Ian Faison & Kevin Tate 34 min

Building Brand Awareness in Shifting Markets


Kevin Tate, CMO at Clearbit offers valuable insights on the shifting economics of demand generation driven by changes in the market.



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[MUSIC]

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Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries presented by Qualified.

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Go to Qualified.com to learn more.

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I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios.

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And today I am joined by recurring guest, Kevin, how are you?

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>> I'm good.

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It's good to be back.

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Recurring guest.

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>> Thank you.

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It feels good.

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>> You're not super new interior at Clearbit, but it was at the more of the

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beginning of your journey.

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And here we are, checking in a year later.

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I've been there maybe five months, and now it's been almost two years.

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So yeah, different times.

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Yeah.

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>> So tell us what is going on with Clearbit, how have things changed in the

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past year

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for you and your?

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>> Things have gotten busy.

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It is a little bit different landscape today than it was in December 21.

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And we're certainly working with a lot more companies who are a lot more

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focused

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on the quality of their funnel and of their go-to market motion.

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I think one of the big things that we've seen is if you go back to in the way

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back machine to 21, there was a sense of just, yeah, give me whatever I need to

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grow as

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quickly as possible, sort of a growth at all costs mindset because it felt like

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all boats

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were rising so quickly and B2B.

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And what we see today is more of a, how do I grow efficiently?

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My demand gym budget probably isn't going up and my focus on my ideal customers

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needs

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to get even stronger.

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So the customers that we're talking to today, various states and various sizes,

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but there's

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a commonality in how do I be efficient?

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How do I make sure that I have the best understanding of my go-to market and

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put data to work

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and the best way I can?

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So that's a lot of what we're thinking about these days.

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>> And for our listeners that don't know, can you just give a quick refresh on

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Clearbit

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and who your customers are and who you serve?

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>> Yeah.

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So I'm Kevin Tate, CMO at Clearbit.

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And Clearbit brings data, we have 50 million company profiles and hundreds of

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millions

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of contact profiles that are all about pretty much every company with a website

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And companies use that and all of our APIs and our platform to put that data to

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work

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all across their go-to market.

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So they'll use it to do everything from target their ads more precisely to know

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who's coming

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to their website because we can resolve the IP address, which is a big one.

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And once you know what company someone is from on your website, you can do all

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kinds

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of cool stuff.

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You can personalize the website, you can pop the chat window because you know

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they're

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a great prospect.

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And then you can do things like follow up with them afterwards because you know

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who the key

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buyers are based on the data you have access to.

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So companies use Clearbit to make their whole go-to markets smarter.

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>> And obviously you mentioned this, but we have this new normal.

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So many new normal these days.

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>> But the new normal of everybody getting their pipeline scrutinized more than

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ever.

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What are you seeing from your customers and how they are able to navigate those

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conversations?

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>> It's a good question.

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It's fun.

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Clearbit's a fun vantage point because you can put this data to work in so many

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different

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places that working with our customers.

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We get a litmus test or a reflection of where they focused.

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And where they're focused today is largely around optimizing their inbound or

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said differently.

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How do I get more better leads from my website?

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Which is interesting.

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It's certainly related to demand gen and how do I spend effectively.

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I think a lot of what we're seeing is, yeah, I'm going to get them to the site

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and that's

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going to cost me a lot of money.

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How do I make sure that I give them the very best site experience, that I know

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who they

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are and that I'm optimizing my sales efforts around the highest priority ones.

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So a lot of that rhymes with optimizing that inbound motion and that's become a

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real big

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focus area in this new economy.

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>> What about the outbound motion as well?

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Because this is something that with budgets constricting and people are a

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little bit more

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concerned with how they're spending money.

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I don't know if you've noticed this, but I've noticed that like Blint and for

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example

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is cheaper now for us, for sure, than the LinkedIn ads that Caspian is running.

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So I think that there's been a pullback on that stuff.

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I've absolutely noted that it's completely anecdotal and I'm sure it's not

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everyone who

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has the data companies probably like that.

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Definitely not true for us.

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But yeah, I don't know what, but what are you seeing in terms of outbound and

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creating

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demand rather than the capturing size?

