RX 10 - Building Your FY'26 Marketing Plan | Mindy Johnson, Sr. Demand Generation Manager, Bill

In this week's episode of the Revenue Xchange, host Davis sits down with Mindy Johnson, Sr. Demand Generation Manager at Bill. Together, they unpack how to build a marketing plan that aligns with business goals and drives revenue impact.

Key Takeaways:
1.) Start with Your North Star: Align marketing goals with business objectives before getting into tactics. Cross-functional alignment with sales, BDR, and revenue ops is critical from day one.
2.) Use Data to Drive Targeting: Build an ABM ROI model using historical closed-won data to identify high-value accounts and determine where to place your biggest bets.
3.) Balance AI with Human Connection: Leverage AI tools like Clay and User Gems for efficiency and personalization, but reserve tier-one accounts for high-touch, human-driven plays like field events and direct mail.

Closing Note: Mindy provides a practical framework for 2026 planning, emphasizing the importance of signal-based prioritization, clear SLAs between teams, and relationship building as the foundation for successful ABM programs. For demand gen and ABM leaders, this episode outlines how to move from fragmented campaigns to strategic, revenue-focused execution.

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:14

Mindy, hello. Hello. Hey Davis. Thanks for having me. Welcome. Well shout out to everyone who is joining us live as well. We have Emily coming in, Sumitra, Anna, others, we are back for another live revenue exchange, and today we have a very timely topic and one of the best. Expert guests to walk us through how to do one, building your 2026 marketing plan, but also thinking through some of the layers, like targeting and segmentation. What does the campaign planning actually look like from a channels motion tactical mix, and then walking through everyone's favorite measurement and reporting. So a quick housekeeping before we really get into it. One, this, we want this session to be as relaxed as possible, so interrupt us, toss all your questions in the chat. We will make sure to get everything answered. The on demand recording with visuals, it will be housed in our four x research hub. And then the podcast audio version, wherever you listen to your podcasts under the revenue exchange. So with that being said, I'm so excited to officially introduce our guest speaker, Mindy Johnson, who is the Senior Demand Generation Manager over at Bill Mindy. How are you doing? I am so excited to have you on. And also, it has been such a long time since we've connected. So fun fact for the people, tuning in. I've known Mindy since she was at Terminus, and Terminus again being the first quote unquote technology vendor that, Coined the term ABM platform. So there is nobody better to speak on these topics than Mindy. Mindy, welcome. And then maybe if you could give a quick background and intro, of your role and what you've been up to. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Definitely excited to be here. yeah. I'm Mindy Johnson. I currently am at Bill. We're a financial, operations company. my current role is really focused around our strategic initiatives for our AP product, really focusing on our demand gen efforts and our ABM efforts. as you know, Davis said, I came from a background of ABM at Terminus. I've had a mix of. 12 plus years of experience within campaigns and demand gen and marketing ops and and ABM. So I've had a good mix of just being able to see programs from start to finish, with campaigns and ABM. So really excited to be here and just kind of dive in with you. Let's do it. So Mindy, how is 2026 planning going for you so far? What are some of the considerations you're, you're thinking through? Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great, question. So going well so far. really diving deep. I think kind of just from a perspective of like high level planning, really starting with that North Star. Looking at like what are the business goals, what are the go-to-market goals? I think when you're in a role specifically, whether it's in demand, gen, marketing, sales, like you can get very caught up in your lane of like how you view things from the business and, get in the weeds of tactics and channels and different things. So I think it's always good to start from a high level of like bringing yourself back to that north star of. You know, what the business is trying to achieve. What are those go to market goals that you and your revenue partners and your sales partners are trying to achieve together? and kind of anchoring your goals and building your vision off of that. So, we've been, we've been kind of knee deep into those goals and figuring out how marketing can influence those goals, and really using data to, to drive those strategies. How are you thinking about targeting from a segmentation standpoint, from a maybe account based standpoint as well? Yeah, no, that's a great question. So something that sounds really basic, but just to start making sure that all teams have the same like definition of your ICP. I think there are so many different teams that touch the, you know, the buyer's journey, the customer journey. So really getting all of the teams aligned there on, you know, the revenue org that. You're fully on the same page of what you're, you know, what customers you're going after, what type of types of accounts that are driving the most value, where you're gonna invest in those accounts and how you execute is really important. a, a real unlock for me this year came from getting everybody in the same room. So really focusing on marketing. BDR leadership, sales leadership, sales enablement, our revenue strategy team, getting them all together and focusing on like what are those defined roles and responsibilities upfront in our ABM programs. especially with ABM, like spending the time to map out those processes and building SLAs before we even get into, launching those things. Agreeing with each team, like at every stage of who owns what. From there, we kind of went into like our strategy of looking at it from more of a data-driven approach. So, in order to prioritize those accounts, we're looking at data that could drive the highest, you know, revenue potential, aligning all of those different teams on what that definition of high value is. And we went through an exercise