Supercharging Your Pipeline: The Impact of Mastering Event Marketing with Andrew Everingham | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast Ep7

In this episode of GrowthPulse - The B2B Sales Podcast, we talk to Andrew Everingham. Andrew is the CEO & Founder of Capital E Marketing & Events, one of Australia's leading events & experiences companies specifically for B2B sales businesses. We discuss how to grow your pipeline with marketing & events and in particularly the importance of understanding the audience. 

We talk about event planning and the need to consider the audience's perspective. We tackle the significance of creating engaging and valuable experiences for attendees, rather than just delivering content. Together we look at how you can plan your event and the content to deliver insight rather than just knowledge to your audience.

Next we examine how you get the right audience at your event. We look at the empathy needed when you plan your event content, particularly for executive targetted events. How do you put yourself in the shoes of the audience and tailoring experiences to meet their needs? 

Lastly, we talk about how you can get your sales team to truly maximise the outcomes from your event investments. We look at how the concept of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) might be an area for your team to consider. 

Overall, the podcast underscores the significance of understanding the audience, being accountable for one's work, and finding enjoyment in marketing and sales endeavors. It highlights the role of empathy, personalization, and alignment in creating successful marketing campaigns and events.

Transcript

Andrew Everingham: 0:00

And it's fascinating to listen to the sales guys that you're talking to talk about how their lives have changed now on the way engaging with individuals is different to what it used to be. I think Jeremy Cooper who used to work with it at Salesforce, I think he said to me, he challenged me with that question one day and I think I came back with a with a great marketing answer something like we are the custodians of the brand. Our job is to do this, our jobs to do that. And we own this, that the other part of whatever, and he cut it down, and he just said, purpose of marketing is to shorten the sales cycle.

Daniel Bartels: 0:33

Welcome to growth pulse and b2b sales podcast, we take a deep dive in the world of business business sales, and how you can get the most out of your investments in sales people sell systems and processes, the lifeblood of any thriving organisation. Join us as we explore a range of topics as well as speak to the industry's thought leaders, vendors, success stories and people who just want and failed along the way on their journey in business and sales. Before we get started, please do us a huge favour and click subscribe. Follow alike wherever you're watching or listening to us. Also, please drop us a comment that you've subscribed or any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. And today's show, we're talking to a longtime friend and colleague of both myself and Simon Andrew Everingham. Andrew is the founder and CEO of Capitole, one of Australia's leading marketing programme events and experience agencies. This table of customers is truly the envy of the industry, including brands to Salesforce, ServiceNow, AWS, Google workday, just to name a few. We talked to Andrew about one of the most important topics in Sales Lead Gen. Specifically, how events have changed in the last few years and what the best organisations are doing today. We spend some time talking about how you can get the most out of your events, and even jump into the topic of Account Based Marketing. So let's jump in Welcome to growth pulse, the b2b sales Podcast. I'm Dan Bartels. I'm joined as always by Simon Peterson Simon, how are you? I'm very well. Thanks, mate. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. And we are here with one of our very good friends Andrew Everingham. Andrew, welcome to the podcast, mate. Thanks so much for your time and effort and joining us. Hey, thanks, guys. Great to be here. You know, let me just say it loved the podcast love the love the format. I will say to anybody who's able to see the cartoon at the front end of this, that it's not completely representational of you to guys, because your feet are definitely not that small. Although I

Andrew Everingham: 2:33

think you drink that much coffee, I gotta be honest.

Daniel Bartels: 2:37

Well, you know, I've actually got to say, I'm really excited that you're on the podcast today, because you probably recall, but many others won't know the story that the tides have turned for once in my life. And now you are my guest at a recording event. And Andrew and I did a video when I was a customer of Salesforce as like 13 years ago, or my very, very first experience in doing anything on sort of, I could actually do plumbing as a kid years and years ago, but in anything commercial being recorded, and I was that idiot that turned up with a striped shirt. And I had no idea that wearing a striped shirt on television just doesn't work especially gonna put you on a green screen. And I've walked in and just saw Andrews face drop.

Andrew Everingham: 3:25

Yeah, you know what, it's actually quite a good little test about the fact that this whole podcast is about riffing on the spot, because had you reminded me of that, I would have turned up in a striped shirt today. Absolutely guaranteed.

Daniel Bartels: 3:41

Funny, so there you go, mate. 1314. Easy. I reckon that was so yeah.

Andrew Everingham: 3:46

And you know, how much has changed in that time when you consider that really? Now having a striped shirt is not it's not the catastrophe that it used to be right. So technology's caught up. You know, it's quite incredible to think it's amazing, great story.

Daniel Bartels: 3:59

And we obviously know you exceptionally well, but for all of our guests on the podcast made a really want to sort of give yourself and Capitole a bit of a plug here. You know, I knew you initially as the head of marketing at Salesforce, and I can't read what your actual title was back then. I think it matters for all this, but make Look, what's your journey been today and tell us all about capital V, which is you know, what, one of the really the leaders in its space in the Australian marketplace. Yeah.

Andrew Everingham: 4:27

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Well, it's a funny one sister. Capital has been around for about 12 years now. And I think that's frightening for all of us, right, just as just as turning up in a striped shirt must be is a recollection of history for 12 years to have gone past since since I was back at Salesforce. It's pretty amazing. It's incredible to think what's happened in that period of time and and I think there's a lot of that is going to come up in this conversation today. You know, just what that journey has been like so, as a snapshot, we Capitole are A b2b marketing and event management company we specialise in, in the tech space, I would say sort of 99% of our, of our clients are in our in tech, which is amazing. And we'll talk a little bit about that today. But we're really about what we call creating engagement. Okay, and so what what that really is about is connecting humans in a meaningful way, with our clients around their products and services, and what they most need to share with those people. And that's really, I know, today's gonna focus mostly around business events, and how to how to look at making them successful. But that is all really resident in, in, in marketing, right, and we'll take a look a little bit today about what the purpose of marketing actually is. So it's been a great journey. I mean, I started out, I started out this little life as an actor, I was sure I was going to be treating the boards all over the world, and maybe giving giving Mel Gibson a run for his money back in the good old days, and then quickly caught up with the fact that this doesn't translate particularly well to the small screen. So fell into, fell into working in marketing, and just sort of loved it, to be honest with you, I loved the process of, of being able to align technology with what businesses and individuals really, really need. So it's been a great journey. And obviously, that toilet Salesforce was was incredible. So

