Changing the Conversation: How ABM Helped One Company to Break the Mold

Written by Don Lee, with Greg Acquavella, Senior Marketing Manager, Gryphon.AI

Sales and marketing technologies have transformed the way companies attract and retain business. Just ask the team at Gryphon.AI, which has developed a unique solution to businesses that wish to improve their sales efficacy. Using a concept called “real-time conversation intelligence,” Gryphon uses an AI platform to provide in-the-moment call coaching and guided selling.

It is said, however, that even the Emperor needs clothes – and such was the case for Gryphon.AI, which was looking to improve its own sales effectiveness in a crowded SaaS marketplace. How we worked to ultimately add millions of dollars to their sales pipeline is a testament to the practice of account-based marketing, or ABM. I recently helped Greg Acquavella, senior marketing manager for Gryphon.AI, on the successful deployment of ABM for Gryphon.

A fierce competitive landscape

First, a bit more on the challenges facing Gryphon.AI: As with most SaaS products, competition was commonplace – more than 10 similar services were clamoring for corporate dollars. In addition to a project designed to sharpen its brand, Gryphon was seeking a way to better align their sales and marketing (a process called “smarketing” in today’s business world).

Upon further examination, I learned that more than 40 percent of Gryphon’s customer base was comprised of self-service, online consumers. Though this meant that more than half of Gryphon’s client base was derived through traditional hand-to-hand sales combat, the company needed a better way to impact unique groups of consumers – known as “personas” – in order to target groups with messages that would resonate with greater clarity.

Enter ABM – a way to curate the buying experience based on the kinds of customers that you want. Available in three “flavors” – one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many – ABM requires a commitment to understanding those personas, a dedicated resource to manage the ABM campaigns, and a tech stack to support it.

At Gryphon.AI, gathering the resources and intel wouldn’t be terribly difficult. But breaking out of a pack of like products – all of whom had a similar thirst for digital demand generation – would require a unique approach to ABM.

A funnel-flip provides a needed boost

We decided that, rather than start with the broad universe of prospective buyers for Gryphon.AI, it was more important to flip the funnel, and to focus on intent data first – looking at likely buyers, and targeting them directly, and individually. In a crowded marketplace, said Greg, this gave Gryphon a way to invite likely buyers to “come to our funnel first, and then let us nurture them by explaining how we believed we could solve their problems.”

One key differentiator – real-time voice processing – was a critical advantage over competitors, and a great way for Gryphon to change the conversation, from a belief that they were “one in a pack” to that of a disruptor.

Other ways we worked to upgrade Gryphon’s ABM strategies:

1. Curate and Confirm: To cultivate a more likely prospect using intent data, we used services like G2 and ZoomInfo, along with other third-party data for research, then applied a proprietary scoring system to help rank the prospects. This had a sort of “pre-screening” impact on the records that the sales and business development team appreciated when it came time to call upon the prospects.
   
   
2. Get Sales Buy-In: At the handoff to sales, it was made clear that this list curation process wasn’t a one-sided affair. It was important to get consistent feedback from sales to gauge progress against personas, tweak the scoring matrix, and, most importantly, to hone and refine messaging and materials that the sales team saw as essential to getting the deal. “We worked closely to make this engine is working properly – and to make sure that leads weren’t just being nurtured, but addressed directly,” Greg said.
   
   
3. Get the Tech Stack Right: “There are thousands of different tools you can implement – from a simple subject-line tester, to full marketing automation,” Greg said. The recipe that we came up with included market-leading services like HubSpot and Salesforce, along with Bombora and G2 for marketing intent data, and ZoomInfo for market intelligence. This combination was a “game changer,” said Greg, helping to fill the funnel from the downside up, and the outside in.
   
   
4. Create Trends – Don’t Follow Them: Start behind, and you’ll always be behind. We implemented a process to religiously follow industry reports by analysts like Gartner and Forrester, to ensure we were staying ahead of market forces, rather than being controlled by them. As a result, Gryphon’s website has gone through three iterations since February 2020, incorporating feedback from consumers, upgrades to messaging – and product refinements, which were coming by the boatload as a result of a “product team that is on hyperdrive,” Greg added.

The results

Today, Gryphon.AI has millions of dollars in its sales funnel at any given time – and sales representatives can prioritize accounts, plan their quarter more effectively, and determine where to focus for pipeline development. This is particularly helpful for new sales representatives, who can hit the ground running with focused, intelligent data, rather than test the market with a broad net.

And, with a greater understanding of client paint points, Gryphon is better able to immerse itself in insights, and build richer messaging and positioning. The takeaway? You can truly triangulate your intuition with data.