Brewing Success with Thomson Reuters: Rethinking Brand, Attribution, and Buyer Groups

How do you drive over $160M in pipeline impact with strategic marketing? Adam May, Director of Account-Based and Field Marketing at Thomson Reuters shares how ABM, field marketing, and sales alignment make it possible.

With a background that bridges graphic design, startup growth, and enterprise marketing, Adam shares the key experiences that have shaped his journey and where he sees opportunities in today’s B2B landscape. He emphasizes the critical blend of art and science in ABM which requires balancing creativity with deep data fluency. He also breaks down how his team strategically maps buyer groups, enables sellers, and creates personalized programs that align to complex sales cycles.

You’ll also hear Adam’s perspective on field marketing at scale, what it means to truly achieve sales-marketing alignment, and how brand reputation drastically can impact your pipeline. Whether you’re looking to scale ABM or integrate marketing more deeply into revenue strategy, this episode is packed with insights for modern marketers navigating enterprise complexity.

Veteran marketer with experience planning, organizing and executing multi-channel programs that drive pipeline. Highly curious individual with a combination of creative, analytical and project management skills and a history of creating B2B demand engines that strengthen relationships between marketing and sales to drive revenue. Experience working in fast-paced environments with cross functional teams in highly regulated markets.

Valuable addition to any company softball or volleyball team and cooks a mean steak. 

“Best Son Ever” Award – 2021

[00:00:00] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Pipeline Brew, the podcast that meets at the intersection of people and pipeline. We’re bringing you fun yet insightful conversations where you’ll not only hear from marketing experts, but also get to know them as well.

[00:00:22] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone. Today I’m super excited to be joined by one of my favorite people, Adam May. Adam has been with Thomson Reuters for nearly six years and serves as the director of account-based marketing and field marketing, where he spearheads innovative marketing strategies that drive real results. In 2023 alone, his team drove $110 million in marketing attributed sales via a BM and events.

[00:00:44] Matt Hummel: And last year that number grew to $163 million. Today we’ll hear his thoughts on  ABM field marketing and the impact sales and marketing alignment can have on an organization. Adam, welcome to the show. How are you? I’m doing great. Thanks Matt. Thanks for having me. [00:01:00] I can’t wait to chat. My pleasure. Yeah. So did you write that introduction?

[00:01:04] Matt Hummel: I mean that’s, those numbers are pretty. Pretty amazing. Is that real? I’m like a pretty modest guy. So, uh, no, those numbers are awesome. I mean, in a, in a world where marketers are really trying to figure out how. To do more with less. It seems like you may have cracked the nut, so I’m excited to dig in. 

[00:01:25] Adam May: We are in a very fortunate place.

[00:01:27] Adam May: I would say for my team, we, we are, uh, I mean, we will get into it. We will absolutely get into it, but we, you know, we have an amazing team. It’s a big team. We have a large remit, so that number corresponds to that remit. 

[00:01:40] Matt Hummel: Well, it’s amazing. So I’m excited to jump in, but before we do, I’d like to start with a little icebreaker to get the ball rolling.

[00:01:47] Matt Hummel: So Adam, what is your go-to beverage when you need a little Pick me up. 

[00:01:52] Adam May: Yeah, I am a, I’m a cold brew guy, like it is, it was negative eight this morning here in Minnesota when I woke up. [00:02:00] Uh, but I still had my cold brew iced coffee. That’s my drink with a little bit of cream or milk or whatever, kinda settle it down.

[00:02:08] Adam May: Not a huge snob, but I have a, there’s a Dunkin Donuts in between my youngest daughter’s daycare and our house. So if I have not made my coffee the night before in my Amazon cold brew brewer. Then I, uh, hit up the Dunkin on the way home and roll into my first meeting with some, uh, with some cold brew in hand.

[00:02:28] Matt Hummel: Well, I love it and I think you’ve actually given us two potential sponsorship opportunities with Dunkin and Amazon, so thank you for that nod. Here you go. 

[00:02:35] Adam May: Affiliate links in the description. 

[00:02:37] Matt Hummel: That’s right. You did say something though I’ve not heard before. You called it cold brew iced coffee. I thought, I’m not a cold coffee drinker, but I thought cold brew and iced coffee were two different things.

[00:02:47] Adam May: I’m probably gonna show my naiveness, but yes, they are. I cold brew, I think is the correct name, but there’s, I put ice in it. It comes with ice in it, so. 

[00:02:57] Matt Hummel: Okay. All right. That’s fair. It is 

[00:02:59] Adam May: brewed cold [00:03:00] in my refrigerator. It’s brewed differently. 

[00:03:03] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, right on. And that is funny that it’s, it was negative eight, but you’re still going for the cold coffee, is that, I know, I know.

[00:03:09] Matt Hummel: Cold brew or cold coffee is more of a thing in the northeast, but is that. Is that more of a thing where you, where you are up in Minnesota? I don’t know. 

[00:03:16] Adam May: Yeah, I don’t know. I see other people with it at work. I see. You know, it’s just what works for me. Yeah. I consume a lot of caffeine throughout the day, so 

[00:03:24] Matt Hummel: you have to, if you’re gonna be, you know, raking in 160 plus million.

[00:03:28] Matt Hummel: So when I would come out to Minnesota and stay at my favorite hotel, the Radis and Blue, connected to the Mall of America, literally every week, so 

[00:03:37] Adam May: many affiliate options for this episode, 

[00:03:40] Matt Hummel: I would always get Caribou coffee. Are you a Caribou Coffee fan? 

[00:03:45] Adam May: We have a Caribou coffee in our office, so yes, absolutely.

[00:03:48] Adam May: I have a perks account. Uh, yeah, you do. Great rewards program. 

