Driving Engagement in Professional Services: From First Touch to Closed Deal.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:00:01] Hi everybody, and welcome to Driving Engagement and Professional Services from first touch to close the deal. Before we get started I have just a couple of things to go over. Um, put any questions you have in the Q&A widget and we'll be answering those throughout. And then of course we are recording this. So this will be available as well as the side slides for you in a couple of days from uh, from this going live. So with that, I am Stephanie MacArthur. I'm a Principal ABX Expert here at Demandbase, and that is just a fancy way of saying I have sat in the seats of you fellow marketers. I have a background in Global Integrated Marketing, heavy on the digital side, and was a multiple time customer, uh, of Demandbase. And now get the honor and privilege to work with our clients to help them see the same success that I had in the past. I am here with Monica Behncke from our partners over at Iron Horse. Uh, Monica, hi.

Monica Behncke: [00:00:52] Thanks so much for having me today. I'm Monica Behncke, I'm chief growth officer at Iron Horse. We are a marketing agency that specializes in both account based engagements and all things digital. Um, my background, I've been involved in this kind of world for a long time as well. Um, I've been at Iron Horse for a couple of years. Prior to that, I was at SiriusDecisions and Forrester, where I spent a lot of time helping marketing organizations, getting to best practices, and prior to that, I headed revenue at uh, or revenue marketing at a number of large companies and started with the whole marketing and technology piece. So spent a long time watching the whole market change over, uh, over the period of the last couple of decades.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:01:42] Yeah, it's it's, uh, it's been pretty incredible to be a part of, to be honest. And you really think about where it's been, you know, the stuff wasn't taught in school when the explosion of martech and all that, and it really set the landscape of where we are today. Right. So if you think about traditional Demand Gen and when I first started out, you know, our idea of, you know, marketing and automation was being really good at being really bad at sending emails. And we were really reliant on, you know, that North Star of a form filled. And the fact is, like the technology has evolved. We've had this explosion of martech and point solutions, but that's also created, you know, silos from a technology and marketing standpoint. But at the same time, the buyers on the other end, they've become more savvy. They're aware of, you know, of the different tricks that we use, the technologies we're using. Um, and at the same time, they want to do it more on their own. They want to have kind of like, let me just research, let me just, you know, let me see what I can figure out on my own and my spare time in between things. And when I'm ready, I'll raise my hand. And so what the nice thing is, is the technology has evolved into a place where we can actually allow them to do that.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:02:53] You know, we don't need to be creepy about it, but we can allow them to, you know, stay over here, stay in that anonymous zone. Um, but meet them with their expectations, right. Bring in that personalized feel without requiring, you know, their life story for every single piece of content or for every interaction with us. And what you get out of that is actually a higher quality. What's interesting today is this technology. You know, it's evolved. I've really seen it explode, like you said the last ten years. And if you think about, you know, the smart tech where you could actually see all the technology used to actually be able to see all the martech on one slide. Now you need a magnifying glass, right? Yeah. But the fact is we still want to go here. We want to go to that form fill. And the fact is it's not translating. It's not getting a great experience. And so, you know, we've got to evolve or you know, somebody else is going to take that from us. Right. The companies that are willing to evolve, the marketing leaders, you know, the sales leaders, etc., that are leaning into these, um, changes of behavior, those are the ones that are going to propel forward. And those that refuse to - those are becoming dinosaurs and eventually extinct. Yeah. Yeah.

