92 | High-impact demand strategy: Changing mindsets for incredible results

92 | High-impact demand strategy: Changing mindsets for incredible results 

Jon Busby: Welcome to another episode of the Tech Marketing podcast. I'm joined by Nghia Karroll. Am I saying that correct, Nghia? That's exactly right. Senior Director at Demand of Demand, generation of ServiceNow. So Nghia, welcome to the Tech Marketing podcast. It, we're super excited to have you here.

Nghia Karoll: I'm very excited to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Jon Busby: We are here in wonderful Orlando. Very sunny Orlando actually, isn't it?

Nghia Karoll: It's, yes it's hot. Yes. Orlando.

Jon Busby: Oh really hot. Where are you from in the States?

Nghia Karoll: Normally I'm in Southern California. Okay. So in Orange County, the west coast, orange County.

Jon Busby: But it's still warm there, but it's just, it's a different type of warm thing.

Nghia Karoll: It's an interesting year. It was it usually is warm, so I can't complain, especially to east coasters weather. Yeah. But usually it's very warm and right now we're getting a lot of rain, which we desperately need, and we're okay with that.

Jon Busby: Yeah. And California's the only place being a Brit coming over and everyone cheers when it rains.

Yes. We're English, right? So we love talking about the weather anyway. Yeah. So it's just, yeah it's fascinating. But I can't wait to get into some of the talking points. You've been, you've got a wonderful session here at the a and a Masters of B2B conference.

On your demand on ServiceNow's demand generation strategy and how you've reached 180 x return on investment, which is crazy.

Nghia Karoll: Yes I actually will update you on that number here in a little bit.

Jon Busby: Okay. There's, we're gonna hear it first on the podcast, but such for such an impressive heritage in demand generation for.

Yeah. For some of the world leading tech brands, like where has this passion for demand generation come from?

Nghia Karoll: A little known fact is, I actually have a sales background. I was an account executive for a company long, long time ago, and it was always very interesting on how customers, how the strategies to attract customers and how your marketing team enables you. With the tools as a seller to attract customers, and I thought, you know what I would like to learn and see how does this strategy come together? And here we are.

Just so hang on. You used to be in sales. I used to be in sales. And and then, and that's what gave you the passion moving into demand gen, but yes.

Cause selling is very hard.

Jon Busby: But were you good at it or is that why you made the jump?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah, and I was relatively good at it. I hit quota

Jon Busby: With, I, I find this fascinating, right? So I've been spending a bit more time with. Sales types of people recently, especially in tech. Sure. And I've found it really interesting how they break down the different propositions in front of a customer because from a marketing standpoint, we, we create a tactic, we put it in front of them, we see how they might interact.

Yeah. But actually watching it in the room, like what back have coming from a sales background, what has. What did, how did that change your approach to marketing? Or what did you bring from your sales background into marketing?

Nghia Karoll: It's a lot. I think having the insight a seller's being in the room and seeing as you, you state like this in action, it really helps me craft.

Strategies, resources, tools in a different way because I, I could very much look at it and say, okay, in marketing we should do, we should create a battle card and we should create these questions and and all of these things. But unless you're in the room actually delivering this message having direct insight into that actually is very powerful.

So that, On this side. Now on the marketing side, I'm crafting actual messaging and positioning that can be used by a seller versus them saying, oh, This just came from marketing. Set this aside. I'm gonna proceed with my approach. So that's where the partnership is born.

Jon Busby: I think that's so true.

Do you, just to dig into that a little bit deeper do you still what's your relationship like with sales?

Nghia Karoll: That service sounds a very strong one. It, we work very much in concert and, that'll be showcased quite a bit in the session when we talk about our session.

But the. Partnership with sales, one, as a marketer, sales folks are your first line customers, right? And that's, and understanding that, and if we have a customer mindset then that is why the partnership is so important. Because whatever we are creating, we wanna get leveraged by our sellers.

And everything we do is with. Customer centricity and mine. And that starts with our sellers. But that also starts with knowing your seller. Oh. And knowing the level of sales ability that they have. And some are just much better than others. Yeah, absolutely. And ServiceNow is pretty large tech company and we have a matrix sales organization.

