Podcast: Measuring the success of your ABM program with Christian Weiss from Autodesk

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How to Measure the Success of Your ABM Program

On this episode of Growth Colony, Shahin Hoda is joined by Christian Weiss, Director of Account-Based Marketing (Central Europe) at Autodesk. They chat about how to measure the success of an ABM program and the importance of transparency in the relationship with your team and accounts.

Christian also shares his experience with working on ABM programs, as well as the mistakes he’s stumbled upon when it comes to managing client expectations and the important KPIs that one should focus on.

This episode’s guest: 

Conversation segments on this episode:

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni

About the Growth Colony Podcast

On this podcast you'll be hearing from B2B founders, CMOs, marketing & sales leaders about their successes, failures, what is working for them today in the B2B marketing world and everything in between.

Hosted & Produced by Shahin Hoda, Allysa Maywald & Alexander Hipwell, from xGrowth

Get in touch!

We would love to get your questions, ideas and feedback about Growth Colony, email podcast@xgrowth.com.au

Episode Full Transcript

[01:48] Shahin Hoda Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode. I'm Shahin Hoda with xGrowth and today I'm talking to Christian Weiss, Director of Account Based Marketing for Central Europe at Autodesk about how you should go about measuring the success of your ABM programs. On that note, let's dive in. Christian, thanks a lot for joining us.

[02:09] Christian Weiss  Thank you very much. I'm happy to join this podcast.

[02:13] Shahin Hoda  No absolute pleasure having you. I want to dive right in and talk about how we previously had a chat, and one of the things that you've mentioned in the past is that transparency is the starting point for ABM success. I want to dive into that and I want to ask you if you could unpack that a little bit and what exactly do you mean by that?

[02:36] Christian Weiss  So transparency for me has various levels. And I think with one point of transparency, we have to look at ourselves as marketers, right? And say, do I see enough information to make the right decisions? So in terms of data analytics, the rest is guesswork. And it's also good, sometimes right, and sometimes we don't need all the deep insights we are looking for. But especially when we look into account based marketing transparency into looking to our accounts and our setups in the ecosystems and so on helps a lot. 

[03:14] Christian Weiss  From my point of view, the key where transparency kicks positively, completely, is in the collaboration with our colleagues, especially with sales. And the reason for that is maybe I have an example for that. In the past, in the very past, I was in quarterly meetings with sales, and these quarterly meetings say, it's normally happened like this. Sales gives the update, marketing gives the updates This is our plan, or this is when we look backwards in the quarterly review and say it says, Yeah, and by the way, the leads were not enough and the quality was bad. That's, I think, a discussion everyone had in the past.

[03:58] Shahin Hoda  Yep.

[03:59] Christian Weiss  And until this comment, everything was nice. My presentation was nice and glossy. I'm always prepared, of course, and like it. I enjoyed the presence of sales because that brings me closer to reality and customers and out of the ivory tower of marketing sometimes. So I ended up always in this discussion, what is enough? How many leads are enough? Are we sending too many? Not enough. I don't know. And I didn't have this answer. Then I had the chance to work with a very smart analyst who helped me build a Power BI dashboard. 

[04:32] Christian Weiss  And this dashboard was made to really like hundred percent transparency. And this dashboard showed not just how many leads did we deliver and how did we, how did inside sales, for sales, convert them, but also who is not picking up on leads? How old are the leads until they are picked up? Who are the black sheep and why? And maybe some leads were going to the wrong person, right? And no one knows about it. And we have delivered 150 leads and no one knew about them. So that was really a 100% transparency attempt. And on the next meeting I got…

[05:13] Shahin Hoda  How did that go? Yeah.

[05:16] Christian Weiss  The meeting changed completely. And then it was like, what, 15 days until that lead got touched and we had like 35, 60, 80 days, right? And then sales was really- so the sales leaders stood up and said, OK, guys, this cannot happen. And then I said, OK, now we are in the right discussion. It was not about blaming each other, it's about transparency. Then it became two joint actions. The next thing I got now, in the report feedback. What is the reason why they close a lead? Was it bad data? Did they, have they not been interested in whatever, right? So all of that and these closed reason helped the marketers also to plan better and take better action. 

[06:01] Christian Weiss  So it's not just about blaming each other, it's about putting everything on the table and at the end build trust for each other. And leads are difficult topics for ABM but they happen, right? So still in the ABM setup, we are looking at this report and also I’m looking into the next step. And so just off the conversion and I look into how many opportunities to be created. What happens with these opportunities in which stage they are falling into parts or do not, right? So I see the entire funnel. And also how old are these opportunities? Do they move ahead, all these pipeline progression and that helps me also to support sales in this further stages. 

