Building the Perfect Tech Stack

0:00

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Pipeline Masterclass

0:03

Building the Perfect Tech Stack.

0:05

I don't know about you, but after listening to that

0:07

pipeline power hour, things that are so common

0:09

across the industry is that we are in desperate need

0:11

of more pipeline and every marketing leader agrees.

0:15

So now that we've heard a little bit about kind of the what

0:18

with tactics and strategies, I want to talk about the how.

0:22

So with me today, I have Kristen Horsant,

0:24

the VP of Marketing over at Groove.

0:27

Before we dive in, Kristen, I would love to hear a little bit

0:29

about your background, how you came to Groove,

0:32

and kind of your journey to up until this point.

0:34

Sure, thanks, Emma.

0:36

My name is Kristen Horsant.

0:37

I'm the VP of Marketing for Groove.

0:39

I have spent about 25 years in Series A startup marketing.

0:43

Typically, I will join a startup right after it gets its Series A

0:48

when it has some semblance of product market fit.

0:50

And then I will grow it to be a category leader.

0:52

And typically, I'll go back and find another one and do it again.

0:56

So I have built and established tech stacks many times,

1:01

and I'm excited to speak with you today.

1:04

Awesome.

1:04

You have that serial entrepreneur spirit.

1:06

So excited to dive into that.

1:09

So things we all know, there is so much marketing technology

1:13

out there.

1:14

And as you've said, you've done this a few times now.

1:16

So I'd love to hear kind of about your thought process

1:19

on how you decide what kind of technology

1:21

is worth investing in and what isn't.

1:24

Absolutely.

1:25

So typically, when I join a startup, I come in and I--

1:29

we have some semblance of funding.

1:30

Like I said, we typically have Series A funding.

1:33

And I'm usually building the marketing foundation

1:36

from the ground up.

1:37

So part of my tech stack has been built through many years

1:41

of experience, just trial and error,

1:45

using certain systems and understanding what works and what

1:48

doesn't, and just inherent knowledge

1:51

for certain more established categories,

1:53

like marketing automation, for example.

1:56

But then also, I will typically want

2:00

to stay abreast of new technologies that are coming out

2:05

because, as we know, technology is very dynamic

2:08

and constantly changing and evolving.

2:10

And so I'll usually come in and lay the foundation

2:14

with what I know works.

2:15

And then I'll have a certain budget that's

2:17

kind of set out for more experimental, newer technologies

2:21

that I will task my head of demand gen to go out

2:24

and start investigating.

2:26

Love it.

2:26

I want to double click into something

2:27

you just said about staying on top of new technologies.

2:31

What are some influencers you follow or trades you read?

2:34

Or how do you kind of keep on top of the tech industry

2:38

in general?

2:39

Well, I usually start with the analysts.

2:42

I'm really big on analyst relations.

2:44

So I will always make sure that I read the vendor evaluations

2:48

first.

2:49

Then I tend to check in with the RevOps communities

2:52

and understand what-- because that's their job.

2:56

So they're usually thinking through the best ways

3:00

to be orchestrating data or to integrate systems together

3:04

in a way that is seamless.

3:06

And then I will also ask other heads of demand gen and CMOs

3:12

what they tend-- what they're using.

3:14

And I will use that process to create a short list that we then

3:18

run a full vendor evaluation for.

3:21

Incredible.

3:21

Process has purpose.

3:22

And it seems like now that you've done this a few times,

3:25

you have it down pat.

3:27

Yes, that's absolutely-- well, I mean, like I said,

3:30

nothing's ever perfect.

3:31

You do have to try-- for example, I'll just

3:36

use Qualified as an example.

3:37

When I joined Groove about three years ago,

3:39

we had Drift in place as our chat application.

3:43

And it was fine.

3:44

It was working well.

3:45

But I think it was one of Qualified's SDRs,

3:48

got a hold of my head of demand gen.

3:51

And we decided to give it a shot because our contract

3:55

happened to be up for renewal.

3:57

And lo and behold, we've been able to increase our source

4:00

star, OY, by 7X and our influenced RY by 11X

4:04

by changing platforms.

4:06

And I'm happy to get into why that is.

4:07

If you would like to talk more about that.

4:10

Those stats never cease to amaze me, and it's incredible.

4:14

I do want to get into more of that in a little bit.

4:16

But first, something I want to talk to you about is things

4:19

we've noticed at Qualified is that the entire buying

4:24

committee across the industry has changed.

4:26

So our sellers are up against more decision makers,

4:29

more people involved in the deals, more opinions,

4:32

all that good stuff.

4:33

So take us inside of Groove.

4:34

What does your buying committee look

4:36

like when you're evaluating new marketing technology?

4:39

You mentioned your first line of defense

4:40

is your VP of demand gen.

4:42

How does it kind of go up the food chain from there?