And so you've got your. BDRs and SDRs who are the early in career folks who need a lot of guidance and and training and enablement because they're early in their selling career. And then you've got your AEs who have been doing this for tens 20, 30 years. And They need the same information but geared towards their role.

And so they need to be provided the resources so that the conversation they're having at their levels, while it's the same message and it's on message across the board, but it's very much custom to how they are going to. Talk to customers. That's amazing. Yeah. And do you find also when you're working with your teams, that they also need to recognize the abilities of their sales customers, so to say?

Yeah absolutely. My team spends a lot of time meeting with. Our sellers, right? We've got we call it the Global Sales Development Organization, which is the SD essentially the SDR team, the B team. And so because they are our catcher, Yes. And we need to make sure that they're ready to catch when we pass.

And so in order to do we have to provide, overviews, enablement and say so that they know what to expect when we're pushing leads over, over to them. It's, it is just very important that alliance, that partnership with the sales team, because if you don't spend the time and you're sitting in a closed door room writing, Materials for your sellers, but you haven't asked them.

Yeah. Does it truly work in the room and you're just throwing it over the fence, right? And that's not where the partnership begins. That's right. Yeah. And do you also align your goals with them as well? Oh yeah. A hundred percent. ServiceNow's goals, we're all, it's top down. It starts from our ceo and all we align to all the priorities across the board and.

Key priorities to make sure that what we're driving in marketing will eventually drive into the sales priorities. Cuz at the end of the day, it's one number, right? When you talk about pipe generation or revenue creation, it's one number. And it's all of our numbers. Yeah. Yeah. And do you find that it's just, When you come up with that number, is it a number that everybody agrees on easily?

Or is it I think we, that's the real question. That real? Yeah, that's a, it is a little bit, and when we think about high growth companies like ServiceNow, it's that target, we're always chasing that target, right? And the better you do, the bigger it gets year on year. And that's no different.

At ServiceNow. What I'll say is while the numbers and the targets are large, we're up for the challenge. Okay. Yay.

Jon Busby: It's an interesting, you, we were talking as we prepared for this, part of what you've. Driven at ServiceNow is this mind shift towards a high performance organization, high performance demand generation.

Nghia Karoll: Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Busby: And you, what you touched on there is some of the metrics like. Are you using one number between yourself and sales, or is it you have your own stream and we hand over at the MQL point and see you later?

Like how does, how is that organized?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah. We very much have that structure in place to ensure that we're looking at the same sets of data, right? We have a funnel where we're putting Interactions in and measuring the volume, but we know that volume is a little bit arbitrary unless it converts, right?

And so we're measuring the conversions through the marketing funnel to the handoff. And similar metrics to many enterprise organizations, the MQL and the SQLs, but we actually look very much once it enters the sales cycle at. Opportunity stages, right? That's when we truly report on impact for our marketing our marketing investment and our marketing programs, right?

Because at the end of the day, you can drive volume, but unless it's converting all the way down the sales cycle, it really doesn't show impact. So

Jon Busby: I love that term impact. Actually. I don't think enough people use it in marketing. Cause we tend to. Sit relatively siloed. Like we, we look at we talk about mql or we'll talk about different stages of the funnel, like how.

How do you measure the impact? What is the, what does that mean to you at ServiceNow?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah I, impact from just a concept that, so there's a number of things, and I say this pretty frequently across my team, as you bring up mindset shift, right? It's, I always say, if you can't see it and you can't measure it, it didn't happen.

And it's very important that. Folks understand that because, it's like the tree falls in the forest, right? Did you hear it or did you know it doesn't make a sound? And we really rally around making sure there's visibility of the metrics, the performance metrics, and we spend a lot of time talking.

Not only tracking the data, but showcasing the data. So that we're always looking at. Okay are we hitting benchmarks? Are we converting? And using that data to say if it's not working, we need to pivot. Relatively quickly. And so all I think that's very important.

The visibility of the data beyond just having it.

Jon Busby: what else what are the other key principles of that success then? So we talked about this. You you're gonna update us on what this 180 x is. So I think firstly you need to tell us what the new number is.

Otherwise I'm, cause I'm on the edge of the seat, I'm gonna fall over.