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>> Yeah.

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So a few pieces there and some of the ones that we end up working with

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customers almost.

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So first is the using social including LinkedIn to target really precisely with

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B2B attributes,

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right?

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So making sure you're going after the companies and the industries and the sub-

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sectors and

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the titles and the departments.

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All that is a lot of what Clibbit gets used for on the demand gen side.

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We're also seeing the economics change there.

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I think some of that is the platforms growing up and getting better with data

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like ours to

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target more specifically.

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I do think also the reality is given the market shift, there's more tire

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kicking than there

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used to be.

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It's a little bit of an over characterization, but when things were really fro

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thy, you could

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be more sure that someone who came across your content ad on Facebook or

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Instagram or

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somewhere, yeah, they might just be in the market.

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And now I think it's less likely that they're ready to buy now, but it's just

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as important

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for you as a brand to be building awareness so that you're top of mind when the

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time is

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right.

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It just kind of changes that equation a little bit.

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I know for Clibbit, for example, we've changed the way we look at our social

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advertising,

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expecting less direct leads and more awareness and engagement that then lead

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people to our

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site that then will turn into leads when the time is right.

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So I think it's changed a bit the way people expect things from their demand

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spend.

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But then the other side of that, when you think about outbound, there's that

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spend and

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demand creation, there's also the sales outbounding.

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And we have a BDR team or an SDR team that is trying to start net new

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conversations.

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And that's an area where we see companies kind of almost bifurcating.

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So we see some teams really saying, all right, get on the phones.

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We just we got a we got a cold call.

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And I know everybody hates cold calling, but we got to do it.

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And it's not wrong, but I know my phone is just blown up and it feels like

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everybody

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has my mobile number.

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And so it's awful.

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And so that's not it.

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You want to track it here?

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That's not our approach.

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We're not so much focused on that and enabling that motion where we've been

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working on we

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want something last year called capture that does this when a company is

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showing interest

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because you can tell from who came to your website.

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How do you make sure you can connect with the key buyers that that company,

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whether

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that's through campaigns or through emails, like how do you start building that

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air cover

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awareness at the right time?

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And that's the sales outbound motion that we've been more working with

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companies to

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enable.

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And again, this capability around capture to get the key contacts for the

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companies that

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are showing intent and appear to be in market, that's been a pretty powerful

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tool.

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So I think it adds up to sort of smarter outbound.

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I like that smarter outbound.

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Thank everybody thinks that second half budgets are going to be a little

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different than they

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are now.

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And gosh, isn't that just like I was having this conversation with our CFO and

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I was thinking

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about how hard projecting is right now and thinking about the second half of

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the year

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and all these conversations that people are kicking the can people do that

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anyways, the

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normal sales cycle, right?

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But thinking of it strategically of like how many people are doing that and a

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lot of that

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will end up being kicked a can till Q4 or Q1 next year.

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Ultimately, a lot of the advice is do more or less sit back a little bit.

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Don't waste your money getting in conversations that aren't going to convert.

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And I almost feel the opposite as I almost feel like getting in those

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conversations now

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and really helping your sales team to build thoughtful, relevant sort of

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experiences for

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those people to know that like we're not the pain in the ass to work with.

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We're not going to be beating down your door every two seconds to close the

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deal.

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We're actually going to like understand what you're saying and we're actually

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building

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content and community resources and things that are anticipating you're wanting

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to get

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budget back and do these initiatives that you want to do later in the year.

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I don't know.

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That's just kind of how I personally feel about it.

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And it's how I feel as a buyer.

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Maybe that's why is because that's how I feel as a buyer.

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Where it's like, I kind of want to know when I'm going to get to make those

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decisions and

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the CFO isn't telling me.

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So if you can help me as seller to like crisis plan a little bit for me, that

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would be nice.

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Yeah.

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I don't know.

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What do you think?

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I think you're right.

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And it's a great point because people take very different approaches under that

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stress.

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Right?

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So what I picture when you talk about it, let's say you've got 50 people, 50

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companies in

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your pipeline.

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And now you know that they're going to be kicking the can down on budget.

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One approach is just focus on the five that you know have budget and can buy.

