Do you ever find yourself thinking, “I just wish I knew that company's secret sauce?” Take a deep dive into Groove’s marketing tech stack.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Pipeline Masterclass
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Building the Perfect Tech Stack.
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I don't know about you, but after listening to that
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pipeline power hour, things that are so common
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across the industry is that we are in desperate need
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of more pipeline and every marketing leader agrees.
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So now that we've heard a little bit about kind of the what
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with tactics and strategies, I want to talk about the how.
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So with me today, I have Kristen Horsant,
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the VP of Marketing over at Groove.
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Before we dive in, Kristen, I would love to hear a little bit
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about your background, how you came to Groove,
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and kind of your journey to up until this point.
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Sure, thanks, Emma.
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My name is Kristen Horsant.
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I'm the VP of Marketing for Groove.
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I have spent about 25 years in Series A startup marketing.
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Typically, I will join a startup right after it gets its Series A
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when it has some semblance of product market fit.
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And then I will grow it to be a category leader.
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And typically, I'll go back and find another one and do it again.
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So I have built and established tech stacks many times,
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and I'm excited to speak with you today.
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Awesome.
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You have that serial entrepreneur spirit.
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So excited to dive into that.
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So things we all know, there is so much marketing technology
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out there.
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And as you've said, you've done this a few times now.
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So I'd love to hear kind of about your thought process
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on how you decide what kind of technology
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is worth investing in and what isn't.
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Absolutely.
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So typically, when I join a startup, I come in and I--
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we have some semblance of funding.
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Like I said, we typically have Series A funding.
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And I'm usually building the marketing foundation
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from the ground up.
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So part of my tech stack has been built through many years
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of experience, just trial and error,
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using certain systems and understanding what works and what
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doesn't, and just inherent knowledge
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for certain more established categories,
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like marketing automation, for example.
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But then also, I will typically want
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to stay abreast of new technologies that are coming out
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because, as we know, technology is very dynamic
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and constantly changing and evolving.
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And so I'll usually come in and lay the foundation
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with what I know works.
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And then I'll have a certain budget that's
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kind of set out for more experimental, newer technologies
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that I will task my head of demand gen to go out
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and start investigating.
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Love it.
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I want to double click into something
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you just said about staying on top of new technologies.
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What are some influencers you follow or trades you read?
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Or how do you kind of keep on top of the tech industry
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in general?
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Well, I usually start with the analysts.
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I'm really big on analyst relations.
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So I will always make sure that I read the vendor evaluations
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first.
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Then I tend to check in with the RevOps communities
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and understand what-- because that's their job.
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So they're usually thinking through the best ways
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to be orchestrating data or to integrate systems together
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in a way that is seamless.
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And then I will also ask other heads of demand gen and CMOs
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what they tend-- what they're using.
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And I will use that process to create a short list that we then
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run a full vendor evaluation for.
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Incredible.
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Process has purpose.
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And it seems like now that you've done this a few times,
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you have it down pat.
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Yes, that's absolutely-- well, I mean, like I said,
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nothing's ever perfect.
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You do have to try-- for example, I'll just
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use Qualified as an example.
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When I joined Groove about three years ago,
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we had Drift in place as our chat application.
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And it was fine.
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It was working well.
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But I think it was one of Qualified's SDRs,
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got a hold of my head of demand gen.
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And we decided to give it a shot because our contract
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happened to be up for renewal.
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And lo and behold, we've been able to increase our source
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star, OY, by 7X and our influenced RY by 11X
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by changing platforms.
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And I'm happy to get into why that is.
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If you would like to talk more about that.
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Those stats never cease to amaze me, and it's incredible.
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I do want to get into more of that in a little bit.
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But first, something I want to talk to you about is things
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we've noticed at Qualified is that the entire buying
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committee across the industry has changed.
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So our sellers are up against more decision makers,
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more people involved in the deals, more opinions,
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all that good stuff.
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So take us inside of Groove.
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What does your buying committee look
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like when you're evaluating new marketing technology?
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You mentioned your first line of defense
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is your VP of demand gen.
