Josh: Hey, Jess, I've been thinking, what if our SDRs secretly did outbound?
Jess: Secretly?
Josh: Like undercover, but for pipeline.
Jess: Josh.
Josh: A sleeper cell of demand gen that also does outbound.
Jess: That is an ABM program.
Josh: I want them to have a cool code name.
Jess: It's called ABM. Hey, Josh, remember when you decided we wanted to hire a undercover secret agent marketer?
Josh: I didn't know that had a name for it. But it sounded really cool the way I described it.
Jess: It's been around a while, actually.
Josh: Yeah, I remember. And you're like, "That's a thing, it's called ABM, and yes, we should do it." Which was the ultimate thing that only mattered, which I was right, and we should do it. Yes,
Jess: exactly. Yeah.
Josh: Not that I—
Jess: That's the end result. You were correct.
Josh: Yeah. I remember when you wanted to do that. Do you remember why we
Jess: needed to do that? Why don't you explain why?
Josh: Fair, okay. All right, I don't think this will come as a surprise to no one, Factor has a great marketing team, and we've generated almost all of our pipeline to date from our marketing efforts from inbound. And as part of our Series A, I had to answer the question, how long will that scale?
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: What... is this gonna keep going to Series B, Series C, or eventually are we gonna have to start to consider a traditional model where sales either has to go outbound or start picking up the slack? Unsurprisingly to anybody that listens to this podcast, marketers, our sales team was not interested in the idea of them having to go outbound. And we went through a quarter where we were trying to figure out, well, are they saying that because they're salespeople, and of course they'd rather have pipeline handed to them. Yep. No, no one would argue that a qualified warm inbound lead is better to work — Totally — and easier to work than outbound. Yeah. So I get where they're coming from, but we also had to ask the question, maybe they're just being salespeople, and we should make them, quote-unquote, "toughen up." But one thing that we just couldn't get over... Actually, two things that we couldn't get over. Yeah. One, we knew that the brand that we had built and the way that we did marketing was really special.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: And we were nervous sort of handing that to any traditional outbound sales team. Yeah. And then also to the sales team's credit, we had not built our sales team to be full cycle.
Jess: Totally.
Josh: Yeah. We had these excellent killer closers, right? Yep. That could take something warm, and we would have to go staff a very different type of team — Yes,
Jess: exactly —
Josh: to build this way.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: So we decided to go a different direction.
Jess: That's right.
Josh: Built an ABM team. But we built one very differently.
Jess: Yes.
Josh: What was your... When I came to you with this sort of "Let's build the sleeper cell of people in market who do outbound," what was your reaction, outside of that exists?
Jess: Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about, Josh. You're not coming up with anything new. Yeah. I think at first it was like we're re- traditionally you start ABM when your demand gen is totally knocking it out of the park. You've got that all figured out, and now you're like, "What's the next way to permeate the best accounts that are out there?"
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: There's a crawl, walk, run, and we're definitely still... We're really good at crawling with demand gen right now. Yeah. Real good. Yeah. We're like... You know on the Disney cruises where they do the baby races? Yes. We're the baby that wins the crawling race. Every time. The diaper,
Josh: you can't even see it,
Jess: it's going so fast. Yeah, so fast. Yeah. We're gone.
Josh: Yeah. But when we walk, we're a little — we're a little, we're a little
Jess: stumbly.
Josh: We need the couch to support us. That's
Jess: okay. We've only had demand gen for less than six months, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: So we're still getting our sea legs there. Yeah. Traditionally, you would wait a little longer, really understand everything you're doing in demand gen — Yeah — and then you go standard ABM. Yeah. But I think the nature of our product, a lot of our customers are doing ABM when they first come to us and they're like, "Hey, we're doing ABM. It works well, but we want to do it at the next level — Yeah — and contact-level data's gonna help us get there."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And so it was a little bit of a, if we are going to be able to provide that for demand gen marketers — Yeah — we have to be able to do it ourselves too. Yes, yeah. And so I think I was excited at the challenge, but knowing it was going to be a challenge — Yeah — because we are still getting all of the infrastructure. It's gonna take a while to get all of that set up and really understand everything we needed in place to really make that happen.