Daniel Bartels: 6:30

yeah, I mean, so much has changed since that time, we were both at Salesforce mean, even in terms of how companies look at getting their message out there looking at building pipeline, or actually, you know, running marketing campaigns. And that's one of the big pieces that that some are quite keen to talk to about today. You know, really, not just what for the last two or three years, because that's changed the event space. So but you know, what, what is what are you seeing is really changed, you know, over the last 567 years, because so many Australian companies really are behind. They're not sitting on the cutting edge of what's happening from a marketing perspective. So what are you seeing it's, it's really changing the marketing space today.

Andrew Everingham: 7:16

Look, obviously, the the pandemic has had such a massive impact on on business, it's almost redundant to talk about it in this in this circuit, except for the fact that it's changed the way we do everything we look at this, like we really launched the idea of doing a podcast a bunch of years ago, probably. I mean, in some of the conversations that you've had, I've spent some time watching the podcast, and it's fascinating to listen to the sales guys that you're talking to talk about how their lives have changed now on the way engaging with individuals is different to what it used to be, you know, it's people have got a different tolerance for what we do. Right. So one of the things they saw links back to I think, is people often kind of mistake what, in my opinion mistake what marketing is all about, right? And I've worked with you two guys in multiple guises over the time. So you probably know when I when I say the stupid if I was to pose to you, what do you think the purpose of marketing is? What would your response be?

Daniel Bartels: 8:18

I'll let you go first Simon.

Simon Peterson: 8:20

Yeah, put me on the spot, I think probably two things make, make people aware of my brand. And engage them to, in a b2b sense, engage them to be actively looking at my product, move into a sales cycle type of funnel, that type of thing. And I think, get a good understanding of, you know, what the brand stands for, and know whether it's a problem I have that the organisation can fix

Andrew Everingham: 8:51

your convenience got a good one.

Daniel Bartels: 8:54

I've got a I've got a really different view to this. I'm a I'm a view that marketers I actually spoke to Randy Lawson, former CEO. Nice and, and conga. I don't think you've heard that yet to get the Press published. But um, but he talked about, it's more of a head of market. And I think it's about how does an organisation look at building the opportunity for what they want to sell and how they have this handshake with a customer set or a focus group on the problem they have and how we solve that with either a product or a solution. And then how we educate on both sides of the equation about that. And that educate piece is how you find leads because you're educated that I want to I want to buy from you or you can solve my problem. I'm educated about the needs that my customers have and how I start to modify my products. So to me, it's marketers are about building a market and building an opportunity for everybody to come together to Have a problem and solve a problem. That's my view.

Andrew Everingham: 10:02

Nice. I actually, when you said about that conversation on my mind was already listening to the one where you heard about Daniel much the other day with Dan, when you're talking about my product market has been the people that the design that helped to design the product and help to create the market. Right. So, and I was I didn't, I wasn't listening to what you're saying I was jumping to it already. So I think Jeremy Cooper, who we used to work with, at Salesforce, I think he said to me, he challenged me with that question one day, and I think I came back with a, with a great marketing answer. And something like we are the custodians of the brand, our job is to do this, our jobs to do that. And we own this, that the other part of whatever, and he cut it down, and he just said, the purpose of marketing is to shorten the sales cycle. Right. And I really liked that. And I really liked that. That is the way my organisation takes look at the stuff that we do. So whatever it is that we're doing, if we're writing copy, if we are, if we're producing an event, if we're producing some content, building a video, whatever it is, is this activity that we are undertaking, going to make it is going to make the sales cycle shorter. Now, there's probably a place in there that you could also add it Have we got the ability to influence the size of the deal, as well. Right. So there's, there's probably a little bit of a given taking there. But what why why I said that is because I think despite the changes that we've seen, actually, at the end of the day, that is still our job, right? Our job is still to, to look for a way to align what it is that our organisation has, and line that up with the needs of those organisations that are saying we look at what we do, and see if that fits there. And if it is fantastic. And that's I think, I think there's a huge part for marketing to play in that now. The way we go to market now is so it's so different. I mean, just just I think we're entering a really spectacular time. I couldn't be more excited about being in business right at the moment around AI. I think the I think that what is what that's going to drive and the and the efficiencies and effectiveness that AI is going to drive for all of us, it's going to be incredible. Yes, I think there'll be some casualties along the way. I think that's that's, that's probably, that's probably true. But I think there's going to be some reframing about the way we think about educating our audience and the way the audience thinks about getting educated about the things that we want to talk to them about. So.

Daniel Bartels: 12:28

So that's a kind of a good segue then into like aI really changing the way that we operate day to day. Events has changed so dramatically. And and I see such an opportunity for organisations to think they can make things simpler with the use of AI, and then going off in these funny tangents with events and not really knowing how to get the best out of them. How if we kind of just go back to the basics of what makes a fundamentally good sales outcome driven marketing event for business? Right?