of building what we called our is our ABM, ROI model. So we took historical data, really to project like an expected average deal size for ABM, essentially like unifying where we can place our biggest bets for ABM. and that target segmentation. That really helped us like identify where our highest potential value is, where we can make the most impact, with deal size, potential product fit, utilizing different product level signals to make the most impact. so that we had a really strategic way to kind of drive that focus. and deepen the value within our existing customers or penetrating new segments, moving up market. So a lot of different ways that you can tackle how you want to, segment your targeting. But again, kind of all rolling back up to those business goals, right? Like are you looking at expanding or are you focusing on net new customers and penetrating a new market? Or, different things like that that can kind of drive those strategies. That's amazing. On the ABM modeling, when it comes to revenue target, segmentation, forecasting, and mindi, how do you think about your, you and your team's capacity and budget when it relates back to the number of accounts that you can cover and the number of segments that you're pursuing? How do you, how do you think about that? Yeah. So, especially at a company, company like Bill, where we have a very large team, we have different segments from product on sales, we have different segments in how we're going to market with marketing, it, it can get like very big and convoluted. So focusing like specifically on my part of the business, focusing on the AP product, looking at our kind of total budget mix versus. You know, our demand gen that we're kind of having always on in the background versus these specific ABM programs and trying to target that. I think that's where that model came in really well to say like. Here's where we're gonna put our bets up front. And here are the things that we know about historically from closed one data, how much it costs to, you know, basically generate an SQO for, or an opportunity with these customers, how much it's costing us to, actually have them become a customer and kind of working backwards from the numbers, to then allocate like. These are the number of accounts that we need to, go after in order to hit specific goals for our sales team, and kind of working backwards from the data from that allocation. And then I think a lot of it too is like we have like our on demand always running in the background demand gen programs, so. Some of that does influence into, especially when it comes to like paid ads and different channels that are probably still hitting some of these target accounts, and warming them up. But we have very like, curated plays that are specific to ABM, that we allocate budget for in order at like different stages of the cycle in their, you know, their progress in their account. So it kind of like. Not an exact answer, but kind of varies based on like some of the data that we're looking at and we're making bets on like what we think we can get from some of these accounts. That totally makes sense, and Anna has a great question as well. Yeah. Which is, what activities are you planning for 2026, such as webinars, live events, gifting. Yeah. Yeah. So I think a lot of it is a mix. one of the things that. We've like kind of our biggest shifts that we've made this year, especially focusing on like different things with signals. And first part, like first party product data, is we are kind of investing into more of those like AI powered scoring systems like user gems and GE to kind of analyze more of our like buyer activities, gauge readiness for sales. and so. Pushing into some of those different channels allows us to like, have bandwidth to do more, like things that are hands-on and, require a little bit more personal touch, like, field events, direct mail plays. Those are things that we focus on a lot in our ABM programs. While we have other channels and motions that are running in the background, like paid social SEM. so I would say it's kind of a mix of. AI generated, and always on programs plus more personalized touches for field events. that's one of, I would say like field events are a big bet for us. Also partnerships are a huge bet for us this year. So partner marketing and utilizing our, sync packages that we sync with from our, our side of the business, our VAR partners. we've seen a lot of success there and just driving higher deal sizes with those partners. And so those are two, that we're really investing in a lot more this year and kind of ramping up and, and almost doubling our efforts in. while keeping the lights on with things like paid social and SEM and things that can always run in the background. and then a mix of, yeah, to your point, content webinars. we have a great content team internally that has kind of an always on motion with that. But some of the things that we've done in the past, like year or two, we. One of the biggest like content series that we do is called Controller Appreciation Week. so for context, like with my ICP, we're going after finance leaders. and the controller is kind of like that step below the CFO. They're doing a lot of the ins and outs in the house, but they may not get as much credit or recognition. So we've created this like controller Appreciation week each year that we just like. Phrase controllers. We have content built out around like all week for them. send them gifts, have multiple different touch points. and that's driven a lot of interest, in that timeframe every year. And so we keep expanding on it and keep growing that. but we're kind of starting to see some bigger event type things with webinars and content like that and investing in those areas while we have some, like monthly webinars that we're always running in the background. And Yes, you can steal it. That's what I was about to say. For the ones listening in, Anna goes, that's such a great idea. Can I steal it? it we'll steal. Yeah. Because I feel like every, every like persona or ICP that you have, that you're going after, like. Probably has that person, right? Like you've got your CMO, but then you have these people that are really working hard in the background, maybe not getting as much recognition. You've got your salespeople, but then you've got these BDRs that are working really hard in the motion and