[06:44] Christian Weiss  To avoid that, we are just looking into transactions added to into the conversion of a lead into an opportunity but beyond that. So that helped a lot. But that's just one minor example. On the other side, I think transparency helps also in the things of what can ABM deliver and what not, because especially when you start with ABM, you have a tendency of overpromising and you tell whatever, right? We are standing now in the water and with a spear and we fish every fish personally.

[07:15] Shahin Hoda  Anything that passes, we’ll catch it.

[07:17] Christian Weiss  Exactly. And not with a net. Of course not with a net. And then, so when I looked into the data we had available when we started, I figured out, yes, we have a spear, but we are standing in the dark, right? I had no idea. All the contents we have collected over the past X years, I didn't even know who that was. It was just an email address. So also here, transparency helps a lot to help sales understand in which state of stage of ABM am I. In which evolution stage, but also on the other side, it helps me to be realistic with myself, right. 

[07:59] Shahin Hoda  Got it. I love that. I love that. And I know the analogy of net and spear has been evangelized by many in the ABM space. I love how we have the spear, but someone turned off the light we’re with a spear, but it's pitch black and it’s the middle of the night. And it's not very helpful. In fact, we prefer the net at that situation. OK, I guess my next question is why do you think that this is important? Why do you think this is such a critical component for ABM?

[08:36] Christian Weiss  Because we are now interdependent with other colleagues, from other colleagues of the company. We are depending on sales, we are depending on accountings, from customer success and so on. And if we really, really, really put the customer in the center and not sales and not marketing or anyone else or the revenue target, right? We put the customer in the center and look deeper and take action. Then we work as a real team. So I'm using very often this analogy of the pit crew of a Formula One car hits the Pit Stop. Everyone knows exactly what to do but they have different functions, right? 

[09:17] Christian Weiss  And it's about the driver and the car. And it's not about my own personal expectations, what the other one should do. It's about my task to make this driver and the car successful. And the fundament of this is a book I've read about and did several trainings about it. It's about the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I don't know if you know this. And the fundament is really is trust. I know exactly that the other one is doing a great job and I'm doing my best as well. And we use our trust level to be successful. If we start with a revenue target, we start maybe also with beating each other up or blaming each other. 

[09:57] Christian Weiss  But transparency helps us to have the first steps in the right direction. And on the same level, and then we are working as a team. So from my point of view, transparency, lead, transparency leads to trust and trust leads to the right decisions.  Better decisions. And we also use everything we know to share with each other. So no one holds anything back because that's my territory and not yours. And this openness and trust fullness helps us to make the best decisions for our customers.

[10:33] Shahin Hoda  That is so good. That is so good. First of all, I love the analogy of the of the pit crew, but also how the transparency connects with trust and then connects to those better decisions. When you're looking at ABM programs, this is a little bit of a different, different conversation. When you're looking at ABM programs, what is the time horizon that you're looking at, from kind of measuring success?

[10:58] Christian Weiss  This is, from my point of view, one of the most critical areas in ABM between the relationship between sales and marketing, because sales looks traditionally at this quarter and maybe the next one. And these are not the quarters where ABM should look at because I mean, you cannot build a customer relationship in six weeks or in eight weeks or in two weeks and not in 12 weeks, right. You have to start understanding the customers. You have to start looking even deeper, have conversations, to discoveries. And then what's also missing, many, many times is through a strategic plan describe by when do I want to achieve what with this account?

[11:40] Christian Weiss  And then do I need marketing for that right? Sometimes it's a renewal of a contract and nothing else. I don't need marketing for that. But if I'm able to jointly describe my future goal in three quarters, maybe then I can start working really with sales. But this challenge of thinking and working long term and strategic first and looking into my today's results of this quarter - will I make my quarter? This is, I think, a tricky thing. So what we have in Autodesk is we look at the five quarter rolling pipeline, so it's less this quarter this year and after this fiscal year, we are falling from the cliff. It's more a rolling pipeline where we constantly look into future pipeline gaps.

[12:27] Christian Weiss  And so my advice to every marketer is look at not this, not the next, but in three quarters and look at where are the gaps. With which customers do you have the biggest gaps? Is it the customer who is least engaged or is it the customer who is most engaged, right? Is it whatever? But it changes your strategic plan. But you have to look further out in the future to really build the right content based on insights, align with all the account colleagues and peers and that requires several quarters to to work against. But then I think we are better.