Josh: Yeah, we just didn't have that muscle matured — No — at all.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: But we needed to figure it out. We had to answer that question of how will we scale? And the reality is, we haven't found it yet, but there has to be some sort of ceiling to organic and content. Yes. Eventually you have to go to the market. Yes. And so we knew we wanted to do that, and we also wanted to make sure that we controlled that natural extension of Vector's brands. We didn't want just cold calling a bunch of people and being like, "Have you heard of Vector?" This didn't feel right — for us.
Jess: Totally.
Josh: So establishing that program took a lot of thinking.
Jess: Yeah, in the way that felt Vector, for sure. Yeah,
Josh: yeah.
Jess: And we didn't wanna do it — there's a very traditional way to do ABM, which is you work with sales to choose the accounts, and you go after those accounts through a lot of one-on-one personalization. Very bespoke landing pages and things like that. And actually, we wanna do the more modern version of ABM, which is what are the signals —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: telling you about who you should go after first? Yes. Let the signals and buyer behavior guide — Yep — your tier one and tier two account lists. Yeah. There's a lot of marketing teams that actually have an SDR underneath them. Yeah. And their goal is still booked meetings.
Josh: Yep.
Jess: That didn't quite feel like the right use of that role for us, for Vector.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: We wanted a little bit different experience. Yeah. And so how we wanted this to play out was we wanted to test both like signal —
Josh: Yep —
Jess: was the signal actually something that was providing us with high quality leads? Yep. The message that we served the audience that showed us that signal — was there resonance there? Yeah. Once we found a signal message match, it felt right to, "Hey, this campaign is working."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: This signal now needs to have its accompanying outbound program.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: So it was very ad led, right? So it'd be led by Kelly, who's running all these campaigns — Yeah — finding the signals, and figuring out who fits within that signal as an audience. And then as a team we're figuring out what is the message we're serving to them. Yeah. Once we found something that hit —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: we would be like, "Okay, this person who is gonna come in and do the SDR in marketing thing," at the time we were calling it an XDR — That's
Josh: right, yeah —
Jess: cause we weren't sure what the actual title was going to be. Yeah. We were like, that person would then, knowing that's the audience, and that's the signal, and that's the message, craft an outbound program —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: based on that. So now not only are the ads working well — Yeah — but now we have that recognition that when an email lands in their inbox — they recognize the name.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And the goal is not, "Come book a meeting with us." Yep. The goal is much more brand concierge. Yeah. It's like, "We have this webinar we're doing. We think this would be great fit for you." Yes. We just created this piece of content, this guide —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: this calculator.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Thought you might find it interesting.
Josh: I think that's so smart.
Jess: It's so much better. It's such a better experience,
Josh: right? Yeah. I feel like there's this big detachment from reality that a lot of executives have with how they think outbound should work. Yeah. But they themselves wouldn't respond positively to this, right? You have these CROs that are just like, "More volume, more volume, more—" Yeah — et cetera. And then you ask them, "When was the last time you picked up a cold call? And did you like it if you did?" Yeah. And the answer's either never or, "No, I hated it." Yeah. No one on this planet enjoys being like, "Ah, shoot, I picked up the call and now I have to tell someone no and hang up." Yeah. Yes. That, nobody likes that, yet that's what we've built all of our programs around.
Jess: Yes.
Josh: And we had felt like in marketing — we had all this signal that was the market loved us because of the small events that we did, the dinners that we put on — Yeah — the authenticity of our brand, and it just felt real wrong to be like, "And now we're gonna call them when we see this signal."
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: So I love that in your activation you said "We need someone that's..." Yeah, they're gonna go in these channels, they're gonna call, they're gonna send emails, but the thing they're going to say is going to be valuable — Yes — and helpful.
Jess: Yes.
Josh: So you had to hire to make that happen.