like probably not getting the same recognition as the AEs. So I think it's, it's definitely something to steal and, and kind of like almost, not the underdog, but really highlighting the person that maybe doesn't get as much recognition in the beginning. How do you, how do you actually give them recognition? Like what are the activities that you're running? Maybe specific ad campaigns, maybe like a gift giving campaign? Yeah. so like what are the activities there to just show them that appreciation again? That's, that's great question. Yeah. No, that's great. so basically we have like a three day long series of different content mix and webinars. this year we're kind of running. A, a fun, gratitude like coffee series in the morning. So if you sign up, you get like a direct mail gift of coffee. We're featuring one of our, customers that actually is providing the coffee. it'll be more of a fireside chat and then they'll have like specific thought leadership, content throughout the day that's very specific to their roles and, and around controllers. And then. Ending, the controller appreciation week with a virtual, wine and whiskey tasting. So giving them kind of a virtual fun experience to celebrate them. and along the way we do offer, like we do have promotions for obviously like capturing conversions on, on demos. So we do some. Promotion offers, specifically for them, for their interest during like that time of the week looking at like if they are interested in Bill. but we also do like just little gifting things throughout the week that, basically treat them. We do a lot of recognition on social, around them and like. Build up the hype and the praise about controllers and have, last year we did a controller survival kit. So we built a custom kit within postal that had a bunch of little different things that helped get them survive, like through the end of the month. things like coffees and a stress ball and just like fun things. And then it had a gift card in there. and really it was just like. A gesture to say like, we appreciate you, we know you're closing the month. We know it's hard. and so we did a direct mail play with that. so it's kind of a mixture of different channels that we're, we're celebrating them, finding u unique ways like with gifting, and then also providing value to them from a thought leadership standpoint to, to really level up their role. That is such a great idea, Mindy. Love it. Yeah, I think that's genius. Yeah, it was fun'cause like even the direct mail kits, like we sent them to some customers and they posted on LinkedIn and shared out and like tagged their controllers in, in the comments and just really built the momentum and had a lot of fun with it. I was taking a couple notes too. I'm like, this could be really cool for a community appreciation week for four X ABM appreciation week as well. and maybe 2026. How many are there? Seven companies are doing appreciation weeks for their FSAs, like LinkedIn. Everyone's stealing the idea. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one to steal. I mean, it's just one of those things that like. We are getting into such an AI world and we're getting into these like touch points that you can replicate without human. And I think it's really important to remember those human elements of like being able to connect with people, build relationships, make them feel appreciated, and, not lose sight of that. Couldn't agree more. And Mindy, we have another question from Sumitra who mentions, how does 2026 look on the MarTech front? So how do you think about your marketing ops optimizing it based on your marketing motions and channels? and then please also throw some light about your current MarTech state. Yeah. so I know like I'm sure a lot of people's MarTech looks a lot different depending on the size of company you're at. I would say it's a blessing and a curse sometimes when you work for a larger company because you have a lot of tech and sometimes it doesn't get utilized all like fully. so I think the biggest thing that we're really focusing on is like with having so many options out there, there really is like. Endless options of things that you can do today and using tech, but our focus is really. Building out more of a signal based approach with our MarTech. So, leaning into a lot of our highest value signals that we've identified for Bill and different product segments. focusing on building a signal architecture in house of how, to digest those signals for sales, how to prioritize those signals, giving them like. Very clear visibility into the actions that they should take based on these signals. and it's a mix, right? Like a first party data. We're looking at things that are very specific to Bill that we know will make them a good customer. we're also looking at third party data based on account engagement and different things. And so taking a mix of those different, Signals and being able to put that into a digestible format for sales to activate on is a huge project that we're working on. and kind of where we're investing a lot of our efforts from a tech perspective, and from an account scoring perspective. So we've done kind of one off like motions of account scoring, for specific target account list and building out those things. Outside of it, but really trying to implement that into the full business, and into our strategies from a demand gen perspective and not just solely for ABM. So a lot of building and, and like workflows on the front end of, this coming year for us. But I would say our current tech stack right now, like. We are utilizing, six sense from an ABM perspective. but I think again, the goal is to kind of build something that's a little bit more tailored to Bill and focusing more on our first party data, and, and building something that will be meaningful and like. From a signal and intent perspective. and we also are implementing inflection this year, so that's something that is new to us. I actually don't know a whole ton about it yet, but I've heard really great things. so excited to see some of the things that we're building on this end, but really I think the ultimate goal is to like. Adapt to AI better, give our sales team a leg up on like what they should be prioritizing on, and really stack ranking that for them so that they're not, you know, living in a world of just like so many notifications, so many signals, so