Nghia Karoll: I'm going, update you that, when we initially shared the stats of the program, it was 180 x and that, that was true at the time, but that was not a full year's set of data under our belt. And so now 2022 has closed and we measured the full year and we're actually at 200 x.

Jon Busby: Wow.

Nghia Karoll: Return on investment. Yeah, absolutely.

Jon Busby: That's a nice round number. Yeah.

Nghia Karoll: I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it. Absolutely.

Jon Busby: The, so what are the other key principle principles that form part of that success?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah, no, I'll share a lot more of this and get into this in our talk, but, there, there's.

Three pillars that I think are so necessary and you really cannot have one without the other. And one is exec sponsorship and this one's an interesting one. Cause a lot of folks are like, oh, that's not the structure, that's not the framework. Why is exec sponsorship important?

Because, your demand gen marketers are. Architecting these comprehensive programs, right? But they need executive sponsorship. And that is beyond just approving budget, approving the program that is being engaged and and really highlighting this wherever they can, whether it be in the meeting room with the boardroom, right?

Because we're talking about some. Pretty big numbers on the return, right? So we need that executive sponsorship and alignment to help. Support the growth of the program. The second pillar is around systems and process, right? Back to data. I'm I think it's starting to get obvious.

I'm a little bit of a data nerd and I'm okay with that. Don't give me a spreadsheet and think that I'm not gonna be excited about this. Don't threaten me with a good time for the spreadsheet. And data quality, automation, all of those things are so critical to scale.

So you have to have the systems in place and then you have to have the processes defined. For those systems to work. Now when a lot of folks hear about this, they think, oh no, I have to get these, tons of tools and integrate them. You can start small. Absolutely right? But build that foundation.

Get the systems in. Process in place. And the last. Piece, probably something probably cuz of my sales background, but it's the sales engagement, right? You cannot run a marketing program and see success without the partnership with sales. And so all of the things that's necessary to ensure that your sellers are ready to catch and qualify are necessary.

Those are the pillars that I find that. Are necessary to ensure successful results.

 

Jon Busby: I wanna dive into the fir the first one for a second there. So I, so together, I actually also run the exec sponsor program. I dunno how I landed with that. But especially being cto it's, doesn't make any sense, but it just, it was one of these ones where it was a spreadsheet and I was like, it's just not tidy enough.

I need to make it measurable. So how do you measure the success of exec sponsorship at ServiceNow?

And exec sponsorship?

Nghia Karoll: One is it's it's bidirectional, right? Having the execs in the room championing your programs, right? Yeah. And that is, Visible. That's something that you can see and that's tangible.

But from measuring success leveraging your exec sponsor and measuring that success, I mean your standard metrics like return market share pipeline and revenue attribution, right? So that those are the key metrics that when you think about your executives in the room numbers that they care about, because that's going to, that's going to determine.

If you're growing. Or if there's a efficiency motion that needs to take place.

Jon Busby: And you. Okay. Okay. But when we're talking about the execs, let's say you've got a cio who you are hoping to get meetings with other big brands so that they can drive drive connections and hopefully drive return.

Do you measure the amount of meetings they have? Like how do you, it's such an intangible beast. If for a data nerd, and we're both data nerds here, right? Yeah. We can both, we can it's a how do you make that comfortable?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah. I think you have to measure all of it from meetings and we talk about engagement metrics, right?

Every, especially at the executive level, every touchpoint matters. And it's very few because there's only so many. Executives out in the universe, in the world of enterprise. And engagement in meetings, engagement in attendance at executive sponsored focused type events, right?

Any of those activities. And I think we, we had a conversation about this where every executive is building their brand. And they have a short list of how, their peer organization that they need to build their brand too, right? And so we also have need to measure that whether or not those relationships have been ascertained as well.

Jon Busby: I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more like it is that's, we talked earlier in some of the prep meetings about blending the, create the creative side of marketing with the data side. And so finding ways of making things more measurable is always key.

Do you think there's a point at which you can't it's dangerous to over metric.

Nghia Karoll: Sure. I think analysis paralysis, right? You have to identify the metrics that really are going to impact your outcome, right? And whatever that outcome is, and I would recommend that you define what those outcomes are.

