How Field Marketing Can Align Marketing and Sales: Nick Bennett

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Mark Evans: It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. Ask people about field marketing, and you may get a variety of answers and perspectives. It's not as high profile as growth hacker, content marketer, or social media media specialist. But field marketing plays an important role in bridging the gap between marketing and sales to attract and engage customers and drive revenue. To peel the purple onion about field marketing, I'm talking to Nick Bennett, director of account based and field marketing at Alice in Boston. Welcome to Marketing Spark.

Nick Bennett: Hey. Thanks for having me, Mark. Super excited to be here.

Mark Evans: Obvious first question, what is field marketing? Does it have a low profile, profile, or does it operate under the radar? Because to be honest, until I ran into you, I didn't even know there was something such as field marketing.

Nick Bennett: I think, honestly, I think it varies company to company, especially in, like, the b to b world. And so, like, my definition of field marketing is that you're the person that's quarterbacking all of the programs on the marketing side to drive pipeline and revenue for the sales team. So it's like fieldmarketing2.o. Field marketing has always been thought of as strictly events. Mhmm. And, like, I've been trying to solve and and kind of debunk that that myth that it's only events. And, it's it's really you wanna be looked at as as another tool in the arsenal for the sales team.

Mark Evans: Okay. Well, that's a good start. I'm still not getting it. It might be easier if you describe what's the day to day world like for a field marketer. What do you do? How do you work with sales and marketing? What are you responsible for? How can your success be measured?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. So I I think, honestly, one of the biggest things is every day is completely different, at least in my world. It's like a perfect example. This week, we're at Friday already. It's great. So I have been putting together account specific landing pages, so, like, leveraging that one to one personalization. I've also been jumping on sales calls where being in the Martech space, the sales team leverages me to hop on calls with them a lot to just talk about how we use it ourselves. So I've been spending a lot of my time on sales calls, listening to Gong calls, seeing what our customers and prospects are talking about so that I can make sure that the messaging that we're leveraging on, say, these landing pages or the events that we're doing, I'll come back to tell an actual story that is interesting. Besides that, I'm also hopping on QBRs. I am running events is another big piece of it that we do, whether it's, you know, sponsored events or hosted events. So, like, every day is completely different, and it's I've never met a field marketer where Monday through Friday, they're doing the same exact thing every single day.

Mark Evans: So how is that different than a marketing coordinator or the VP marketing? Because, extensively, a marketing leader should be working with sales, should be looking at landing pages, overseeing content. But it sounds like a field marketer is almost like a jack of all trades where their their job is to actually get their fingers in a lot of different pies under the auspices of the head of marketing. Is that is that accurate?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's definitely a good representation of it. It's like you wanna be a full stack marketer. It's like you gotta you gotta understand events. You gotta understand the digital piece. You gotta understand content creative. Like, how does it all come together? But you're the one that is, I guess, pulling those levers in determining with the sales team where we need to go and then leveraging the other pieces of marketing.

Mark Evans: So what's the power dynamic, maybe that's the wrong term, between a field marketer and the head of marketing? Because if you're the one who is active on a number of different fronts and helping the sales team make better decisions, connect with prospects better, how does that align with what the head of marketing is supposed to be doing and their responsibilities?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. I think it comes back to their goal should be more strategic of, like, okay. This is the overall theme or messaging of goals that we need to hit. The field marketer is usually the one that's doing a lot of the tactical work that is, like, rolling up their sleeves in every single day. Like, they're that go to person, that the sales team can kind of leverage.

Mark Evans: Okay. So to borrow a baseball term, and it's well known that you are you have a passion for baseball, and it sounds like you're a pretty good pitcher. Are field marketers five tool players given that they're involved in brand building, customer building, lead generation, marketing? Is that is that an accurate depiction of of someone who's a field marketer because they they're good at a lot of different things?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think so. That that that's a great example because I've never even thought of that. But, I I think so. It's like you have to be able to understand everything. And, like, I've never worked in other functions within marketing. I've always I started off in sales, went straight to field marketing. So I've never done product marketing or, like, content or anything, but I still have to understand how all those pieces work and tell that story so that the prospects and customers at the end of the day are driving pipeline and ultimately revenue.