many different actions they're supposed to take. And like not really understanding how to prioritize, their day or their pipeline. So, that's one thing. I think that's been a huge focus for us. Thanks Mindy. I appreciate your answer. Yeah, of course. And Mindy, you mentioned that you all, you have this project, and I know it's ongoing, but it's a challenge we see so often where, Actually breaking down the signals and being able to share those insights with sales so that they can action it. And from a marketing perspective, so that you can action it. Yeah. In this end state or what you're working towards with the project, how do you envision being able to surface those signals and prioritize them and, and share it in that digestible format? Yeah, no, that's a great question. So, kind of what we're building out, right now is like taking anywhere, I think from 15 to 20 different signals, that we've. Like basically gone through each team identified, figured out what tech stack they're coming from, figured out where they're, where they live today. ingesting that into N eight N. So that is like the, the platform that we're trying to kind of build this in and. Putting it out into Salesforce, inflection Slack. So it'll be in different areas based on like the teams and how they work. I know a lot of that is still in the building process, but I think the goal is to be able to give the teams that are digesting this information, like putting it in the platforms that they're actually working in, whether that's a slack digest on their target accounts, showing like what's relevant to them daily or, you know, something built into Salesforce. So. A lot of those things are like kind of being built out right now and, and the framework is there, but the details are definitely still in the works. But definitely really excited to to push that out because I think the struggles that we have today, like especially in a world of, use utilizing technology like a six sense or something like that, we are just. We're losing that visibility. It's really hard to see, like those signals, if you don't have a rep in six sense, seeing what we're seeing and or like even the things that it's pushing into Salesforce, like the visibility is, is tough to prioritize from that standpoint. so yeah, I think that's, that's definitely a challenge that we've faced for sure. And, and trying to, improve that too. To get our sales team into a better place where they can have confidence in, in those signals and, and know what's working for them. we've built a lot of like that ABM model to really figure out the foundations of what we know works from a target account perspective and now like really moving that into more of a signal and engagement based play so that we can. Meet people are at, like, where they're at, at the right time. And so that's kind of our biggest goal going into this physical year. Okay. That's so cool. So you're, you have N eight N as your central, almost intelligence hub and all of the platforms and signals are pushing it in there. And then the NAN, you have some configuration where it's actually prioritizing and then pushing it out into the different channels. Yeah, exactly. And like our team's done a lot of work on prioritizing those signals from just first party data. Looking at like what's worked and what hasn't worked and. Signals and, really tying them back to the numbers. So we've done a lot of data modeling and, pulling a lot of closed one, you know, data from our customers to figure out what signals are influencing higher, you know, average deal sizes and, and really pairing all of that data to those signals and kind of working backwards. So. Now that we've kind of got a base level scoring model in place, like ingesting all of that into NA and and prioritizing that and spitting it out in like a digestible format to the team. And with buying journeys not being linear, as in the traditional demand waterfall where you have, you know, MQL to SQL and that stage based approach for individual leads, as there are so many different touch points that contacts in the buying group take all across the life cycle. How or what was the. What was the process for analyzing the patterns of signals that actually made an impact? Yeah, that's a great question. a lot of that I think boiled down to what we could measure in our CRM. some of it, like first party data, some product level signals. So we know like specific, ERPs that we sync with specific tech stacks that like. Our customers use are really good validation that they'll be a good fit for us from a customer perspective. just the stick stickiness of'em, the retention, different things like that. so that's kind of an example of a more of a product level, signal and then looking at, kind of digesting. We also utilize Clay today too, so being able to do a close one analysis. Putting that data within a platform like clay that can then turn around and show you what signals from like third party data that they experienced in the last 90 days when they were going through that deal cycle, or 90 days right before they opened a opportunity. So kind of evaluating some of those different signals and aspects that maybe weren't in our CRM or we couldn't see before, and. Putting those into prioritization. So a level of first party and third party. And then from an engagement perspective, we're able to like look at the different touch points, from a marketing side. So how many times they engaged with different activities, campaigns, events, like different things like that, and prioritize like. The touch points needed that go into those, different accounts and like how many touch points. So we're building out, we've been kind of like first touch, last touch, at Bell for a long time. we are kind of building out into Bizible more of a multi-touch attribution, just to get a little bit more visibility, into that and see kind of how we can. Further that model and, and build more of the engagement side into it. But starting with, you know, first party data is kind of where we landed on from important signals and then what we could see from just like third party signals in general. And Anna had a great question around how does account scoring affect what you're doing with an account? So for example, if it scores in terms of how much you want to convert or you score intent. Yeah. that's a great question. So, for account scoring, I