Andrew Everingham: 13:08

It's, I think that's a complex question with a really simple answer. Right? And then we can explode that from there. I think you've just got to know why you're doing it. And one of the things that I see so often is the production of events, or even the attempt at producing events, when no one really knows what the outcome is, what are we actually setting about to do here? And how are we going to, how are we going to know what success looks like? And then how are we measuring our way to success? That's the other thing. So I do think that there are plenty of events which are delivered without that. Without that clarity, and I but I would say they don't necessarily do any harm. They just may be a little bit numb when you when you boil it down. But I think there's also events that have done without the care, that are also quite detrimental on a number of different fronts. And we will get to that. So like, I think one of the things you have to do, and Dan talked about it the other day in the podcast, where he was saying about making sure that you have that alignment between marketing and sales unless you've got that alignment, where the marketing team knows what the sales team need. And the sales team can articulate where they're up to and what they're looking for, then you're going uphill from the very beginning. Right. So what are we trying to do? We're trying to do it a bit do we want? Do we want contact? So we run an event we get a couple of 100 people a lot into the event? Is that good for us? Is 100 contacts a good thing? Or is that just more trouble for the BDR team to have to crunch through for people that just came along for a free event? Are they leads? But who knows? I mean, what's the what's the definition of a lead in that particular instance? Shouldn't we know whether people who've said they're coming to the ventral lead before they get there? And in that case, does that then inform the way we're going to engage with those people when they get on site? Are we? Are we? Are we looking for leads? Or in what way? Are we going to be tracking? That we are moving people further down that funnel? Right? So are they going from a lead to an opportunity? Are we looking to take deals that are in play and grow them? Or just move them further down that funnel? What are we actually out to do? And if we can work out how we're going to sort that stuff out from the beginning, that's the way to get everything on to the rails and then make sure that we're we're actually going in the right direction, to the point that we've been, we've been approached plenty of times with people saying, we're going to run this event. And when we challenge them and say, Why are you running the event? What are you actually looking to achieve out of dropping, and let's be honest, it can be a lot of money, right? It's a huge part of your budget can be dropped on running a really nice event. When we've challenged it, it's actually worked out. But there's a better thing to do than running. And there might not necessarily be with us. But that's kind of if we if we know that we're going into the park with a customer to deliver event and we know that they're rock solid about what they're trying to do, then we can start reverse engineering to deliver what's going to be what's going to be really quality experience for everybody that gives up their time to be there.

Daniel Bartels: 16:10

I know Andrew and we've talked about Dreamforce in the past which for those who who aren't part of this, like Salesforce ecosystem is 170,000 People go to San Francisco, once a year to drink from the fire hose of all things, all things Salesforce, depending upon the time of year, that event changes dramatically. And what I mean by that, so typically in the Salesforce finished their financial year, where date, which is January 31. And like most companies, they have a big uptick at the end of financial year to try and get the deals in and get get it closed. So if you've got to if Dreamforce is date is November, ended November 7 and started December, but sort of in that period, or it becomes a closing event, instead of September. Now it's a lead generation event purely because of a time a year. And as a result when everybody builds and the type of people will come to the event like that thinking about how you look at the event as a salesperson and Simon, you know, you and I've run a number of different Dreamforce investments for different organisations Salesforce, and when we've run financial force and other companies afterwards, you know, we went through that process. I mean, how did you think about that, as a leader? Looking at that spend, and it was big dollars that we spent as a partner and going to Dreamforce? How did you think about that as a, as a leader looking at those different times of year?

Simon Peterson: 17:34

Yeah, I think it's an interesting one, I think it to Andrew's point, you've got to really think about what you want to get out of it, I think it's, you can be you can oversimplify it. I think if you look at it just as a closing event, or just as a lead gen event, I think you've got to be a bit more nuanced, I think you've got if you run a later Dreamforce, you've absolutely got to be across, which are the accounts that you want to be taking to that close, making sure you're answering questions, connecting them with senior executives in the business, etc. And it's all part of the close. But I think you've also got to have an eye on the next quarter as well. So while you've got one eye, on closing the bigger deals, I think as a leader, you've also have to have another eye, one two quarters out. So you, you can't fall into the trap of just as a leader focusing on the closing event, you've got to have some leads that come in. But I think as a salesperson, you've got to look at the guests at the event and understand intrinsically who they are, what they need to get out of the event. And if they're in closed mode, you take them down one path and if they're in learning about your product, or does the product fit my problem that cetera it's very, very different type of experience. But then I think you've also got to think about, you know, Dreamforce is obviously one of these mega events, right? They get 150,000 people, I don't know whether that continues on into the future after COVID. But I've also looked at events in probably three categories, you've got the mega event that the global organisation puts on, you've got a local country event where you asking for hundreds of participants, and then you've got the smaller event, the more intimate event, I think you really need to think about how you balance those three events. And I think to Andrews point, ask yourself precisely what you're trying to get out of it. I think we've run a couple of events that you know, very intimate restaurants and I think nice ones, you know, we rent and run at Aria, I think you organised for us, Andrew and then wanted Bentley in, in Sydney. And both those two events, I think we got a hell of a lot out of but they're much more intimate types of events. So it really depends as a leader depends on you know, you've got to ask yourself, I'm about to spend 20 30k or 100 200k, or the mega events 1,000,002 million, what do I need to get out of it? And I think it's It's tricky for a leader because you can't just look at one time horizon.

Andrew Everingham: 20:06

I agree with you on that. And I think it's really interesting. When somebody will say to me, what's the most successful event you've ever run? It's so difficult to answer that question. And because for that very reason, because the really successful events are the ones where the, the objective of the event and the result, overlapping. And even in some cases, the result is better, obviously, than they were expecting. But I love those moments when I'm at an event. And it could be a round table for 10 people, or it could be, you know, hundreds of people at a at an event where you look at your stakeholders, and you can just see it in the eyes, they look at you and go, Yeah, this is fantastic. Thank you. So if I look at one of the most successful events that I can call to hit to my mind is that was that was a roundtable at rock pool. It was a visiting CTO. And it was the the CIO, one of Australia's leading banks, and probably another 10 people around and a couple of the couple of the staff from that organisation. And I stood in the corner of that room, and I just watched the light bulbs go on around the room, and you could tell that they were going to walk away from that event. Not only that, not only the sales guys sitting there going, this is amazing, we're going to have such incredibly deep conversations. But you could see the delegates, the attendees of that event going, this has changed the way I think this changed the way I'm gonna go forward, this is going to make me incredibly successful. And I caught the eye of the CTO, and he just looked at me, there was so much said without words, where it was like, this is just phenomenal, what an amazing conversation. And the only way that I would just everybody in the room, from the client side knew exactly what they were there to do. They knew exactly what they were trying to achieve by running that event, and everybody walked away, at the end of the day, go tick the box. That's amazing. So they're having that real clarity from the outset, is just so important. And then the details, the details of how you deliver it, that that's where organisations need to look at themselves and go, Can we do that? Or do we need someone like, like us to step in and help them to do that? And it's not always the case they do right there, you have to have that need? And if you do, then you should outsource that to the people that know what they're doing. Right?

