Target accounts' data buying groups warmed before each conference and worked after it
Sellers met engineers at the stand while the leaders who approve purchases stayed out of reach. Event ABM maps, warms and follows up each account's buying group.
- Challenge
Conference conversations reached engineers at target accounts, rarely the people who approve purchases.
- Approach
Buying-group maps, account-targeted digital pre-engagement, hosted moments and post-event account plays.
- Result
Each event has a play for every engaged account, and sellers work each buying group afterwards.
The situation
Data observability vendors often send sellers to cloud data platform user conferences, where their users gather. The engineers who live with broken pipelines stop at the stand; the heads of data platform, analytics leaders and CDOs who fund a purchase rarely do. Friendly technical conversations then stall without a sponsor. Seller time is spent while target accounts' buying groups barely move.
The question that mattered
How can each conference move the buying group at every target account, from the engineer who feels the pain to the leader who funds the fix?
What we did
- 1
Map the buying group in each account
Name the data engineering lead, head of data platform, analytics leader, CDO and procurement contact, and what each needs to hear. As a sub-step, flag who will attend each event.
- 2
Warm each buying group before the event
Run account-targeted ads and content by role (a data-downtime cost worksheet for analytics leaders, an incident-ownership note for CDOs, an architecture checklist for platform heads), then send personal invitations.
- 3
Host moments around the agenda
Run a platform heads' breakfast and a data leaders' dinner near the venue on a shared question: who answers when an executive dashboard shows wrong numbers. Seat each guest beside their account's seller.
- 4
Run post-event account plays
Choose a play per account by who engaged: a pipeline health review for the platform team, a data-incident cost briefing for the CDO, or a peer reference call.
What we delivered
The evidence and working documents the team kept.
- Buying-group map per target account, attending members flagged
- Role-specific pre-engagement: ads, worksheet, checklist and invitations
- Hosted-moment plan: guest lists, seating and discussion theme
- Post-event play sheet per account: play, owner and next step
- Event report of buying-group members engaged per account
The outcome
Platform heads and analytics leaders
from target accounts join the hosted breakfast and dinner
Sellers
arrive knowing which buying-group members engaged before the event
Account owners
run a chosen play for each engaged account
Marketing
reports each event by buying-group members engaged per account
Account reviews now discuss which buying-group member a conference reached, and which role the next play must bring in.
What changed in the GTM motion
Marketing and account owners now agree an account plan before each event: which roles to warm, who hosts whom and which play follows. A post-event review picks the next play for every engaged account.
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