Mark Evans: I guess one of the ways to look at is that field marketing could be, like, the perfect pathway to be the head of marketing. Because as the head of marketing, not only do you have to operate strategically, but you really have to have an understanding of how the different pillars work and how they come together. So when you're a field marketer, you're really getting your hands dirty in a lot of different places. And that strikes me as awesome experience if you wanna become a marketing leader and you really wanna drive strategy because you've been there, done that.

Nick Bennett: Yeah. Exactly. And so it it's funny because they mentioned that because, like, a lot of people will say, okay. You know, what's your long term goal? Do you wanna become a CMO? Do you wanna become, like, a VP of marketing? Because it's like, you you understand all of those pieces, and I feel like it's an easier path. And, I mean, ultimately, you could go from, like, failed marketing to a head of demand gen to ultimately leading a marketing organization. At least that's the path that I know a lot of people have taken.

Mark Evans: There's a lot of talk these days, growing numb amount of talk about ABM because I think as it becomes increasingly difficult to connect with prospects, the idea of account based marketing has a lot of appeal because you can focus your efforts on a small group of of customers. I'm interested in getting your take on the relationship between field marketing and ABM. Are you is it just another marketing activity that you're involved in, or is it a different kind of relationship?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. It it's honestly, it's the same thing. Like, I've always had the the understanding that field marketing really equals ABM. Because if you think about it, like, field market is I guess, this is more pre COVID, but, like, they were always in the field. They would be responsible for a specific territory, say, the East Coast. And so, like, within that East Coast, they are responsible for driving pipeline for target accounts with the sales team. That's really all ABM is. They're just doing it on, like, a smaller scale versus, like, a national or global scale. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely the same thing, and it it's funny because a lot people will be like, why is your title say account based and field marketing? Personally, it's it's more of the field more of the the ABM side of it, but I just I've been in field marketing for so long that I didn't wanna lose that as part of my my title. So it was, like, important that I had it for the community that I've built. But, honestly, it's the same exact thing.

Mark Evans: Curious about your take on ABM and the amount of attention that it is receiving right now. You you see companies like Terminus, and they're actively wagging the flag for ABM, and Chris Walker will talk about the value of ABM. Are we looking at a matter of marketing focus and marketing efficiencies? Because as marketers, we can spread our efforts all over the place. And as marketers, we love to do that because it's a lot more fun to be using different channels. But what is the focus on ABM mean to you given that so many b to b SaaS companies are trying to implement it? And as important, what are some of the key success when you haven't actually done ABM before?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. I think it's yeah. And I I definitely think it's, you know, being able to figure out, okay. We're working on, like, a subset of accounts. So it's more of a targeted approach, which honestly should help with spend. Because if you think about it, if you're going back to that, like, spray and pray mentality of, like, everything else that's out there, you're just spending money across channels and levers and all these things. But they may work. They may not. They may not even be your ICP accounts unless you've really identified what those are. But it's like, okay. You've you've come up to for us, it's 50 accounts on the net new side and then 50 accounts on the expansion side. And so out of those 50 accounts on the net new side, for example, we have very strategically and personalized the one to one experience for each of them. So it's a very targeted we know the path that we want to to take them down. There's content specific to that. There's a specific kind of even with gifting, like, how we play across in that journey, it ultimately it's gonna lead to a higher conversion versus just sending it out to, you know, alice.com. Because if you send them to a website and it's just like, okay. They may or may not convert. They may raise their hand and kinda request a demo. But if you're personalizing that experience for the person and not just the persona, it hopefully works a little bit better. And then the second piece of your question is the biggest thing, I think, is the the list. Nailing the list is, 50% of the job because it's like you can't marketing can't say, okay. We're gonna go after these these accounts. Sales are gonna say, you know, not those those might not be great accounts. You have to develop the list together, and you have to develop the KPIs and metrics together to make sure that it's accept it it's a successful program. And if it's just like marketing doing their thing, sales doing their thing, it's still very siloed. It's not gonna be it's not gonna be that successful, and you have to really rally the entire company around an ABM strategy. And it more becomes not even just ABM, but it's, like, account based everything, or account based. You know, ABX is is another hot term that a lot of people are using right now. And it's like, okay. You got sales and marketing. You really just bring it in, like, the customer success side. That's what we're doing too. It's just, you know, the list was the the biggest piece.

