Vincent Plassard’s Post

I talked to the VP Marketing of a 150 FTEs company looking to take their SMB product upmarket. Historically, they’ve been inbound-focused, but now they want to move upmarket and get bold by going full ABM for this motion, as their product is now ready for it. As the VP put it, "if we want to go upmarket, we shouldn’t be shy—let's go full-in and look back in a year to see what works and what doesn't.” The priorities: - Hiring a Field Marketing Manager to support Sales - Nailing down their Target Account List - Getting Sales and Marketing in sync on the GTM strategy - Adapting their online experience for mid-market accounts The challenges: - Identifying the right accounts to pursue - Validating their GTM for mid-market - Not having enough tailored content The solutions: - Build a lookalike model of existing mid-market customers - Create a dedicated mid-market sales pod - Scale relevant content for every buyer stage - Empower sales with person-level insights on key accounts I love their proactive mindset on this. Too often, companies let inertia keep them from pursuing bigger opportunities. As Wayne Gretzky famously said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." 🏒 What do you think about their approach? Is going "full-in" on ABM the right call here or should they take a more gradual approach?

🤩 NEW WEBSITE, NEW BRAND A little less than 2 months after I joined Userled (blood, sweat, and tears–okay, mostly just tears), we've finally launched our slick new website and rebrand. ✨ With our kickass product and customers, it was about time we showed the world how freaking cool we are as a brand and spotlighted all the killer features that were hiding in plain sight on our old site. 🦚 Our mission remains unchanged: help B2B companies smash into their dream accounts with hyper-personalized experiences. 💎 By personalising content for every stage of the buyer journey and empowering sales with person-level insights, Onfido, Pigment, and Wayflyer are already driving more pipeline and accelerating sales. 💥 Massive shoutout to the Userled squad who poured their hearts into this project, especially Yann, Tristan, Zsolt, and Adrien. I see you. 👀 And big thanks to Hervé.studio for bringing our vision to life and dealing with our endless feedback. You the real MVPs. 🙌 Go check it out and let me know what you think!

While I find LinkedIn to be the go-to place for consuming content, I'm not subscribed to any. Curious to have your thoughts in comments!

The first true ABM campaign I launched was in 2019. The context, the step-by-step process, the resources involved, and the final results: Back in 2019, Spendesk was among the first spend management platform in Europe targeting SMBs in France, United Kingdom, and Germany. 🎒THE CONTEXT Our CRM was composed of: - Tier 1 accounts: 250-2500 employees, scaleups with high-spend, multi-offices, 5+ finance team members (approx. 500) - Tier 2 accounts: 50-250 employees, startups and agencies, high-spend, 1-3 finance team members (approx. 1000) - Tier 3 accounts: under 50 employees, high-spend online or on the go, finance often managed by founders, one card shared in the office. (over 2500) - “Logos”: big companies we all knew and wanted to have as customers. (approx. 50) 🧭 THE STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS 1. Prioritized the project in the roadmap 2. Created a cross-functional squad: growth manager, front-end engineer, sales 3. Selected 30 top accounts (called “logos”) 4. Analysed the org chart and identified the different buyer persona 5. Strategised the expected scenario and align with sales on the approach 6. Developed the process and enablement (more below) 🧰 THE RESOURCES INVOLVED - Team: growth, front-end engineer, sales - Budget: ~1K (gifting) - Bandwidth: 2-months (end-to-end initiative besides the main priorities) 🧮 THE SCENARIO - Pre-sales to gather information about the buyer committee and internal processes from company’s end-users. - A handwriting letter for the CFOs with a chocolate box for the finance teams. Objective: make it human and conversational, focusing on creating relationships rather than being transactional. - Targeted 1:1 ABM Campaigns: directly addressing the CFO and the finance team, showing we acknowledge their pain points and may have the solution. - Customised landing page creating FOMO internally with a system of “claps” where end-users could show their interest towards the solution. - Experience tailored to our product: An online card with €50 was created for each account, and by filling out the form or showing interest, we would send the CCV of the card to the CFOs. - Multi-threads outreach: at least 5 decision-makers were identified for our sales team to contact. - A Slack channel to notify the team about activity on the dedicated web page 🤑 THE FINAL RESULTS - We managed to get a foot in the door with 8/30 accounts that had always been unresponsive. - One of these CFOs directly called the sales rep who reached out, expressing frustration about contacting his team and sending the chocolate box. (At least we finally connected with him! 😂) Two years later, he became Spendesk’s CFO. - At the time, none of these accounts converted before I left. However, I later learned that some of them became customers. There's a lot more to share about this initiative, but LinkedIn limits us to 3000 characters. 👀 Nevertheless, I'm happy to now have solutions like Userled to make such campaigns even more effective. 🙏

A few examples of manual outreach techniques and their effective hooks that have received positive replies for me and helped me break into key accounts (some are hard, or impossible, to scale): 1️⃣ The 45-Minute Podcast Listened The Hook: “I just listened to your podcast where you mentioned…” 2️⃣ The LinkedIn Post Trigger The Hook: “I just read your post about…” 3️⃣ The Contextual Outreach Based on Connections The Hook: “I talked with {{n+1}} two weeks ago (it was just a few days before {{companyEvent}})” 4️⃣ The Random (and Unexpected) Trigger The Hook: “I saw you in {{streetName}} this Morning” (this one could seem cringe, but we previously worked together in the same company 😂) What are yours? ↓