In advance. Sometimes you can let them come to you organically, but it's better to know what you're marching towards. And so every metric needs to drive to that outcome because, data sets. You can probably tell 1,000,001 stories with every data set, but what is the right story that you are trying to tell? And how is that moving the needle?

Jon Busby: Yeah. Yeah. Completely agree. You mentioned, Before we, we we touched on this element of customer centric marketing. Take me back to when you joined ServiceNow. You've been with ServiceNow five years, five and a half years.

And can you share a me memorable experience? I'm gonna start that question again. Take me back to a time when you first joined ServiceNow. Can you share that memory that you have? About the company's marketing approach and how it's become more customer centric?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah. It's no surprise that ServiceNow is a platform company, has a very broad set of solutions and it's a truly a platform across the entire enterprise.

So what I think a lot of companies. Tend to do is they will build a strategy based on their solution, right? And they will say, oh, I'm trying to sell x. I wanna position this product in a certain way to attract customers. But in actuality, the customers Don't need to know about your product, what they need to know is how you are meeting their business value.

So you have to shift that mindset and say, okay, what are the customers what problem am I trying to solve for my customers? I'm not trying to sell them products, right? That's interesting. Do you get involved in any of the product strategy or. Development. Yeah.

There is a pretty large organization at ServiceNow, I will say. And there's a lot of very intelligent, capable people across ServiceNow that are responsible for developing the product strategy. And what they do is in concert with marketing teams like myself, as they say, okay here's our product strategy.

And then what we come to the table with is, What is the marketing strategy, which is what does the customer care about Exactly. And then we marry those two together. That's right. Rather than yes. Driving from one direction. It should be a a conversation that we're having across the product organization.

That's great.

Jon Busby: The Wow. Yeah, I, yes. I'm just agreeing a lot. I dunno why I'm agreeing so much, but I'm agreeing a lot today. The this, so we're gonna come back to that 200 x, right? So this has created a huge amount of long-term growth. You're still measuring it now. Yes, absolutely. And we all know how long deal cycles are in b2b.

It's likely that 200 numbers we're gonna be talking in a year's time, it's gonna be 300 or more. It's just gonna keep growing. But how do you present that impact to the board? Is it something you do alongside sales? Is it, are there certain metrics that they say they look out for and there's certain metrics that you tried that haven't worked?

Nghia Karoll: Yeah, ultimately they're. There is data that helps serve our marketing strategies to say, Hey, are we moving in the right direction? And I would say return on investment is probably one of those numbers so that we say, okay, we're investing in a program. Did are we getting a return on that program?

But I think in concert with sales, how that number translates to is the number they care about, which is, Pipeline attribution, right? Pipeline creation and attribution. And so the these metrics of 200 x ROI will lead ultimately to that, what their end goal is, which is the pipeline number.

And so what. We, what we like to do is make sure that we look at the right sets of data on the marketing side to make the decisions we need in terms of program investment. And how does it deliver on our sales targets.

And what are those? What are those metrics you're looking at to know that you are investing in the right things?

I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but we measure from prefrontal I know we don't tend to talk about this a lot, but it, this happens a lot in awareness type marketing channels, but we talk about prefrontal in terms of engagement and impressions and things like that. Now these numbers. Are very much geared towards volume.

And while volume I think is not necessarily an impactful metric, it helps give an indication of whether or not we're at least touching the right personas. And then when we. Are able to engage and convert those folks to actually let's say download our content. Now we're showcasing impact that messaging is hitting and then we lead into interactions targets.

I think there's something to be said about how we. Still go to market with cost per lead type programs. And while I think that's gonna be here to stay for a while, I think we need to start moving towards more engaged metrics where it's showcasing that the customers are truly engaging with our content, with our programs.

And that is only proven by how they convert in the sales cycle.

And those engagement metrics, what I'm trying not to phrase this in a too much of a leading way because I think engagement is something that we talk a lot about in marketing. We talk a lot about in how we measure.

But there's, I'm gonna say there's a lot of nuances about doing it. And there's lots of nuances that can cause hiccups. So when we talk, when you think about engagement, what are you looking out for? In, in

those accounts very much, as I mentioned, impressions, are people seeing what we're putting out in market.