[13:07] Shahin Hoda  OK, so you're saying you look at you look five quarters out. That's really the horizon. You talked about, you look at pipeline gaps, can you define that? What do you mean by you know, you analyze pipeline gaps, like what are you looking at?

[13:24] Christian Weiss  So of course, we have different filters. We have, I can look at the pipeline based on renewals only. I can look at renewals because we are software as a service company. So renewals are critical for our business and the new business is critical. So I can look at new business, only new business and renewals or only renewals, and I see the pipeline. So every opportunity which is already in these first quarter so I can also see sales reps say in three quarters, this opportunity will probably close. And based on that, I see also the marketing contribution in my report.

[13:59] Christian Weiss  So I can see based on leads, this has led to opportunities, but mainly based on the influence we have done based on engagement. How much did we influence this pipeline today and in the future? Therefore, I can also see how much more can I do in three quarters to increase the engagement of these accounts, to increase the support of the expected pipeline. And that makes it so interesting because I see the pipeline, but also I see how much did I do already as a marketer to support this future pipeline. That brings us to a different level of conversation.

[14:37] Shahin Hoda  Interesting, interesting. So I'm guessing from, so you looking at, let's take an example. You're looking at the timeline and there is a deal that is coming up in three quarters time and you- this is a renewal deal. So how do you approach that? Is that, you know, you're saying OK, how can we what is the current today's engagement level with this account? And I'd love to kind of dive deep in terms of like what do we mean by engagement, right? And then how do you kind of plan for that? Does that make sense?

[15:15] Christian Weiss  Yeah, makes absolute sense. And sometimes you have a customer where it's absolutely clear that their renewal would be super successful for sales. And it's already obvious that these goals will be achieved. So my question would be, what do you need marketing for? Like little fireworks on the table when you like a contract or stickers, I don't know, balloons or whatever, but nice event. Or is the account where the renewal comes up so low engaged or disengaged or not interested before is behind the expected goal we have calculated?

[15:54] Christian Weiss  That marketing can make a difference and then the marketing can follow any goal within this account plan, right? Support the adoption, make more people aware that they have a contract with us so that they're using our software or whatever, right? It could be the buy-in of the missing buy-in of executives to drive this contract further or to grow this contract. It could be a so-called white space where you say, I'm super in this department, but not at all existing in the other department. So what can I do to move? I want to extend my footprint, and this is why we need longer term plans, right? That doesn't work, if I have just one quarter to close the deal.

[16:40] Christian Weiss  And therefore, so I think that makes sense, right? To really go deep into it and say, is it necessary to involve marketing here or not? We all have not and limited resources.

[16:52] Shahin Hoda  Yes, of course. That's always the biggest challenge, resources. Christian, when it comes to the the accounts you're targeting at Autodesk as part of the ABM program, is that more you find that's more net new business or when you say net new, that's like existing customers, net new and renewal. How does that divide look like?

[17:17] Christian Weiss  So it's with our products, it's relatively difficult to find in this larger company size a customer who is like someone who is not.

[17:26] Shahin Hoda  There's no presence.

[17:27] Christian Weiss  Yeah.

[17:29] Shahin Hoda  The amazingness of Autodesk, everywhere.

[17:35] Christian Weiss  But yeah, but the problem is rather so how big is our footprint, right? So if a customer is a strong customer in their real estate department, but maybe not in the factory area or in design, then I can treat this department like a new customer. This white space is then like a new customer acquisition. I don't know the relevant people. The people are not engaged. They're using the wrong products maybe, or no products from us or competitive products. So it's like new customer acquisition within an existing account. And these large accounts, they are so complex that it's any way like a new customer.

[18:13] Shahin Hoda I see

[18:14] Christian Weiss  They are often not talking to each other as well.

[18:16] Shahin Hoda  Yes, yes. Definitely have experience in that. And sometimes they buy the same software, but from two different vendors and it's like, what? What's going on here? Let's talk about the other thing that I want to touch on is short term or medium term KPIs. So long term KPIs everyone is familiar with, hey, one revenue, one pipeline, one stage, three pipeline, stage four pipeline, whatever it is but I want to dive a little bit deeper when it comes to short term and medium term KPIs that you look at. 

[18:51] Shahin Hoda  What are some of the things that you monitor very closely? You know, from maybe month one to month three, if you're running a program from month to month, maybe nine, right. So in that first, second, third quarter where sales is very focused on revenue. But as you said, ABM is focused on, you know, that three plus quarters. What are some of those KPIs that you look at in that period?