Mark Evans: So a couple ways we can go here. One, follow-up a little bit on the list. And so are you talking specifically about a list of customers? And once you have that list, how much deeper do you need to go to determine, okay. These are the influencers. These are the decision makers. Do you have to be precise so that you've got not only personas, but you know exactly who you wanna talk to?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. Absolutely. So it's like we we break it out into a few different pieces when we're starting to determine. Our reps only cover named accounts. So each rep has about 90 named accounts. We don't cover territories currently. And so within those 90 named accounts per rep, there is four things that we look at when picking a, like, tier one ABM account. And so the first thing is accounts with the biggest potential for growth to complement kind of our land and expand strategy. It's just, like, what our product is. And so, like, once we can get into, say, marketing, it helps us kind of break out into other functions within a company. The second piece is accounts that are already identified on our named account list. So, basically, the sales team actually develops that named account list. We then, together, develop this ABM piece. The the third piece is, you know, best fit accounts that are based on our ability to service them and make them successful present day. We don't want we don't wanna set accounts up for failure that we know are gonna end up churning because we can't do something for them. We wanna make sure that they're successful. Like, say we signed them today, and we're launching them on Monday. Like, we wanna make sure that by Monday, we a 100% are able to to make them successful. And then the last piece, and I think this is a big one for us, and I think just ABM in general, is accounts that add credibility to our brand in the enterprise space. And so when you see, you know, Adobe and other large accounts like that that are customers, it you know, like similar companies that are in the same space or same size as them, we'll see it and be like, oh, okay. If they're using it, maybe I should check them out too. It just kinda, like, makes our job a little bit easier and adds to the credibility piece where we can then still personalize an experience for them, but it just kind of adds that extra layer.

Mark Evans: You mentioned something earlier about marketing and sales working together and not operating in silos and a podcast that I did recently with John Matteig, and that was something that we explored a lot. Because what happens in a lot of organizations is sales is doing its thing, marketing is doing its thing, and in many cases, customer success is doing in its thing. And there's no coordination. There's no sense of we're moving in lock stop lockstep together so that we have a plan of attack and we're we're all coordinated. What role does field marketing play in making sure that all those pieces come together so that you work as a team as opposed to sort of individual players, if we're gonna go with the baseball or sports analogy?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I think, honestly, I think you're that middle person between everything. It's like a it's a two way street. So you've got the field, which is really the sales team, and so you're kind of that person that is hearing things from the field, relaying it back to HQ. From HQ, you're you know, the marketing team, you're passing stuff to the sales team. So you're that, like, middle person within the two way street that's delivering information and also relaying information. And so it's like you wanna be able to not be another corporate marketer that's jamming stuff down people's throats, especially the sales team or, you know, customer success team. Everyone's busy. They're trying to close deals. Like, how can you be looked at as a, like, asset versus just another marketer that's, you know, trying to get me to do too many things and not make me hit my number at the end of the day? And so that's where I feel like that's where field marketing really shines, like, being able to be that that leverage piece and build those relationships. Like, I I started off in sales before I went to marketing, but I always walk a pretty fine line between sales and marketing where I don't wanna be looked at as, like, a corporate marketer, but I also don't wanna be looked at as a salesperson. I kinda balance that line, and I build these relationships where they trust me because I can deliver value. But then when I need something from them, they know that they'll be able to give it to me without issues.

Mark Evans: Sounds great. Spend a lot of time on LinkedIn talking about content and the value of content, which I find obviously, as a content driven marketer, I find that interesting and relevant. I do wanna get your take on the role of content within the ABM process. Because, obviously, if you're developing personalized campaigns and you're being very focused on specific people with specific interests, then how do you make sure that your content is relevant, is on point, and is developed and offered at the at the right time in the right place? What kind of strategic approach do you take, and how do you make sure that you can tactically execute in a very flexible and agile way?