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Okay.

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Yep.

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That's not wrong.

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But then there's also, all right, let's make that 50, 100 because I don't know

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quite

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when.

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But I want to be in as many conversations as I can when the time is right.

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And you got to do both.

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And I think that some of the sales versus marketing tension right now is how

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you focus

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on closing the highest priority, but you're also building pipe for the future.

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One of the things that we've done as a part of that strategy to your point is

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we focused

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more on our free tools.

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So we offer something called the weekly visitor report that lets you see who's

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coming to your

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website for free.

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And it doesn't show you all the companies because it's the free version, but

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you can

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unlock more and then we've got things like our TAM calculator and our connect

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extension

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for Chrome.

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We've been really relying on those to let companies who maybe are kicking the

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can down

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the road in terms of budget, but start using Clearbit and start seeing the

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value and start

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trying it out.

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And we trust that when the time is right, we'll be top of mind.

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So that's been part of our kind of not so secret plan to expand that set of

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conversations,

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even though we know that it might be a while before they're ready to buy.

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I absolutely love that advice because it speaks to the person who really wants

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to solve this

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problem right now, but doesn't have the budget for it.

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So it's like just give them a taste of solving it now, at least so that they

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could start solving

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it now.

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And like most software products pricing is endlessly complex thing.

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And I don't pretend to know a lot about it because it is so complex.

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If there is something that you can do to work on right now to get people into

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the product

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now is a six month free trial.

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Hey, you really think that this is going to close in six months.

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Okay.

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Here's your six month free trial.

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Let's see how much we can onboard you and get you using the product or whatever

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because

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we know you're going to be back.

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Maybe you don't do that for anyone, but maybe there's like a super high LTV

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profile of your

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persona that if you're like, Hey, everyone in FinTech, we're going to give a

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six month

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free trial for whatever, however you think about that stuff and then launch a

11:28

campaign

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like that.

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And maybe that's totally wrong.

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Maybe nobody would care and maybe that loses you a bunch of business down the

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road because

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they don't have enough skin in the game or something like that.

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I think it's an interesting thing to focus on those free tools and getting

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people into

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the product when they don't have the money to really experience the whole thing

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I think you're right.

11:48

I think you're right.

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And I think we may look back at this time and realize, Oh, there was a whole

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land grab

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going on with free tools and free trials.

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And if you weren't participating, then you're starting from the back foot.

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So that's certainly what we've been leaning into as a marketer.

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It also means a lot more companies that you're working with and talking to and

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learning from

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and are getting value from these tools.

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It just expands the conversation versus that sort of former approach, which is

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just like,

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all right, let's get really narrow minded or tunnel vision around just the

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people of

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budget.

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It's a hard way to live.

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So yeah, we've been expanding.

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Let's get into our next segment, the playbook where you open up the playbook

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and talk about

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the tactics that help you win.

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You play to win the game.

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Hello, you play to win the game.

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You don't play to just play it.

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Obviously, the first time around, you told us you're on cutable budget items,

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but I'm

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curious how those things have changed.

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What are your three uncutable budget items now as we currently sit as the

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entire world

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changes every six months?

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Yeah.

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What are your three uncutables?

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The first would be mid funnel content.

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This is a little different from I would have said 15 months ago in this world

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of people

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who may have interest but not budget and trying to make sure we can nurture

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people along through

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what may be a longer cycle.

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We've really leaned into what we define as mid funnel content.

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We actually organized our team into talk with funnel, mid funnel, bottom of

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funnel, and

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each has its own objectives and content and things.

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I realize it's not the first ones to do that.

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The mid funnel focus for us are things like guides.

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How to guides for trying to better score and route your leads using Clearbit

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and Lead Feeder?

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Here's exactly how to do that step by step.

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We've been published 12 of those guides in just the last few weeks.

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That's been a big focus for us around this mid funnel content that helps

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someone solve

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very specific problems using Clearbit.

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That also gives us that signal, "Okay, someone's moving from looking around and

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learning to

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their reading guides about very specific implementation and how to approach

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things.

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That tells us that they're getting further down the path."

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That's uncutable number one.