Monica Behncke: [00:04:06] Unquestionably. I think, um, I love this chart. I've seen it a number of different times. Um, and uh, when we're working with demand-based clients, we use it, um, frequently. And when we're proposing demand-based, we, we show it frequently alongside of this, what we do is we also show the data, because some people can kind of visualize and, and they associate their own experiences, um, to this kind of map. And some people come in and say, yeah, but we're different. And, you know, professional services is different or small business is different. Um, and the fact is, we've done a lot of research at Iron Horse, and we've sliced it and diced it and looked at it and researched it. And the fact is, there are some truths about marketing that it doesn't matter what industry you're in. What geography you're in, how big the clients are that you're targeting? These are the things that are the facts. Um, and this comes from Iron Horse and also other places in the industry. Um, buying groups are a reality. Uh, we used to think about the contacts and making sure we had a contact. And I think people are understanding now that there's a lot of people involved. And, uh, interestingly, a lot of those will be anonymous or almost lurkers through a large portion of  the purchase. They may not be the person that you're talking to all the time, but they're out there signaling, because if I'm going to buy something, you know, or make a big change, my staff is going to start looking at it, even if they're not, you know, hugely involved in the front line of it.

Monica Behncke: [00:05:51] They are going to do start to make um, searches and start to look at websites and their signals are going to show up. Um, and people like you said Steph, they, they want to have those digital conversations. Um, and the research we did last year said there's only 10% of people want to have a primarily human-to-human or face to face conversation. Um, what was really interesting about that research, though, is a lot of people go, yeah, that's that's true. But executives, the C-level Executives, the SVP, they still need the white glove treatment. They're the people that we really have to have the 1:1 relationships with. And what we found was, across all dimensions, Executives actually want to be more digitally engaged. They want to be they want to be able to, you know, look at the information when they want, the amount that they want without being bothered by salespeople. And I thought that was a really interesting finding last year and maybe orthogonal to what a lot of people think. Um, the sorry. Go ahead.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:06:59] I was going to say absolutely. I think that the fact matter is we're all super busy. Um, and, you know, even in the last couple of years with more people, you know, still being remote than ever before, having that flexibility to do things and not be stuck to an 8 to 5, 9 to 5 when somebody might be by a phone, I mean, that just shows that we're just going to continue down this path. And, you know, I think, uh, you know, what's happened the last couple of years, that Band Aid has ripped off that, hey, we can, you know, do things on our own and come, you know, go back and forth and have that balance. And then when it's necessary for that white glove, for that, you know, for that 1:1, you know, real relationship, you can save it for where it matters. So you're not spreading your resources too thin either.

Monica Behncke: [00:07:44] That's right. Yeah. It's and that's the way the buyers want to be. So we should let them. Um interactive interaction volume super high. This one up even even higher during the pandemic. You probably saw that as well. But I think that what, what people sometimes fail to do is remember the math because they'll they'll hear things like, oh, it's 16 interactions or 15 or 19 or whatever. Different sources have different numbers, and they don't realize that's per member of the buying group. So it's not just 16 for everybody. And each interaction can be a very small thing. It can be a search, it can be a web page hit. But it's a lot of interactions that you have to think about and orchestrate when you're in this digital world. Um, and the orchestration has to be across sales and marketing. We, we recently did research. We're just about to publish it. Um, and what we found was specific to professional services where people are, um, feeling like there's a barrier where they can't move forward. It's generally when sales and marketing are not aligned. So we spend a lot of time thinking about how do you align sales and marketing. What does that mean? Um, and in a platform like Demandbase, um, it means a lot to the salespeople. The salespeople should be involved. Um, I even had a client saying, we want to co-create with this new process, this new approach with the sales team, not just marketing sets it up and, you know, tosses it over. Um, there has to be more than alignment. There has to be collaboration and co-creation to make it really successful. So for for the people that, you know, think in data as opposed to visually, it's exactly the same story.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:09:38] Right? And there's been a need for it. I mean, I actually started in sales, um, early in my career and, uh, you know, I saw the misalignment back then. And so when I moved into marketing, you know, a few years later, that was always my goal. And, you know, nearly 20 years later, I think we're still trying to figure out. But what has changed is there's more conversation around it we're seeing, yet still a gap. Um, but at. At least people are now open to those conversations. And then the ones that are successful is they're actually following through. Right. And one of the first ways of actually aligning is understanding who's actually our target, not just a wish list. Right. What are how do we how do we measure success and really starting to put everybody on the same metric. So then we're all, you know, moving on that same sheet of music. And that's where Demandbase really allows both sales and marketing dependent, you know, or even customer success. It really doesn't matter what part you're of that of the account journey, but really being able to to centralize on those data points, understand those, you know, 100 plus interactions, you know, Demandbase, we call it that exquisite orchestration between sales and marketing and pulling together all the different ways an account can interact. And then some can be hired. You know, more highly. Um, but that's where the. Control comes in. Trust that data because part of that alignment is not just seeing it. But do I trust it? Right? Um, because that unfortunately is some cases where it's done incorrectly. So then they try, oh, we did this. It didn't work. We don't trust it. So the next time around, you know, it's that much harder.