First and foremost. And then are they taking that action? So one is do they see it? The second is, we call 'em hand raisers, right? The interactions is, that's when we start to see engagement is are they taking that action to say, Hey, imm, I, I want to read the content that you're putting out there.

Jon Busby: And then when. Could. So to give you a bit of context over where my head was going here, there is, there tends to be two schools of thought. There's, I think it's the, there's a forester model that everyone quotes which is, sure. You move away from it being purely the amount of effort that the buyer takes or buyer's putting into the interaction.

So it could be, you, the old school ways you would look at a video and say they've watched a 10 minute video. That's a pretty big hand raise. Instead you look at the points of the buyer's journey like. When, at which point do you decide, okay, this is ready for sales, or this is, we need to hand this over.

Nghia Karoll: Yeah. You have to get a little bit further down the funnel, right? I would say mid to the end of the funnel is when you have properly on the marketing side nurtured. Yeah. And created the right level of conversations digitally for yourselves before you, you're handing off to them, right? And this is something I talk a little bit about in. Our session, but, you think about multi-channel approach, right? So your customers are being delivered. Multiple messages constantly. And you gotta make sure that every time a message is delivered, it lands at the right time.

Yeah. And the right time. If it's, if it's too early for sales to catch, we know that it will not convert. Yep. So you have to spend the time in the customer journey, in the, awareness, the discovery, the consideration phases to truly educate your customer. Before you hand off to your sellers.

Jon Busby: Because I think there's the temptation especially, I think Wall Street's got a lot to answer for that in this where we're quarterly driven to just try and hand off as much as we can to try and get, as, just purely play the volume game. Yeah. But I think if you do it correctly, if you balance those two, what you'll hear from your customers is they won't be frustrated.

And they're, when they do speak to sales, they'll say, oh, I was just thinking about you. And that's the real nuance in building, we see in building some of those high performance, Demand generation engines.

Nghia Karoll: And that's why models like lead scoring exist, right? We've gotta lean in on these constructed models so that you, one, you don't want a marker or manually looking at the data and passing and say, Hey, is this.

Showing the right signals, that's not scalable, but you lean on these lead scoring models to say, I'm, what are the signals the intent data that is showcasing that the customer is interested and they're ready for that sales conversation. And we we have a pretty comprehensive lease scoring model at ServiceNow so that we align with our sales team and that they're catching when it's the right time.

Jon Busby: And you I'm gonna put that in your process systems and process bucket. Like how do we, one stat I've heard over the last few days is there's 17 stakeholders in the buying committee. Yeah. 17. Absolutely. How do you mold. That, that data together alongside something like your exec sponsorship to, to build a high performance demand generation engine.

Nghia Karoll: For folks like myself and demand gen, the partnership with your data and operations team is so critical cuz these are the folks that are, is gonna make the work I do visible. And showing the right story. And Lead scoring models. I have an incredible data partner who actually built the model based on AI and machine learning.

And I look, I'm a data nerd, but I do, that is not my wheelhouse. And so I leave it to the the experts. She has constructed this very comprehensive model that is taking in thousands of signals that we're putting into the system and saying, rather than a human deciding, I. Is a webinar interaction a meaningful interaction?

We're letting the model say, Hey, based on your hi history what showcases as a high scoring lead is, are these factors, right? And I, yeah, I we've gotta lean into these available tools as marketers to help us conduct business.

Jon Busby: And that's something your ServiceNow's built internally.

That correct? Yeah. You've gotta be the first case of someone actually building that it's been, and it's showing that level of maturity. Cause I think so, so many brands are striving to build a machine learning model or an AI model. Yet so few are actually using it as part of their activities.

So that's fascinating. There's any secrets you can give us that you've learned, I,

Nghia Karoll: that you can share with Unfortunately no, no secrets, but We hear it everywhere. Generative ai. Everything's ai. Right now. And so if you haven't if you are unfamiliar with ai on any level that rock you are living in under is very big, right?

And so you've got to stay current with these trends and and. Build partnerships with the folks who understand it to apply it to your business. Like my data partner. Wow.

Jon Busby: Sorry Sonia. I didn't wanna, I didn't know if you were jumping

Sonia David: there or not. Yeah.