Nick Bennett: Yes. I think it's understanding where they are in, like, the the buyer's life cycle, in developing or developing or if you have the content already, like, figuring out where to deliver it within that life cycle. Because if they're, you know, top of funnel where they're just starting to understand or say they're going down the the gifting path, and it's like, okay. You know, there's some companies out there starting to explore it, but right now, we just kind of, send gift cards to people. Okay. Wanna kinda do one piece of content down there. And that's more of like the one to one to many, one to few approach where it's gonna be delivering content where they are. When you get to the one to one in developing specific content for kinda your tier one accounts, it kinda brings it up a notch. And I can tell you right now, we're not currently doing this just because we don't have the bandwidth. It's on the list to get to, but you could also purchase software that could help with this. And it's like developing the content that, one, speaks to your prospects, but also has, like, their name all over. So if they think it's a personalized piece of content or infographic or whatever it is for them, it just kind of usually does a better job. You wanna be able to I mean, you could use, like, a Uberflip or a Pathfactory to kind of curate content where they are too. I've used, you know, a couple of those in the past, it's worked out really well to just kinda tell that story and take them to the next piece and just kinda keep on going down. It's it's just important to figure out, one, do you have enough content? The content that you do have, is it relevant for your prospects? And then it's like, how can you take your existing content and maybe personalize it to an a specific specific account.

Mark Evans: I wanna talk a little bit about LinkedIn. I mean, a lot of people have been on LinkedIn for a long time, but I would I would argue that most of us have really used it in a different way for the last fourteen, fifteen months. And to talk about your LinkedIn experience because as you probably mentioned in other podcasts, you're one of the few field marketers that is active on LinkedIn or at least who declares that they're a field marketer. How have you used LinkedIn over the past year or so, and how has it evolved? Like, I'm really curious about the journey that a lot of people are on because as much as people say, everybody's on LinkedIn, and we're all using it the same way. We're not. I mean, a very small percentage of people are actually using it to drive content, and I I'm curious about your experience and how that has changed over time.

Nick Bennett: Yeah. It's you know, when when I first started out, like, I just wanted to get people to understand what field marketing was and, like, that it wasn't just events and how important as a pillar it was to any b to b company. And it worked really well because, again, like, there was no one talking about. There's still no one talking about it. Think it it just I don't know. That blows my mind that there's millions and millions of people on LinkedIn, and there's thousands and thousands of failed marketers because I could tell you every b to b company has failed marketers. Maybe it's only one. Maybe it's you know, you get into some of these larger companies. You've got, you know, fifteen, twenty failed marketers at a certain company. And it's like, no one no one talks about it. And I'm connected to a lot of field marketers, and, you know, all they do is post, you know, events that they're doing or webinars that they're doing, and, like, they don't add any additional insights to it on a regular basis. And I was just like, okay. This this is, like, a niche path that, like, I could go down, and I could build an audience and, like, create a community of like minded people because there wasn't anything where I could learn from others or I could bounce questions off of people. And since then, we've been able to create a Slack group for field marketers and event people, and there's over a thousand people that are in there. And we I host a monthly field marketing meetup with over, you know, 300 people. We're actually doing one this afternoon with Chris Walker. He's gonna talk about field marketing, ABM. Where does he see events going post COVID? So it's gonna be really exciting. And, like, for me, I actually posted about this today, but it it's a side hustle for me. Like, I I don't gain anything financially from it. Like, I don't monetize anything, although people tell me I should. I just give it away for free, and it's starting to get to the point where I have a lot of people that will say, hey. Can I pick your brain? Or, you know, would you be open to mentoring me? And just like a bunch of different things that, like, I've always just said yes, and it was fine when it was one to two people. But when that one to two becomes, you know, seven to 10 per week, like and I have a regular job that I'm trying to do. I have a three year old daughter, so, like, I'm, you know, I'm trying to balance that. It's, it's tough, and, like, I've just had to start to say no and, like, have people understand that I'm not gonna be able to please everyone. But for my mental health, it's okay to say no. And, like, who knows? Five years from now, maybe I go down the consulting path and, you know, I consult for field marketing teams all over the world. I've thought about it. And I've had VPs of marketing CMOs come to me saying, hey. You know, would you be interested in, like, doing some, like, consulting for my team to help them? And I'm just like, honestly, I don't have the bandwidth right now. It sounds really fun, but I just can't do it. It's like posting on LinkedIn every single day for over a year now has, like, opened a lot of those doors for me that I probably wouldn't have before. And the end goal for me is whenever people talk about field marketing, I want them to associate my name with it. And whether that's good or bad, just say, hey. This is the guy that posts on LinkedIn. Like, I love your stuff. You know, people talk about ABM. There's a lot of people that talk about ABM on LinkedIn. So it's it's a little less niche. There's a lot of people that talk about events, but there's no one that talks about field marketing. So I am forming that kind of community and then growing it over time.