Monica Behncke: [00:11:12] Yeah. It's I started my career in sales as well and I started it. I started it well before any technology like this existed. And, you know, I, I work with clients now, um, and I'm just, I'm blown away. I keep thinking, gosh, I wish I had had this much information, you know, when I was in sales because it's it's truly at your fingertips. I agree that that having trust, having good data is, is important knowing how to use it equally important. But the fact that it's there, the amount of efficiency a salesperson can get by using the system that's set up correctly is just astronomical. Really, really is.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:12:00] I know I joke that, uh, I if I had had the technology exist that exists today, I might still be in sales, right? Yeah. So, you know, although I'm having two sellers in the household probably, you know, I think we're better off not doing that, but, um. Yeah. So, so this, this.

Monica Behncke: [00:12:18] Presentation is really about professional services. And I think that's a, you know, it's a good lead in when we're talking about sales. Um, I work with a lot of, as I'm sure you do professional services organizations been been a part of them, worked for them as well. And, you know, there's some challenges that are very specific to professional services. Um, and we've listed a few of them here. And just to put them in the context of everything that we just said. So one of the things that I notice a lot in professional services is there's a real reliance on referrals, like that's the way that businesses have grown for a really long time. It's especially in any organization that is a partner, um, a partner structure. So a law firm is a partner structure. A lot of like accounting and finance, a lot of consulting. All of those have these partner structures. So the person who is the delivery partner is also responsible for growing their book of business. So what they do is, you know, hey Steph, do you know anybody that might need mice? And I'll give you your service. And we all kind of exchange that, that, um, that referral basis in the result of that, when people are starting down a path of doing account based marketing is they don't have the database, they don't have an opt in database that they can go and market to, because it's all just you and I are referrals and our our contact lists, which is a a difficult kind of first barrier to get over.

Monica Behncke: [00:13:55] And there's that that belief that that is the best way to grow. But you know what? Unless you hire new people, there's only so much referral business to go around. Um, the other thing that that I find is huge, huge difference for professional services is in other products, you can often demo the product, whether it's a piece of software or it's a physical, you know, piece of gear. Um, you have the ability to get them to the point where you can say, hey, I want to come and look at it. Um, with the problem with professional services is often the demo is the IP that you're going to charge for. So how do you, as people are going through that self-serve journey and you want them to learn about those, those services and be able to come to a good conclusion or a good perspective of your service? And how do you do that without giving it away? It's a whole lot easier if it's a piece of software.