[19:22] Christian Weiss  Of course, it depends on the tactics, right? But so what I think many marketers, so many marketers are in this delivery routine. I need a new campaign here, and you can do a new campaign there and let's deliver and let's plan and execute a plan and execute a plan and execute. And these short term KPIs whatever the number of attendees, the number of downloads of content, the engagement on a new landing page, whatever that. So really basic things, attendees of a webinar I have planned. These shorter term KPIs help me not just to report out on the next QBR I don't care about. 

[20:00] Christian Weiss  It's helpful to optimize my campaigns so that they are really long term running. We deliver, deliver, deliver and do new stuff because that's our routine. But I think, we are creating a lot of marketing waste with that. We create content and five people have seen it, but the next campaign requires new content. So we build new content instead of looking to this piece of content and think about why did no one read it, was it not compelling enough? Is the story good? Whatever we are not reflecting, we are just notoriously looking forward but never really optimizing.

[20:36] Christian Weiss  And I think also in terms of resources sometimes or very often the optimization of a program could lead to success instead of just putting it to the dump and create the next thing. And especially when we think about ABM, where you should build relationships and trust with customers, what do they think about us when we constantly throw stuff against them instead of also by pretending we know them, but without knowing them. So we bombard them with stuff without getting better into what we do. So I think these short term KPIs sound very basic and very transactional sometimes, but they help me to get better in what I do instead of just putting it to the dump and throw the next thing against my customer.

[21:21] Shahin Hoda  Interesting. So some of the traditional KPIs that kind of demand gen marketers have been looking at, you still look at that in the short term to kind of evaluate the success of programs.

[21:33] Christian Weiss  Exactly. And so I think when you mentioned engagement, you look a bit deeper in the conversation we go further out with this podcast. But I think engagement is a critical measure here as well. We call it meaningful engagement. So it's everything someone does actively, of course, ideally, also depending from the top level, the hierarchy level, the function and so on to avoid that in a large corporation. Five working students are downloading a trial and we think this entire account is highly engaged. So this has to be put in relation but everything someone does active helps me to identify and I grow the interest and the engagement in this account within my relationship.

[22:21] Christian Weiss  When someone used this analogy and I really like this, it's about personal relationships as well, right? Sometimes we think we go into a bar and I'm a marketer, I say, Hey, can I get you a drink because that person wants to talk to you, right now, that person wants to marry you in an hour. Right? And without knowing each other, of course you can marry someone in the same night or same evening, but these are normally not long lasting relationships, right. And I think without listening and understanding and looking into the other person's behavior and interests, the less I can build a relationship and the engagement numbers and the responses to what I'm offering them in terms of content, help me to understand this, this account further. 

[23:14] Christian Weiss  So just bombarding them doesn't really help in building a relationship. And I, my wife, can also switch off when I'm talking because I'm sometimes talking far more than she does. But if I’m just talking, surprised? If I'm just talking to her and she has no chance to talk to me, how could I know what she thinks about the topic?

[23:35] Shahin Hoda  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You talked about account engagement, is that do you treat that as the same, is this the same way of like account scoring? Is that the same you taking the same approach? How does that look like?

[23:50] Christian Weiss  Yeah, so this fits into the account scoring as we do it. And so we have four accounts, calls or engagements’ calls. Low, medium, high and very high. And whenever we track the marketing contribution to a pipeline, independent if it's coming through elite or through engagement, we count only four with accounts who are high or very high engaged. This is also to avoid that we are entering sales QBR and saying, Hey guys, 100% goal achieved. Yeah, we contributed 100% to your pipeline. So we did this. And even with 30% or 40%, they say, hey, sorry, what do you mean with contribution, right?

[24:35] Christian Weiss  And from my point of view, this is necessary to share right? But these accounts, this course high and very high, keep me from claiming 100% success. Where is there? There is no right. This is what I meant with the five looking students when they don't know. That's why that doesn't mean that APB is or whatever random large corporation is highly engaged with us, right? So it has to show more.

[25:02] Shahin Hoda  Interesting. Interesting. Right. So there's the account scoring of low, medium, high and very high. And then and then there are data that feeds into that. And it sounds like there is data from people who downloaded the, the white paper or people who have filled forms or attended the events or but it also sounds like there is a usage component in there as well. Like, hey, we've seen like the usage level go up or that that area is not necessarily something you put in.

