactive. That actually isn't that different when I started selling. All we have is proactive. There were no leads back in the day. And so a true hunting salesperson is going to thrive because they're not afraid to

Julia Yavin (38:45.734)
Mm

Julia Yavin (38:49.724)
Exactly.

Future Of Selling (38:57.756)
Yeah. Right.

Peter Dean (39:06.968)
They're not waiting. They're like, Hey, I want to, I want to get in front of them because I really think I can help them. And that passion hopefully comes through. I know sometimes it does for me, but, you know, yeah. And so people are like, why is this person so excited about this? and it's something that is about my problem, but that's like the, the ABM thing is it's proactive. It's not reactive. We're not waiting. We're trying to be part of that solution earlier.

Future Of Selling (39:12.274)
Yeah.

Yeah. It does. I've seen it. Right.

Julia Yavin (39:17.904)
you

Julia Yavin (39:25.616)
Very excited.

Future Of Selling (39:29.02)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (39:31.995)
Mm

Future Of Selling (39:33.65)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Peter Dean (39:36.846)
and letting them choose, giving them the opportunity to choose whether they talk to us or not, not waiting for them to decide to.

Future Of Selling (39:42.44)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (39:46.745)
Okay. So if there's someone out there listening, and I know a lot of companies are already kind into the ABM thread, right, they're making that swing, but what if they're not? mean, how would they get started? What should they do? I do they need to go out and research it first? I mean, what do they do if that's not one of their kind of arrows in their quiver that they're using right now?

Julia Yavin (40:14.736)
Yeah, I mean, so we typically approach this as, you you kind of have to be ready for account -based marketing. There's a bit of a checklist. I like to call it a readiness matrix that we kind of walk people through. I mean, you have to have, there's a couple of things that really need to be in place already for an account -based marketing to be successful. That's not to say that you can't jump in and start positioning yourself to eventually run or to be more targeted and more,

thoughtful about who you're approaching as far as targets. You know, that's a good place to start and just having some of these definitions, but it kind of all goes back to, know, how aligned are you as far as what, where's your pipeline coming from? Where do you need your pipeline to go? And how is your organization agreeing to that plan to move forward? So that's a big part of it. Having that agreement, understanding what do you need to do?

Future Of Selling (40:47.677)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (41:08.018)
Okay.

Julia Yavin (41:14.214)
to hit those goals. And the other thing is just, you know, there's some basic kind of technical things, you know, account based marketing requires more investment and requires more time. And so you have to have, you know, a higher, average deal size that you're trying to hit. have to, tends to work better with a longer sales cycle because of how you're supporting it across, you know, this threaded omnichannel approach. And you need to have a couple of, you know,

revenue operational type systems in place to properly run an account based program and to more importantly, report on and report back on the successes of those programs. That's a big piece there as well, Peter.

Future Of Selling (41:57.522)
Got it.

Peter Dean (42:00.41)
100%. Yeah. The reporting is the most important thing. Rick, actually you, you did talk about it. It's different. It's change. It's hard that agreement of what good looks like and then understanding what that is. And then also in the beginning, also understanding that this is what we think it looks like. We have to be open to the fact that we're going to learn what it, what it turns into, what, what that means. And

Future Of Selling (42:03.356)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (42:11.974)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (42:12.144)
Mm

Future Of Selling (42:27.933)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (42:29.11)
It's a lot easier. It was a lot easier for board members to look at a linear lead conversion model and think that makes sense to me. It's super easy to, understand and change to a model where you're saying we're activating engaged with these accounts. this is how they've engaged. They came to our booth. I don't know if anyone talked to him, but they scanned in a dream force. Let's just say they did,

Future Of Selling (42:37.392)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (42:49.727)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (42:55.333)
Mm

Peter Dean (42:58.786)
You know, they were all over our site. They did this, but they're like, do we, are we talking to him yet? No, they're at this early stage. Okay. That is that okay. Does everyone agree that that's what our goal was to get them really activated here? Because that's different than saying someone filled out a form, right? Cause we know today it's going to be way late. And by the time they felt a form, our influences opportunities usually gone, but, that's kind of.

Future Of Selling (43:09.98)
Right. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (43:15.986)
Right.

Future Of Selling (43:23.046)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha.

Peter Dean (43:27.366)
Those are the things that you need to kind of make sure everyone's aligned on. And so like if, if you said, Rick, we want to do this and you know, your team isn't behind you or your senior team isn't your other senior team isn't aligned with you. It's going to be really hard to kind of have that conversation when you say, Hey, this is what we did in Q4. And everyone's like, I don't understand. Like this doesn't know. This is not what I, my expectation was. And so again, that's.

Future Of Selling (43:49.852)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (43:51.825)
Thank

Julia Yavin (43:56.582)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Peter Dean (43:56.952)
That usually is the big driver,

Future Of Selling (43:59.388)
Got it. Okay.

Okay, cool. So I know we got to wrap up here in just a minute. So I always like to end with key takeaways from the conversation, right? Because when people listen, I want to make sure they get, they're not just walk away and go, wow, this is interesting. But what should they take away from this today, right? I I wrote down a couple of things, right? The fact, I love the idea that we say, buyers now are kind of, got to veil until they're ready to

Julia Yavin (44:29.286)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (44:30.964)
expose themselves. I think that's a great takeaway. Talked about more, maybe less, right? So you can't just spray and pray. You got to be very focused. What else? For you guys, what would be the top two or three takeaways from today?