Monica Behncke: [00:14:52] You can just kind of do a little video demo. How much do you give away another big piece of it? And because of that point, you end up in professional services with a I call it a sea of sameness because at the surface, it all kind of feels the same. It's like I do accounting, you do accounting, I do consulting, you do consulting. The real difference is the IP and the knowledge of the, the the delivery team is that differentiator. So I feel like we now are in a place where there's like a little bit of tension between the hurdles that professional services have got to get over. They don't have the database and they don't want to give away the IP and the fact of how clients want to buy, they want to be self-service. They want to be, um, you know, independent, the ability to look on their own, make their own decisions. So how do you start to solve this, this natural tension that's starting to, you know, erupt in, in this kind of situation? And you're the expert. So you you have all the answers.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:15:56] I mean, this all it all just it rings so true for, you know, the typical B2B. But I will tell you, like as a typical B2B SAS, you know, that was my background. I loved trials and demos like that was like my evergreen content. Right? It was a great way to get people in, and even more so if we had a platform where it was free over certain, you know, that freemium model is, you know, really great. But when you're when your product is your service, you know, and the fact is more companies I think need services. I know, you know, depending on the size or even, you know, fortune 500, 500 person marketing team, we still have services, right? There's always casework. But then how do you set yourself apart. And so that's really, you know, just another layer of complexity that professional services, you know, teams have to like think about. And I do think that ABM really allows them to start to think a little bit more creatively. If you start to think about, you know, where do we show up? What's that message? And you know, what is our message, what's our goal that we're trying to attract? But then how are we going to get to them? And I think, you know, both in a B2B, you know, just enterprise mid-market doesn't matter. You know, no matter what type of business you're in. But really starting to think about, well, how am I using the channels today? And can I maybe throw out the rule book? I think that's always been one of my favorite things.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:17:13] When I really started leaning into data, leaning into technology was thinking about how can I throw out the rule book and just try something new, right? Everything's a test until you're proven one way or another. If you're going to fail, fail fast. But one of my favorite ones was, you know, paid search was an area where people typically think, well, we spend a lot of money on it. It's expensive. We must put that form in front of them. But I'm like, well, we have like total page abandonment, like, and if we get anything it's a bot. Like what value is this having versus when I started playing with it and saying, okay, instead of putting 100% lead generation as my goal, you know, even if it's a top of the funnel activity, what if I still, you know, did some awareness, sent them to a landing page for content, like sent them to the home page, sent them to a product page. Depending on what they search, let them navigate. Like you said, we said earlier, right. Let them consume. Let them kind of do it on their own. That do it yourself, you know, experience and then evolve over time. We can then start to take those signals, those 100 plus engagements, and start to increase the awareness. But it's all about meeting them where they are and then having that consistency and message at multiple places and allowing the person on the other end to determine what's the right channel for them to respond to.

Monica Behncke: [00:18:29] Because they will when they're ready, they will.

Stephanie McArthur: [00:18:31] Exactly.

Monica Behncke: [00:18:32] I also think that, you know, for professional services that might be going into this for the first time, um, you know, or maybe they're, they're, you know, they've started, but it's not going as well as her as quickly as they would like. Um, I think that it's also I really like what you said about what am I trying to, to accomplish and how can I be experimental about it? Um, because there is this it's almost a a mindset of if I get a referral, a lead, you know, it's going to close in a week, two weeks, those sorts of things. Because the nature of the referrals that they're used to getting, the nature of the leads that they're used to getting are very warm, very well informed, you know, highly trusting because they've come through somebody else. And when you're starting in a situation like this and you're thinking about revamping your channel strategy, you're kind of going all the way back to, well, do they even know who you are? Like, let's start with that. Do they even know they have a problem that you're going to solve for them? Um, do they care about their problem? Is it worth solving and taking them all the way to the moment where it would have been a referral? Um, and that's a longer journey. A different journey and a journey that takes, um, more work, you know, between sales and marketing to, to get to that moment where, you know, oftentimes professional services kind of where they normally start, there's a whole lot comes before that.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:20:10] Be interesting to know. This is just a thought as you were talking, um, if you think about that, because you're really building the trust and that foundational trust from the beginning versus waiting for that referral, I would have to imagine, right? I'd want to dig in the data, but I would feel like because of that, you're building a more meaningful relationship than just oh so and so recommended you. So we're going to go with that. But it's almost like if you don't do something right the first time, they're more likely to leave because they haven't built this relationship with you. Or I feel like if they've gotten to know you from the beginning, before they even knew they had a problem and you were there answering them in the right way, you know, all the way. So by the time they, you know, not only just convert to let's have a conversation, but then. Converting to pipeline in one business, I would imagine it's a much more fruitful long term relationship.