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I think uncutable number two has been our use of our own reveal capability.

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That's the ability that lets you turn an IP address into knowing what company

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someone

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is from so you can treat them like you know them because you do.

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We actually weren't taking as much advantage of that in the past as we have

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been in the

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last year.

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We use one of our partners, Mutiny, on our site to do personalization based on

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that IP

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address.

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We use partners like Chili Piper to make sure that we're scheduling meetings

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right away

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with the ones that are best fit.

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We have a lot of scoring that now goes in the prioritization for the sales

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people based

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on what we could reveal about that company and how well they fit our ICP.

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Applying a lot of the sort of Clearbit capabilities to Clearbit has been a

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focus of ours over

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the last year or so.

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I would say that we've seen really strong results from being able to know who

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our ICPs

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are and then treat them like VIPs.

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That has become an indispensable budget item for us.

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Then I have a new one.

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We'll see.

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On here in a year we can see whether or not this one comes true or not.

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But we're trying to start something new.

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Again, focused on the mid funnel, which is a weekly demo, a Clearbit Live

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weekly demo.

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We just say, "Look, we're going to be here every week.

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One of our SEs is going to show the platform and what you can do with it for 20

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minutes.

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If you want to come, do and ask questions."

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Really low pressure, really low hurdle.

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I have this theory that any buyers, but especially smart experience technical

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marketing buyers,

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like, "Hey, let's schedule some time for you to get on the phone with a sales

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person."

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That's kind of a high hurdle.

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That's asking a lot of my time.

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I would like to put a lower hurdle in the middle of our funnel that's just like

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, "We're

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here every Wednesday.

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Feel free to join."

16:07

We're hoping to kick that off here in a couple of weeks.

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I think it could be a really interesting waypost in our mid funnel.

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Let's just see who comes.

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I don't know.

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I don't know if five are going to come or 50 are going to come, but it's good

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either

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way.

16:22

It gives us a way to just, again, just engage in this real live way with our

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mid funnel

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customers in a way that's low pressure.

16:30

I love it.

16:31

I've heard that has worked really well for other companies.

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Somebody did a post on that.

16:35

Maybe Jason Lemkin did a post or he was like, "Every single company should do

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this.

16:38

It's such a no-brainer."

16:39

I forget.

16:40

I think it's him.

16:41

Yeah, I agree.

16:42

I totally agree.

16:43

Why not?

16:44

Yeah.

16:45

That's the thing.

16:46

If one person shows up, that's what a regular demo is.

16:48

Yeah.

16:49

It's interesting.

16:50

It's working on this side benefit, which is that our AEs and our solution

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engineers

16:56

always need more practice and demos.

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Having them rotate through could be a really nice way to also give them more

17:02

practice and

17:03

hone those skills.

17:05

I think only goodness can come of it.

17:07

But again, if we're back here in a year, you can contest me.

17:10

It's fascinating.

17:11

I'm going to be really interested to see the results.

17:13

So I'm excited to follow along.

17:14

Are you also going to publish a recorded demo that people can just consume on

17:19

their

17:20

own?

17:21

We've asked ourselves that question.

17:23

My guess is yes, because why not?

17:27

But my only hesitancy is that I wouldn't want it to supplant to the other.

17:33

So we do want something that's low hurdle.

17:35

There's still a little bit of a like, "Yeah, I'm going to go to the Wednesday

17:38

Clearbit

17:39

Live versus I'm just going to speed through the recorded ones."

17:42

So I don't know.

17:43

Probably is the answer.

17:45

But maybe we'll take it and cut it up into three or four short subjects that

17:49

really become

17:50

more like a quick take on certain parts of the solution and use it that way.

17:56

I was reading a great sales post where they were talking about the four

18:00

questions at every

18:02

sales person would ask, "Gosh, I got to find this thing now."

18:05

But they were all very listener heavy, right?

18:08

They were intended for that really brilliant sales rep that wants to go listen

18:14

to how these

18:15

people describe their own problems in a creative way and pull those things out

18:19

and map that

18:20

back to how the product fits in there, which is what every single marketer

18:23

wants to hear

18:24

that their sales people are doing.