Jess: We had to hire this person. Yeah. And so I'd just gone through the whole thing with finding a demand gen marketer and I was like, "Here we go again." "I gotta find this amazing unicorn — Yep — who's done SDR stuff before, but wants to be in marketing." Which like —
Jess: Can also write really well.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Live up to the standards of Vector. I was like, "Oh my God. Yeah. This is gonna be another six months."
Josh: Yeah, yeah. I was
Jess: so wrong.
Josh: And there's one human being on the planet — Yeah — that fits that — Yeah — that need. How many months did it take you?
Jess: Oh, it was like I found her the day she sent me an email.
Josh: So you got outbounded —
Jess: I got
Josh: outbounded —
Jess: by this candidate. By this candidate. Yeah. And I think the stars really aligned here. Yeah. So we had just started talking about we think we need a position like this, when lo and behold, in my LinkedIn inbox — Yeah — I got one of the most thoughtful, well-written outbound messages, just random, "I love what you're doing. I've been doing SDR work for five years." Yeah. "Really interested in the marketing aspect of things. I would love to join a marketing team like yours —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: and do this under marketing." And I think actually when I was telling you about this message — Yeah — you actually said to me, "Do you ever feel like your life is a movie?"
Josh: Yeah, yeah.
Jess: And it was. It was just so serendipitous that she had sent this message.
Josh: Wild.
Jess: So wild.
Josh: Signed Abbi Beckwith.
Jess: Signed Abbi Beckwith. And Abbi, she was at Goldcast — Yep — who is a customer of ours. Yeah. They had just been acquired by Cvent.
Josh: Yep. And we're good friends with their leadership team.
Jess: Very good friends. Yep. And it was funny because she later told me, when they got acquired by Cvent, she was like, I, she told Cindy Dubon, who is — Yeah — her manager, "I think I'm, I think I'm ready to move on to the next thing." Yeah. Cindy was totally understanding and was like, "You should reach out to Vector." Which
Josh: is so nice. That's so
Jess: cool...
Josh: I remember, I think maybe the second thing I said to you after, "Do you think your life is a movie?" I think my second question is "Is Cindy gonna be mad at us?"
Jess: Yeah. And I was like, "No." No. "Do you wanna know something crazy? She told her to do
Josh: this." That's so cool. Yeah.
Jess: And so I reached back out to her, and I was like, "Listen, I think your timing is perfect. Your message was amazing."
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: "Would love to talk to you about how we're thinking about this," right? And so we had a handful of interviews with her. We talked her through the program. We had her meet our sales team, because she's gonna be working very closely with them. Yeah. We had her meet with Kelly because she's also, one, very interested in demand gen, and two, going to be working very closely with him — Yeah — because he's going to be leading the way and turning all of these campaigns over to her, if they are successful —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: to build an outbound program. Yeah.
Josh: Can we talk about that for a second? Yeah. So one of the things that I just, I feel like we need to share is, sometime — we're working on knowing when to have process and when not to have process. Yes. It's an unfinished job for us. Yeah. We're not perfect at it, but there's certain things that we do execute just really well on. Yeah. One of the questions that we had that we were just so okay not having the answer to was who is she going to work for? Do you remember this? Yes. We went to Kelly, and we were like, "Hey, do you wanna run an SDR team?" And I love the honesty of our company. He was like, "Not really." Yeah. And it was less of, I don't think I'm capable, more of I just got started here in demand gen. I feel like I have a bunch to do. Yeah. And for a half second, we entertained do we need to find a leader first or whatever? Yeah. And we were just like screw it. Yeah. Let's just go do it. There's a really talented person here. Yeah. We'll figure out the process. And I think that allowed us to... And now we're finding out that she's incredible.
Jess: She's so great.
Josh: And probably in a good shape to help us form that function. Yes. And we would have never arrived at that conclusion if we had gone through the traditional slow process — Right — of building out a team and investing in a leader and all this sort of stuff.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we just brought her on. She sits underneath me.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And she again just works... She's one of the people who works probably most cross-functionally between —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: sales and marketing and rev ops.
Josh: And what title did you give her?
Jess: We gave her the title of ABM manager.