look at it two ways, like. One from a base level of firmographics and ICP fit, like if they are at a certain level of account score, they're probably a better fit to go after for like a tier one account, versus tier two accounts. So we kind of went through this process of, building out like our tier one and two, two accounts for ABM this quarter. looking at those different account scores and splitting up. The touch points that they get. So our tier one accounts are getting a lot more personalization. They're getting a little bit more hand curated touch points and plays within our, ABM playbook. Whereas we're utilizing things like user gems and gym Jimmy to like. Analyze sequencing and timing and context from an AI perspective so that we can still touch those accounts and be very relevant and timely with like what we're serving them by. You know, identifying key triggers like champions moving from a company or. Multiple stakeholders, enga, engaging with content, so that we know to where to focus and prioritize those accounts for the tier two accounts, but kind of allowing AI and allowing systems to do that a little bit better. And then focusing our tier one efforts on more personal experience, like field events. direct mail plays based on, you know, their stages within, the account and where they're at. And kind of moving along, moving them along that, buying stage. So I think it just varies, like more of the touch points is what changes based on the account scoring. So the plays that we're offering those accounts. So, so basically scoring is just like a prioritization model for you on how much effort you're putting in. sorry, just a follow up question. I know you mentioned clay. Mm-hmm. And something that I'm doing right now is, we're building a, an automated motion with clay. Yeah. by, well basically Clay pulls, data from intense signals that we are collecting and generates an email, and that's actually been working very well. And the emails are, you know, untraceable, they don't look stupid. Yeah, which was my main concern. Is that something you're doing? As well. Yeah, it is. so Clay and Jimmy kind of have similar things when it comes to exactly what you said. personalizing, you know, generated outbound messaging, specific to those accounts and based on their content. Contact signals. So, currently we're using user gems and Jimmy for a lot of that, you right now, like we're mostly using clay for data enrichment and some personalization. starting to build out some like custom landing pages and different things with clay from a personalization standpoint. But I know that like, yes, to your point, like Clay definitely has the same capabilities from that standpoint and it's worked really well for us from that standpoint.'cause like we're looking at these different signals that we've identified as like key signals that we wanna track. and they're able to like. Search our CRM kind of pull that data out. So if we have, you know, a past champion that was a customer for Bill and they moved to one of our target accounts, we're able to pull that information and pull in the information of who they worked with, who they talked to, like. All of these different like key elements out of our CRM, that would take probably a rep a lot more time to go and like dig for that information account over account and insert that into a personalized one-off email. so it's saving our time, like saving the reps a lot of time from that perspective. And then they have more time to focus on like their strateg, like strategic plays that are more personalized and like. Those touch points of like building relationships in person at field events and different things like that. We have the same ABM program, essentially. It's the same. I love it. I, I, I, I've used things in a very similar way, so that's cool. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, of course. No, it's good to hear that other people are doing it too. I mean, I, it's things, it's kind of crazy'cause things change so much with ai and like, I think right now. One of the biggest challenges that teams face is like really adopting that AI effectively. And so there's so many tools and resources out there as we just like identified two tools that can do the same thing. and it can be really overwhelming to learn and like integrate and figure out like what's worth the investment. So, yeah, I think just continuing, like one thing that we do here is treating AI as like an accelerator and not a replacement. I think it can really speed up research and clean up data and polish writing and do certain things that can help on like repetitive tasks. But that just frees up time for the team to focus more on like strategy and creativity and building those meaning relationships and that's kind of that human connection. Right. And that's what I love about ABM so much.'cause like you can't replace in-person events with. Ai, you know, like things that you are doing to, like, there's people-centric channels that you're focusing on, and then there's things that you can do with ai, but I think it's a healthy, like a healthy mix between the two. Mindy, are you seeing any cost reductions in terms of campaign production with ai? And then if so, are you taking those cost savings and rebalancing and putting them into other areas? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say I haven't been tracking it as heavily, but I will say that I think there is definitely impact there. we have a lot of these, like newer things that we're doing with AI have definitely been newer in the last, you know, quarter or two. so still kind of like reaping the benefits, kind of showing the differences. one thing that I feel like we do. Focus on is like creating a cohort so that we can see the difference between like what we were doing before versus like how it's impacting us today. but I definitely think that there, like from a reallocation of budget standpoint, like we are seeing more efficiency with. AI from, especially on that outreach motion, especially on the messaging side to where we're able to like repurpose our reps times, like in more of a effective way for account planning, relationship building, really diving into more of the details that might take a little bit more effort, but they didn't have time for in the past because they were doing these manual tasks. So that part of it, I think we're able to like shift at