Daniel Bartels: 22:28

Yep. Yeah, cuz I mean, you and I've seen so many different events, Simon and Andrew, you've helped helped us deliver some where we've designed phenomenal events. But if you don't have the right bums on seats, it's not gonna work. Right. And this is where I think so many salespeople dropped the ball and sales leaders dropped the ball on these events. That, you know, we asked for marketing, spend the time and the effort and the dollars to go and put these things together. And they get kicked over the fence to sales going, Hey, q2, I've organised this phenomenal event, and you need to go and get the right people and but I've got some deals to close, and I'm off, right, and we get to work out for the event. And I mean, as a sales leader, it is always my biggest fear when you kind of sign these things off that I'm back on my rolodex a week out, trying to fill the seats and you're like, I don't know why I bothered you. I didn't, I didn't need to have the event to or to organise dinner with a bunch of people that I already know.

Andrew Everingham: 23:28

So I mentioned before that there's that difference between something just not being successful, and something actually being damaging, and in their lives, some real, some real tricks that I think organisations need to be need to be really careful. So I think if you make if you make a promise to somebody, then you absolutely need to keep their promise. And they are things like if you are going to offer somebody a PA networking opportunity. So you're inviting CMOS to come along and sit around a table and have a conversation about how AI is going to change their, their department or whatever it might be. And they arrive and they're in a room full of marketing directors or marketing managers. You've just blown your your integrity, right. And I think they're the sort of things where you if you're going to say it's bespoke for somebody, you need to deliver it. So when you're forced into a situation as a sales guy to jump on, go through that Rolodex jump on the phone just trying to get bums on seats. What's that for? What are the vanity vanity metrics we're playing with it is that because it's seen as the investment of x 1000s of dollars to book that restaurant or that functional space is diminished by the fact that there was only six people there and not 12 Now there's there's a need to be able to show momentum. I really believe in that there's there's nothing worse than walking into an event with a great amount of black. Right? So you know, you believe in one of those. You walk into the room and you go this feels cheap and nasty, and my expectations have not been met that but that is the worst thing that you can possibly have. But if you've been invited to a roundtable and you walk in there and you go, Oh, I expect there's going to be 20 people here, and there's six, that can that can be overcome, if you're sticking to what you promised people. Right? And you and you're actually still imparting that information. So there's there's some interesting, there's some interesting dynamics to play with, between what you're what you're promising and what you're not.

Simon Peterson: 25:25

I think, Dan, just ask your question. You've been a salesperson before you're a sales leader, and obviously very, very successful. What advice do you give salespeople that their bosses just set up an event, asked to invite some of their key prospects along what's what's the best way to approaching getting your prospects in to these events.

Daniel Bartels: 25:53

My biggest criticism of salespeople and these types of opportunities is they don't own them. And what I mean by that is, you know, if I, if I've seen this 10 times, I've sent it 100 times, to Vince been organised. It's been shared to the sales team, the customer success team, whichever team is actually delivering people to this event. At a team meeting, they haven't paid attention, they're on the phones, it's next week's job to do to deal with, and they just don't think about it, instead of looking at it and saying, we're going to spend a whole heap of money to get in front of people in a more engaging environment than you could normally do by yourself. So how do I get my unfair share of that? Unless it's specifically organised just for me and my five, you know, one or two or five customers, whatever it is, it's typically organised for you as part of a group? Did you just grab it by the horns and owner and take an unfair share of people at the event? And for the salespeople that look back on their pipeline and say, Oh, that's a bit dodgy going into the next quarter? Or the next half? Or whatever it is? Okay, cool. That's just a representation of the effort you put in the time period before. For each one of those marketing events, how many invites did you send out? Because the reality is for me as as an exec. I don't get invited to that many events. And I probably have, like an 8% attendance rate when I am invited. So why are you not inviting them? Why are you making the decision for your customer before that before it that you should or shouldn't go, that they should or shouldn't go there? It wouldn't be, you know, wouldn't be a very interest. That's the one that frustrates me the most when I've seen as a sales leader, or just for one of my colleagues, where they just haven't engaged with the event. Send out the invites.

Andrew Everingham: 27:58

Yeah, so picking up on that with you guys, both if I can ask you both this question. So to what extent do you think that the sales teams awareness of the purpose of that event in the attendees journey, so they might be a prospect they might be an existing customer, how important you think it is that the sales guys are aware of where they were, this inflection point is going to happen in that in that journey.

Simon Peterson: 28:28

That we've all seen the marketing meeting where the marketing manager sits down, and takes us through the next three months, here's the marketing calendar. We've got all these wonderful events coming up. And I think I've seen a lot of sales A's open their laptop and do their emails when that's being presented to them. So that to me, tells me that they're not invested or engaged in the purpose of why they're running the events, I think, I think, as sales leaders, we can better engage ourselves, because I've been guilty of that as well. So back at the marketing guys, tell me about the marketing calendar. So the point you raised around the purpose of the event, if that resonates with the salespeople, you have that alignment, and the goals are mutual. I think the best sales guys get why you run events. But I think the you know, the ones that continually smash their number, they can see the events purpose, and then very quickly map it against their pipeline. What I don't want to see is, you know, just willy nilly, I'll just, I've got 10 customers in my pipeline, I'll just flick it out and see what happens. I think the best reps are very much engaged with the message. They're very much engaged with the purpose of the event, and then very quickly, they can see this, this customer is probably a little early in the cycle for that event, but this one's perfect. This one's perfect, etc. So I think that that engagement needs to happen. And at the time when marketing first talks about the events that are coming up, that actual conversation probably needs to be led by the sales sales leader. Now let's have a think about why we're running the event. What types of pipeline activities are we're about. So your deals in the pipeline, and what maps to this event. I think, if that's done at the get go, you then get accountability, engagement. And I think the most critical thing for both the sales leader and the marketing manager when they leave that room, they're on the same page, they're agreed that there needs to be a lot of follow up salespeople, traditionally, a very, very busy, they'll forget that meetings, you need to continually go back and back and back and make sure that they're, they're engaging. And I think it's not just about have you sent out the leads yet, have you actually thought about the right leads to send those invites to have you thought about the individuals and what they're going to get out of it. And please, for goodness sake, if you're going to send them an email, followed up with a conversation, it's a great excuse to have a conversation with the prospect, then