Josh: Which I think is so interesting. It
Jess: is.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Yeah. One, we wanted to signal she was in marketing. Yeah. She's comped as a marketer. Yep. She is a marketer. Yeah. She is on the marketing team. She does not have a quota. Yep. She does not have a sales goal.
Josh: Yep.
Jess: Her job is just to bring people into, more into our world — Yeah — and build more brand affinity —
Josh: Yes —
Jess: by providing value.
Josh: And that's huge, by the way, 'cause we talked about that, right? We were like how much is this SDR, how much is this ABM? Yeah. And she does things that you would see an SDR do, send emails to customers that have signed up — Yep — and could use some more value. Or I'm sure she'll call people if we need to get people into events or whatever. Yeah. Those are SDR things. But you and I sat down and we said we don't really want to give her a pipeline number — Yep — or a cold calling quota because, and this turned out to be true, she floats across all these different — Yeah — customer and prospect evangelism type — Yep — jobs and stuff, where I think she would have been very conflicted, and we wouldn't have been able to get as much out of her if we basically said, "Your job is X pipeline or X calls today."
Jess: 100%, yeah. It just wouldn't have, and it would have felt like us. Yeah, yeah.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: 100%. Yeah. I think the other thing we found out she's really good at, probably because she came from Goldcast — Yeah — was events.
Josh: Yes, yeah.
Jess: And understanding pre- and post-event — Yeah — outreach and follow-up. Yeah. And so we had a whole episode about the ghost tour to her, our owned event series. Go back and listen to it if you haven't. It's a fun one. Yeah. But she's helping me run all of the sales hand-off stuff there. We really understood the people who are going to be at this event who are in our target accounts — Yep — and who owns that. All of the outreach we're making sure is a very clean-cut line between what sales is doing and what we're doing, and she's leading a lot of that.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And so yeah, I think it's funny. Sometimes you bring people onto the team that you didn't know how badly you needed them —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: until they're there and they're doing the thing where you're like, "Oh my gosh, we..." Talk about, process when you need it. Yeah. She's building processes we — Yeah — needed and did not have.
Josh: Yeah. I'm a big believer, just hire very talented people. Yes. They'll figure it out.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: They'll figure it out.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: By the way, and we'll jump back into what ABM means for us in all of this, but this is not to say we let sales off the hook. No. We didn't say, "Okay, we'll just bring someone into marketing who will generate more pipeline for you." ABM still is a cross-functional thing. Yeah. And we have... After Abbi does her thing, we have expectations of what the sales team needs to do to go out to these accounts as well.
Jess: Yeah. I think her being there, and then we also around the same time hired a VP of sales. Yep. Heather Bell, who's amazing.
Josh: Yeah,
Jess: amazing. This has all, those two things sound like it would almost widen the gap between marketing and sales. It has brought us so much closer together. Yeah. I've, we feel more aligned right now than I think we ever have, and I genuinely felt very aligned with sales —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: team — Yeah — at our company, and I feel like we're even closer — That's — and more aligned now, which is really exciting. Really cool. 'Cause I think we have the support they need. We have the support we needed. We have a much better line of communication now — Yeah — open for handoffs — Yeah — and for follow-up — and who owns what and when —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: that we just did not have before.
Josh: I almost feel like by bringing in two new people, one in marketing, one in sales at the same time, it almost, any sort of festering that we had between marketing — Yeah — and sales, which every team has. Yep. And we had it as well. It almost immediately went away because you have these new people that are both really still positive, right — Yeah — around their goal.
Jess: Yeah, it was like we didn't wanna taint them with that. We wanted their fresh eyes and positivity to come in and help us all.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: Yeah. Ring, ring.
Jess: Hello?
Josh: This is a cold call.
Jess: Oh.
Josh: Do you know what time it is?
Jess: I think I do. It's
Josh: time for the positive affirmations. Woo.
Jess: The only cold call I've ever enjoyed.
Josh: The one and only. That's the only type of cold call you should get. Let's do it.
Jess: Let's do it.
Josh: Dear marketer, your brand presence is giving already IPO'd.
