Interview With Christopher Antonopoulos

hi this is Bob Samuels founder of tech
connectr techconnectr is a

transparent marketplace and campaign
management platform a Best of Breed

account based marketing lead generation
solutions we’ve partnered serious

decision summit to bring you wisdom from
leading account based marketing thought

leaders to that end I’d like to
introduce you to Christopher

Antonopoulos CEO of measured results
marketing Christopher it’s a pleasure to

speak with you how are you today
well Bob I’m glad I’ve had the

opportunity to connect before this call
and they’re really excited to talk about

ABM and data and technology today
outstanding and so if you can give our

audience a little bit of your background
specifically around ABM and targeted

marketing subway I think um I like to
think of myself as part of the old guard

and that’s in the technology space so
yeah an initial user of tools like

Eloqua HubSpot ExactTarget and a lot of
the platforms like Salesforce Sugar CRM

and Microsoft Dynamics and so you know
my background is really how do you

connect the system’s together so that
you’ve made sure that the leads are

passed from the capture point all the
way into a sale system and then match

back to where they came from in the
first place I’ve worked with Cisco

Systems Network solutions and now really
focused on helping

mid-market companies build their
technology stacks outstanding so and and

you’ve had experience both as a
consultant and as a user yourself

yes I think as a user myself is really
the impetus to doing this but when you

work at large organizations where
they’ve got seven instances of

Salesforce and using multiple marketing
automation tools it gives you a good

context of how that how all those pieces
work and then it’s continued to help

companies build that as a as a
practitioner and they’re building a keep

team of subject matter experts to do
that work okay and as we talked briefly

before this interview you mentioned it’s
all down to people process and

technology yeah I think um what was
what’s interesting about this space is

that you can have the best configuration
you can tag your key and target account

and create your account tiers and if you
don’t take into consideration in the

process of how that gets the sales or
moves around your organization nor train

the individuals that are you know
working with this data or the frontline

to talk to prospects or the account it
doesn’t matter how good of a system you

have what data you have set up you get
you get stuck if you don’t have the

people aligned with the information that
you’re sending to them okay

and so I imagine it all comes it all
starts this whole ABM and targeted

marketing it has to start with a lot of
planning before you can actually

implement anything yes I think um I mean I
think people overcomplicate it to start

I mean essentially ABM is about choose
the clients that best fit with who your

organization wants to sell to you
identify those organizations and then

programmatically market to them and
build programs to try to engage them

understand understand a bit more about
your solution so it’s it’s a bit easy to

start I think
where people get caught up with it is

they’re trying to build the perfect
model to start and exactly target

organizations and so they get to a
position where it’s there they build out

this entire map of type of organizations
industry personas within them and then

they they need to then develop content
for each of them and segment their

database and create all these fields
with dropdowns and so although you

eventually get there I think it’s just
find the best fit type of companies

first and start really simply and don’t
get caught up in all the webinars or

analytic framework that it may not be
necessary when we were just getting

started so basically spend some time
figure out who is your identical key ideal

customer profile if you will and find
those keys and then find the right

people within those companies right
because there’s probably half a dozen or

dozen right folks depending on their
their personas in their angles and just

it just depends on where you’re starting
I mean this can be as simple as going to