least like. The priorities for some of our teams and get more focused on like strategy and things that will make a longer term impact. focusing on like those things that can't be as done by ai that you have to know from like a human level. I love how you kind of segmented it into freeing up more time. That's being re-put into creativity, strategy, relationships. Yeah. I love that. And when it comes to AI enablement, how are you making sure that your sales partners and then other cross-functional marketing teams are up to the same standard of ai? almost knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. I think that's definitely something like across the board that is. Hard to do. we have a great sales enablement team, and I think one of those things, like I mentioned at the very, very beginning is like getting everybody in the same room, getting everybody on the same page of. Really like focusing on the right things, what key strategies we're working through. we go through a lot of training here. so I think knowing that like if there's something that we're adopting on the marketing side and we feel like it's, gonna be super beneficial for sales, like ensuring that we're training them on the right pieces that make sense to them and not trying to like. Maybe they don't need to know the full picture of how user gems works, for instance, like the backend and all the things like really focusing them on the training of like. What's important to them And we actually just went through last week a whole training on like GEM E and user gems and, focusing kind of the areas that where they can impact and showing them that time savings and showing them like the different ways to utilize the tool within Salesforce and their Chrome plugin and, and different things that just speed up their like. Knowledge and account research. so yeah, it's, it's an ongoing training. Like I meet with, our seal, our sales team weekly. we also have like a pipeline, a pipeline meeting weekly for our ABM process so that we can review accounts and where they're at in, you know, the deal cycle and, how we're accelerating them and different things like that. So I think partnering with internal, like. Sales enablement teams, if you have them. if you don't like just really getting into that point of like, what, when you're adopting a new technology or adopting new AI that might require training in sales. focusing on what's gonna matter to them and like continuing to drop, like tips and things that they can do, to speed up their workflow and showing them the benefit of it is kind of an ongoing thing for us. Do you have a center of excellence or some repository where you keep either prompt workflows to, templates, in either training videos as well? Is there some ai single source of truth or where where does all of the sit. That's a good question. we use seismic for our sales team. that's kind of the hub and the resource that our sales enablement team uses. it kind of all lives in there from one central place of all the trainings they go through, and different things like that. We also. I utilize Slack channels a lot in, bill. So quick for quick things like for instance, like just walking, if I come up with an idea or I have something that like, I think will help speed up a workflow for a rep or something that I can like quickly enable them on, that's typically where I'll do those things and just give them. Short loom videos of a training or something they can do or a tip, with prospecting or whatever it is. and then we have kind of more of those long-term sales adoption processes and trainings and things that, our sales enablement team is doing and, and that lives in seismic from just a resource hub perspective. Yep. And Mindy, you mentioned you have, so there's tier one accounts, tier two accounts. Mm-hmm. Tier one has more personalization, more time, energy. Are you, or how are you when you're building your playbooks, how do you balance the tier one versus tier two in terms of. tactics and different assets that you're building. Segmentation as well. Yeah. How, how does everything come together? Yeah, that's a great question. so for our tier ones, like we're definitely focusing in on less accounts, hyper focus. For example, our, our BDRs have 10 accounts per BDR. They're focused heavily on building account plans for those accounts. we've. Enabled them on how to do some of that with ai to, to train on the basics that you can find publicly. but there are certain things like from a product standpoint and an internal perspective that would help us understand like how to better serve those accounts. so some, some things that they would have to do research on themselves. And then, just kind of building out that account plan from start to finish and, and how they work those accounts. And then going into. Balancing that with tier two. I think that's where we have those, like always on programs that we talked about. So user gems, being an always on. We have our paid channels that are running in the background to help warm up all accounts. and then focusing more on like in-person experiences focusing on very specific. direct mail plays based on their stage. So, if they're, you know, maybe an account that. Signed up for a demo and they're no showing, like having a specific play that we're triggering to, help kind of clear, maybe not have the rep have to go into postal, for example, and like send a gift, but having certain triggers that still feel very personalized and relevant based on like the action that they're taking. so there's some ways that we can speed that up, like from a. Automation standpoint and then other things that we feel like are really best to keep from like a human connection perspective, for those tier one accounts. And, keeping those touch points very like personalized human, human forward. so it's definitely a balance and I think that's why we use kind of that. ABM, ROI model to say like, okay, these are why we're selecting these tier one accounts because they have the, you know, highest chance of driving the biggest, average deals for us. their product fit from a certain perspective is. A lot higher because of their ERP or whatever it is. And so looking at very specific things to bill, that matter in tiering those accounts and then giving them that level of personalization. Based on that, how often do accounts switch between tiers or what does some