18:26

And I wonder how you can create a really easy next step to that demo experience

18:34

to get

18:34

there or if it's just a totally different type of buyer that needs that thing.

18:38

Because I always look at it as the type of buyer self-selects into the way that

18:42

they

18:42

want, but at some point in time, there's going to need to be some hand holding.

18:47

And if you let them self-select into the one, I've done this a million times.

18:51

Yeah, yeah, okay, I got it.

18:53

And then it's like, you get to the point and you're like, "Wait, no, actually I

18:55

do have

18:56

10 questions."

18:57

And it's like, these are all the things that you said you got.

19:00

So there is that natural thing there.

19:01

But I wonder how there's that sort of personalized touch.

19:05

I also always wonder if the next step is talking to a person with that role

19:11

rather than a sales

19:13

person.

19:14

Like if you put a A, B, like button A, talk to a sales person, button B, talk

19:19

to your

19:19

peer at our company who does your same job.

19:22

Right.

19:23

Like how many people would click the button B?

19:25

Oh my gosh, I know in ClearBits case, it would be a lot.

19:28

And it's not because we don't have great salespeople, we do.

19:31

But the so often we're talking to a demand marketer that is looking for demand-

19:37

gen strategies

19:38

and how to optimize their inbound say, and they want to talk to Colin who runs

19:42

demand

19:43

on my team.

19:44

And it's great.

19:45

And we get them together and they're like, "Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah," because

19:47

they're

19:47

living in the same world with the same challenges.

19:50

And it's one of the fun things about ClearBits because it gets very meta, right

19:53

We're using ClearBit, @ClearBit to sell ClearBit.

19:57

And so we have a lot to talk about when it comes to how do you actually use

20:01

this well.

20:02

So it keeps it fun.

20:03

I think it's also interesting to see how the, what you describe, that sort of

20:08

solution architecture.

20:10

Now, let's get on the whiteboard and figure out how is actually all this going

20:13

to fit

20:14

for you in your particular context that has changed in this virtual Zoom-based

20:22

world.

20:23

I'm dating myself here, but when I started my career and it was in the late '90

20:27

s, I was

20:27

literally filling up actual whiteboards with, "Here's how your website's going

20:31

to work

20:32

and everything."

20:33

And that, it's a little trickier to do over Zoom.

20:37

And this is how we all sell today.

20:39

We see people doing some pretty innovative things.

20:41

I'm hopeful that that sort of co-creation of the solution in a whiteboard-y

20:46

kind of

20:47

way is something that we get better and better at in these virtual environments

20:50

, because

20:51

I think it's such an important part of the consultative selling process.

20:54

Yeah, agreed.

20:56

And I think that ultimately if you're doing, if you have that strong consultant

21:01

level sales

21:02

approach that at the end of the day, yes, the sales engineer is part of that.

21:07

But there has to be someone who actually has this job because at the end of the

21:13

day, the

21:14

reason why consultants make a lot of money is because they tell you how to,

21:17

what's the

21:18

old phrase, ask you for the time and tell you to buy a better watch or

21:22

something or

21:23

whatever that is.

21:24

Yeah, they borrow your watch and then tell you the time.

21:26

Yeah, exactly.

21:27

That's right.

21:28

Right.

21:29

Right.

21:30

So true.

21:31

But the alternative to that is the person who is sitting in the seat with you.

21:35

And I wonder if the pathway is there.

21:38

If we eliminated the pathways, the roadblocks in order to talk to someone like

21:42

that faster,

21:43

because they got to find that person at your company, they got to schedule time

21:46

with them.

21:47

Yeah.

21:48

They use it to like calendar, chilli, whatever, whatever.

21:50

You know, it's like, yeah, you get into so many different things.

21:53

I wonder also if the demo that you record, if you made a recorded one available

21:59

, that

22:00

was an interactive one where it is like your person sitting in the seat, like

22:05

calling for

22:06

you where he's asking questions or they're asking him questions about his

22:11

product.

22:12

So it's not just a straight demo.

22:15

It gets a lot of those like the consultative questions asked.

22:18

They're like, oh, well, actually I have this problem in this forever.