[25:32] Christian Weiss  So it's a machine learning model. So I don't know all the details, but I think this is not yet in, but it's a very good one. So we have different pricing models and one is about consumption. And of course I can take this into account when consumption does not change at all over time, then this should definitely be an alert for marketing as well, not just for sales.

[25:54] Shahin Hoda  Interesting. You know, I think this is the account scoring is one of those things that you could go very deep into the rabbit hole very quickly and then be very overwhelmed and then taxing

[26:05] Christian Weiss  And then you can easily cheat yourself.

[26:07] Shahin Hoda  That's correct. That's correct. And then also the tech team would say, yeah, sure thing. That's a $200,000 project to build that out for you, for our VIPs.

[26:17] Christian Weiss  Exactly. Exactly. So one last bit of advice on the comment on the engagements, cause we are only looking 180 days back because we say it takes time to engage. So that engagement of like three plus two years is not counted, of course in the current opportunity, but also we would like to drive behavior that long term engagement makes more sense than just looking at the last ten days or last 30 days backwards and so that there's no operate as hectic and more strategic planning and long term engagement activity.

[26:51] Shahin Hoda  Got it, got it, got it. We've touched on some Christian, but what are some of the mistakes that you see people make when they're trying to measure the success of of their ABM program or show the success of their ABM program? What are some of the mistakes you've made or you've seen people make? Again, we've touched on a few, but is there anything else that comes to mind.

[27:16] Christian Weiss  I think the biggest mistake is overpromising. Or pretending, right? That you say, Sorry, guys, now we own ABM. This is much different and different and better and whatever. And at the end, you measure the same trust than before. So if you want to do ABM, then be very clear in what you want to measure and what you can measure and what the path looks like. So that you are starting step by step. And then it's a measure of what you see and what you learn from occurrence instead of pretending and then say it says, OK, guys, forget it. I need more leads and the rest. I don't care. You will fix it someday, but certainly more leads, that's all. 

[27:59] Christian Weiss  And I think this kills the relationship at the end. If you pretend that and at the end you cannot deliver that's also a trust question, right? Do you have enough trust to show weakness? But if you can, then I think being realistic to yourself and to your peers helps a lot to achieve goals without stepping into many deep holes.

[28:22] Shahin Hoda  Yes, I got it. Got it.

[28:29] Christian Weiss  I also think, so one last thing- In terms of KPIs. So I think the biggest mistake is also if you go for results who are driving impatience and short term results, right? If you think you have KPIs who you meet, the requests from sales quickly and then you deliver constantly on short term results, they drive these short term results constantly drive impatience on the same side. So I think you have to have a mix of what can I do today? What do I deliver this quarter and how can I help you this quarter to achieve your goal? But I have also KPIs to help you showing that I'm working already on your future pipeline, right?

[29:08] Christian Weiss  And then I think there's a good balance. You can never work only in the future because then no one listens to you and you can never work just in the presence because then you will never achieve your ABM goals.

[29:19] Shahin Hoda  Yeah, I feel like getting deeper and deeper into delivering short term results. It's like crack cocaine. It's very hard to, yeah, it's very hard to get away from once you're too deep and you can't get out where it's like, no, no, no. But what about this quarter's results and the numbers become focus on that. Christian, I want to ask some rapid fire questions before diving into that. Is there anything else on measuring IBM's success that maybe I didn't ask where you think it's important for us to cover?

[29:53] Christian Weiss  I think the last advice is and that's something I was reading on the first slide I saw at an ABM conference. And that advice was fix your damn data first. And I think you can do a lot of ABM and a lot of pretending, but if your data is not clean and sorted out, you will be surprised at.

[30:14] Shahin Hoda  Data first. I love that. I love that. I’ll just write that down. OK, thank you very much for that. Thank you very much.

[31:05] Shahin Hoda All right, let's do some rapid fire questions. First question I have. I know you're a reader, so I'm excited for this. What is one resource? This could be a book, a blog, a podcast, a talk, whatever it is that has had a fundamental and big impact on the way you work or live.

[31:21] Christian Weiss  So it sounds very common sense, but it's the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that influence me by far more than I thought. I did the training 10-12 years ago and for example, keep the end in mind is something which influences the way we do marketing as well, right? If someone says, Hey, can you do a campaign or this and that, and you just deliver, then you deliver, but you maybe not never, ever achieve your goal. But when you ask, What am I doing this for? And when do you need it? Then you have so much more clarity in what you should do, then it helps. And personally, of course, it helps me as well.

[31:59] Shahin Hoda  Love it, love it, OK. Question two I feel like you have a couple of these, but if you could only give one advice would be to be marketers, what would it be?

