What does it take for sales development to win as #OneTeam with account-based marketing (ABM)?
On the quest for ABM greatness, it’s essential for sales and marketing to be closely aligned. It’s something we’ve gone all-in on at Terminus, where we’re in the midst of an account-based marketing renaissance that we’ve dubbed #OneTeam. We recently revamped our ABM strategy and processes to bring sales and marketing closer together — and Lucas Ulloque is one of the people who made our #OneTeam transformation a reality.
Lucas was recently promoted to Vice President of Sales Development at Terminus. Since he joined Terminus as Director of Sales Development in 2015, he’s scaled his team to more than 20 SDRs.
Lucas was recently featured on #FlipMyFunnel’s podcast with Terminus co-founder & CMO, Sangram Vajre, sharing how he built the SDR team to achieve account-based marketing success. Read on for a recap and the recording, and learn more about our #OneTeam ABM transformation at Terminus here.
Prior to Terminus, Sangram and Lucas worked together at Pardot during its acquisition by Salesforce. “That’s where I really fell in love with developing and coaching folks,” Lucas explained. “It was awesome to see reps come in brand new, watch that lightbulb go off, and then see them get more and more confident and light up the dashboard scheduling demos.”
“When I started a new journey at Terminus, I was able to leverage everything I had learned from Salesforce — the great training and resources there and the talent that they had — and start building something special. My mindset has always been ‘people first.’ I’m so proud of what we’ve developed with our SDR squad,” Lucas said.
Here are three ways Lucas has helped the Terminus sales development team success with account-based marketing.
1. Put the Right Processes and Technology in Place
In December of 2015, when Lucas first became a “Terminator,” there was only a handful of SDRs on the team, and they were all wearing a lot of hats.
“There was no structure, no training program. We needed better processes and workflows,” Lucas explained. “We learned right away that we needed to create an account-based model to get our account-based marketing message to the masses and to understand what our ideal customer profile was.”
Over the past two years, Lucas has turned the sales development team into a well-oiled ABM machine.
“Today, there are over 20 SDRs at Terminus who actively work a list of target accounts that are prioritized by our incredible marketing team,” he said. “We’re using tools such as Bombora and EverString to determine if these are good fit accounts.”
We use a data-driven approach we call the secret formula of Fit + Intent + Engagement to power our account-based program. Our marketing ops team identifies a list of target accounts, and we launch marketing campaigns that support our SDRs’ outreach into those companies
2. Focus on Professional Development
Another way Lucas is setting his squad up for success as #OneTeam is through his keen focus on professional development.
“We’ve had six SDRs get promoted to account executives during the time that I’ve been here,” Lucas explained. “We’ve had two SDRs get promoted to SDR managers. We’ve had an SDR get promoted to Customer Success Manager. We’ve had two interns that started with Terminus–their first jobs after college–that are now doing really well in full-time SDR roles.”
“We’ve seen a lot of growth and a lot of success, and that’s because we invest in our people. It’s about recruiting great, raw talent and developing that talent. Then once those folks really hit their stride and developed great business acumen, they have a good propensity to be successful as account executives or in other roles within the business. They go on and spread their wings. I am in essence a college football recruiting coach.”
As Lucas explains, the lifeblood of our business is this SDR team, both in terms of pipeline that becomes revenue for our business, but also our people pipeline. While there can be a lot of distractions in an open office setting like Terminus, with more than 100 people in the office every day, Lucas knows it’s important to keep his team focused and utilize their strengths.
“What I want to understand is what my SDRs are they really good at. What part of the role do they have an edge? Let’s double down on that. Let’s make sure that if you’re really good on video and you’re crushing it through Vidyard, let’s make sure you’re sending more videos to the contacts you’re trying to reach in target accounts. If you’re really good at focusing and making 45 to 60 dials in an hour, let’s do that.”
3. Lead By Example
Above all, it’s the trust and an understanding of your reps that will set your team up for #OneTeam success. It’s about digging in deep to ensure you’re taking the right approach with the right strategy to do sales development with account-based marketing.
“I’m in the weeds helping with emails, listening to every call, breaking those down,” Lucas said. “When you really understand what your team is good at, there’s a level of trust then that comes with a level of autonomy. You can allow them to go and experiment and try different things.”
The important thing is that the entire #OneTeam is held accountable for the same metrics and has access to the same data. It’s time for the era of marketing and sales showing up to a meeting with different numbers to end. Through a #OneTeam approach for account-based marketing, there is beautiful, seamless alignment between marketing and sales.
Learn more about what it means to be #OneTeam for account-based marketing.