22:20

I don't know if you could act that or if you could just have him do it honestly

22:24

But that's an interesting angle.

22:27

I'm going to take it in a weird direction, which is that it reminds me that

22:32

sort of how

22:32

do I accomplish this question?

22:35

And then how do you get back answers to that at scale?

22:39

The whole AI chat GPT thing right now.

22:42

I mean, I feel like so much of what I've seen all the demos this week, even

22:46

just from Hub

22:47

Slide and Salesforce and companies showing off these new interfaces, a lot of

22:51

it comes

22:51

down to how do I accomplish this task?

22:57

And I've been thinking about how do we bring that to what's going to be this

23:01

back to this

23:02

mid funnel, how to content, right?

23:04

How do I use Clearbit to score and route leads better using Lead Feeder?

23:10

That's the type of thing that we need to organize our content in a way that an

23:15

AI-assisted

23:16

interaction can say, "voop, here you go."

23:19

And so it's going to be really interesting to see how and how quickly that type

23:26

of interaction

23:27

changes the way we think about to your point producing and organizing content

23:30

so it can

23:31

be used that way.

23:32

This is actually a good segue into the second thing that you said, which was

23:35

talking about

23:36

personalization and using tools like Muni and things like that.

23:39

How that could y'all do in personalization?

23:41

How do you even think about this?

23:42

Because I think that this is something that people are either doing well, doing

23:47

not well,

23:48

or just I'm not even thinking about it yet.

23:51

So I will say first, personalization is it's a long word and it's way too

23:56

complicated.

23:57

And I think if we rebrand personalization, it would benefit it, again, sounding

24:02

like

24:02

an old person, but I remember selling personalization solutions in '97.

24:08

And they were not much easier than they are now.

24:11

So I think a better way to look at it, a way that we often look at is like

24:16

segmenting

24:16

and tailoring.

24:18

And a little can go a long way in terms of what you show to a customer based on

24:25

what

24:26

you know about them.

24:27

So a common example is when you're showing logos or case studies.

24:34

And if a company comes to your website and you can tell it's a small company,

24:38

oh, look,

24:39

there's the company and they've got 14 employees and they're series A funded

24:43

and that's a good

24:44

target for you, show them the logos and the case studies that are for small

24:49

companies.

24:51

And maybe even so far as small companies that are in their industry, if you

24:54

have those.

24:55

But that's going to be way in the data shows way more impactful than if you're

24:59

showing

25:00

a random assortment of logos and case studies or worse ones that are huge.

25:04

Oh, wow, these folks work with IBM and Google and they say, okay, yeah, they

25:08

don't work

25:08

with companies like me.

25:09

So even quote simple things like show the small companies, small company

25:14

examples and

25:14

show the big companies, big company examples end up going a long way.

25:18

And then we regularly see people do simple but sophisticated things on like

25:23

their pricing

25:24

page where they will show more relevant plans or they will show good fit

25:30

customers a different

25:32

call to action.

25:33

If you've got a company that you can tell because you reverse your DNI is IP,

25:38

wow, this

25:38

is like strike zone for my ICP.

25:41

Let's offer them a free trial.

25:43

I can't do it for everyone, but I certainly would do it for them.

25:46

So you give them a free trial CTA versus schedule a demo or whatever the other

25:50

CTA is.

25:52

Huge impact just had a customer come and talk to our group about something they

25:55

did recently

25:56

and they ran one of these changes on the homepage and it had a 972% increase in

26:04

their

26:04

click through.

26:05

I mean, almost 10x, right?

26:08

So these things, these little things can have a huge impact, but they've got to

26:13

be simple,

26:13

right?

26:14

Back to the sort of small company, show them small company stuff.

26:18

My soapbox or anti-personalization is a little information can go a long way,

26:24

but don't overcomplicate

26:25

it.

26:26

Pick two or three text areas, pick two or three calls to action and try to

26:30

align them based

26:31

on the things that matter most.

26:33

That's so interesting.

26:35

And I think that the corollary to that is make stuff on your website easy to

26:40

find by

26:41

the persona, by the company size, by all that stuff.