Mark Evans: And one of the things that I find interesting about LinkedIn, especially as marketers, is everything is about attribution. We wanna measure everything. We wanna quantify everything. And when it comes to LinkedIn, I think one of the interesting things that I found over the last year is that there's a lot of benefits that you just can't quantify. There's opportunities that come up. There's podcast interviews that you, that that you get. There's all kinds of different ways that people wanna work with you that helps you personally and professionally. You joined Alice three months ago. What role did LinkedIn have in terms of that relationship? Because it sounds like you knew the people before, but it certainly must have helped that you had this stature and that your brand profile was a lot higher than it was before.

Nick Bennett: Yeah. You know, it's funny. I was like, I always joke around. Like, did you guys just hire me because of my network? And then I got you know, who knows? Probably deep down, that's that's definitely part of it. But it's like it's interesting because in the three months that I've been here, I've been able to get three people hired through my network for open roles. I've been able to pass about 30 sales opportunities over to the sales team. It it's funny because one of the sales reps sent me a Slack yesterday. He's like, you produce more opportunities as a marketer than the entire BDR team, which which is the two. They do a they do a really great job. He's like for him personally, he's like, you know, you you provide a ton for me. And, it's great. You know, marketers, especially field marketers, and that's who we sell to, like, they would much rather hear from another field marketer versus a salesperson. Like, I feel like being in the martech space is probably the perfect path for me because, like, outside of that, if I was in engineering, developing developers or whatever selling to them, my network would be useless. And I wouldn't I could probably do a great job at the actual job itself, but delivering the network piece of the inbound that you know, the amount of marketers that come to me inbound say, hey. You know, we use x y z, which is a competitor of yours. Like, I'd be open to hearing about you. Awesome. That wouldn't have happened if, like, they didn't start to associate my name with, like, working here. And it's just it pops up. So it's it's it's a really great spot to be.

Mark Evans: One final question. Interesting book that you've read recently or podcast that you love. Anything come to mind?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely really big into Chris Walker's podcast. I feel like any everything that, like, he do I listen I don't listen to I don't really read many books. Although I did read, Latinese from Six Senses, her book recently, like, no form, no whatever. It was really good. I don't read a ton of books, but I do listen to a lot of podcasts. And Chris Walker's is one that I listen to probably every single week and and just I I always pull a lot of things out of it. As a field marketer, he talks a lot about, you know, attribution. He goes out he goes down a lot of different paths. He's not afraid to tell it like it is or go against the grain. And whereas, like, a lot of people will just, like, you know, regurgitate information that's already out there. And so like that, I always walk away with some piece of knowledgeable information.

Mark Evans: Great to have you on the podcast and explain to me and other people what a field marketer does. I feel like I've been educated. I got field marketing one zero one today, which is really great.

Nick Bennett: Appreciate that. Thanks for having me. It was a blast.

Mark Evans: One final question. Where can people learn more about you and Alice?

Nick Bennett: Yeah. Definitely find me on LinkedIn. It's where I spend most of my time, Nick Bennett. Although I found out there is a few other Nick Bennett's in B 2 B. So find the one that works at Alice. And if you wanna learn more about Alice, go to alice dot com or shoot me a note. I'm happy to demo the product myself.

Mark Evans: Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe by iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you'd like to learn more about how I help b to b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, send an email to Mark@MarketingSpark.co. I'll talk to you next time.