[00:03:55] Matt Hummel: This is my favorite podcast I’ve ever done. This is awesome. Alright, well I think we [00:04:00] have literally sponsors lining up at the door so we can, we can move on. Mm-hmm. But before we do, you know, Adam, I’d love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about your background.

[00:04:09] Matt Hummel: You know, how did you end up at tr, what’s kind of your journey? 

[00:04:12] Adam May: Totally. I would say for the better part of my career, I have a pretty marketing generalist background. I actually went to school for graphic design and kind of thought that I was gonna be an artist someday, and, uh, had an internship at a company for two years and did, you know, did the whole thing that you were supposed to do.

[00:04:29] Adam May: And the week after I graduated, they shut the place down and I ended up kind of. Looking for a job in, my buddies owned a Pete’s place and they needed a marketing manager, and part of that was doing the graphic design. And I kind of rolled into marketing when this’ll date me, but like when social media, like paid social Facebook ads was just getting started.

[00:04:50] Adam May: And I started kind of just digging in and learning how to build brand, build community back in the day on Facebook and Twitter and things like that. And. [00:05:00] Then I moved up to Minneapolis and had the opportunity to join like a very early stage startup. I was employee number five and still in angel phase and kind of figuring out product market fit and had a whole different experience there.

[00:05:14] Adam May: You know, really building what was end up being like a demand gen and marketing ops function. But there, our ICP was a very specific set of accounts and you know, later realized what we were doing was account based marketing because we had basically 1500 accounts that we were trying to sell into and we had the mapped and reps had named accounts.

[00:05:36] Adam May: And my demand gen team, while we did kind of mass marketing, was still highly tailored to this really finite group of accounts. You know, me and the sales ops person were stuck together and we sat in on pipeline calls and we talked about what, you know, what each deal in the pipeline needed to move forward, and if we needed to build personalized marketing to do that, or [00:06:00] various things, you know, to help support those deals.

[00:06:02] Adam May: We were still a small company, but we were highly focused on that and. That was kind of at the time when a BM was becoming a thing. And then, you know, fast forward a couple more years and ended up at TR where we realized, you know, there was an opportunity to build a BM as kind of a, a skillset and as a function.

[00:06:21] Adam May: And that’s looked a lot different over the course of my time at tr. But what it looks like today is we have a team of about 30, 33 people across the globe, north America. Canada, us, Mexico, and then in Europe where we support A BM and that’s like one-to-one in named account model, but also a lot of one to few supporting various business segments across the org as well as our field marketing and kind of events teams.

[00:06:48] Adam May: So thinking of small TR hosted events, as well as all the third party stuff that all runs through my team. 

[00:06:55] Matt Hummel: Super cool journey and story of how you ended up where you are, and I’d forgotten you started out in graphic [00:07:00] design. It’s funny because for more traditional demand gen, it seems more science than art and arguably both are equally important.

[00:07:07] Matt Hummel: Though I would contend many anchor or over anchor to the science part of it. But you know, you being in a BM and also field marketing opens the door for a lot more creativity and experiential type marketing. Do you think your creative, you know, background and sort of just passions in that area have helped shape you into the marketer You are as well?

[00:07:27] Adam May: Yeah, I mean, I, there’s a couple ways, uh, I think about that. I think if somebody would’ve told like 22-year-old Adam how much time I would spend in Excel spreadsheets today, he would’ve not been interested in, uh, being a marketer. But as I’ve grown in my career, I’ve recognized like we all need data to reinforce the decisions that we’re making and like having a point of view and being able to back that up with data is so important in everything that we do every day.

[00:07:55] Adam May: So now I absolutely enjoy digging into the [00:08:00] data, helping like answer questions, coming up with new questions, with data like. And I do think there is this science and art with every team in marketing, but particularly with a BM and I. You know, I think we’ll chat a little bit about this later, but understanding how our.

[00:08:18] Adam May: Programs impact various stages of the pipeline and that can look different depending on the metrics that you’re exploring for your program. So 100%, like I very much appreciate that within a BM and field marketing, like there are aspects that AI will never, I. Be able to take away because it is super creative and it’s very hands-on and it’s very tactical and real world.

[00:08:42] Adam May: So having that kind of creative eye is a really good skillset for marketers to have in the functions of a BM field marketing. But we also have to, like all of our decisions have to be backed in data. 

[00:08:53] Matt Hummel: A hundred percent. Love that. All right, well, I want to transition to our first topic, which is a BM. [00:09:00] So, you know, you ask 10 people, I always say this, you ask 10 people what a BM is.

[00:09:03] Matt Hummel: You’ll get a 11 in different answers. How do you think about a BM? 

[00:09:07] Adam May: I think if you asked, uh, 10 different people at TR that you might get different answers and, and you know what? That, that’s actually okay to me. I think within the, you know, the contents of my team, we have people doing one-to-one. We have a lot of few, uh, one to few.

[00:09:23] Adam May: And then, you know, I think there’s been so much going on in the past year, year and a half around this kind of concept of buyer groups and how, you know, frankly, how complex buying. Software is particularly at enterprises and there’s so much a BM kind of mindsets and behaviors that are transitioning into broader demand gen.

[00:09:48] Adam May: Things like buying groups and like understanding who’s involved in the purchase decision, which goes beyond just your normal persona based kind of conversations. It’s around people. We’re [00:10:00] talking about concepts of multithreading, which is like what? A BM was built to do is multithread into accounts.

[00:10:07] Adam May: We’re talking about, you know, people abandoning MQL about waterfalls and looking at account scoring and things like these, and. Whoever it was back in the day, Sangram or you know, one of the original people around like a BM, it, it kind of changed this into, into this conversation like a BM is just good marketing.