26:44

And if Jeff Bezos taught us anything, if you can save them those clicks, you're

26:49

not

26:49

in need, then you're going to do a lot.

26:51

It is interesting.

26:53

And this is where one wants to be careful because you don't want to appear

26:57

creepy.

26:57

Hey, how are things in Portland?

26:59

Like I don't need someone to like show off that they know where I'm coming from

27:03

But by the same token, I think as consumers, as B2C consumers, we sort of take

27:09

for granted

27:11

now that when I'm shopping at Best Buy or whatever, look Best Buy, I shop there

27:16

a lot.

27:17

You shouldn't be treating me like we've never met before, right?

27:20

I bought something last week.

27:21

I'm a Best Buy rewards member.

27:24

You know what my local store is.

27:25

I just take all that for granted when I'm interacting with Best Buy online.

27:29

So figuring out what the B2B version of that is so that you can treat somebody

27:33

like you

27:34

know them because you can, but you also don't want to be overbearing.

27:40

I think that's where that personalization line falls in.

27:43

And it's particularly important, I think not just so much in the initial online

27:47

interaction.

27:47

But when you've got a company that's interested or in market or showing you

27:51

those signals,

27:52

when people use Clearbit to pass that over to sales, it's got all this rich

27:56

information

27:57

about it, right?

27:58

It's not just an email address and maybe a title.

28:01

It's a whole bunch of information that now they can use as they follow up and

28:04

know how

28:05

to prioritize that.

28:06

I think that those things end up making a big difference in terms of priority.

28:09

So we didn't do most cuttable or stuff that you're maybe dialing back.

28:14

Are you dialing back?

28:15

We haven't really dialed back in terms of overall spend and budget.

28:20

We've been fortunate that way.

28:21

Our sector is pretty hot.

28:22

But trying to think about things we've defocused on.

28:26

We've defocused some on virtual events, honestly.

28:31

That's not a shocker.

28:32

The last couple of years, a lot of virtual events and virtual conferences.

28:35

And it felt like one of the only ways to get out there or get access to pulls

28:42

of buyers.

28:43

So we've shifted that to actual in-person events.

28:47

And none of time we'll be going to 10 or 15 in-person events this year and also

28:52

looking

28:53

to do some smaller events with our customers, like customer dinners and that

28:56

sort of thing.

28:57

So that's been a shift.

28:58

I think where we are and others, I think a little fatigue from all of some

29:03

purely virtual

29:04

events.

29:05

Yeah, that's probably the one that comes to mind most.

29:08

I do want to jump back to your first uncuttable of that mid-funnel content.

29:12

That's a great uncuttable budget item recommendation.

29:15

I'm curious, how do you get ROI from that stuff?

29:19

How do you show ROI from mid-funnel content?

29:22

It's a good question.

29:24

Attribution.

29:25

It's so easy.

29:26

We do though.

29:27

We tagged all these things up and tried to figure out what part, what content

29:31

was two

29:32

sides.

29:33

What content attached most to our ICP and the personas and a lot of that, a lot

29:38

of that,

29:39

especially our guides content in the mid-funnel, it's really jobs to be done

29:43

oriented.

29:43

So it's almost just like a catalog of jobs to be done.

29:47

We have hypotheses about these are the jobs to be done by these personas at

29:51

these types

29:52

of companies.

29:54

And thanks to Clearbit and Deontemodemization, we can actually see whether that

29:58

's true or

29:59

not.

30:00

Look at the guide for how to prioritize your leads based on fit and intent and

30:05

say, "Okay,

30:06

did it actually connect with?

30:08

Does it appear to be useful to the personas and the companies we thought?"

30:12

So that's kind of the front end.

30:14

And that's more a measure of, was our hypothesis right and as our marketing

30:18

dollar being well

30:19

spent to get them there.

30:21

On the back end, it's about, did they become opportunities and did those

30:24

opportunities

30:25

close?

30:26

I find the first of those a little more useful.

30:30

I think measuring whether or not in our language it became a sales accepted

30:34

opportunity, that

30:35

tells me if it's the right person, right company, right time, that's kind of

30:38

what I can control.

30:40

Whether or not they go on to buy, lots of things, the confactor in there.