Jess: Dear marketer, LLMs quote your content like scripture.
Josh: So we've got all these new people now. Yeah. We've got Heather in sales. We've got Abbi as our ABM manager. We have Kelly sitting in a new demand gen role. Logistically, how do you, where do you go from there? How do you get started with our ABM program?
Jess: Like I said earlier, the new modern approach is start with the signal. Start with the buying behavior. Yeah. We have a couple different hypotheses around the signals or the combination of signals that Kelly likes to call it, an alpha signal. What is the thing that consistently every time we see that signal we know that they are going to be a great buyer for us?
Josh: What are examples of these sort of signals?
Jess: Okay. So for us it would be when we see organic traffic go down —
Josh: Yep —
Jess: ad spend go up.
Josh: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Bonus. If they're hiring a demand gen or ABM marketer.
Josh: That's awesome.
Jess: Those three together are a really great cohesive sign that a company is starting to invest more in demand gen — Yep — because they're not getting the same traffic they were, and they need more help trying to figure it out, so they're making a hire in that space as well.
Josh: Which feels like a really nice diversion from old ABM. Old ABM was like, "We build a target account list of people that have money because they fundraised recently." Right? And have X amount of employees. And it was very much like a, "Oh, the company of that size should have the problem we support." Yep. Now it's actually looking for signals where you can go to them, have Abbi go to them — Yep — and say, "I see your traffic is down. I see your ad spend is up." Yes. "I see you're hiring this person. I presume you have this problem. Is that true?"
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: Yes, exactly. I love that.
Jess: We're letting those signals build the target account list for us. Yeah. Which companies are showing, exhibiting these characteristics? We should go after them.
Josh: Love. Okay.
Jess: All of those accounts are going to get targeted with ads — Okay — from us — Yeah — on a contact level.
Josh: Okay.
Jess: So we're gonna use Vector to do this.
Josh: Yep.
Jess: And they're not all gonna get the same ad. Yep. Because it's gonna be based on the signals that they were identified with.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: That will vary up the ad messaging — Yeah — but they'll all get targeted with ads.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: There's a smaller subset, let's say about 60.
Josh: Yep.
Jess: And they're gonna get divided about 20 per rep.
Josh: Okay.
Jess: The reps are going to focus on those 20 accounts each.
Josh: Okay.
Jess: And really go after them with very specific messaging that marketing is going to write.
Josh: Love that. Yep. And help them with. Brand approval.
Jess: Yep. But they'll get outbounded from sales, right? Yep. To start building a relationship there.
Josh: Yeah. Okay.
Jess: And then there's going to be a set of probably 30 — Yep — that Abbi will also touch.
Josh: Cool.
Jess: And that is going to be, like, our top, top tier. Wow. We really... If we could close 80% of these people — Yeah — this quarter would be huge — That's awesome — for us. So she'll be doing some very specific outbounding to those groups, delivering them content, things of value, calculators, inviting them to events.
Josh: That's neat.
Jess: Pointing them toward blog posts or episodes of the podcast — Yeah — that makes sense for them.
Josh: So it's not a perfect analogy, but a one way to think about it is we have this really broad, many to one ABM. Yep. Then we have a few to one ABM that the reps are going after, and then we have one to one ABM where Abbi is going specifically — Yes — after — Exactly — these folks. I love that.
Jess: I also wanna say this is the run version.
Josh: Okay.
Jess: We are not here yet.
Josh: Oh, good to call out. Yes. That's the full thing we're trying to achieve.
Jess: This is the ideal state.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: We're building what we're calling a signal house. Yeah. It is the underlying technology that's going to help us actually identify the people who should be in the target account list. Yeah. However, we do have Vector, and we do know our ICP very well, and so we're starting with those two things first. So we're gonna start... Obviously anything that's ICP fit in combination with engagement data — Yeah — from Vector — That's
Josh: cool —
Jess: will help us build the first iteration of our ABM target account list. Yeah.