[00:10:24] Adam May: I think they were really onto something and I think we’ve seen a lot of these, you know, big reports come out in the last two years and people are adopting a BM mindsets to apply to broader demand gen. That doesn’t mean it’s like diluting the value of A BM or changing a BM because at the core. We will always be trying to personalize for our highest value targets and accounts, but there are a BM mindsets that like demand gen marketers need to be able to kind of understand and activate in their own programs, which I think is like a, a big interesting trend.

[00:10:58] Matt Hummel: That’s really well said. I’ve got a couple [00:11:00] follow up questions. You know, one of them is, I think your point of view on. It’s the mindset around a BM that a lot of more traditional demand marketers are taking on. I think that’s smart because a lot of people now will say, oh, all B2B marketing is account based.

[00:11:13] Matt Hummel: As long as you know who you’re targeting, what accounts you’re targeting, it’s a account based marketing, I guess. That’s right. But I don’t think that takes you all the way there. And so I think the point you’re making is. Demand gen, whatever you wanna call it, traditional demand. Gen funnel marketing, I think went done correctly, is starting to take on some elements of what you would have been doing otherwise in an account-based specific environment.

[00:11:38] Matt Hummel: I. But I think they still can coexist. I think it’s just, again, it depends on obviously resources and priorities and number of accounts and and so on and so forth. But would you agree that, you know, in large companies in particular, you could see more of a traditional demand gen approach, if you will, however much mindset of A BME still have versus a standalone true A BM function.[00:12:00] 

[00:12:00] Adam May: Yeah, 100%. And I think you, you know, you said it correctly and the way that demand Gen should be thinking about targeting their mass marketing programs is with an account lens in mind. That doesn’t mean that all those programs instantly become a BM because they’re using an account list, but like as people.

[00:12:21] Adam May: Further define their ICP or their TAM and their ICP and like, you know, continue to niche down within the products that they’re selling. That type of understanding of the market that they’re going to at an account level is at core. I think the change that demand gen marketers as a whole. Need to understand like, yeah, they say people, you know, people buy, people buy software.

[00:12:44] Adam May: Yes, people buy software, but also companies that people work for, buy software and they’re put through a process a 

[00:12:50] Matt Hummel: hundred percent. And 

[00:12:51] Adam May: you know, and I think the other side of all of this data suggests that, you know, buying software is really [00:13:00] hard. 

[00:13:00] Matt Hummel: Mm-hmm. And 

[00:13:00] Adam May: one of our jobs as marketers and as a BM marketers is to educate that whole buying group.

[00:13:07] Adam May: To make buying easier for our prospects and customers. Yep. We need to educate them at different parts of the funnel with the right information to the right personas to make sure that it doesn’t get caught up in it or procurement like we’ve, ’cause we’ve created special content for them to understand.

[00:13:28] Adam May: Hey. We’re compliant or hey, we integrate correctly, or you, you know, what have you. It’s like, how can a BM help support some of those conversations? I think like the concept of helping enable buyers, I. Because it’s so complex and there’s so many people involved. There’s just an interesting kind of development as all this data gets released around buying groups and everything else.

[00:13:52] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Well, no, you’re spot on. I mean, there’s a lot more scrutiny on tech purchases today, I think, than there ever have been. But you know, there’s blow to tech [00:14:00] stacks. There’s more people now involved in the buying process. All the data says that you’ve got folks who probably weren’t involved historically.

[00:14:07] Matt Hummel: You’ve also had the dynamic of. You know, digital native buyers who have only grew up in a world where the internet existed. And then you have on the other side, you’ve got, you know, some older buyers who are more experienced, but have been used to buying perhaps in a different way. So you have all these new complexities.

[00:14:22] Matt Hummel: One of the questions that we get most often is, how do you know who is in your buying group? And if you’ve effectively engaged them, how do you guys do that at tr? 

[00:14:31] Adam May: That’s a really good question. I think part of it is understanding who’s been pulled in in previous deals that look like this deal. And then, you know, in the case where you have the resources or you have the, the kind of the A BM program is, what do we know specifically about this account?

[00:14:48] Adam May: Like, you know, we have done account mapping exercises with sales, things like this to understand, okay, who’s the champion? Who are the people we need to influence? What are those other people [00:15:00] outside that we know are gonna get caught up? In this process or who historically is involved, are there other adjacent technologies that we’re gonna be like requiring to integrate into?

[00:15:11] Adam May: And is that where, you know, like the, the concept of having programs dedicated to it, personas, you know, is something that we’ve been grappling with. For years. But you know, now it’s like, it’s part of the conversation when we build out the strategy around like, do we have a content plan to tackle the, you know, the main objections from it?

[00:15:33] Adam May: Like, what’s, what does that look like? How do we make sure that it is brought along for the journey? And not necessarily like we’re just looking at the end user in mind, but we, we need to know who’s gonna be involved and what tough questions they’re gonna ask throughout the evaluation. Yeah. You know, to keep this deal moving.

[00:15:49] Matt Hummel: That makes perfect sense. Well. Similar to asking folks what’s their definition of A BM. I think you get that as well with field marketers. And it’s interesting because [00:16:00] I’ve seen at some companies, field marketing really is their account based marketing team. Some it’s viewed more as like a tactical, small events planning group.

[00:16:08] Matt Hummel: How do those two teams, you know, coexist? Is there delineation between the two or does the line really start to blur? 

[00:16:15] Adam May: Yeah, no, that’s a, that’s a good one. And I think, you know, just as. Field marketing gets pigeonholed into events like a BM oftentimes gets pigeonholed into, are you running like account based display ads?

