Brewing Success with Craig Abramson: Turning Data Into Sales & Marketing Trust

Many contenMost enterprise marketing teams are focused on building for scale, often sacrificing speed and adaptability. So what happens when you bring a startup mindset into that environment? 

On this episode of Pipeline Brew, Matt sits down with Craig Abramson, a demand gen leader who built his career in fast-moving startups before recently bringing that expertise into Workday. Craig shares how his scrappy approach shapes the way he thinks about pipeline and how it helped transform Zimit’s marketing contribution from 5% to over 50%. 

From rapidly pivoting strategies with a test-and-learn approach to rethinking how buying groups are identified and engaged, Matt and Craig explore how startup principles can still thrive inside larger, more complex organizations. They also unpack the realities of operating within enterprise systems and where marketers can still find room for innovation.

If you’re navigating the shift from startup to enterprise, or simply looking to bring more agility into your demand gen, this episode offers a practical look at how to improve targeting, strengthen sales/marketing alignment, and drive pipeline which actually converts.

Craig Abramson builds marketing engines that drive pipeline, generate acquisition-level outcomes, and deliver significant ROI — often with lean budgets and from scratch. At Zimit, he grew marketing-originated pipeline from 5% to 56% in under a year, culminating in an acquisition by Workday. At Workday, he took that same demand generation expertise and scaled it globally, influencing over $500M in ABX pipeline in FY25.

What makes Craig’s background unique is the combination of startup bootstrapping and enterprise scale. He has personally built and relaunched websites, run SEO campaigns that drove 4,300% traffic increases, managed SDR and marketing teams, implemented Marketo automation and ABM nurtures, and developed analyst relations programs — all while also thinking strategically about Go-to-Market positioning and messaging. Now he also integrates AI tools into his workflow to accelerate content development, data analysis, and campaign optimization.

“There’s no one size fits all when it comes to buying groups, I think that’s the challenge that a lot of companies are facing. When I started to dig into the data of the content syndication programs I was running, we were bringing in a lot of manager titles. But those managers weren’t having conversations with our SDRs, but Director+ titles were. And once we went Director+, it just increased the quality that we were bringing in.”

“The startup experience helped because at different places, I had to integrate the CRMs somehow. By default, I was the one who was implementing Salesforce. And then when I would bring in HubSpot, integrating HubSpot. And then taking that out and integrating Marketo and just getting a sense of all the data that’s in there. And that actually carried over to Workday and going into all the different systems and figuring out what information do I need? And what’s the best place to get it from?”

“I was at a company where the CEO wanted friction between marketing and sales. And at one point I went right to the CRO and said: ‘Look, we’re trying to accomplish the same thing. Let’s work together.’ And he was on the same page. And anytime there was friction created, we would talk to each other on the side and figure out what was going on and figure it out. Let’s do what’s best for the company and the teams to make sure that marketing’s driving the right leads and sales.”

00:00 Episode start

01:05 Craig’s scrappy startup background

05:00 Quick pivots in demand gen

10:00 Bringing startup thinking into enterprise marketing

13:00 Navigating processes and speed at large companies

16:25 ABM vs. ABX explained

18:15 Moving from leads to buying groups

22:15 Improving lead quality with better targeting

25:05 Sales and marketing alignment in practice

31:05 How AI is changing demand gen

34:30 What’s on tap for Craig Abramson

[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.

Hey everyone. Today I’m super excited to be joined by Craig Abramson. Craig is a startup veteran and brings a wealth of direct expertise building marketing engines that drive pipeline to today’s discussion. Most recently, Greg grew marketing originated pipeline from 5% to 56% at Zimmet, leading to an acquisition by Workday, where he now sits as the senior demand generation manager of A BX.

In today’s conversation, we’re gonna focus on how Craig’s background and scrappy demand translates it, scale the evolution of A BM, and where marketing leaders can find the most success in aligning sales and marketing [00:01:00] functions. Craig with that, welcome to the show. How are you?

[00:01:03] Craig Abramson: Good, thanks Matt. Glad to be here.

[00:01:06] Matt Hummel: I’m glad to have you here too. I’ve been excited and waiting for this podcast. I’ve known you for about a year now and you’re doing great things over Workday, so I think it’s gonna be a great show and you know, just love having you on. So. Before we get started, I’ve got a little icebreaker for you. What is your go-to beverage when you need a little?

Pick me up.

[00:01:25] Craig Abramson: I’m pretty boring with my beverages, especially with pick me ups. Probably just a cold Coke.

[00:01:31] Matt Hummel: A cold Coke.

[00:01:32] Craig Abramson: That’s it. Something very simple.

[00:01:33] Matt Hummel: Alright. You know what? You are the first.

[00:01:35] Craig Abramson: Nothing too exciting.

[00:01:36] Matt Hummel: Hey, it is exciting because I think I’ve done almost 30 of these and you’re the first person that said Coke and.