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How does it kind of go up the food chain from there?
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So it depends on the technology.
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It depends on who's going to be using it at the end of the day.
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I am a firm believer, again, through lots of experience,
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that you can't just make a top-down decision.
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You have to get full buy-in from anybody
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that is going to be using the platform every day.
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So in the case of a sales engagement platform like Groove,
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obviously, ensuring that you're able to run a trial
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with the people who will be using it,
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or using it at the end of the day,
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it's kind of a bad example because that's our platform.
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However, it was very similar for qualifying,
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ensuring that the people that are going to be using it every day
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felt comfortable with the platform.
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In fact, they had a better experience with the platform.
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If it's something kind of behind the scenes,
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like data hygiene or data orchestration,
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then it's very important that obviously revenue operations
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be included, but that the leaders of each functional area
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understand how the data is going to be structured and manipulated
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and that everybody's on board with the enrichment strategy,
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for example.
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This is especially important in a high growth startup
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because I find in the early stages,
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a lot of the leaders tend to make their own technology
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decisions, and then you reach a certain point
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where it all needs to be integrated and start to function
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together as part of an integrated system.
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So the more you can get alignment and secure by in early on
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before you start to scale, the easier it will be.
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So you don't end up in a situation
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where you have a bunch of different technology silos
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and have to stitch them together later.
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It's a lot harder.
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Totally.
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I feel like it's like every marketing leaders nightmare
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to invest in a sales tool that sellers are like,
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oh, we don't know how to use this,
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or revops invest in a marketing tool,
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and the marketing team is like, ugh, we don't really need this.
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And so I love that your take is to really get your cohort
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of decision makers together on the upfront
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because it saves your team so much time internally as well.
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It's absolutely worth the time so that you don't end up
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with pain on the back end.
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I would also add to that that it's
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important to think through your process.
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Like, for example, with something like qualified,
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you could implement qualified with an inbound team,
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or you could implement qualified with an all-bound strategy,
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where it would require very tight sales marketing alignment.
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Those are decisions that also need
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to be made when you bring in the software.
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Right now, we're still in the first stage
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where it's split out between inbound and outbound.
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But moving into 2023, we're starting to look at all bound
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and working really closely with the outbound team
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to ensure that the buyer gets the most unified experience
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possible.
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Awesome.
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Well, shout out to Andrew Ritter, who's your guys' customer
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support manager.
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I know he'll be happy to guide you through that process
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whenever that day comes.
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Andrew's amazing.
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Yes, we do love him.
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So, Kristen, you've noted that you've
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done this now a couple of times.
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What is some software that when you go to a new company,
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your team just simply cannot live without to get started?
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Well, it all has to start with Salesforce
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as the CRM system and the system of record.
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All of my Series A startups that I have joined
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over the last 25 years have all leveraged Salesforce
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as the system of record.
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The next layer that's critical because all of the different go
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to market teams are going to be leveraging Salesforce
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as their centralized database for the company
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is some sort of a data hygiene layer.
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Historically, I've used Ringlead.
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Currently, we are a new customer of a company called Open Prize
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that's relatively new.
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But these are data orchestration platforms
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that can enable you to do multi-vendor enrichment, to D-DUPE,
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ensure that you're not creating more chaos in the database.
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Because without that data layer, you're
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not going to be able to effectively leverage
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any sort of automation, whether it's marketing automation
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or a sales engagement platform, which are the next two
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that I would say.
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Obviously, you need some sort of a marketing automation system.
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We use Pardot because we're a Salesforce shop.
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Groove is built on Salesforce.
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And therefore, the best for Salesforce.
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And so we use marketing automation for our forms,
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for being able to do contact scoring and lead scoring,
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and any sort of when to many communications that
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come from the brand.
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And then Groove is the Sales engagement platform
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that is the one-to-one at scale.
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So that is leveraging automation for sales
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in a way that makes them more efficient, productive,
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and effective.
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And so those two platforms complement each other very nicely.
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In the middle, what we're leveraging with our GoToMarket
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strategy currently is a combination of four different
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intent data providers.