Daniel Bartels: 31:06

I take this with a different point of view. And I think salespeople get overly concerned about the type of content that is actually in an event. And they expect that there is genuinely different activities or content. If someone is a stage zero lead to someone who is at stage five and about to close. The reality is for most of our customers, they don't know, they don't know how much information they're gonna get from, you know, this next presentation. Often the senior exec your environment, one event, or even your coach you're bringing along, they don't work for you. They haven't seen this content for bazillion times, they've seen it maybe twice. So repetition of seeing the same piece of content a third time, our perception of salespeople is that they wouldn't want to see it again. Because under no circumstances should I show them the same deck. It's like when you read a book The third the fourth time, you get different information from it. And you have a different experience when you read it even though you know what's coming up in the storyline. And we think that people are not going to get value from talking to someone who's sitting beside them at event or, or talking to you again, or understanding with a greater nuance that same information that we've delivered, but thinking about it at a different level, why are we making that decision for them? Get their bum on the seat, the person who is invested in, I'm at stage five, wants to know that when I signed the contract with you, when you start to deliver, you're on the bus with me to make sure this is successful. The same as the person who's at stage zero to move to stage one says, Before I engage in this, is this likely to be a good journey. And when I get to stage six, and I buy from you, will you be invested? Will it be worth the effort? Why are we presuming for customers that they won't get value? Why are we trying to overcomplicate whether it's a closing or a starting or a maturing event? Don't make that decision for your customer? Let them make that decision. That's my kind of viewpoint on.

Andrew Everingham: 33:20

So I I like what you're talking about. And I think I think it's I think you're right, I think as long as well people show up for what you've told them they're going to get is honoured. Right? So I think one of the challenges that field marketers have is that there's so many programmes are pushed down from headquarters, wherever that is, and thou shalt deliver this event, right. And so then they are forcing the sales guys to make sure that they get all those bums on seats for events and, and not promised them a lot. I've been sent plenty of invitations, which we have this VIP special event for you because you're the you're the CEO of an organisation. And we're going to target in on this just for you. And then if you read further in the email, and we're going to talk to marketing people, the head of CX, we're going to talk to tech and we're going to talk to but it's all just one stream, right. And so you get there. And what you end up getting isn't what you promised in the email, but a whole lot of sweeping vanilla motherhood statements. You never get deep into what you really want to learn about. Or you might just get a fleeting part of that little bit. And I'm not not saying that we have all the answers to all of these problems. But I think as long as what you turn up for it, you get what was written on the packet. Because what can happen is if you don't, not only and I'll give you an example, there's one and not one of my customers, I'm very happy to say that event just random lines, humans and people are turned up to that event, but majority of the majority of that audience were devs and what they saw was big sweeping motherhood statements for which they have no interest. What they want to see is show me the code. Rip the on an app, show me what this thing can actually do. And not at a claim, this is what sits on YouTube demo level showing how I can integrate this product into into the backend. It's bottom up, right? That's what that that's what that audience is looking for. Now, you can say that they walked away from that event. And when and when I, well, that was a waste of my time. And let's be honest, if it's a couple of hours, well, it's 20% of your day, or whatever. And worse, if it's in the evening, or you've been, you know, you're outside of your true work time. And since most of us are spending part of the time at home, you've slipped into the city or wherever the event is. The worst thing about that, is that then when the right message gets to the right person at the right time in that organisation, and they turn around to their dev to go, Hey, Jenny, I just want to make sure that this is okay. That person goes, oh, you know, went to the one of their events, that was pretty lame. And all of a sudden, you've made it part of your sales guys. Not easier. Yeah, and slipstream it, you've then put a roadblock in there. So I think as long as what you get when you arrive, and experienced that a bit, is what you said you were going to be delivering or better than you sweep.

Daniel Bartels: 36:08

Yeah, and I think within that concept, and using using your example of the dev row, we get overly concerned that, you know, 12 months ago, we showed the show the dev community, this piece of information, we can't show it to them again next year. You're making we're making a massive assumption that a they were listening be there remember, see, they're not going to get a whole bunch of white prompt a whole bunch of other conversations that need to come out of that. So we just start again. But you know, that that piece doesn't necessarily it's not what happens in reality, because people go back to the same reference material all the time.

Andrew Everingham: 36:49

That's advertising 101. Right. And, and you're absolutely right, in so much as those core basic building blocks need to be repeated. Because that's your, that's your core foundation of what it is that you're offering, right? The incremental changes are the cream on top right. And that's the thing that sometimes the core blocks, I know that stuff, but let's just go through there, again, some level set with this. Now, let me show you these cool little new features, new products, new services that we're able to offer on top of that, that's where I think that's where the friction happens, where people go. Okay, finally, after having set for three of these before. And let's let's not forget that at most events, there's multiple levels of things going on, there's Yes, I want to hear about your information. I'm also interested in networking, because this is my community. So make sure the community is there, right? But these are my peeps, these are the ones I want to communicate with. And most people are interested in it for themselves as well. They're like, what, what's my next step? What what's going on in the industry? What can I learn from these other because there's multiple levels of, you know, run the right kind of event, it's just nice to go to, it's nice to be entertained, it's nice to be able to socialise with people.