Monica Behncke: [00:21:01]  Yeah, I think. It definitely could be. I think it would be, at the very least, a more informed relationship. I mean, there's, you know, if I really trust you and you refer somebody and you've you've made other suggestions to me in the past that have worked out well. There's a high level of trust there. But how informed are you? Like how much information are you giving me that is specific to me because I'm not necessarily going to, you know, ask you all the questions. You're not going to know the answer, nor am I going to lean on somebody like that when I've been getting to know, you know, kind of the, the, the solution, um, kind of what are the problems, you know, and that empathy is being built with me over a period of time. I think I become more knowledgeable and more comfortable, um, with, with my own decision to investigate because, you know, as you're as you're going along your journey, you are making the decision to continue the journey each moment in time, right? It doesn't. You have to you have to keep making that decision. It's worth another five minutes of my time to search. It's worth another ten minutes of my time to read something. So you are convincing yourself along the way and becoming very knowledgeable. So it's. I hadn't thought about it that way, but I think it's a really interesting point.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:22:16] Yeah. And I mean, I think that's what this all comes down to regardless. You know, it's all about trust. And at the end of the day, you think about the amount of people that we have to bring. So the complexity of the buying groups and at the end of the day, they all just want to trust and feel comfortable because if their head is on the line. Right. Hey, why did you make this decision? Um, and when there's a more informed decision, it's a lot easier to say, hey, this is backed in, you know, X, Y, and Z, right? And I think ABM really just plays so well in that from a professional service standpoint, but increasing that trust factor. And that's at the end of the day it's really about that trust. And you know, revamping the channel strategy really. And you know you get that maximum impact out of what we all think of those traditional channels. But then using it to your benefit, to our benefit. Um, yeah. It's just it's a really interesting time to be in. And I just love like I said, like really just going in and, you know, testing everything, which I think really kind of takes us into, you know, testing everything. That's.

Monica Behncke: [00:23:19] Yeah. Other point on trust, though, which I think is really interesting, um, professional services, um, when I have worked for professional services companies, um, you'd be surprised that when you look at the web analytics and this for a lot of our customers, it's the same thing. It's the people pages. It's the who are we pages because buyers recognize they are buying not just methodology. Um, you know, not just kind of maybe it's a framework or something like that, but they are buying the people. Um, and so those are some of the most trafficked pages is, is the people pages because they want to trust who the who it is they're going to be doing business with.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:24:00]Well, there's your offer right there, right? What what is your thing that sets you apart and it's your people. So that's one of your high value offers that you just then determine which channel are we going to use and present. You know, how we've got the key people to to help out or whatever solution, you know, problem they're having that you guys can help out with?

Monica Behncke: [00:24:16] Yeah, it's definitely, definitely a part of of it. There's usually some methodology and things like that. But the people are a big, big piece of it. And and putting them front and center is it can be a very good idea. It can be the right thing to do.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:24:29] I mean, I know when I've bought, you know, and I've been one buying services or when I've gone looking to my agencies 100%. Right. And I still look to those people today. And I'm like, I know I can count on them, even if they go to a different agency or start a new, you know, business venture. Um, but that trust of, like, they know what they're doing. I know I'm going to get what I expect out of them. And, you know, that's huge because I've also had the opposite. Where did not trust them. And it was really easy to be like, no, that was somebody else made that decision and, you know, probably won't go back.

Monica Behncke: [00:25:05] Yeah. Um, what what we have here at Iron Horse, one of the things we do is we love to present, like a little bit of a roadmap that says we prefer professional services, that if you are trying to start with a BB, BB, BB, BB, BB, BB, or maybe restart or or accelerate, you know, what are the things that you have to do well in order to increase your chances of success? And, and we've kind of touched on most of these, but this kind of puts it in an order. Um, it starts with that, that point of alignment, getting everybody on the same page. Um, and that can be sales marketing, it can be product, um, people. It can be your customer success, customer support, it can be the executives as well. And everybody on the same page has a. A number of different dimensions to it. What? What kind of account based marketing do you want to do? What are you hoping to get out of it? Um, who are the accounts that you want to go after? Is that segmentation done correctly? Is everybody, you know in agreement on on what that is? Um, and all those and also kind of culturally because with, with account based marketing, sometimes the it goes back to what we said at the beginning, the roles of sales and marketing start to shift because people want to do more on their own. And it's marketing that is equipping and enabling them. So it's almost like marketing and your your website become another sales person that's kind of taking them along or an SDR. And if you think about it in that mentality, there's a little bit of a shift that you have to think about versus traditional marketing or traditional demand. Gen. Um, next thing, I'm sure you deal with this all day long. Um, targeting. I always say targeting is more than a concept. I can't tell you how many people they go, yeah, we're going to target, like, mid-market insurance companies. Great. Where's your list? Oh, it's the global 2000. Why why why?