[00:16:30] Adam May: You know? Yep. If your program doesn’t have display ads that are targeting account, like is it really a BM, like that’s the first thing that people go to? It’s like that. Both of them are so much more. In our case, our field marketing program is predominantly event-based, but we’ve also built all these other tools to help.

[00:16:48] Adam May: The reps regionally, like along the course of the journey. So it’s more programmatic, I would say, than a BM where a BM is. We have marketers who are looking at [00:17:00] either named accounts and what exactly can we do on a one-to-one or like really small couple account basis. And then we have like, okay, this initiative is either like an industry theme and we know we have 600 accounts in this industry that we’re going after.

[00:17:16] Adam May: Something like that. Like on that kind of couple hundred esque account, specific message, specific target. Mm-hmm. Like specific buyer journey that we’re trying to support. I think the, you know, the skill sets overlap a lot. There’s definitely tactics that play one way or the other, at least in the case of my team and my team’s perspective, but like the similarities on really deep alignment and engagement with sales.

[00:17:44] Adam May: It’s kind of like right at the top. And then I think the interesting thing for us, and where I encourage my team to collaborate across these, these two teams is there might be something that’s working in field marketing that we could like bring a particular account [00:18:00] along with, or like we might have an event or we might have a program going on and we say, oh gosh, this account that we’ve been trying to send the same message to would be perfect to maybe either present on this topic.

[00:18:12] Adam May: Or make sure that they’re in the room for this conversation. Mm-hmm. And kind of like tie them into field marketing programs. But at the same time, we might have a BM programs that were designed with a specific audience in mind that we’re like, okay, this could scale to a field marketing kind of opportunity for us to reuse this topic.

[00:18:31] Adam May: Maybe, uh, regionally at, um, you know, a road show or, or like an in-person event. Or maybe this is like a national virtual, you know, experience that we could now look at. It goes beyond just like this very specific kind of niche audience that we may have built it for a BM and try to scale it. So I think, like when I think about some of the benefits for my team, it’s that kind of cross team and cross segment collaboration to share like what’s working, [00:19:00] what are the topics that are resonating in the market, what tactics are really working and like.

[00:19:05] Adam May: When somebody has already gone through the pains of building out a program and kind of like building the backend and creating the nuts and bolts, I think it’s a lot easier to leverage and scale things quickly up or down, depending on the need of either a BM field marketing or you know, you know, whomever our internal customer is.

[00:19:22] Matt Hummel: That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So are your field marketers or you know, their time, is it reserved for your account based accounts? We will 

[00:19:30] Adam May: have a BM marketers that support. Only a BM and then we will have field marketers that support territories. Okay. And so a BM could mean that their, their efforts are specifically aligned to an a target account se, like a named account subsegment.

[00:19:48] Matt Hummel: Yep. 

[00:19:48] Adam May: That could also mean they support, you know, an area of the business that has lots of clusters. That need kind of more one tous support. That makes sense. The interesting thing, and I think like a side [00:20:00] benefit to having them aligned is because the skill sets overlap so much. Mm-hmm. There also creates kind of movement opportunities within the teams and career opportunities for the teams to say, oh, you know, that’s interesting over there.

[00:20:11] Adam May: I would love to, you know, learn a little bit more about that business. Like if a role opens up. In a different area of the company. Like they can move between the two teams and it just gets them more exposure. But the core skillset is so similar. Yeah. That there’s not this massive learning curve. 

[00:20:25] Matt Hummel: No, that’s super smart.

[00:20:27] Matt Hummel: So given that when you have field marketing and an account based marketer supporting the same account, there’s one resource under, we’re getting very tactical, but do you sort of have one quarterback still in terms of the point person for, for the sales relationship? 

[00:20:42] Adam May: In the case where? A BM and field marketing are overlapped.

[00:20:46] Adam May: A BM would take the lead. Okay, so if it’s a named account and we want them to attend an event that field marketing is running, or we think this event that you guys are running makes [00:21:00] sense for a BM to be involved, a BM would own all of the communication with that rep and with that account, and they would like work to make sure that the strategy for.

[00:21:13] Adam May: Whatever it is that we’re doing. Makes sense. In the context of a DM. Got it. The groundwork or, you know, whatever’s happening, boots on the ground might still happen from a field marketer who’s running this event or this initiative, but like. The invitations, the kind of the coordination with sales, et cetera, would be, hap would be owned by the A BM person that is in tune with exactly what those counts need in the context of everything else that’s going on.

[00:21:39] Matt Hummel: Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. And that’s probably a good segue to the next topic I wanted to talk to about, which is, you know, what are your thoughts on creating alignment between sales and marketing teams, and how much weight do you put on that and that relationship as sort of core to driving performance?

[00:21:55] Adam May: It’s a journey when everybody was talking about sales and marketing alignment. They thought that it [00:22:00] was this kind of like end thing, and once you achieve it, you sit in Nirvana and we’ve achieved sales and marketing alignment and now everything’s perfect. But like literally, this is something that we’re just constantly working on.

[00:22:12] Adam May: And like coming in, we, we just went through annual planning process and like things change and then you have SKO and like people are assigned territories and accounts move. So like it is just this constant stream of consciousness. I think like the key thing is for both teams to have empathy for where the other ones coming from and like this deep understanding of we’re, we’re all trying to do this, like we all have the same goal, is drive more revenue, support the customers, like we want to have good experiences for customers in the long run.

[00:22:48] Adam May: What that tactically looks like is some type of regular cadence, right? Some type of meeting cadence. Where marketers and either sales leadership or sales reps, and probably both at [00:23:00] different times on different cadences, sit down, talk about the plan, talk about the future. Plans are really aligned there, and then there’s like some kind of baseline operating functions around.