Daniel Bartels: 38:01

It's nice to have a community honour present. I think that's we mentioned before, I would love you guys to talk about this, you know, the best part for me of being part of the Salesforce community. And I don't want to harp on that, in particular, but for such a long period of time was because I had a group of people who I really enjoyed working with and spending time with, who I learned from and some I looked up to, and some who were peers and some who I had seen their journey from from BDR through to VP. And that becomes really important for people in their working careers and in what they do every day because we spend more time working than we do with our families, right. As things have changed, events have changed in the last couple of years, people's willingness to invest in events, particularly in Australia, where we don't have the scale to really justify a lot of these events happening all over the place. It's changed what they look like. And it's definitely changed what the communities look like. Are you seeing that Andrew and Simon, are you seeing that in kind of your experience? And I suppose Andrew, are you saying that for for the events and people investing as well.

Andrew Everingham: 39:09

Without doubt, I mean, community is, is where it's at. In fact, the whole idea of bringing people together is about creating community. So if you're if you're not considering the experience that people are having, when they when they come along to hear your hear your message, then then you're missing out on probably 75% of the value of the event. Right. And I do genuinely feel what we're very focused on. I believe in fund, I think fund is really important. And it's not frivolous funds is actually an underlying tenet of our organisation. If it's not fun, we're not doing it right. I thought that was in mind. I thought I made that up. But apparently Richard Branson come up with that. So he probably borrowed it from me, I'm sure, but that that underlying idea of bringing people together and giving them an experience where they leave feeling better about themselves feeling better about that, just that it was a great fun experience, I really believe that there's some really interesting psychology around events, you know. And if you if you have people walking away, having had a really good time and learn to live, don't they're going to remember what they learned a lot better than having sat through something super dry, super boring, but really factual. I think I think that's critically important. And what that what community does, I think is it community is the domain of an organisation that has a confidence around itself that it's willing to allow people to connect in the wild. So going back a long time, there was a, there was a very large technology company that I that I used to work with who the last thing they ever wanted to do, was to get there to get their, their customers, their existing customers and prospective customers into the same room. Because God forbid, they should ever talk to each other, because we'd never sell another product. Because they, you know, they just tell them how bad things were. I mean, that time has got to have moved on. Now we want to bring everybody together, you want your partners, you want your customers you want perspective, you want you want, sometimes the media or who's going to contribute to that you don't bring them all together, create an environment where everyone can share. Because if you can't do that, you're not confident in what you're really doing. And you're so Simon,

Simon Peterson: 41:23

Andrew, you stopped there, mate, I was actually going to say the big change is really around that customers and prospects in the room together. I think I've worked for a couple of very large software companies over my time. And I do remember the time, probably more so in the 90s than then more recently, but that the thought of putting customers and prospects in a room together was something that you would really have to take a deep breath before you did. And I think as I moved into the SAS world, it was completely the opposite. I need my customers and prospects to talk to each other. So if you think I think about a an event, I did recently, top of Sydney Tower, I think Westfield tower, it's called these days, we had a, we had probably about 7080 people there. And it was about 6040 prospects to customers. But we needed to talk to our customers reassure them that we're on the the journey. So the messaging they'd all heard before, for our prospects are at various stages in the cycle, they really need to hear the message. But I think the presentation side of that event by the vendor is is less interesting in those sort of smaller environments than it is actually hearing from people talking about what they're actually doing. And you mentioned before, partners in there as well. And, you know, we had a see the proper term for it as a fireside chat. And I interviewed a couple of customers completely different industry. And they talked about the journey. And I made sure in my questioning, you know, implementing ERP, it's hard things go wrong. Tell us a little bit about, you know, some of the things that you would advise your prospects to do that you possibly didn't do or what you learned. And I could actually almost hear everybody leaning forward, because that's the real conversation they want. So they walked out of that they got a great feed, they were entertained a hell of a view up there at the top of Sydney Tower. But honestly, when we finished it and ran, finished, the fireside ran the networking it was on. What was really interesting for me is one of the comments from our, one of our customers wasn't it alluded to a difficulty with a partner in terms of the implementation, that partner was sitting in the room, I can tell you one of the outcomes of that the partner and that customer got together within 30 seconds of that Fireside Chat being finished. And there was a really good dialogue that happened. So you're bringing those sorts of conversations in that you probably typically wouldn't get unless you got those people to an event. I mean, I can't imagine the customer and the partner having that conversation so openly, you know, a formal Zoom meeting or an in person meeting, etc. You put them in an event, the customer talks about what they would do differently next time. And immediately there's value for everybody in there. So those sort of events I love, you know, the food was great. The view was great. But my goodness, the conversation and you could just see all the prospects leaning in going, Wow, this organisation doesn't shy away from talking about doing things better, implementing better being honest with its customers and its prospects around what some of the pitfalls are because implementing complex software is never a press of a button is there's a lot more to it than that. I think those bringing that out in an event was just Fantastic.

Andrew Everingham: 45:04

But that takes into account the point of view of the audience though, right? And I think that's another thing that we that a lot of people don't do, and therefore they don't think about. I mean, I unfortunately, I think quite often content it's like children, you know, you love your own, even people don't realise that they're ratbags and a little bit. So it's, there's, there's times where you actually have to find a way to step back and say, if I was the invitee? Would this be cool? Would I love that? Would I love this order? Why would I be happy sitting in the audience? Looking at a PowerPoint presentation? As somebody walks me through their key what's really important to them? Or would I rather hear from one of their customers talk about what a huge change made to them? Or would I be more interested to hear from somebody that's talking about the most important new development around technology and money space? Because what they do is educated me? Will I not trust them more, that they weren't confident enough to get me in a room and just help to educate me to make me more successful? Am I going to think of next? Am I going to think about the guy that gave me the chalk and talk? Or am I going to think about the one that added that value? To me, I think that's really important that everybody always sits back and goes, would I come away from that event going? That was awesome. I love that. That was great. I'd love to come to the next one. That's the secret sauce all

Simon Peterson: 46:23

about? It's all about empathy. Right? If you've got to put yourself in the audience's shoes, you know, it's an interesting one, teaching people about empathy, which is something you know, I value highly as a leader, really putting yourself in the shoes of the people you're coaching, mentoring, and in an event context, what are they sitting through? I think they're going to learn something, or they're going to walk out with a smile on their face. So they're going to meet people they haven't met before. I'm curious, maybe, Dan, how do you, you know, empathy, I find is fundamental. How do you teach people about that? I think you've got a lot of alphas in leadership roles that tend to think a little bit more about themselves and the people they're trying to sell to or educate.