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:27:07] Why ?100%? I know that segmentation is so critical. And not only that, like really understanding that it doesn't need to be this static global 2000 list. Right? Like let's look for the Technographic Firmographic. Then let's bring in some behavioral information. Um, and that way you're always evolving that list. You're not running stale. Um, because I have I have accounts where I meet with them. They're like, well, you know, we're doing all this, but we just need more accounts at the top. I'm like, well, when was the last time you actually evaluated your segmentation? I'm like, well, yeah, we have we've had accounts on here for about eight years there.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:27:40] I'm like- I think they're not going to buy, unless there's drastic change right in who who there. But for whatever reason, like and that's okay because there's other accounts out there that match your ideal profile. Let's just get the right ones in here that are in market who are looking for you. And stop wasting your resources on accounts that are just never going to do business with you, or at least not in the short term. Right? And I think too, the other thing you talked about was, you know, bringing everybody into an agreement. And part of that is that, you know, if you think about marketing versus sales metrics, um, typically marketing is thinking about the big story or thinking about share of voice, all these things kind of long term demand gen pipeline. And while, yes, seller sellers, especially the, you know, the higher ups are very much into like the full year quota and all this stuff, but your sellers in the day, they've got a short term quota. And so they need to know that whatever we're doing is going to bring this most impact for them to hit that first goal, which is what's my goal this month? What's my goal this quarter? Right. What's going to keep me on pace to, you know, to hit my goal at the end of the year? Right. And that's I think goal number one. And part of that to be able to do that and to have, you know, a roadmap that is consistent, it starts with that targeting. Right. That and then other things start coming into place. Yeah.

Monica Behncke: [00:28:59] It's it's a um that in the technology which is why those are like two A and B because they are readiness pieces that, that work together. Um, and that are really important that they, they iterate with each other. Um, it's, it's interesting, you know, bringing in a new piece of technology especially. And this is where we go back to professional services and the way that they many of them, all of them, obviously, but many of them have done marketing in the past with this kind of referral and, and, you know, kind of one on one approach. Um, you bring in a piece of technology that has requirements in order to make the ecosystem work, and the requirements don't exist. So, um, there's accounts with no domain names. Um, there's people are putting contacts in without associating with campaigns. So you can't actually create attribution at any point in time. So you're bringing in this new piece of technology and some of the things that have happened in professional services, because the way that they've been running, all of a sudden, there's this ripple effect that you have to go back and take a look and say, okay, let's shore up these other pieces so the whole thing works properly. Um, can't make any assumptions. So I know that your team, um, spends time with clients to make sure that they're in good shape with, with, uh, anticipating some of those operational hurdles that are you just, you know, they're going to happen. 

Stephanie MacArthur [00:30:28]Absolutely, but, you get ready for it. But the technology though, if you get the technology set up, you know, and everything's iterative. So even if you're using the most basic like customers and they're first starting to man base, it's like, yes, we can do all these things for you, but let's just start with intent and understanding who's on your account, your website right now, like start with the basics and then iterate. And then you get to, you know, telling the story based off of where they are in their journey. Right? So varying up the content makes it much easier than, you know, the old days of like, well, it's been three months, let's let's change out the ad and change out the content behind it, because that's all we can do, right? We don't have to do that. We can actually have content pathways that last much longer. So we get to a fully automated system, right. So you're spending less time on actually just executing and getting things out the door and more time on, you know, analyzing and optimizing. That's where it becomes a lot more fun, right? It's not just the hamster of like, I need to just get another message, get get that blog post up, like, whatever it is, um, you know, we want to help you between Demandbase and Iron Horse like coming together and really helping our clients do what they do best, let the machines do what they do, and then let the, you know, the people help you, like, navigate all this together.