Josh: So the signal house, what we ultimately wanna get to is this really nerdy concept that Kelly, our demand gen marketer, came up with, which is instead of relying on Clay or these sort of tools that are purpose-built to generate signals, we have very specific signals that we are looking for. Yeah. Nothing's purpose-built for us. And so we're basically building this data warehouse where we can pump all these bespoke signals in, how many ads are running, and is your website traffic dropping? Yep. And so that we can basically train AI to essentially score which accounts to go after. Yeah. But to your point, we didn't need that, and we still haven't completely built that to this day — Yep — to get started. Exactly. And so I think him and Sarah, our rev ops leader, started in a much smaller place, which is here's all of the accounts that are showing the earlier stage signals to go after.
Jess: Exactly. And so I think that'll be a nice little practice ground for us. This'll be our walk version, right? We've already won all of the crawling races. Yeah, yeah. So now we need to do the toddler waddle. Heck yeah. Now we need to do a waddle race.
Josh: Yes.
Jess: And we're gonna get there, and we're gonna win that too.
Josh: Big chunky legs.
Jess: All the rolls. The rolls.
Josh: Aw, it's delicious. Little rubber band arms. I
Jess: love it. So that's the next step, and the idea is that Kelly's gonna start running campaigns based on those signals, and then pass that to Abbi if we get a hit again, and then she's gonna build an outbound program around that. So it will be a very well-oiled machine, this kind of vision that we have. In this walk version, and then by the time that Signal House is built and ready to go and we're firing on all cylinders with the actual process itself, we'll be able to really expand what we can do in the world of ABM.
Josh: That's really cool. What is, out of all the things that we could do in this, what are we calling it? Toddler waddle — Yeah — phase .5 version. What's an example of an actual campaign that you would run in that?
Jess: Yeah. Okay, so we have two that we're prepping for right now. Okay. Which are built around some more traditional signals. The first one is new demand gen hire or demand gen promotion.
Josh: Mm.
Jess: And then the second one is a fundraise. And so the idea here is that we are going to have not only ads that talk to that signal — Yep — also a piece of content — as kind of a give or an offer for that signal. So our content marketing lead, Annalisa, who also just joined the team... Y'all, this team has grown.
Josh: It's big.
Jess: Like —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: we're five people now. It's insane.
Josh: Wild.
Jess: But Annalisa was someone that I had worked with at Fastly. She was incredible. Yep. And unbelievable long-form content writer, and so she's joined the team, and she's creating these great pieces of content around — at any given series — Yeah — series A, series B, series C, what should demand gen look like? Oh,
Josh: love
Jess: that. What should ABM look like? Yeah. So you have a guide for "Oh, we just got this fundraise," "What's expected of me now that we're at this new level — Yeah — in terms of demand gen and pipeline creation?"
Josh: That's cool.
Jess: What does the first 90 days as a head of demand gen or head of growth look like, and what's expected of me, right? So these are two really interesting guides —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: that we can give away inside of ads. Yep. We can have Abbi hand — Yeah — off to people who show this signal, right? So that's going to be the motion is we're gonna take these more traditional signals paired with Vector's insight around what they've been doing on our website, what ads they've been clicking of ours. Yep. And then we're going to get them this piece of content somehow, that Annalisa's creating. And then Abbi's also going to be doing the outreach around that, handing them that piece of content, inviting them to the events that make sense, just pulling them further into the brand.
Josh: I feel like the theme that we've had across all of our content, including this podcast, as episode three was about videos for our ads. Yeah. Our theme, or maybe a better way of thinking about it is our bet —
Jess: Yeah —
Josh: is that really valuable content that really creates engagement is the way.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: And you mentioned hiring Annalisa — that was another bet in that direction — Yep — which is yeah, AI can create content, it can push out a bunch of slop. But we're learning to differentiate what's valuable, what's not.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: And I think Annalisa is a hire that most people would not associate to a successful ABM program, but I think she will be. Oh, yeah. I think she'll be the reason —
Jess: Yeah —
Josh: that ABM works for us.