of the disqualification and qualification criteria look like? Yeah, that's a great question. I, so that's something that, like, we've recently established a pretty good list of disqualification because obviously as you get into the weeds of product fit and things that you might learn upfront, those are things that maybe when we're going through our target account selections, like we can't verify upfront. So we, I would say. So far what we've experienced in this quarter, we've had a handful, that maybe two to three that we've had to switch out, just based on learning, for example, that the company does more. like they have international entities and that's something that Build doesn't support. So like very specific things that you couldn't really maybe see through a surface level without digging into the account. pretty deeply. So I, I would say those are the things that we look at as like hard disqualifications. a disqualification is not, I reached out to this person three times and nobody answered. So we're d Qing this account. so we had those very like strong SLAs upfront with sales to understand like, so they understood from a pros like prospecting perspective and from an. Way of working accounts, like what that means, what they can disqualify and what they should maybe move to tier two for nurturing because they're not ready or not responsive or whatever that might be. so I think that is kind of like how we handle that. I would say. A lot of them don't shift to tier two unless like we get to a certain point of like they've engaged with X number of people on the buying committee, we just can't get them to like bite or it's not the right timing or whatnot. Like we wouldn't disqualify them at that point, but we moving them to a tier two. So they're still getting a lot of those automated plays in the background, still warming the account, still trying to get into them, but maybe not as high of like a value at that point. And you mentioned the buying committee, so I wanna get into measurement and reporting. what are some of the core metrics that you are using to measure success? And then also, does it have a buying group or buying committee component when looking at engagement? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say the core things that we're looking at today, are really just like. Pipeline velocity. That's where we're trying to get to, like proving out with ABM, that with this motion versus our typical demand gen motion, we can accelerate that pipeline velocity and close deals faster. our win rate of ABM opportunities, so really focusing on, a higher win rate, better conversion rates. and then average deal sizes are kind of the three things and making sure that, like, are we increasing these average, you know, deal sizes and like, is the revenue that we're getting from these accounts higher with ABM than with our typical demand gen motion? we do have, you know, account engagement scoring is something that we're kind of working on still internally, like. It is, it takes a lot of, you know, touch points in looking at different marketing touches and looking at different things. We're using Six Sense for it today, but, it, it's tough. Like it's definitely one of the tougher ones to measure because of the integration and the things that like, don't really surface as well to sales from that perspective when you're using like a six sense. So, that part of it, from our standpoint, like. We're still in the works of how we, we like capture those engagement scores. We're currently using like the buying stages and six sense for that, today, but I'd like to get that in a better place to where we're really focusing on, very specific ways that we want them to engage in tracking that, and scoring them based on, on very specific things. So, overall, like I think. We have our, our standard like financial goals and we have our standard funnel of how we do things with demand gen. And I think those key elements of like pipeline velocity, increasing the average deal size and like increasing that win rate from ABM is what we're trying to prove out from that strategy of like, this is why we're doing these things. It's not, it's not something you can. Do as effectively with demand gen, like, because you're not as personalized, you're not as focused on specific accounts. So, those are kind of the things that we're, we're tracking and trying to prove out with the program. When you have conversations with the sales team, what are some of the metrics that you are reviewing with them? Yeah, that's a, that's great. So I would say like, we are definitely looking at. How many touch points within the buying com committee? So I know we kind of talked about that, ensuring that we're engaging with at least, you know, three people from the buying committee. we are looking at activity level metrics too. at least our BDR, you know, managers are to make sure that we're actively working the accounts, that they, they're. Actually doing the plays that are set for them and like those touch points are actually happening and we're moving and progressing the account over time. and then some of the, like, some of their metrics that they're kind of looking at are like, they, they are looking at dials and, and emails and different things like that. but I think like more so just ensuring that we're continuing to. Progress the account in certain ways and having those touch points of whether that's inviting them to events or having those direct mail plays, paired with some of the sales activity and, looking at some of those different intent signals. So I think from their standpoint, like it is, it is still pretty heavily like. Activity driven. but what I like to see is making sure that they're engaging with the account consistently. And like, we're not just trying upfront seeing like for a couple weeks if we can get in the door and then walking away from it. So keeping a true pulse on like continuing to work that account for a period of time before, we just decide to nurture them for a little while and come back to it. On the topic of the buying committee, how did you discover or how do you think about who makes up that buying committee? Yeah. so we have a internal like title matrix. We've. Pretty much use that, for a lot of our demand gen efforts moving like forward. But, what we've done with a lot of our ABM accounts, depending on, you know, whether, whether