4:45

So it depends on the technology.

4:47

It depends on who's going to be using it at the end of the day.

4:50

I am a firm believer, again, through lots of experience,

4:54

that you can't just make a top-down decision.

4:56

You have to get full buy-in from anybody

4:59

that is going to be using the platform every day.

5:02

So in the case of a sales engagement platform like Groove,

5:05

obviously, ensuring that you're able to run a trial

5:09

with the people who will be using it,

5:12

or using it at the end of the day,

5:13

it's kind of a bad example because that's our platform.

5:17

However, it was very similar for qualifying,

5:21

ensuring that the people that are going to be using it every day

5:24

felt comfortable with the platform.

5:27

In fact, they had a better experience with the platform.

5:30

If it's something kind of behind the scenes,

5:33

like data hygiene or data orchestration,

5:36

then it's very important that obviously revenue operations

5:40

be included, but that the leaders of each functional area

5:44

understand how the data is going to be structured and manipulated

5:49

and that everybody's on board with the enrichment strategy,

5:52

for example.

5:53

This is especially important in a high growth startup

5:57

because I find in the early stages,

6:00

a lot of the leaders tend to make their own technology

6:03

decisions, and then you reach a certain point

6:05

where it all needs to be integrated and start to function

6:07

together as part of an integrated system.

6:10

So the more you can get alignment and secure by in early on

6:16

before you start to scale, the easier it will be.

6:19

So you don't end up in a situation

6:21

where you have a bunch of different technology silos

6:23

and have to stitch them together later.

6:25

It's a lot harder.

6:27

Totally.

6:27

I feel like it's like every marketing leaders nightmare

6:29

to invest in a sales tool that sellers are like,

6:32

oh, we don't know how to use this,

6:34

or revops invest in a marketing tool,

6:36

and the marketing team is like, ugh, we don't really need this.

6:40

And so I love that your take is to really get your cohort

6:45

of decision makers together on the upfront

6:46

because it saves your team so much time internally as well.

6:50

It's absolutely worth the time so that you don't end up

6:53

with pain on the back end.

6:55

I would also add to that that it's

6:59

important to think through your process.

7:01

Like, for example, with something like qualified,

7:04

you could implement qualified with an inbound team,

7:06

or you could implement qualified with an all-bound strategy,

7:11

where it would require very tight sales marketing alignment.

7:16

Those are decisions that also need

7:17

to be made when you bring in the software.

7:19

Right now, we're still in the first stage

7:21

where it's split out between inbound and outbound.

7:23

But moving into 2023, we're starting to look at all bound

7:26

and working really closely with the outbound team

7:29

to ensure that the buyer gets the most unified experience

7:33

possible.

7:35

Awesome.

7:35

Well, shout out to Andrew Ritter, who's your guys' customer

7:39

support manager.

7:40

I know he'll be happy to guide you through that process

7:42

whenever that day comes.

7:43

Andrew's amazing.

7:45

Yes, we do love him.

7:46

So, Kristen, you've noted that you've

7:48

done this now a couple of times.

7:49

What is some software that when you go to a new company,

7:52

your team just simply cannot live without to get started?

7:56

Well, it all has to start with Salesforce

7:58

as the CRM system and the system of record.

8:01

All of my Series A startups that I have joined

8:04

over the last 25 years have all leveraged Salesforce

8:07

as the system of record.

8:09

The next layer that's critical because all of the different go

8:13

to market teams are going to be leveraging Salesforce

8:15

as their centralized database for the company

8:18

is some sort of a data hygiene layer.

8:21

Historically, I've used Ringlead.

8:23

Currently, we are a new customer of a company called Open Prize

8:28

that's relatively new.

8:29

But these are data orchestration platforms

8:31

that can enable you to do multi-vendor enrichment, to D-DUPE,

8:35

ensure that you're not creating more chaos in the database.

8:40

Because without that data layer, you're

8:41

not going to be able to effectively leverage

8:44

any sort of automation, whether it's marketing automation

8:46

or a sales engagement platform, which are the next two

8:51

that I would say.

8:51

Obviously, you need some sort of a marketing automation system.

8:55

We use Pardot because we're a Salesforce shop.

8:57

Groove is built on Salesforce.

8:59

And therefore, the best for Salesforce.

9:02

And so we use marketing automation for our forms,

9:06

for being able to do contact scoring and lead scoring,

9:12

and any sort of when to many communications that

9:14

come from the brand.

9:16

And then Groove is the Sales engagement platform

9:19

that is the one-to-one at scale.

9:21

So that is leveraging automation for sales

9:24

in a way that makes them more efficient, productive,

9:27

and effective.

9:28

And so those two platforms complement each other very nicely.

9:31

In the middle, what we're leveraging with our GoToMarket

9:36

strategy currently is a combination of four different

9:39

intent data providers.

