For Dylan Freier, Curiosity is the Secret to a Powerful ABM Program

Demandbase Champion Dylan Freier, a Senior Demand Generation Manager, is a data-driven marketer who has spent his career working for tech companies focused on data. He started out in sales, but found his perfect fit in account-based marketing. He shifted his focus from sales to ABM while at Snowflake — an experience that helped him hit the ground running at all times during his career. We talked with Dylan about his experiences with ABM, how to best align marketing and sales, and the New York City music scene.

What do you like best about your job?

I enjoy spending time with the sales team and getting as close to the deals as possible. My favorite aspect of this job is the creativity involved in generating account-based experiences, especially one-to-one or one-to-few campaigns targeted at our top enterprise accounts. I regularly sit in on calls with prospects and dissect the call with the sales team after. As I’m listening to the conversation, I’m thinking of the best integrated campaign for that specific opportunity.

How have you made your ABM program shine? 

To be successful with an ABM program, you have to align marketing and sales. We focus on early education. Every salesperson who joins the company, finds themself in ABM’s “classroom” within two weeks of their start date. Our team partners with sales enablement to make sure everyone on the team understands the value of Demandbase One and ABM — and how to use it to their advantage to win deals. We don’t just leave them to fend for themselves after training either, we continue to strategize with the sales team on individual opportunities to ensure they are armed with the most relevant information. We’ve built a strong foundation for our ABM program based on solid account data and appreciate a single view of each account.

Our go-to-market leadership understands the benefits of the ABM program. They see it as a way to focus effort and resources on accounts that are likely to drive revenue — and a way to meet near term goals like minimizing wasteful spending, winning bigger deals, and increasing our close rate.

Ultimately, our team is never happy with the status quo – one of our company core values is we innovate and demand quality. We’re always trying to optimize how to make a campaign work better. We’re thinking about how to close the next deal faster. That whole motion excites me and it’s great to share it with sales.

What is your superpower?

I’m a naturally curious person and that has helped me grow throughout my career. In my daily work, I always ask questions and try to figure out a better way of doing things, even if they are already working really well. I encourage my team to do the same thing and to imagine new ways of doing things.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I’m a native of New York City, so I like to explore everything the city has to offer with my longtime girlfriend Samatha. I especially like going to concerts and just saw a cool collaboration between John Mayer and members of the Grateful Dead. My favorite person to go to concerts with is my dad since we both love classic rock. I also stay active — my two dogs, Pickle and Mugsley, make sure that I get out for walks every day. And, I’ve recently taken up pickleball. I played tennis in college and pickleball is a more fun, mellow version of the sport (and easier on the knees).

What would you tell someone who is just starting out in ABM?

• Take a crawl, walk, run approach to launching your ABM program. Make sure the people that matter are on board before making the decision to switch to an account-based approach. Once the doors are open, you can start to prove value quickly.
• Hone in on your ideal customer profile. Start small and pick campaigns for good reasons — you don’t have to do everything all at once. Prove the ROI and then gradually increase your efforts.
• Leverage your data. I’m fascinated by data. In order to make sense of what our organization is doing, we must back up our actions with facts. As such, our team checks our KPIs often.
• Emphasize teamwork between sales and marketing. We’re all in the same boat, and cohesion will help us travel much faster to our destination, especially if everyone is rowing in the same direction.