Daniel Bartels: 47:08

You know, it's funny, as this conversation been going on, I've just been thinking about that, how do you teach people but in a different mindset, a different strength train of thought, which is, there's a reason salespeople of the current generation struggle with this idea so much. And it's a tax problem. sounds odd. But the government, especially the Australian Government, got away with a teeny expense tax deductions 25 years ago now. So the experience for people who are sales reps in these same types of roles, 30 years ago, you were so used to running social events, and having to give value for someone beyond the dinner. Because if you're boring, I'm not turning up. Whereas now, that concept of sort of social engagement, selling, not social selling on mobiles, etc, but social engagement selling is is theory kindergarten, they don't know how to do it, they because there's there's no financial commercial structure that actually makes it worthwhile for the company to fund doing that. And it's only organisations, once you get past a certain size, that can start to justify reasonable spends on this and attend means that in order to do it more often than not the only ones inside or outside an organisation, you've got the budget to do what is marketing. Now I want to do it not just that that organic level where I can invite two or three people to an event, I can have a customer a prospect or in the same room because you you guys are getting along, we have that conversation. And I learned to build that empathy. I learned to understand how to put the right people together, and how to manufacture that conversation because I've got to do it in a room 25 people? Well, now I'm trying to manage five or six people at the same time and fill a table and rather than just in a format like this, three or four people having a conversation and having empathy around Listen, I've had a really tough cut. You mentioned before I've had a tough deployment of my delivery software, whatever they are my what I brought what are bought for him and I've bought a power plant and things not working, whatever it is doesn't matter. That you know, the customer vendor relationship is fundamentally the same no matter what it is you buy and sell. And how do you have that empathy for both sides? I think if you can't do it at a one on one level, it becomes super difficult to do it at a at a medium term level with five or 10 people in an event. That's what I look at. I mean and I, I can actually count on one hand the people that I know who are exceptional at building that sort of social event and unfortunately now in the in the business world. They looked at kind of, you know, ladies who learns so to speak, that's what used to be. And there was a really important part of that social engagement for people who who drive core understanding To the other customer.

Andrew Everingham: 50:03

So, so don't I think that's I think that's pretty astute, actually, that that observation and I think I'm interested in whether the the fact that that kind of very much one to one social engagement maybe has given rise to so much interest in ABM. And I think ABM has absolutely has its place within the marketing mix. I don't think it's the silver bullet for everybody. And I also don't think that the majority of people actually understand what ABM is about. But I wonder whether that desire to be able to get more personal and one on one with individuals within within trig, where they treat an account as a market itself, and then work out who the people are within the organisation and then go to them specifically and personally wonder if that's kind of born out of that challenge of not being able or people not embracing that approach to, to developing relationships with the with the constituents that really matter for them? Yeah,

Daniel Bartels: 51:02

I think I ab Account Based Marketing for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about. But yeah, sorry. Isn't it is an interesting idea and concept, right, because salespeople have always done Account Based Marketing. Because at the end of the day, I'm standing in front and sitting or sitting in front of a singular customer. They don't really care what the marketing materials and the brochure look mean. You think about your yourself when you go and buy your next car. I don't care what the ad said, I care if I'm married with with an 11 year old, I care if I can fit the bikes in the back. Run. And if I can fit in my bikes, I don't care if the advert said it can fit bikes in the back, I care if it can fit and solve my problems. So salespeople have always done Account Based Marketing at that level account based selling because the process forces you to do it. I think the challenge that people look at from Account Based Marketing being this panacea of solutions of how do I get greater cut through in my in, in a design in a world where everyone wants to get a customization suppose or the tools can give it for you is they're looking for all these dark web tools and things that can provide scale. If you don't have the capacity within your business to actually run 345 100 Account Based Marketing programmes, then what you're actually doing is just selling in a different way. And you're being really selective around who it is you're going to spend time and effort trying to sell to this year. You know, Simon and I did a I did a probably an execution of this five years ago, when we looked at our business and the the year before had been an abject failure. We tried to scattergun for the entire region and it just didn't work. And we came back to our sales team, we had a sales team of five or six at the time. And we deleted territories was the first thing we did, which is in ABM world was was like, What are you doing? And guess what? Your territory the whole of Australia, but you got to pick 10 accounts. What was it, you could have 10 accounts, everything else sits on the bottom. And when you're finished actually selling, speaking to them having a meeting, building if it's a one on one landing page that we need to do as a salesperson, you've connected with the CEO, CFO when you've got to the end of the 10 want to pull 10 Back in the back in the box and pick up another 10 Not a problem. You know what happened? Nobody got to the end of the 10 and the other thing that happened was we crushed our number. Right? But but the point being that the focus and the action that we did was what ABM desires to do but it's trying to use all these mass tools to say how do I do this as a marketing team at scale because I am really trying to find that moderate point between I don't know the industry verticals or nuanced messaging of my product or how I'm not going to build an individual landing page if I'm any companies I don't care if you're to man plumbing company or if you're if you're Salesforce or SAP you're not going to build an individual landing page for every single prospect does does work. Right Simon you lived and breathed that that story with me. You know what, what are your thoughts on it?

Andrew Everingham: 56:46

Yeah, so I would say I would say it's definitely not a silver bullet. I would say it's got its place and a little bit like, a little bit like, CRM. A lot of people don't do it well, right. So and by that, I mean, I don't deploy it well. So it's it is, as you say, it is, in some cases, it's thrown out by either the CMO or regional head, and it's like, we're going to now start doing ABM. And, you know, I would absolutely say, there's a podcast here with a follow up with with somebody who has done ABM extremely well, to show people what the difference is between marketing going, we're going to do ABM, let's get going guys. And then and then the really successful deployments of IBM where sales and marketing are completely aligned, not dissimilar ly to running great events where they both aligned in what the outcomes are, the expectations are set from the beginning, it's a slow burn, we're not doing it to try and generate 50 leads, we're doing it to take down an elephant, right? Terrible analogy. No one wants to take down an elephant. That's not what I'm really talking about. But it's about making sure that everybody knows what they're actually there to do and what their role is in it. Because it's it is it is time consuming to do it really well. And if you do it really, really well. The results are fantastic. So there you go. There's your challenge. You've got to you've got an update, you've got to do another podcast. Yeah, for sure. Not with me.