30:45

But we look at, did they go on to become an SAO or sales accepted opportunity

30:50

as a key

30:51

measure?

30:52

So kind of looked at, it's interesting because as you ask that it's another

30:57

reason or the

30:58

challenge in doing that is another reason I'm excited about this weekly demo

31:04

idea.

31:05

Because I want to create a sort of like a waypost or a lily pad on that

31:10

customer journey where

31:12

I can see a bunch of them.

31:13

You know, like, yeah, they won't all come, but like a lot will eventually and

31:18

then you

31:18

can say, "All right, well, what was that like?"

31:21

So much of the final management is complicated by so many different personas

31:26

and so many

31:27

different jobs to be done and then so many different products and paths and

31:30

then so,

31:30

and like trying to create sort of a center of gravity around certain types of

31:36

content

31:36

or something like a weekly demo, I think it helps you to recognize the patterns

31:41

more.

31:41

That's so fun and such a great description.

31:44

Do you see those people engaging with those type of mid funnel assets before

31:48

they become

31:49

an opportunity or even still a lot of them after they become an opportunity?

31:54

We're seeing it, we're seeing it mostly before, but it is a good question.

31:59

I think some of the best mid funnel content reads almost more like

32:03

documentation.

32:04

I mean, if you kind of put it on two ends of the spectrum, one is the case

32:09

study that

32:10

is a thinly veiled ad for the product and that's certainly a thing, but it's

32:14

way over

32:14

here and then over here is like the API documentation, which is no bones about

32:19

it, just the facts.

32:20

And so something in the middle that's like, "Hey, here's actually how people

32:25

like you

32:26

are solving this problem and it's got busy o diagrams and it's got suggested

32:30

things and

32:31

it might even have code snippets."

32:33

I like that kind of mid funnel content, which to your point could happen before

32:36

they're

32:37

ready to raise their hand and talk to someone or it could come after because

32:41

they're using

32:42

it, it's educational enough, it's meaningful enough that it's actually a

32:46

resource.

32:46

So that's the balance we're trying to strike.

32:49

I love it.

32:50

Let's find this is a very clear bit pluggy sort of send off here, but I just

32:54

feel like

32:54

it's everything is so persona based, like the rise of account based marketing

32:59

and like

32:59

all this stuff, it just feels like all the momentum is going towards persona

33:04

based stuff

33:05

and us having the realization that these personas are so different and unique

33:12

and how they buy,

33:15

how the personas buy or how different people within one type of persona buy and

33:20

like it

33:20

just feels like going that direction and pushing super, I mean, that's what

33:26

personalization

33:27

is.

33:28

That's all this stuff is just going further and further.

33:30

If you know who they are and you can create hyper niche, hyper targeted like we

33:36

are creating

33:37

this case study for this one type of tiny use case for, but we know that these

33:43

three

33:44

companies are the only ones who have it and their lifetime value is a million

33:48

plus and

33:48

whatever, then it's worth creating.

33:51

That's the sort of stuff that like is endlessly fascinating to me.

33:54

Yeah.

33:55

And I think you're right.

33:56

And I don't think that's going to never say never, but that's an arrow that's

33:59

going

33:59

to go in that direction for quite some time.

34:01

So yeah, it'll be fun to watch.

34:03

Kevin awesome having you on the show.

34:05

Thanks again for listeners.

34:06

You can go check out Clearbit and you can check out Kevin on the socials and on

34:10

LinkedIn

34:11

any final thoughts anything to plug?

34:13

No, thank you so much for having me.

34:14

I'm super exciting here from our tech and for Clearbit.

34:18

And if you haven't had a chance to check out Clearbit, I do invite you to try

34:21

out our weekly

34:22

visitor report.

34:23

That's a free tool that tells you the companies come into your website and a

34:26

little bit about

34:27

how they fit your ICP.

34:29

So check out the weekly visitor report.

34:31

Awesome.

34:32

Thanks again, Kevin.

34:33

Thank you.

34:34

That was super fun. (upbeat music)

34:37

(upbeat music)

34:39

(upbeat music)

34:42

(upbeat music)

34:44

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