I also know that you don’t like warm coke, which sounds terrible. So if you’re a Coke guy it is

[00:01:48] Craig Abramson: bad

[00:01:49] Matt Hummel: if you’re a Coke guy. Is it true McDonald’s Coke is better.

[00:01:53] Craig Abramson: I’ve heard it. It’s uh, based off, they’ve done all this marketing research and they found that they make the straws bigger. [00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:02:00] Craig Abramson: So apparently it tastes better.

[00:02:02] Matt Hummel: Alright, before we talk about what you’re up to today, I’d love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, your passions and your background.

[00:02:09] Craig Abramson: Yeah. So in terms of marketing, I found myself. 10 years into my career, I look back and say, you know what? I’ve been in software this whole time not realizing it.

So I realize I’m, I’m in this niche already, so I better just continue it and have been doing it ever since. Um, and that’s been in the startup world, kind of start to specialize more in the ERP. When I was at a company called dicom, they were multi-channel order manager, mom software. That was on-prem and they brought me on to help relaunch the company and launch a SaaS solution that kind of pushed me in the direction of ERP.

And, and then I went to an SAP business, one reseller who had their own solutions. And then from there went into the SAP ecosystem with a solution that was [00:03:00] focused on compliance and, and then another one on cybersecurity. So I was doing a lot of work with SAP and then. Moved over to, to Zit, which was acquired by Workday.

So for the past 12, 13 years, I guess I’ve been more focused on the ERP space.

[00:03:18] Matt Hummel: Got it. So you’ve, you’ve really been on the technical, not technical side of marketing, but really marketing for more technical solutions.

[00:03:26] Craig Abramson: Yeah. And these are, we’re all B2B solutions. Even early on when, when I was at a company called Archive Systems, we were doing accounts payable automation.

I had a SaaS solution that could automate the whole process, and there we’re targeting CFOs that, you know, large enterprises. So a lot of the work that I had been doing then targeted these audiences is carried over, especially at Workday.

[00:03:51] Matt Hummel: That’s awesome. Well, it’s cool too that you got to experience, you know, on-prem.

So I’m sure you, you saw kind of the. You know, I dated myself with migration, [00:04:00] the migration from on-prem to cloud. And you know, there’s folks who are comparing what we’re seeing, whether it’s, you know, this idea of SaaS to services software or certainly what’s going on with Gen AI and Agen ai, just, it’s as disruptive and as opportunistic as back when we went from on-prem to cloud.

So certainly creating tremendous new opportunity.

[00:04:21] Craig Abramson: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s interesting being at, at Workday through this, because we are focused on. Incorporating AI into our core solutions and making sure that all these companies can take advantage of AI along with the built-in functionality of Workday.

[00:04:40] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. Well, one of the things I always love hearing about from my guests is any of their aha moments or kind of key learnings throughout their career, what have those been for you,

[00:04:49] Craig Abramson: especially coming from the startup world? It’s the ability. To pivot quickly. So especially in startup [00:05:00] environments where you’re, you’re asked to build out marketing plans for the year, and probably within the first month, you’ve already pivoted away because you’re starting to work on something.

Programs that. Either are working or not working or, or you uncover some technology that you didn’t have previously that all of a sudden can change the game for you. I think an example of that was when I was at Zimmet, the company that was acquired by Workday, we were building out our adjustable market, so we were putting all these accounts into our CRM.

We’re being very careful about the data that was going into our CRM and I was using ZoomInfo to bring in the buying committee members. And ZoomInfo introduced intent data into their solution. And so I started to use it. We were focused on the services industry, and so we were offering a configured price quote solution in the [00:06:00] services industry.

And because we were in this niche, started to just focus on those accounts that are showing intent, even though this wasn’t part of my original plan, and pretty quickly. Through email nurtures to these accounts, and then also targeting them on LinkedIn. Through LinkedIn ads, we started to drive people to our website, started to drive them to register for our webinars, and then pretty quickly shifted the pipeline from, I think at the time I was the first marketing person brought in, so it was 5% marketing driven pipeline at the time.

And within 10 months they shifted that to 56% right before the acquisition.

[00:06:45] Matt Hummel: So Craig, you’ve been part of several startups, which is awesome, and obviously now you’re part of Workday, which is a much larger organization. I’ve worked with a lot of people from Workday and I don’t, you know, uh, great, great people, super talented folks.

I don’t think of them like [00:07:00] startup type marketers. So how do you bring that startup mentality and really think about, you know, something like innovation as you’ve now entered into a much larger scaled organization?

[00:07:10] Craig Abramson: Yeah, it’s, it’s been interesting. So throughout my career at these startups, I would. Find something that could move the needle in terms of demand generation, pipeline acceleration, whether it was SEO or the intent data that I was just talking about, and when I came over to Workday, it was definitely deer in headlights moment to have all these different teams handling things that.

I used to have to roll up my sleeves and do on my own at these startups where I, I would have a, a small team where we would have to work together to get this done, but that startup mentality actually transferred over when I was moved to the account-based experience team. Hmm. We very much worked in a startup like environment where we [00:08:00] had different KPIs and other teams.