[00:23:13] Adam May: Maybe this type of communication needs to be approved, this type of communication doesn’t, and really building a very specific operating model around what’s okay from the context of a BM and what’s not, and just getting alignment with your sales counterparts there, and then maintaining that, again, you establish it today and six months.

[00:23:32] Adam May: That doesn’t mean that the same rules are gonna apply because maybe something happens with your accounts or may you know, maybe. I, you know, I don’t know, maybe you stumble and something changes and you say, okay, we got a backpedal on this and we’re gonna pivot this to that. 

[00:23:45] Matt Hummel: Well, no, I think my, you know, I was just writing something down, which is, alignment is not a transaction, it’s a relationship.

[00:23:52] Matt Hummel: And I think that’s so smart. There’s not this moment in time where it’s like, ah, I’ve achieved alignment Nirvana probably [00:24:00] the second. You think that is the second that you’re most vulnerable to it, to it all crashing down on you. So it is funny, the parallels between. Sales and marketing alignment, and really any good relationship.

[00:24:09] Matt Hummel: Take with your spouse, whatever, right? You need regular touch and touch points. You need to check in, you need to communicate. You need, make sure that problems don’t arise, that then fester. And to your point, you know, just like in relationships you have bad days, a campaign may not perform well and it doesn’t mean that you’ve inherently done something wrong.

[00:24:29] Matt Hummel: You know, it could be you had the wrong set of accounts or Right. There’s a hundred variables it could be, or multiple of them. And so I think. Sort of the tactical suggestions you gave are really smart and make, I think, make a lot of sense. It’s, yeah, it’s really a journey and it’s just important to keep investing in that and make sure that you remain committed towards that common goal.

[00:24:50] Matt Hummel: And I think that common goal is the most important thing. I can’t tell you, maybe this won’t surprise you, but I can’t tell you how many companies that we talk to where sales and marketing [00:25:00] don’t share. A shared KPI and I mean, data consistently shows if you don’t share a KPI, your performance goes down. I think it’s upwards of 50%, but I think the number is 85% of companies out there are not sharing that KPI.

[00:25:14] Matt Hummel: So the fact, you know, you said, Hey look, we’re, we’re all in this together. We probably have a little bit different roles in different things we’re doing, but at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. So I think that’s super smart. 

[00:25:25] Adam May: I mean, it’s so interesting to me to think that there are that many people out there that don’t have a North Star that’s aligned because.

[00:25:34] Adam May: What are we doing here? Like even the, the top, and I think this is where it starts to get challenging, is like the higher you play in the funnel, the harder it is to connect the pipeline and the revenue KPIs. And so like that’s a valid challenge that people that sit in the, you know, thought leadership generation team or whatever Yeah.

[00:25:54] Adam May: Like branded experiences, like those are valid takes [00:26:00] of having this. Hard to tie to revenue activity, even though I think like you could probably figure it out if you really had to, and you, and again, it is about alignment. Like you find the right people to have the conversation about the marketing activity you’re doing and what is like the outcome that you would expect that could influence pipeline, but the higher you are in the funnel.

[00:26:21] Adam May: The more challenging that becomes. We are really lucky in that we’ve built this program at bottom of funnel and even like in pipeline. So we have a really one-to-one relationship with if person A does this, like we have influenced steel. Mm-hmm. And like that doesn’t necessarily mean like. This deal closed because of us, but we’re helping progress that pipeline and helping increase close rates.

[00:26:46] Adam May: Like we’re making sure that the, the, like when we talk to sales reps and we say, who are you trying to close? They come back with 10 accounts. Like we want to engage those 10 accounts in some meaningful way that they then come out of whatever it is [00:27:00] that we’re doing with a more positive impression of TR than they had before that.

[00:27:05] Matt Hummel: I love that. Well, and, and I think the challenge you mentioned around. Particularly for top of funnel marketers makes a lot of sense. It’s really hard to see that all the way through to pipeline and, and at least your ability to influence and impact that. I think the two other big challenges that, that I hear from marketers around, you know, why don’t we have that alignment?

[00:27:25] Matt Hummel: Certainly yours is, is a big one. Number two is they think, well, my job’s not to create or close pipeline. That’s a sales job. And I’m like, you can still influence it in many ways. And then number three is. And this is probably the most common one, is they don’t like getting in this attribution model. They don’t like saying, oh, this was marketing sourced or marketing influence.

[00:27:46] Matt Hummel: This was sales sourced. It becomes more of an argument than ultimately collaboration. And look, I get it. I’ve lived on both sides. You know here in my current role, our CRO and I share the entire number, and we really don’t even look at [00:28:00] sourced influenced any of that. We just look at are we driving the right amount of pipeline and ultimately the right amount of bookings.

[00:28:06] Matt Hummel: There’s pros to that, right? We don’t get hung up on where did that come from. I think the downside, if you will, to that though, is that when you start to think about where to make investments, right? Whether it’s resourcing or program spend, or more sales reps or more BDRs, I think you can do both. You still have, you almost have to have the data that supports it, but then even if you have the data, you could start to say, well, you know, marketing’s doing a really good job, but you guys, your close rate’s not that good.

[00:28:30] Matt Hummel: So. I get it. It’s still just, it still surprises me that at the end of the day, only 15% of companies that at least we’ve surveyed, have said, no, we, it’s really important that we have a shared metric. 

[00:28:42] Adam May: At the end of the day, it all comes down to the individuals in the room having that conversation and their ability to like navigate that conversation together.

[00:28:49] Adam May: Because you and I might totally be aligned on, Hey, the ultimate goal is revenue, but as soon as we get into the weeds on. What the tactical conversation is, that’s where [00:29:00] the rubber meets the road. And it so much depends on the leaders that are having those conversations, setting the targets for the larger teams, how much they understand the nuances of everything downstream and the impact to the marketers there.