LinkedIn putting in a profile for
revenue geographic location and industry

and then identifying some titles of
individuals who you want to target in

this company it doesn’t yeah that’s a
very manual way to do it and manual way

to start but at least it gives you the
context of how you find these

individuals and then get the right
component pieces when you start to build

this at scale and either by data about
organizations or augment stuff you

already have and so to find so you
get your your Key people your key target

companies and you figure out okay so
what do I get it for you so how do you

how do you reach out to them what type
of messaging do you use is it

imagine the whole story of the whole
series of messages and different

platforms and different approaches yeah
it’s um meaning it depends on size and

the scale of company I mean it’s always
trying to find attributes or things that

that person or categories of companies
care about yeah I think so you’re

starting starting with an experiment if
you’ve never done it before let’s say

she’s LinkedIn as an example you find a
company you want to do business with you

find the title of an individual within
that organization and then you need to

do a bit of research to understand you
know what are their pain points are

there any articles about their company
or press releases yeah

I’m sure Bob you’re you’re bombarded
like I am with these I just connected

with you on LinkedIn I have these great
lists that you can buy contact me and I

will send you a hundred contacts with
companies that want to buy from you

right now
and so if usually if you’re doing it at

a small scale it is personalizing
messages based on organization to those

individuals and offering to help them in
a way that if they care about if it’s a

cyber security company there’s there’s
specific challenges that they have that

is quite a number of them you know what
what area are they focused in and so

knowing a bit more is is where it starts
initially if you’re doing this at scale

it becomes a you know using they’re
creating a survey or using research that

an audiences is interested in and then
using a data source to identify industry

or augment information about that
company so these are there’s a zoom

info discovere.org there there’s a
whole host of tools where you can

collect data about
out these target companies and then and

make assumptions in terms of what their
needs are and present them with things

you they think you think they may be
interested in it’s not as effective as

one on one but it’s that sort of next
stage and in development or building out

one of these programs I said a lot of
words that hopefully hopefully made

hopefully made sense in terms of how I
walked through that process make sense

do you use intent signals type of data
in the process finding out what their

their dimensions are reading running out
with the social types of signals yeah I

think that’s the little next phase of
development so it I did identifying your

organization’s finding the right titles
and experimenting with to is who is

responsive to those messages then it’s
trying to find out more information in a

more automated fashion about individual
and company to understand what their

needs and pain points are yeah the next
part is intent and so you have it tools

like demand base and others that have
the extensive ad networks and what they

try to do is look at what are
individuals behavior what content are

they absorbing and then did they visit
your website or are they showing

interest by activities in terms of
needing the solution that you offer so

that’s sort of that next day for you to
break this in the buckets in terms of is

the 101 201 301 level intent data is
that the real one level but you have to

do those other those other steps first
because it’s thinner it’s just it’s

harder to collect and typically more
expensive when you are trying to get

data about individuals intent to
purchase or behavior not through your

own channels you know through a visit of
your website

or a download of a piece of content
it beyond that it becomes a bit more

expensive and you have to be really
sophisticated and getting it in their

system and then they’re building rules
to use that information and just just to

clarify it wouldn’t be the intent of a
person they would be more of intent of a

company at the domain level not even
knowing who who that person is just

reading that article for instance yeah I
mean sometimes the there’s all sorts of

um pay per click type models where yeah
companies do research so you have um

probably assent to as an example of one
where they survey industries demand gen

as demand gen report is another example
where you’ve got individuals completing

surveys about what their priorities are
and then that information is passed to

companies and organisations to learn in
intent so it’s both on the company level as

well as an individual who is completing
a survey to get a report so there’s

units that’s one example of a source
there’s LinkedIn Greeks a whole host of

ways to defeat you that out just depends
how little sleep you want to get and

does it really make a difference in
targeting that company with a

personalized experience so they’re more
likely to engage with your company ok so

what what do you have you come up across
how do you handle issues around

data privacy GDPR CCPA coming around
and have you have you had experience

addressing those sort of challenges yeah
I mean I think it’s um so the answer is

yes the the challenge is really you know
how do you initially engage with someone

that you believe that you can help with
your product your solution I think from

a frame GDPR perspective it’s really putting

something in the market that is
compelling enough for someone to respond

to or opt-in to communications with you
a lot of webinars online events it

really that they are they’re essentially
approving your ability to proving the

ability for you to contact them but you
know it’s really caused at least in the

last year year and a half a number of
companies to be really careful about

tagging and identifying where they met
someone how they communicated with them

and really focused on building things to
engage individuals to get that

permission yeah I think in the u.s. it’s
going to be a big it’s going to be a big

change in terms of how companies think
about marketing I mean at this point as

long as it roughly speaking as long as
you when you email someone tell them who

you are what organization and give them
an easy build ability to unsubscribe it

for the most part you can email most
anyone I think when you in the future

when you move to more you know
permission for contacting individuals

that fully changes how you market and
how you target organizations as they you

really have to provide value first
before blasting out an email to tens of

thousands of people makes sense so so what
does the future look like how what is

how do you think things are heading what
do we gonna be talking about in a year

or five years from now as far as ABM
were targeted market I mean

I think we’re going to talk
more about groups of individuals for ABM

or there you’ll have platforms places
where people get information that they

subscribe to that are part of a group
and so

I think ABM is going to be about how do
you provide information to that group

and then solve specific problems in
order to get permissions to communicate

I think there’s a lot of talk about
personalization and what level is

required but I think we’re going to talk
about you know how much better data has

gotten and what programs people are
using in order to get that information

from individuals I think I know if
you’ve seen Google put out some news

from from a chrome perspective about not
allowing third-party smacking codes at

some point in the future and so you’re
really going to need to get information

directly from individuals rather than
relying on other sources to try to

augment what you have so I think it’s
going to be a move to one-on-one

relationships with people and companies
it was I listened to one one podcast

where they said your grandparents are
much better suited to market and sell

than you are and so I think it I think
we’re going to continue to move to that

relationship and individual
correspondence as we as we progress in

the next year at back to the old school
you referred to in the beginning yeah I

mean it’s picking up the it’s um having
a relationship it’s showing how you’re

connected I think we talked at the very
beginning about people we knew in common

as a way to you know bet experience in a
space I think it’s going to be more and

more important and company is going to
rely on it because in in some spaces

like cybersecurity where you have a
company forming it feels like every 30

seconds how do you differentiate and
build a relationship and a lot of it’s

going to be with actual
communications rather than a blast of a

piece of content that you hope is
compelling enough for someone to open

yeah well I hear good things about
handwritten notes people don’t do them

anymore they’re they’re appreciated yeah
we we do that so all of our clients we

do a handwritten holiday card with a
note not just a they’ll have a good 20

20 it’s a note about what we’ve done
with them and at what we’re excited to

do with them in the next year it takes
hours and hours but it it’s a great way

for clients to understand you appreciate
them and it usually has them reaching

out and asking about what net what’s
next or yep how do you think about the

coming year okay good
well I create your time any other words

of wisdom before I let you go no I think
it’s just just try I think for ABM

programs don’t over complicate it start
simply and identify a few companies and

research them and then scale that
process one to you once you figure out

what works excellent thanks very much
appreciate your time have a

great day
great thank you