No, I just, was AI already in place or did they just was that something that.

Someone said we have to apply it, or, itegrated

Nghia Karoll: would say just generally from a service now innovation perspective, we're, as a platform company, we are innovating with ai. But the use of it in our leads scoring model, I've very much contribute to the knowledge and the expertise of my my data my data partner because, it's one thing to have it, it's another have the vision on how to architect it. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Cuz you're talking about innovation. And, the fact that it's already there. And in place and in use. That's, it's absolutely fascinating.

Jon Busby: Which brings me on, I think, to a question that everyone's gonna be on tender hooks forth, right? So we, it feels like you are. It, this feels like a journey that you are, we're really just the beginning of. So what is next for demand generation for you?

Nghia Karoll: I think we're always on a journey. One of the themes that I like to promote across my team is doing demand gen differently and really focusing on innovation because the truth is the channels that are available to us, demand marketers are not unique.

Many of them have been in place. You think about syndication programs or social search, right? All of these channels. Exist and have existed for a while, but what is going to be next and exciting, I think, is how do we take these existing channels and leverage them in new ways. We know that we're moving into with the pandemic, we went to a fully digital model.

Now we're actually moving into a hybrid model where we're starting to see tons and tons of in-person events, but digital's not going away, right? Yes. So how do we leverage all of these channels digital, like online and offline channels. In new and interesting ways to drive demand. Do you see your budgets, I don't wanna talk about your financials, but, do you see your budgets going up with the, with the reopening of the world and hybrid? I think they're the best way to do it, I think, is we have to assess what is happening. We have to stay very current with market trends to say Yeah, where.

Do our budgets need to be That's right. Placed, right? And it has to be balanced with the in-person or the digital channels because you can't have one without the other. And so just ensuring that, back to my earlier comment around outcomes, is making sure that, again, your budget is also balanced and contributing towards the outcomes. Yeah, that's right. They're definitely not going back to 2019. No, we're not. This is a whole new world and it absolutely, this is a hybrid world for sure. And all marketers now is we're all digital marketers, and yes, we, even bef prior to the pandemic folks who are focused in the event space, right?

Yes. They're also digital marketers because we have to use all of these tools to create an in-person experience, right? And digital's not going away and we've all gotta get on board. That's right. Yeah. Or do we just take away the word digital? Everybody's a marketer.

Digital is already embedded. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Love that.

Jon Busby: So we've been asked this question to everyone in five words. I'm a little nervous in five words or less. What advice would you give future CMOs and marketeers to achieve success like yours?

Nghia Karoll: We talk a lot about.

How marketers need to be nimble and pivot on a dime with changing market trends and pressures. But I actually would say, especially on this multi-year journey I'm on with our demand gen strategy is, I would say stay the course to grow, stay the course to scale. And it really, at the end of the day is stay the course.

That means that you're patient enough to stand up and construct a program, but see it through, obviously have short term goals and the milestones that you have to hit and make decisions along these decision points. Whether or not you do need to change it up and do something differently, right?

Because we don't wanna. See a train headed toward a wreck and not stop it, but but we've gotta let things run for a little bit. When we pivot too quickly, we haven't given ourselves a chance to see if we are gonna generate success.

Jon Busby: So be consistent. I would say

Nghia Karoll: be consistent. Yeah. But definitely stay the course.

Yeah. Be patient

Jon Busby: with it. Stay. I love that. Stay the course. Stay the course. Yep. And of course final question, will you be at the Ana's next year? Are we gonna see you next year?

Nghia Karoll: You know what, if I'm invited back, I would love.

Jon Busby: Cool. Are we gonna get an update to that figure? Is it gonna be 300?

Yeah, 301. We can have a sweepstakes for it.

Nghia Karoll: Yeah, maybe we should, it's like the game. You put all the marbles in a jar and you guess how many marbles in the jar. We can certainly do that, but I've done some projection and I'm excited for where we will net out the end of this year.

So I think we're gonna keep growing.

Jon Busby: That's fabulous. That's great news.

Nghia, thank you very much for joining us on the Tech Marketing podcast today and yeah, hope to have an update next year.

Nghia Karoll: Thank you so much for having me. It was great.