[00:29:12] Adam May: Like that’s where the real like meat of that conversation happens. Because I agree like. Every attribution model is flawed. It’s about how you’re telling the story. Like you, you live in First Touch World. You live in Last Touch World. You live in multi-touch. Like each of those has its benefits, its flaws, and it should just be this goalpost to help us make more informed decisions.

[00:29:35] Adam May: Yeah. But we do need some type of attribution and like a point of view on why that’s the right one. So that we can justify doing anything and each of those models benefits a different portion of the funnel disproportionately than others. Yep. Yep. So like you really have to, as a leader, understand what attribution model you’re [00:30:00] using, what’s the story around why that makes sense for what you’re doing.

[00:30:04] Adam May: And then be able to like back up KPIs that may not directly. Influence that number because at the end of the day, they all do like impressions still ultimately lead to revenue 17 steps down the road. Yeah. And you have to figure out how to connect the dots with those things. But like I realize that’s a big ask.

[00:30:23] Adam May: And for small teams wearing a lot of hats or big massive companies where everything’s matrixed and the data’s a mess, like. It’s challenging for everybody. Like we don’t have that figured out. I don’t have that figured out, but like those are the conversations that we have and that’s the work that’s part of the job.

[00:30:41] Matt Hummel: Uh, makes sense. And I think the other part too is it’s for marketers and is, it’s a mindset. And what I mean by that is a lot of marketers, when they think about attribution, they use it as a, a defensive tool. Like, no, I’m generating 10 XROI, so we’re good. In reality, it should be an offensive weapon [00:31:00] because if you’re like, no, I’m generating 10 XROI, therefore CFO, for every $10 you give me, I will give you a hundred back.

[00:31:08] Matt Hummel: So if there’s more investment or if there’s investment that’s not paying off at the same, you know, same level of return, let’s shift it and let’s make that decision. You start to think of yourself. Whether it’s, you know, the combination of marketing and sales or who else, whoever else is involved in that overall buying process.

[00:31:24] Matt Hummel: Internally, you start to think of yourselves truly as a small business, we have so many people and so many dollars, but we have one goal. What’s the fastest and the most cost efficient way to go hit those numbers. And so again, it just becomes everybody playing their part. It doesn’t mean one group is better than the other.

[00:31:42] Matt Hummel: It just means that you’re being smarter on how you’re spending your money and ultimately creating the right experience for your customers. 

[00:31:47] Adam May: Spending the money where your team spends their time. Like it’s the same conversation. What are we gonna focus on and what can get us the most impact for what we have today?

[00:31:57] Adam May: Capacity, headcount, dollars, [00:32:00] finite amount of time, like what content do we have that could actually drive the needle? What do we need to create? What’s the timeline it like everything backs into the, the plan all backs into that. After you’ve kind of. At least got the North star there of this is what we’re gonna chase.

[00:32:16] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Well you mentioned, you know, top of funnel marketing and a little bit around branding, and one of the topics that has regularly come up on this podcast is just the importance of brand. What role do you think it plays? I’d love to pick your brain just briefly around brand and how in your world, so you, you said you’re, you know, you really get down truly bottom of funnel.

[00:32:40] Matt Hummel: You are at the point where you’re. You’re seeing the revenue come through. What role do you think brand has or should have in terms of supporting the efforts of whether it’s demand a, BM, field, marketers like yourself? 

[00:32:53] Adam May: I think when you think about brand in the world of a BM, it goes back to the three Rs and [00:33:00] it’s that reputation, like when we create an A campaign to go.

[00:33:05] Adam May: Influence people’s decision making process when they see our logo. Like what do they think? Do they think authority, trust, or do they think something else? Yeah, that’s gonna like influence if they open or decide to, you know, open the, the email or open the package or decide that they’re going to invest three hours of their life driving to an event and sitting through the, you know, in or attending a virtual event for an hour and a half.

[00:33:31] Adam May: Like a lot of that. Upfront, like Snap decision to engage with an A BM or field marketing program relies heavily on the brand and the perception of the brand. And I think one thing that we are kind of constantly managing is like this balance between having product brands and having this overarching brand of a company.

[00:33:56] Adam May: Mm-hmm. That potentially means a lot more or something [00:34:00] different than individual products. It’s not just the sum of the individual products. It does mean something more. It does mean something grander. And I think, you know, we’re constantly trying to shift that perception and increase that perception with some of like the thought leadership style content that we do, the product launches that we help support.

[00:34:21] Adam May: The general engagement of the, of the market when it comes to field marketing. Like how can we continue to influence the perception that all of these people who are using our specific products have about TR brand as a whole? 

[00:34:36] Matt Hummel: Well, that makes sense. And you guys have a, you know, a unique challenge in that you’ve really grown in a lot of ways through acquisition, and so you have these.

[00:34:44] Matt Hummel: What are now products, but previously were organizations or entire brands. And so it is such an interesting challenge because, you know, and I’ve lived it during my time at Thomson Reuters with you, but also at other companies where, you know, particularly the guys, guys generically [00:35:00] speaking, who came over from that acquisition, they leaned into, no, this is our brand and this is, this is what we’re known for.

[00:35:06] Matt Hummel: And it’s like. Well, I get that and it snarly, I would say like, oh, but guess what? Thomson Reuters is the name on your paycheck. And I was, and I was half kidding. But I mean, it’s a real challenge and I think. Obviously you want the power of a, of a brand like Thomson Reuters behind the products, but I think more importantly than the, the reason you’re bringing these companies in is to create a better customer, end-to-end, typically an end-to-end solution, to create economies of scale.