it's industry driven, whether it's, a specific type of company or different like structure that we're going after, we typically see, for instance, in our mid-market space, like we have a pretty good. Pulse on like who that buying committee is. We've done a lot of like research with our product marketing team. we've dove into data from like a vertical perspective to know that like how the roles change if we're targeting like religious organizations versus, you know, a tech company. So some of those roles and how they change, like based on kind of what those different criteria is and like what we're going after from. Industry level or type of company, but standard across the board typically. Like we know that like they have very specific roles within the company and the size that we're going after. So, that changes drastically when you're talking SMBs versus your up market or mid-market accounts. and that's where I think like knowing what motion works for you best. Like we know that today with our s and b companies like. It's definitely higher volume. ABM probably doesn't make as much sense to do with our s and b companies, focusing more on a net market motion for ABM. and so that's kind of from a buying committee standpoint. Like we've, we've definitely identified some of those key roles, but they do shift based on like the type of company sometimes and, and just being lenient with that. And that's kind of where that. Mapping comes in from the account, planning. So having our BDRs really look at like a map of like, here's here's the main, point of contact. Here's your influencer, here's, someone that could influence the deal from like an IT perspective, because we do tend to have like. Integrations and things that, matter from that perspective. So highlighting different, those different roles for them that could be in the deal cycle upfront so they know what to look for. Do you associate buying group contacts to open opportunities? So I will say like in the past. It's funny, before we moved to more of an ABM motion, you would always hear our sales team say like, we only want CFOs. We only want these titles. Like we will only work with these people. but then you go look at the like closed one analysis and you're like, no, the decision maker here was this person or this was your point of contact. So, I think like going back to that data of really saying like, here's what we've seen historically based on. our close one analysis and saying like, these people do matter in the buying committee. What you have to focus on is what role they play in the buying committee. So what matters to A CFO may not be the same thing that matters to an accounting manager that's actually in the platform and running, you know, your day to day. So I think that's something that like we've really focused in on, especially with the ABM motion of training the reps on, like, these are the pain points that these people face. They're still important, even if they're not the decision maker and they can get you in the door. If you can win them from the beginning, you move your way up into, you know, that next level. And so not disregarding the people that could have influence, and building out like what that really looks like from a pain point and like value perspective for those specific roles has helped them kind of like. Guide their conversations as they're working the buying committees and figure out like what's important to each of these people. Because I think it, it does like vary throughout the deal cycle and obviously like depending on number of employees and how many people they have in their finance department and all of those things. But generally we've found like a pretty good sweet spot in each. Type of role, whether that's champion, you know, decision maker, influencer, kind of how they think and what their influence is in that, in that current role of the buying committee. And I know we have a few minutes left. Yeah. There was one thing, one piece of advice that you would share with other ABM and demand gen leaders for 2026 planning as they're going through the process. What would that be? Oh gosh, one piece. well, I'm gonna stick to like, what's tried and true to me. relationships, especially internally with your, with your like collaborative partners are so important. you can like, you can know all the right things and all the tactics and all the like. Levers to pull from an ABM perspective, but if you are not aligned with your sales partners, your rev ops partners, your, you know, customer success team, if you're trying to expand, like that has been the biggest crucial thing. Like when I walked into Bill day one, like my goal was to build relationships and make those like relationships like the core around what I'm doing because. Then you can build so much value from there. Like if you have that buy-in and you have those relationships, that's gonna take you so much further than the knowledge. Like,'cause you can learn things and you can teach things, but like if those people don't trust what you're doing from the get-go, it's gonna be really hard to, like, especially with ABM, make that successful. That's great advice and especially setting clear roles, responsibilities, and governance too with all the different stakeholders. So building the relationship and then having everyone know what their, what their lane is. And Mindy, thank you so much for joining and thank you for everyone who joined live as well. Where's, yeah. Thank you for joining. I, thanks Chairman Mindy. great. Sherman, a lot of good learnings. Thank you. Thank you for being service. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you, Mindy. Of course, Mindy, for some of our offline listeners, where is the best place that they can ask you questions? Of course LinkedIn is always a great one, so I can, if you wanna share out my LinkedIn Davis, you can, but LinkedIn, feel free to connect with me, message me, we can connect on whatever, whatever channel is best for you for that point. But, yeah, LinkedIn would be the best connection. And if you don't have a LinkedIn, I'm happy to share my email or phone number too, and be a resource. Amazing. Well, thank you so much everyone. Mindy, this was incredible. Thank you. Thank you for joining. Yeah, thanks for having me. This was fun. This was really fun, and looking forward to see you all next week on our next revenue exchange.