[32:09] Christian Weiss  It's a very good time to be in from my point of view, because the B2B as a B2B marketing was somehow the stepchild in the past. So someone who was not a good engineer or whatever in marketing, I'm an architect, so someone said to me that these are engineers who can’t do math. But honestly, I would say this is the best time to be in because we have an enormous market transparency. Everyone can search for information everywhere. So the influence of the purchase decision is more and more on the B2B marketer side. And the critical part of building a strong relationship is also getting more and more into the marketer side. And I think this is a very, very good place to be at the moment.

[32:54] Shahin Hoda  I love it. I love it. That also analogy, if like if you're if you're not good at math, you become an architect, that’s such as a German analogy and also as a certain other parts of the world who would say, you know, if you don't have the artistic elements, you become an engineer, a civil engineer, but not in Germany. Not in Germany. OK, question three Who are some of the who are some of the thought leaders, influencers, people who are active in the B2B space that you you follow?

[33:26] Christian Weiss  So and so it's difficult to mention names. There are, of course, several lists of people, but someone gave me advice and said, if you want to be on top of a topic really on top, then spend some time every day or once a week for some hours and dig deeper into this. And I think in this dynamic world of changes in technology and insights and behavior in marketing, it's good to listen to these people who are building opinions at the moment, even if it's just a comment of these people. And it's very good to follow them to see how they react, what makes them emotional or angry, right? 

[34:09] Christian Weiss  What do they think? What keeps them awake? And you don't have to read every article, but just watching them make good and bad decisions or whatever. Right. Brings you to a different level. I would say. And what I also do is I'm relatively well-connected to seven marketers outside of the company. And I am just meeting for exchanges from time to time. And give updates to each other. And I think that helps also to learn from other people's mistakes so that you are not just learning by doing or by mistakes.

[34:40] Shahin Hoda  Christian can you give me an example of this? Like maybe not names, but like an example of someone who, you know, talks about this or but yeah, like people you talked about they build opinions. It's good to follow them and see whether they're right or wrong. Any, any particular example that comes to mind.

[34:57] Christian Weiss  Yeah. So there they are, people who say, OK, these five people you have to have in mind when you do ABM. Or so write short articles or comment on something. So I had 11 situations where a tech provider for ABM made a statement, a provocative statement. And of course, so sometimes I'm reading, reading it half through and then I beat back, right,  Or made a comment. And then it ended up in an invitation to see the presentation of this product by the CEO. And I said, OK, I’m in. 

[35:29] Christian Weiss And he organized like two people who share this. And I was completely blown away and impressed and now we are exchanging conversations and I get all the requests from his site.  What do you think about this and that, right? It's so we are building relationships by conversations, not just by likes and shares, but by asking questions, challenging each other. And that changed my opinion completely. And I think this is the way I hope he should also consume social media. It helps us to not just read other people's stuff and mind, but also have conversations and meet, even if they are on a different place on the planet as we do.

[36:15] Shahin Hoda  Love it. Love it. Last question. What's something that excites you about B2B today?

[36:21] Christian Weiss  I think B2B goes through a very deep transition. We have by far better insights into customers that we have by far better technology to use. We are extremely challenged in using the right technology because we have similar take on whatever thousand at the moment, and no normal marketer can make the right decision without good advice or the right strategy. So I think it's the best time to be in it. If you like dynamics, if you like change and a strong future. So I think this is the place to be. And marketing plays a more and more critical role, honestly.

[37:03] Shahin Hoda  Christian, this has been an awesome conversation. Just want to say thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And I've taken a lot of notes from engagement data and account engagement and account scoring and short term medium term KPIs to transparency and everything else that we talked about. So I just want to say thank you so much for your time and for all the insights you shared.

[37:26] Christian Weiss  Thank you very much as well. You see that I'm very passionate about this topic.

[37:31] Shahin Hoda That's what we love. That's what we want on the podcast. No, thank you so much for being very passionate.

[37:38] Christian Weiss  And I also appreciate if people listen to that and reach out later and want the conversation.

[37:43] Shahin Hoda  What's the best way for people to reach you?

[37:47] Christian Weiss  I tell you, it's LinkedIn. I will relatively quickly filter out if that person just wants to sell something without knowing me. And without building a relationship.

[38:00] Shahin Hoda   That’s right. Do your ABM homeworks and then start knocking on door. Fantastic Christian thanks again. It was a pleasure.

[38:09] Christian Weiss  Thank you too. Have a nice day.