[00:35:33] Matt Hummel: And so if you remain siloed and isolated in these sort of individual brands, you’re sort of working against yourself for all the reasons that you made the acquisition in the first place. At the same time, though. I was talking to a guy who used to run paid media for Go for the likes of Google and Amazon, and we had this exact same discussion, and he said, you take a brand like Microsoft where maybe they’re really well known for office or for Xbox, but maybe they’re not as well known for [00:36:00] Tableau.

[00:36:00] Matt Hummel: And so when you’re out in market trying to sell Tableau against Power BI or another competitive solution, all of a sudden you’re like, whoa. Do you need to build the Tableau brand or do you need to build the Microsoft brand? ’cause maybe Microsoft isn’t perceived as a company. Who’s known for their dashboard reporting.

[00:36:16] Matt Hummel: And I’m not picking a Microsoft as much as just using as an example. 

[00:36:20] Adam May: No, but that’s the perfect example because the people who know and use Tableau, love Tableau. Yep. And if you say, I’m here for Microsoft’s dashboard product, they’re gonna be like, what the, what’s that? Right? If you’re here to say, I’m here from Tableau, they’re like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

[00:36:33] Adam May: But. Tableau, the brand has benefit from getting all of that amazing work that Microsoft does on his brand. Yeah. And Microsoft brand has the value of acquiring new brand advocates because Tableau, so like, again, like this solution is, is being built as we speak, like these are, but this is a real challenge that I think companies like Microsoft, like Thomson Reuters, like Adobe, like these big [00:37:00] companies that have.

[00:37:01] Adam May: Either grown through acquisition or grown because they have these pillar products that solve super niche use cases and are like really ingrained in those industries or sub-segments of the uh, whatever it be. They have tons of loyal people at those brands that we need to like understand, hey, the benefit of working with Thomson Reuters expands beyond your use case.

[00:37:25] Adam May: And I think like where that message resonates the most. It’s not like, it’s like again, buying committee. It’s not at the user level. The user level wants to know Tableau works for them. Yep. The executive wants to know Microsoft has my back for all of my, or whatever. You know, like it’s such a 

[00:37:43] Matt Hummel: great point.

[00:37:44] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Thomson 

[00:37:45] Adam May: Reuters has our back for all our compliance needs. Yep. Like whether it’s tasks, risks, legal, like we have you covered those individual products. That support, like actual use cases in those groups. Like we want the [00:38:00] users to be loyal users, but we need executives to understand we support you as a company and not just as a department.

[00:38:08] Matt Hummel: Yeah, I, I love that when you were talking about brand earlier, you used the words trust and authority, and I think just, again, generically speaking, but. When people think of Company X or even Thomson Reuters in this case, so they think of trust and authority and I don’t know if those are your, your brand pillars, but, but say they are.

[00:38:24] Matt Hummel: That’s where I think. I think brand is often misunderstood. You know, people always say, oh, it’s just a bunch of people off in a back room. Like, do you like that blue or that blue? And this word or that word. And you know, it’s easy to joke about. And look, don’t get me wrong, we could do that for every marketing department.

[00:38:40] Matt Hummel: They have their own quirks. But the reality is with the amount of information that people consume every day. Having the right and consistent things like voice and tone and colors that ultimately reflect the attributes that you want and need your brand to. And to your point, it’s, it’s probably not necessarily for the buyers, it’s [00:39:00] for the CFO or the CEO.

[00:39:02] Matt Hummel: Or maybe you need to make sure that the CTO or CIO understands that, hey, they’ve got me from a compliance perspective, we’re not gonna be at risk of any sort of regulatory issue. So. I think that’s where brand can make such an impact too. It’s something that won’t always show up in an attribution report, but you’re not gonna even get a conversation if you don’t have those sort of brand pillars established.

[00:39:21] Adam May: I mean, it can either really add velocity or really put the brakes on a deal one way or the other, whether you have a positive or negative experience or even just association with the brand. So I mean that’s, and that’s the. The trouble and the challenge and the, the exciting piece of it all is that those types of interactions when we’re talking in the world of a BM and field marketing, like that stuff matters.

[00:39:47] Adam May: And so that’s why brand is really important in our space. And having just, you know, gone through a rebrand with new colors and, uh, knew everything else over the last year, I absolutely, and put on my old [00:40:00] graphic design hat, like, let’s talk colors all day. But, uh. It is way more than that and it helps us, you know, it does help us make sure that we see the right ROI on our programs if and if, if the overall goal of the brand is a change.

[00:40:15] Adam May: Not change directions entirely, but at least get people thinking in kind of a new way. We can then supplement that in our, in our individual like demand gen and A BM programs. 

[00:40:25] Matt Hummel: Awesome. Well, I want to transition to our last segment, which we call What’s on Tap. So what’s on tap for Adam? And at the top of the show we talked about your favorite pick me up beverage, which is a cold brew iced coffee from Dunking Donuts or.

[00:40:42] Matt Hummel: Because of the convenience and the great taste and always consistent fresh brew coffee from caribou, caribou coffee. So if we flip that question, you’re, you know, you just get home, I know you’ve got a couple little kids. What’s your, what’s your go-to wind down drink? 

[00:40:58] Adam May: Yeah, it’s [00:41:00] usually like, uh, IPA of some sort.

[00:41:02] Adam May: I’m always kind of looking at. What’s coming out? I, we have a warehouse liquor store by our house and like I, I could spend a half hour walking up and down the, the things not making any decisions that, or like a old fashioned There you go. You know some, the bourbon drink. 

[00:41:19] Matt Hummel: Yeah. So craft those, usually 

[00:41:20] Adam May: the two 

[00:41:21] Matt Hummel: craft brew pretty big up in Minnesota, right.

