SalesTechStar Interview with Katie Layng, Vice President of Sales, Demandbase
The sales industry, is constantly evolving and this has changed how reps sell and also how sales leaders choose to dovetail their strategies. Catch this complete interview where Katie Layng, VP of Sales at Demandbase shares her key observations. ______ My career began 15 years ago, working in the advertising agency world and supporting B2C brands. During this time, I was added to my first-ever B2B account, NetApp, and knew that the B2B world was for me. Following my ad agency stint, I joined IDG selling print ads, custom content, and digital display ad products to B2B brands. It was at IDG, where I was introduced to the Madison Logic team who lured me away from publishing and I joined their organization as the first display advertising sales rep. Then, Demandbase came calling. Gabe Rogol, who was our SVP sales at the time, brought me over to Demandbase, and I became the first ad-targeting sales rep for the company. Fast forward to today, I lead the mid-market sales team selling our SaaS-based ABM platform to the world’s leading B2B brands. Read More: SalesTechStar Interview With Liz Pulice, VP Of Sales Enablement At Brainshark My typical day includes a slew of meetings with key stakeholders across the Demandbase organization to ensure we are all aligned on business goals and forecasts and stay on top of initiatives each team has in progress. Furthermore, I hold 1:1’s with my RVP’s, run my recurring All-Hands team meeting where we review forecasts, share best practices, product updates, etc. I’ll meet with other executives from our customer base to discuss various topics like Sales/Marketing alignment, Ad Strategy, or Territory planning in an ABM world. All of these meetings ensure that the entire Demandbase organization is completely aligned and collaborating to achieve core business goals. The sales industry, especially in B2B tech, is in constant evolution mode, and over the past decade-plus, there have been numerous shifts that have transformed the way reps sell and pushed them to expand their skills. I’ll share a couple of examples of some of the significant trends and abilities today’s sales reps need to recognize and have at their disposal. When I started in B2B sales, the typical prospecting strategy was a mass outreach approach to your buyer’s titles, regardless of the account, with little personalization. Today, it is critical for every sales rep to look at their prospect list through the lens of an account to understand what criteria determines a high value account. From there, develop a deep understanding of the prospect’s business and create tailored messaging that will resonate with them at each stage of the sales cycle. This is a significant shift that’s been happening over the past five years, and it makes perfect sense. Businesses want vendors to help them understand the value proposition of their products through personalized communications. My team works very closely with our marketing colleagues on messaging that will help them connect with customers and prospects. Read More: Will The Face Of Technology Sales Change In The Post Pandemic World? When it comes to having the right tools, sales reps need to have a suite of solutions that can help them sift through the noise and news to identify prospects. Once those prospects are identified, leverage tools to help them craft the right messaging that speaks to their business needs. Now, more than ever, sales and marketing alignment is critical. We see our customers, across industries, recognize that agreement must be in place first before moving forward with goal setting and ultimately execution. Zoom, the leader in video and web conferencing, is best in class in terms of how their sales and marketing teams work together to generate pipeline. They’ve created a methodological approach where they use Demandbase data, in addition to other first-party intel, to prioritize their accounts. Then they leverage those same intent signals as ammo to construct a meaningful, personalized message to send to their key prospects. Lastly, they measure response rates to better understand how to optimize for the next phase. They’re continually measuring what’s working or not working, providing marketing with feedback, two critical exercises every sales rep should practice, and a contributing factor to why Zoom is seeing a 4x return with these programs. Every B2B sales rep and marketer have or are currently dealing with cross-team friction, and if they say they don’t, that’s a lie. In my experience, I’ve dealt with this friction many times, and here are a few tips I’ve found to be valuable: At the end of the day, don’t get hung up on who gets the credit, recognize this is a team effort, and sales’ success is marketing’s success. Read More: Six SalesTech Tools That Can Help Reduce Friction Between Marketing And Sales Overall, I think the emergence of AI-based tools has and will continue to change our day-to-day operations drastically. AE’s and SDR’s are expected to hit high activity goals to meet their targets while still being thoughtful and personalized in their outreach. There’s only so much time in the day, so it’s crucial they have a suite of solutions that can help them sift through the noise and news to identify prospects. Once those prospects are identified, leverage tools to help them craft the right messaging that speaks to their business needs. When it comes to developing your ABM strategy, there are many traps sales teams need to avoid. Here are five tips for fellow salespeople to follow when getting started with ABM: Read More: How To Increase Your Remote Sales Team’s Productivity Great question! Here are five best practices that my team and I follow closely to us exceed our growth goals: Every message should be one of solidarity, support no matter if it’s prospects, customers. Be smart about your approach and be human. Lead with empathy, understanding and humanize the message/outreach. Our teams (at Demandbase) are focusing on the things we can control and put our best foot forward to achieve our goals. We are all living in a challenging and highly emotional time, but this is the time for sales reps to stay focused, celebrate every win, take the time to hone and expand your skillsets, and lean on each other. If we can do that, we’ll come out on the other side in a better position. The biggest and fastest growing companies in the world rely on Demandbase to drive their Account-Based Marketing strategies and maximize B2B marketing performance. Demandbase pioneered the ABM category nearly a decade ago, and today leads the industry as an indispensable part of the B2B tech stack. Demandbase offers the only end-to-end ABM Platform that helps B2B companies identify, win and grow the accounts that matter most. Katie manages all SaaS and Advertising revenue for Demandbase’s Mid Market segment. Hi Katie, can you tell us a little about yourself? How has your journey in B2B/Tech sales been so far – at DemandBase currently, what’s a typical day in sales like?
How have you seen Sales evolve in the B2B/Tech marketplace over the years? What are some of the most crucial skills that today’s salesperson needs more of, given their exposure to martech/salestech and the need to use these tools wisely?
How have you seen (can you share examples) leading brands successfully use and implement their sales tech/ martech to optimize outcomes and results in the recent past? What key learnings from these examples would you say are critical for every salesperson to grow from?
In your experience in technology sales – you must have experienced the often-talked-about friction between marketing and sales: what would your top 5 tips be to help reduce this?
How, according to you, will new innovations in technology sales and salestech change the way sales functions in the future?
What, according to you, are the top 5 common mistakes you would tell sales teams to ensure they avoid when implementing/setting up their first ABM campaign/strategy?
As VP of Sales, what are some of the top 5 best practices you follow to drive your team towards continued growth/success?
We’d love to know a little about your future plans and a few tips/thoughts to share with marketing and sales leaders who are currently struggling through the (pandemic) crisis.