Peter Dean (44:32.366)
100%.

Peter Dean (44:49.43)
I, I, it takes, I would say one thing is it does take courage to change what good looks like. And then being willing to open yourself up to maybe it's different than my comfort level. And then how do I get comfortable to level to the new normal? And what does that mean? And then how do we rationalize? need to rationalize that, go through those process to try to rationalize that and then have that conversation about it.

Future Of Selling (44:56.7)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (44:57.34)
Yes.

Future Of Selling (45:02.45)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (45:07.335)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (45:08.227)
Mm

Peter Dean (45:19.2)
When people don't engage with the conversation and they're like, that's way too, I don't get it. And they're like, okay, but I guess this is going to be good. That's when failure happens, right? But when people agree or, or mash out, like, I still don't get it. We need to sort this out. I think that's one of the biggest things that you need to do at that senior level and decide what does good look and why is that okay? And if it's not okay, let's talk about it now, cause we're going to go try to do this.

Future Of Selling (45:30.418)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (45:48.69)
Yeah.

Peter Dean (45:49.654)
And then we still are going to learn in that process what outcomes could happen from it. know, and I'm not saying leads to still come out of this. You'll get a bunch of people filling out forms. It happens because there's still us in the world, you know, that are like, yeah, I need to talk to someone. I'm, skipping. I'm not reading all this stuff, man. I'm talking to a rep.

Future Of Selling (45:55.132)
Yeah. Okay.

Future Of Selling (46:01.98)
Yeah. So, okay. I think you're talking about.

Julia Yavin (46:10.424)
You

Future Of Selling (46:10.566)
I don't know what you're talking about. I'm still in my prime, so get out of here. So be open to the new normal. Define what the new normal is or what does good look like. And then as you define that new normal, have the conversations about it because it's a transition period, right? And if you don't have those conversations and increase the understanding and just talk it through, then it's going to be a lot harder to succeed. So that's what I took. Yeah. Julie, anything else?

Julia Yavin (46:14.757)
You

Peter Dean (46:37.813)
Absolutely, yeah.

Future Of Selling (46:40.5)
else or you good?

Julia Yavin (46:41.7)
Yeah, I mean, I completely agree, obviously, with what Peter said, but I think the other thing to kind of take out of this is, you know, we talked about, you know, behind that veil is all this activity that's happening, you know? And so being able to really hone in on what your value proposition is and what you want to say, that content is so important right now.

How are you going to stand out? How are you going to make an impact before someone even is willing to reach out and say, I want to talk to you? Because so many impressions are made then before you even get a chance to sit at the table with them. And having content and investing in content and not looking at it just as a necessary evil, but as an opportunity is really, really important, especially as people are just going to continue to be inundated with more and more content, more and more.

Future Of Selling (47:15.196)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (47:22.738)
Yeah.

Future Of Selling (47:30.279)
Yeah.

Julia Yavin (47:37.638)
pitches, you need to say, this is my voice and this is what I'm bringing to the table. And, you know, this is what I want the impression of our organization to be.

Future Of Selling (47:38.546)
Right.

Future Of Selling (47:43.698)
Okay.

Future Of Selling (47:49.916)
Got it, so fourth one to add to that then, the content is so critical. Work on your voice so that you can stand out in the market, because there's just so much out there. Okay, got it, got it, cool.

Julia Yavin (47:55.376)
Yes.

Julia Yavin (48:01.096)
Exactly. Yeah.

Future Of Selling (48:04.028)
Good deal. Well, this has been great today, you guys. Thank you so much for the time and just the conversation. I hope that's what it's been. just a good, it's been a good conversation for me. Hopefully, yeah, I really appreciate it. So if that obviously, if any, our listeners want to get a hold of you, just need to look for RenderTry, know, look at, look up Peter Dean, look up, look up Julia. I mean, you know, LinkedIn, however, or is there a preferred method or not? I'll get it. Yeah.

Julia Yavin (48:12.048)
Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Rick.

Peter Dean (48:12.734)
Absolutely. It's been great. Yeah.

Peter Dean (48:29.88)
We're in LinkedIn, you can find our website, rennetribe .com, but either way we're active in both.

Future Of Selling (48:33.512)
Cool. Perfect. Well, thanks again, you guys. Appreciate the time today and talk again soon. All right. All right. Bye -bye.

Peter Dean (48:39.468)
Yeah. All right. Cool. Thanks, Rick.

Julia Yavin (48:41.404)
All right, thank you. Bye.

Future Of Selling (48:50.28)
think we're good. I think Alicia's gonna go, hey buddy, what are you doing?

Peter Dean (48:50.51)
I'm at 99%.

Almost.

Julia Yavin (48:57.232)
This is Isaac. Isaac, can you say hi? Hi. He can't hear you. Got my headphones in. He's got a little fever, so he's home today.

Peter Dean (48:58.584)
What's up, Isaac?

Future Of Selling (48:59.91)
What's up, Isaac? Nice. Nice.

Peter Dean (49:03.884)
Yeah, Julie.

Future Of Selling (49:08.008)
Cool, but I don't know if I can turn that recording off. Yep. I don't know really when to turn it off.

Peter Dean (49:13.506)
Yeah. And then it all starts.