[00:41:24] Adam May: There are a lot of craft breweries in, uh, in Minneapolis area. Yeah. Yep. That’s awesome. Yeah. There’s some, there’s some really great ones. There’s some, you know, some ones that are doing some wild stuff. Yeah. Uh, yeah. 

[00:41:37] Matt Hummel: Are sour beers a big thing where you are or is it more I feel like 

[00:41:41] Adam May: that’s, you know, I feel like the, the original IPA people have moved on to SOS and then there’s like the rest of us people who are like, gone, gone, like the hazy IPA direction of like, yeah.

[00:41:53] Adam May: I want this to be a little bit lighter and not be 600 calories per can. So like, how do I still have this [00:42:00] and get some flavor, but, uh, be able to drink it. 

[00:42:02] Matt Hummel: There you go. That’s awesome. Well, I think my last night in tr I forget where you took me, but it was a, do you remember what the place was? It was great.

[00:42:09] Matt Hummel: Yeah, 

[00:42:10] Adam May: sir. Sir Sirly Brewing Cup. Sirly Brewing 

[00:42:13] Matt Hummel: Company. 

[00:42:14] Adam May: Uh, one of, one of the bigger, you know, more iconic Minneapolis uh, breweries. They, they have. Every kind of beer. Not, but they’re, you know, they’re kind of flagship beer or the one that I think they’re probably the most known for outside of all the, the niche beers is certainly Furious, which is like a, I think it might be an a PA, like an American Pale Ale, but it’s, it’s kind of on that side of the IPA spectrum.

[00:42:37] Matt Hummel: Nice. I remember it pairing well quite well with some pizza that we also had, so that was a fun night. Yep. All right. Yep. Well, I mentioned you’ve got two young kids. Any great stories, funny stories that you can share with the audience? 

[00:42:50] Adam May: Oh man. So my daughters are six and three and you know, we’ve been looking back when we were doing our Christmas presents this year, we were kind of like [00:43:00] looking back at all the different trips and stuff we took over the, over last year and like trying to figure out what our travel plans for this year.

[00:43:07] Adam May: And it’s just this constant kind of management of, uh, energy around travel with the kids. And it’s been, you know, so much fun to be able to take them places and watch them experience things, but then also the. The, the moments in between the joy and there was a, there was a, I forget if it was a reel or a TikTok or whatever that my wife sent me, and it was like this concept of when you’re traveling with your kids, you have this like 80 20 rule where like 20% of the time is absolutely amazing and 80% of the time is terrible.

[00:43:39] Adam May: And if you just put it in that context, everything can be more, it’s all about managing your expectations, you know, you manage That’s what I was just gonna say. You manage your expectations and you deal with the, the 80% challenging times to have the 20% memories. And after your travel, you know, you forget about the, the 80% challenging times and just [00:44:00] remember the good stuff we.

[00:44:01] Adam May: We just took the kids to Death Valley over, um, nice over winter break and like not a place that I would’ve anticipated me being super jazzed about, but it was so interesting and the kids had a great time, but I. Then when we had to drive from Death Valley back to Vegas to catch our flight, that was a terrible three hour drive.

[00:44:21] Adam May: Like nobody wanted to nap. Everybody was hungry. They ate, they were still hungry, they didn’t wanna nap, you know? So, yep, you man, you manage the ups and downs and, uh, then three weeks later you forget about the car ride. And you remember climbing the mountains and standing in the salt flats and. Luckily we don’t have pictures of the 80% challenging times.

[00:44:41] Adam May: Yeah, you just take the pictures of the 20% amazing times so that that’s what you remember. 

[00:44:46] Matt Hummel: Ah, well that is awesome. Alright, last question for you. So I was doing a little LinkedIn snooping and it appears it appears back in 2021. You, you achieved the prestigious award of Best Son [00:45:00] ever. What, what led to this award?

[00:45:02] Matt Hummel: And you know, I don’t know, do you have an acceptance speech? Have you won it since then? We need the details on this. 

[00:45:09] Adam May: It what, what started as a joke with my sister, really? Like, I guess I will back, I take one step back and like, I like to have a good time. I like to put my personality into everything that I do.

[00:45:20] Adam May: So like my LinkedIn profile has that on there because I’m not a. Snooty person. Like that’s, that’s who I am. It started as a, a very intense competition over the years with my sister about who was the favorite sibling, and like every now and then, my mom would slip up and like make some comment about like, oh, Adam is such a pain in the butt when he is, I.

[00:45:42] Adam May: Doing whatever. And Dana, like, so it started there and I forget exactly the details around why I became the best son ever in 2021. But, uh, I, I feel like I needed to memorialize that for, for my sister. So I can always point to that, that spot on the [00:46:00] internet and say that, that, uh. That exists. 

[00:46:03] Matt Hummel: I love it.

[00:46:04] Matt Hummel: ’cause once it’s on LinkedIn, it’s true. So I don’t know if you knew that about LinkedIn, basically. No. 

[00:46:08] Adam May: I mean, yeah, we create the reality that we wanna live in and so that’s, that’s, that’s there. 

[00:46:15] Matt Hummel: Amazing. Well, Adam, this has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time today and I know our listeners are gonna get a lot out of it.

[00:46:23] Matt Hummel: So. Thank you again, and it was great catching up. 

[00:46:25] Adam May: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. It’s a great conversation. Look forward to chatting again soon. 

[00:46:30] Matt Hummel: My pleasure.

[00:46:34] Matt Hummel: Thanks again to Adam for joining us on today’s episode of The Pipeline Brew. I hope you all enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Please leave me a comment with your thoughts and make sure you subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode. Once again, I’m Matt Hummel and I’ll see you next time.