Jess: Absolutely. I think the thread through all of that is we're very focused on the humans in the business. Yes. You and I are very big about building in public — Yep — on LinkedIn. We put Kelly as the face of our daily user. He's out there doing all these webinars talking about how he's using Vector, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Annalisa is building up her own kind of personal brand, because she also wants to be a part of this and show people how are we thinking about content? Um, Abbi's now going to be one of the first people that people interact with when they come into the Vector world, right? Yeah. And so I think we're making a bet on — I think you've even said this before — the future is very human.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Despite all of this AI — Yeah — despite all of the automation, all of the workflows and everything that we're trying to turn into some sort of process that — Yeah — is run through Claude.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: The thing that I think makes us most successful is we hire really good humans — Yeah — to do what we know is right and build the human experience —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: for the people that we hope to become customers someday, and really make them feel good about it.
Josh: Yeah. I think it's spot on. I think it's... Marketing is about zigging when everyone else is zagging. Yeah. And if you're scrolling through LinkedIn and you're feeling defeated because all you see is "Replacing my marketing team" — and "AI generated this for me," that's the zag that everyone's — Yes — doing. The zig is what happens when that is everything we see in all marketing? I have a feeling humans is gonna become very differentiated again. Yeah. It's like after COVID where all of a sudden you flew to a customer for a sales meeting — Yeah — that was very differentiated.
Jess: Yes.
Josh: I think marketing's gonna feel the same way.
Jess: I think it's why all the small events are so important now. Yes. Because we actually have time to sit and talk and get to know each other. Yeah.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: It's
Jess: humans, guys.
Josh: It's humans. I saw a really sad stat that was like, I think ever since COVID, humans are more lonely — Oh, yeah — lonelier than ever before.
Jess: Yeah.
Josh: Tap into that shit for your marketing.
Jess: I know. Vector's gonna solve it.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: Solving
Josh: marketing —
Jess: World peace... and loneliness.
Josh: So now that we've got sort of the basics set up, where do you see this program going for us?
Jess: Yeah, I think the next step is really figuring out the signals. Yeah. What's our alpha signal — Yeah — and how can we scale that? And then really just getting a ton of good at bats under our belt and knowing this is working, and seeing the progression of, out of the 60 tier one and tier two accounts, we closed this many this quarter, and really feeling good about that and knowing that this percentage of pipeline actually came from that, and it being the majority of pipeline. Yeah. Like that's gonna feel really good.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: I think something that's gonna be a challenge is because we're now working so closely with sales is keeping both sides of the street clean.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: What happens when you have all these signals and all this data and all these named contacts —
Josh: Yeah —
Jess: right? And I think we just have to be really conscious about there should be certain pieces of outbound that sales is going to own. Yeah. And there should be certain pieces of outbound that marketing is going to own.
Josh: Yeah.
Jess: And never the twain shall cross.
Josh: Never the
Jess: twain. The twains should not cross.
Josh: Yeah. It's like, I think of a tri- like a stoplight. Like you just — Yeah — it, anytime that you've got anything that's going out to customers, like we had this, I know we're wrapping here, but we should share this story. We did try a cold calling agency. And one of the experiences that we had was one of our customers reaching out and basically saying "These guys keep calling me, and they won't stop." Yeah. "And they say that they're associated with Vector." And it's such a great example, if you don't have the stop signs set up to coordinate traffic correctly, you can actually generate a really bad experience for your customer. Yeah, yeah. So I do think that'll be the next challenge for us.
Jess: Agreed.
Josh: Jess, this was great. We got the crawl. Yep. We got the walk. Yep. The run is when we run ads. Yep. Then Abbi cold calls. Yep. And then I show up at their door.
Jess: Nope. Oh. Not happening. That's called stalking and harassment. But this was a really good meeting.
Josh: It was a great meeting.
Jess: This meeting could've been a podcast.
Josh: And it was.
Jess: It was. This meeting could've been a podcast is a Vector production. Vector lets you build ad audiences from real people that visit your site, click your ads, and research your competitors. Imagine seeing exactly who will see your ads by name before you spend a dime. It's a great time to be alive, marketers. Go give it a whirl at vector.co. See you next time.