9:40

And then we use six-census our ABM orchestration platform.

9:45

The reason we have four is intentional

9:48

because they're all different data sources.

9:50

So six-census is the best platform for--

9:54

or a six-census or demand-based, we use six-census--

9:56

for understanding intent across the web.

10:00

They also have Bombora integrated into six-census.

10:02

And so that's also accessible.

10:04

We use their advanced platform.

10:06

G2 and TrustRadius are first-party intent for their websites.

10:11

G2 is first-party intent that is stronger in tech.

10:15

So if you're a tech company selling to tech companies,

10:18

then that's critically important.

10:20

TrustRadius is stronger when it comes to more

10:23

traditional enterprises.

10:24

And we service both.

10:27

And so that's why both sets of intent data are important.

10:31

That intent data flows directly into Salesforce.

10:33

And we're able to trigger off of it using Groove

10:35

because Groove is Salesforce native.

10:38

And then finally, last but not least,

10:40

Signals is a really powerful intent data platform

10:44

for our own website so that our teams can understand not just

10:48

what accounts are surging, but the specific content

10:51

that they're looking at on our website

10:53

and they can tailor their communications accordingly.

10:56

Groove, as I mentioned, is our platform.

10:59

We are the leading sales engagement platform

11:02

for enterprises on Salesforce because we

11:04

are built on Salesforce, which is actually something

11:07

that we share in common with Qualified.

11:09

It provides significantly greater transparency,

11:13

greater flexibility, the ability

11:15

to trigger off of any field in Salesforce instantly.

11:18

You don't have to deal with any sort of sync errors

11:21

or data latency.

11:22

And we integrate beautifully with Qualified via Salesforce

11:26

because we are both built on Salesforce

11:28

as the system of record.

11:30

So this is our tech stack.

11:33

It is a very elegant tech stack and it is working phenomenally

11:37

well for us.

11:39

Good.

11:39

Well, thank you for spilling a little bit of the tea

11:41

because I know that just in this economic headwinds,

11:44

all the other buzzwords that we've all heard,

11:47

what I've seen across the communities that I'm involved in

11:49

is like, how do you do it?

11:51

How do you generate this pipeline?

11:52

So I think by showing this example and being so open about it,

11:55

it's just so helpful to the marketers and demand gen

11:58

leaders on this session to learn how you're able to come in

12:02

and really scale your business up quickly.

12:04

One thing you mentioned at the top of the session

12:06

was when you first came to Groove,

12:08

you were using an alternate solution to Qualified.

12:11

So I'd love to hear kind of like, in hindsight,

12:13

is it the Salesforce, like native Salesforce compatibility?

12:17

What is it that makes Groove and Qualified tick so well?

12:20

That is a huge part of it.

12:23

And in fact, I would say it's probably the biggest part of it.

12:26

Because we integrate everything into Salesforce

12:29

as the system of record, we're able to have full visibility

12:33

into every single interaction.

12:35

One of the-- another piece of technology

12:37

that's not on this must-have slide that we use

12:40

is seismic, which is a sales engagement platform, which

12:44

also ties link tracking back through to Salesforce.

12:47

So we're able to know--

12:49

like, for example, if we're outbound prospecting into an account,

12:53

we're able to know specifically who

12:58

is running the active evaluation because they're

13:00

interacting with the content.

13:02

And that's all in Salesforce.

13:04

So it just provides our team with a level--

13:06

the combination of Groove and Qualified in Salesforce

13:09

provides our team with a level of transparency

13:12

that you wouldn't get if you were using systems that

13:14

were siloed or these separate systems outside of Salesforce

13:18

that are trying to sync everything back into Salesforce,

13:20

not in a native way.

13:22

Totally.

13:23

I feel like with this stack, you are legitimately

13:25

pioneering the future of pipeline generation.

13:28

And just seeing it put together so elegantly,

13:30

just tells such a cohesive story of the why behind each tool

13:34

and what you guys achieve with each investment that you make.

13:38

So thank you again for being so open to sharing the tech stack.

13:42

I know that's a question that is oftentimes hard to answer

13:44

because you don't want to open the hood too much,

13:47

but really appreciate the transparency here.

13:49

Of course.

13:50

Our pleasure.

13:51

And that's it from Pipeline Masterclass

13:53

Building the Perfect Tech Stack.

13:55

Kristen, thank you so much for coming on to Pipeline Summit

13:58

today.

13:59

I can't even begin to tell you how hugely helpful it

14:01

is for fellow marketers on the call

14:02

to see your process and thought that

14:05

goes into building your perfect tech stack

14:07

and being so transparent with what Groove has going on.

14:10

So up next, we have the Art of Mastering Alignment

14:14

on the Pipeline Council with Sarah McConnell and Matt

14:16

your in from Bombura.