Monica Behncke: [00:31:38] Yeah, yeah. And like we were saying earlier, it is a journey and there's a lot of touches in that journey. So you know, tell all of the story is really important as opposed to just here's, here's our solution. Like bringing it all the way through and having it all with you. I loved your, um, your what did you call it? Elegant. Elegant alignment. You know, um, uh.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:32:02] Exquisite orchestration.

Monica Behncke: [00:32:04]  Exquisite orchestration. I love that, um, 

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:32:07] I can't take credit that would be a Demandbase. I think that might be from Chris Melody, but, yeah, that's how that's what we dub it. Inside Demandbase is that exquisite orchestration to show that it's not that, like, pass it over the fence or pass it over. Right. The mql is not saying it's dead, but you can't just stop there. Right. Um, and so it's showing that it's this relationship back and forth.

Monica Behncke: [00:32:25] Yeah. And MQLs are I think there's still there's still a need to understand that a contact has done something that doesn't mean they're ready for sales, but it's a it's an interesting piece of information that needs to be, um, recognized for what it is and, and added to the whole. So we think about exquisitely orchestrating between sales and marketing, but also between all of the channels of the program. You talked about all of the different channels, you know, how do you make sure that those are orchestrated in a way that that creates the right level of volume, um, to be available to the clients, and then you get to make sure that your sales people know how to use all those signals, because there's a tremendous amount of information that's going to come at them. Um, and being able to see, uh, I love doing, uh, I love working directly with salespeople. We usually have two moments. We have the what I call turn the lights on moment, where people can see who's been on the website for the first time, and they all like, oh, you know, I love that moment. It's a wonderful moment. Um, the other moment that I love is when you get to the point where you can look at an account that's got a lot of signals, and you can go, look, the CEO has been here four times.

Monica Behncke: [00:33:42] This is what they looked at. But here's an anonymous person. They're looking at this account. Do you think that may be the CFO? Let's go figure out who the CFO is. Let's put them in there. And you can start to to work with salespeople to become a detective. Um, maybe it's because I used to be a sales person. Maybe because I'm just generally nosy. I love having all of that information and being able to use those, those little signals and find out more. I had one I was working with a client the other day and it's like, wow, we've got this, these signals and these signals. And then there's all this other stuff started happening, all these search terms wonder what's going on. Search- looked up the company. The company had been bought a week later and it's like, oh, there it is. Yeah, there it is. Because you saw it in the digital signals. Now, boy, if I'm a salesperson, I've got something really good to reach out to. A really good reason for an outreach.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:34:36] Absolutely. And this is where, you know, you know, letting our sellers know and to use those data points because the expectation is very much white, white gloved, white glove experience that personalization at scale. And this is where all those different signal points, you know, are really going to allow you to do that. Um, any final thoughts? I know you and I could probably geek out on this and talk all day. Um, but any other final thoughts on, you know, this slide or anything else that we've covered today?

Monica Behncke: [00:35:04] Um, I just think that for professional services, um, be be ready for all of the steps that you have to go through. Um, but don't pretend that you don't have to go through that. Like, don't pretend that the market is is waiting around for you. Um, if you don't get going on using this kind of technology and making the shift to account. Based marketing, your competitors probably are. So I would just encourage any professional services companies that haven't started to use this or use it as well as they know they should. Um, the time is now.

Stephanie MacArthur: [00:35:42] Yeah, I love that. I couldn't have said it any better. Um, like I said, we could talk about this all day, and we'd love to continue the conversation with you guys. So please don't hesitate to reach out to either one of us or both of us and see how, you know, Demandbase and Iron Horse can help you along your journey. Um, for Account Based Marketing and really, you know, leaning into that modern marketing motion. So thank you.