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And then we use six-census our ABM orchestration platform.
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The reason we have four is intentional
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because they're all different data sources.
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So six-census is the best platform for--
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or a six-census or demand-based, we use six-census--
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for understanding intent across the web.
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They also have Bombora integrated into six-census.
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And so that's also accessible.
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We use their advanced platform.
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G2 and TrustRadius are first-party intent for their websites.
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G2 is first-party intent that is stronger in tech.
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So if you're a tech company selling to tech companies,
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then that's critically important.
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TrustRadius is stronger when it comes to more
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traditional enterprises.
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And we service both.
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And so that's why both sets of intent data are important.
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That intent data flows directly into Salesforce.
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And we're able to trigger off of it using Groove
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because Groove is Salesforce native.
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And then finally, last but not least,
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Signals is a really powerful intent data platform
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for our own website so that our teams can understand not just
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what accounts are surging, but the specific content
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that they're looking at on our website
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and they can tailor their communications accordingly.
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Groove, as I mentioned, is our platform.
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We are the leading sales engagement platform
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for enterprises on Salesforce because we
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are built on Salesforce, which is actually something
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that we share in common with Qualified.
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It provides significantly greater transparency,
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greater flexibility, the ability
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to trigger off of any field in Salesforce instantly.
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You don't have to deal with any sort of sync errors
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or data latency.
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And we integrate beautifully with Qualified via Salesforce
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because we are both built on Salesforce
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as the system of record.
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So this is our tech stack.
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It is a very elegant tech stack and it is working phenomenally
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well for us.
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Good.
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Well, thank you for spilling a little bit of the tea
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because I know that just in this economic headwinds,
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all the other buzzwords that we've all heard,
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what I've seen across the communities that I'm involved in
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is like, how do you do it?
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How do you generate this pipeline?
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So I think by showing this example and being so open about it,
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it's just so helpful to the marketers and demand gen
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leaders on this session to learn how you're able to come in
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and really scale your business up quickly.
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One thing you mentioned at the top of the session
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was when you first came to Groove,
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you were using an alternate solution to Qualified.
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So I'd love to hear kind of like, in hindsight,
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is it the Salesforce, like native Salesforce compatibility?
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What is it that makes Groove and Qualified tick so well?
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That is a huge part of it.
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And in fact, I would say it's probably the biggest part of it.
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Because we integrate everything into Salesforce
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as the system of record, we're able to have full visibility
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into every single interaction.
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One of the-- another piece of technology
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that's not on this must-have slide that we use
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is seismic, which is a sales engagement platform, which
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also ties link tracking back through to Salesforce.
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So we're able to know--
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like, for example, if we're outbound prospecting into an account,
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we're able to know specifically who
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is running the active evaluation because they're
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interacting with the content.
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And that's all in Salesforce.
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So it just provides our team with a level--
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the combination of Groove and Qualified in Salesforce
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provides our team with a level of transparency
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that you wouldn't get if you were using systems that
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were siloed or these separate systems outside of Salesforce
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that are trying to sync everything back into Salesforce,
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not in a native way.
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Totally.
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I feel like with this stack, you are legitimately
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pioneering the future of pipeline generation.
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And just seeing it put together so elegantly,
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just tells such a cohesive story of the why behind each tool
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and what you guys achieve with each investment that you make.
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So thank you again for being so open to sharing the tech stack.
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I know that's a question that is oftentimes hard to answer
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because you don't want to open the hood too much,
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but really appreciate the transparency here.
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Of course.
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Our pleasure.
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And that's it from Pipeline Masterclass
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Building the Perfect Tech Stack.
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Kristen, thank you so much for coming on to Pipeline Summit
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today.
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I can't even begin to tell you how hugely helpful it
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is for fellow marketers on the call
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to see your process and thought that
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goes into building your perfect tech stack
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and being so transparent with what Groove has going on.
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So up next, we have the Art of Mastering Alignment
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on the Pipeline Council with Sarah McConnell and Matt
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your in from Bombura.