~100 ABM, Growth Marketing, Demand Generation experts are receiving weekly product updates directly in our shared Slack channel (#userleaders for the win) from our Co-founder & CTO, Tristan WHO THEY ARE These experts are all individuals we've engaged with because of their interest in creating tailored 1:1 and 1:few experiences to break into key accounts. Some of them are paid customers, while others are warm prospects. They all have in common that they are talented people whose feedback we value and want to build the product with. WHY WE DO IT It helps us show customers how important their requests are to us and how quickly we address them. It allows us to maintain momentum with warm prospects by nurturing them all in one place and in a more personal way. It enables us to create FOMO among prospects by showcasing prominent logos as customers in the channels too. WHAT IT SHOWS ABOUT US AS A TEAM Our team cares about our customers, and ownership and dedication are a core principles in the team. Interesting fact: Our engineers often jump into these shared Slack channels to share updates and ensure everything works as expected. This level of direct interaction, facilitated by our current size and agility, has repeatedly helped us become the top choice for our customers. I love seeing how this approach moves the needle for us, making us a preferred vendor despite our size! 🌟

One thing that remains consistently by talking with GTM leaders (and how we aim to help our customers face this challenge) Today, getting access to data is a breeze. Firmographic, technographic, engagement, and intent data are all now easily retrievable with major solutions like Apollo.io, 6sense, ZoomInfo, new players such as Common Room, RB2B and the rise of AI-agent. But knowing data and knowing how to use data are two very different things. I'm on the lookout for more engagement playbooks and guide (e.g., cold email, LinkedIn outreach, network-led intros, cold calling) as we aim to start sharing more and more of ours at Userled. Any recommendations?

Here are the top 5 challenges of scaling ABM programs ↓ (and how to overcome them) Challenge 1: Managing Personalised Content at Scale 🤯 Problem: → Creating personalised content for a few accounts is easy, but doing it for hundreds or thousands? That's a different story. ✅ Solution: 1️⃣ Create a central repository of templates and assets for different types of content (e.g., cold outreach, follow-ups, event invites) that can be quickly customised for each account and buyer persona. 2️⃣ Scale the content creation of landing pages, ads, and email banners with Userled. Challenge 2: Ensuring Sales and Marketing Alignment 🤯 Problem: → ABM requires close collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Misalignment can lead to disjointed efforts and missed opportunities. ✅ Solution: 1️⃣ Hold bi-weekly meetings between sales and marketing to discuss strategies, share insights, and align goals. 2️⃣ Establish shared metrics, like new pipeline and pipeline closed, for both teams to measure success. 3️⃣ Allow both teams to access the same data. Userled, for instance, provides account-based and person-based analytics that both teams can use e.g., LinkedIn Matched Audience for Marketing, Outbound sequences for Sales). Challenge 3: Maintaining Data Quality 🤯 Problem: → Accurate, up-to-date data is crucial for effective ABM. As programs scale, keeping data quality high becomes more challenging. ✅ Solution: 1️⃣ Implement reports and regular data hygiene practices to clean and update your database. This includes removing duplicates, correcting inaccuracies, and ensuring completeness. 2️⃣ Use data enrichment tools to enhance your existing data with additional insights. We are using Keyplay and Clay ourselves. Challenge 4: Measuring ROI and Effectiveness 🤯 Problem: → Measuring the ROI and effectiveness of ABM programs can be complex, especially when scaling efforts. ✅ Solution: 1️⃣ Set clear metrics to measure ABM success, such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and revenue impact. 2️⃣ Use attribution models to understand the impact of different touchpoints. Userled customers often use multi-touch attribution models and solutions like HockeyStack and Dreamdata. 3️⃣ Track and analyse the performance of your ABM campaigns in real-time with Userled, and notify Sales every time an ICP account fits your engagement criteria. (sharing in comments a segment working very well for us) Challenge 5: Scaling Personalised Campaigns Across Channels 🤯 Problem: → Managing personalised campaigns across multiple channels gets more complex as you scale. ✅ Solution: 1️⃣ Develop 1:1, 1:few, 1:many ABM campaigns across multiple channels while maintaining a consistent and cohesive message. 2️⃣ At Userled, we’re simplifying the creation of tailored content at scale and soon tackling distribution. ABM is a team effort, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated or painful. Let's move from a cost center to an ROI center. 📊

I told my CEO, Yann Sarfati, that I could beat him in meetings booked this week... Help me prove I'm not wrong 😂

Building a Content Strategy in 5 minutes 🤯 Yes, it’s possible! ↓ OpenAI just announced that all free tier users now get access to the GPT Store for browsing and using custom bots. I’m excited to introduce ZeroContent - the custom GPT bot I created months ago for lightning-fast content creation. With ZeroContent, you simply type in your topic, and it generates: ✅ 3-5 Content Pillars - The core ideas to structure your content ✅ 30+ Content Ideas - A brainstorm of potential angles and topics ✅ A Content Plan - A strategic monthly plan to sequence and space out content ✅ Content Outlines - Detailed outlines for each piece to jumpstart your writing No more staring at a blank page. To demonstrate, I’ll walk through an example using my friends at Cargo (YC S23) 🧱. In seconds, ZeroContent returns content pillars, ideas, a plan, and outlines specifically tailored for Cargo. Now, I can rapidly refine and produce content like a machine. 🚀 This is just a taste of what’s now possible for free with custom bots (and I have a few others I’ve built). What custom bots are you excited to try from the GPT Store? Share your thoughts below!