Daniel Bartels: 58:24

On on that on that topic. That's an interesting from a salesperson, I think this is this is the question that a sales and a sales manager or sales individual should be asking you their organisation. And if if someone raises the concept of IBM or any marketing programme, are we trying to sell to the people that we think are already in the market trying to buy our stuff? Or are we gonna take an approach that says we want to go and sell to these organisations because we think that we will have the largest deals most profitable deals the best fit, and they don't even know yet that that's what should happen? Because I think if it's the latter, ABM is a great fit. If it's the former ABM is the wrong tool. And I don't think you have to have two distinct motions to do the two different things. And I think unfortunately, so many organisations particularly even if you're a part of a larger overseas organisation, headquartered wherever Middle East US, UK wherever you want to be. And we're in Australia we don't always have the resources to genuinely or the size as an as a local organisation to genuinely do that. We're still at that phase of, hey, I don't know I'm selling ERP I'm selling trucks. Everybody wants to buy a truck. I'll still attract to you not do you know what I want to go on be Lynn foxes, largest supplier of electric vehicle trucks that can carry three trailers. And I'm now I will do a 55 minute In order to deal with Linfox issue, because that mode that second motion is a is what ABM is designed to do.

Andrew Everingham: 1:00:09

Maybe maybe when ABM gets put on the table, it's a great trigger for having the conversation as an organiser. What are we actually trying to do? What what because if it's if it's seen as a as we're wheeling in a solution, maybe we need to go back and look at it. So maybe maybe it's um, it's a VMs about activating better management as opposed to account

Daniel Bartels: 1:00:34

activated like that?

Andrew Everingham: 1:01:23

leads yeah

Daniel Bartels: 1:02:45

gotta stay the course right?

Andrew Everingham: 1:02:49

Yeah, without doubt and I think great great ABM practitioners will tell you that from the staff, you know, pure ABM agencies out there will say don't even Don't even start if you're going to start as you're planning to end. And you've got to you've got to stay the course otherwise, you're not really doing it. Right. Yeah.

Daniel Bartels: 1:03:09

And you may, again, you may well may as well not have started. Because you've just been your wheels for X period of time and spent dollars. To your point you haven't delivered to that group of people, that group of customers the journey that you told them that you wouldn't take them on.

Andrew Everingham: 1:03:24

Right. And I would say, I would say that it's, again, like I said, before, we've doing events and not really considering and I don't want to paralyse people, we don't do anything because you might, you might hurt, you might hurt relationships. But if you do ABM wrongly, you can damage the relationships with the most important people within those organisations that you're wanting to work with. Because you've, you've come on hot and strong at the beginning with all of this personalised, we're going to look after you and then you go cold. And then like, obviously, I'm not important, right? So they drop you it's the same thing as running an event where you promise one thing you don't deliver what you you know, that's that's what it's about. It's about honouring the promise. Yeah, it's

Daniel Bartels: 1:04:06

even it's even to us to a company who wants to go in that pathway, make a commitment to the customer that the person running the account is going to be there for X period of time. Are you going to hold on to that IE that sales letter, who's going to own government own transport, whatever you're going to do? That's your person, that's your thought leader? Because you start changing that person out mid and let people quit and leave and all that type of stuff that happens. But if the organisation is the one coming in making those decisions, really, so you weren't, you weren't actually committed to this. You weren't willing to genuinely build that person as a thought leader in order to get the outcomes because that's a massive part of APM too.

Andrew Everingham: 1:04:45

I wonder whether the larger the larger the opportunity, the more than that had locked in and commitments required to, you know, because you, you're talking about a significant deal size, you you you, you want to have consistency as the buyer, you want consistency of experience and you want to have a level of trust with that organisation, and people buy from people so that they're going to be wanting, you know? Yes, you're right. People swap out and change. In some cases, that can be an improvement. Let's be honest. But people want consistency. Yeah, I will agree with that as well.

Daniel Bartels: 1:05:20

Well, Andrew, we're, you know, we're getting long in the tooth here on our time, and I'm sure you've got a busy day and I know you're off. You're off on holidays next week, which is super exciting. Sort of job off job. Before you can think of us while you're sunning yourself on a beach in Fiji. So, before we wrap up, I you know, we we often ask our attendees, our guests, a couple of key lessons, couple of key pieces of advice, marketing lead gen, and events are critical for the growth of any sales organisation. What What's the couple of things you'd leave people with? On the way out?

Andrew Everingham: 1:06:00

So I would, I would say, knowing knowing your audience, right, definitely, is really critical. And I think, I think a lot of marketers are quite prepared to be generalists about their audience not get right down into the weeds and really understand them. Simon, your comment before about empathy is just so critically important, understanding what's driving your your clients is absolutely critical. I would, I would say, accountability, when it comes to the work that you're doing is critical. There's there's a lot of places to hide. And that's, that's not really going to do anything good for anybody if you if you can hide. And then more generally, like I said earlier, just keep it fun. All right, let's keep keep it fun. Liberty is Liberty is a great weapon in our arsenal as marketers and salespeople so, you know, make sure that every morning you get up is when you feel fantastic about going in and doing what you need to do for the day. So that'd be my that'd be my tips.

Daniel Bartels: 1:07:09

Well, exceptional. Andrew. Simon, thank you so much for joining us today. If you've made it this far on the podcast, we absolutely appreciate you listening. Please don't forget to if you're on YouTube, please click Subscribe. Like the video if you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your your audio stuff. Please give us five stars. Follow the podcast. We'd love to hear from us. You want to drop comment, that'd be amazing. But for everybody, thank you so much for joining us and talk to you next time.