We were using Demandbase to build out scoring models to figure out which accounts were most likely in market and then running programs to target the buying committee members at those accounts. And because we weren’t directed by those KPIs, we were able to do a lot more testing with our programs and see the overall impact.

And I remember pretty early on I started to see that. You know, my directive basically was to target these high scoring accounts, bring in opted in contacts. You know, I was working with Pipeline 360 a lot to do content syndication to get the right assets at the right time in front of the right people.

They would come in, and then, because those were high scoring accounts, they were most likely to convert into opportunities. The goal was just to have the buying committee members in Salesforce. So that when [00:09:00] our AEs did talk to someone, and this did convert into an opportunity, they had all the contacts already in Salesforce, but pretty early on I saw, well, we’re not just driving opt in contacts.

We’re actually starting the conversation with many of these contacts and those are leading into attributed opportunities. So it changed my whole mentality on this program and I shifted it into. Building pipeline and started to see a big change in the quality of accounts we were bringing in, the quality of the contacts and would dig down into that data to see well, who’s more likely to engage with our SDRs?

With that initial conversation and then was able to weed out a lot of titles based off of that and make the program a lot more targeted. Then having a vendor who was able to deal with a [00:10:00] shrinking account list, a shrinking target prospect list by titles and functional roles and everything. And then seeing how that impacted the overall programs.

And it made a huge difference between our conversion rate when a lead converted into an MQL and then was followed up by the SDRs. We were looking at anywhere from 30 to 50% high value activities associated with those M qls. Wow. Which is pretty significant. It depended on whether it was prospect or net new, I mean a prospect or customer base, but it was showing that the scoring models we had were very accurate.

And we were getting very targeted and granular with the people we were bringing in, and they were the right people at the right time, like we found.

[00:10:53] Matt Hummel: I’ve worked at, you know, large companies and small companies, and I think there’s this, I, I think it’s a misperception that [00:11:00] when you go to a big company, they have everything figured out and you’re just going in to fill in a box and to do what you know, basically is already outlined.

Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And I think the mentality that you’ve brought in to Workday proves that that’s not true. And yes, there are companies and there are roles that are very much black and white and just execute. But you know, nobody told you what to do. Nobody told you, you know, to look at things the way that you looked at things and to bring in that mindset.

So I think there’s something there for, you know, listeners who you know are considering moving from a startup to a larger business. I think personally, I think it’s harder to go the other way from a big business if that’s all you’ve done to a smaller room because you’re accustomed to having so many people and resources around you.

But I think going from small to big. I remember I talked to a recruiter a number of years ago doing a reference for someone who was coming from a smaller company and she said, my concern is you’ve got, he was a big fish in a small pond and now he’s gonna be a small fish in a big pond. And do you think this [00:12:00] individual can adapt?

And I, it was a really interesting question and I, you know, what’s been your take? You, you know, you probably work with a lot of legacy Workday people, but you know, have you run into any challenges where. You are like, come on, we all, you know, we all need to just be more sort of in that startup mindset and just be scrappy and agile or, you know, is that just kind of, this is what you bring and you can figure it out with the folks you work alongside with?

[00:12:24] Craig Abramson: Well, when, when I first came over, I, I was on a different team and it was definitely a learning curve for me to get used to the large enterprise.

[00:12:35] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:12:35] Craig Abramson: It was working with a lot of different teams, a lot of different processes. Where I was used to, if I wanted to run a targeted email campaign to CFOs at large enterprises, I could write it and send it out the same day.

I didn’t have to go through the approvals that at the large enterprise. Now all of a sudden you’re filling out project requests, [00:13:00] asking another team to write the content. Another team does the Marketo setup. So all of that was. Big change for me took a little while for me to get used to, and at the beginning I, I kind of fought around it and found ways around those processes, but quickly learned that that’s not a good idea.

You gotta work within the rules. And I think it was also coming over to the A BX team. It was the team itself that was very innovative. So it was the environment that I came into. That allowed for that flexibility to try things. Yeah.

[00:13:34] Matt Hummel: Well, it’s cool that you got to experience, you know, that within the A BX team and because you, you brought so much more value and I think it’s a lesson for any of the leaders out there too.

Just don’t put someone in a box. Let them bring their experience and skill. I remember there was a smaller company I worked for and they. When I joined Pretty Small Marketing Team, I think there were five of us, but it, it previously had been, you know, upwards of 50 and a lot of folks had come from [00:14:00] large organizations.

And, you know, I wanted to write a blog and bear in mind, I was the CMO at the time and I wanted to write a blog. And my PM by the way. Yes, a PM on a five person team said, well, we can publish it in three weeks. And I’m like, I’m sorry. I can write a blog today. You’re telling me we can’t publish it for three weeks.

Is that because we have a content calendar? No, no, no. We’ve gotta run it through the review process and then we’ve gotta get it on the what person’s schedule and then we need to do a Q it. And I’m like, you’re all fired. I mean, not literally, but no, this needs to publish tomorrow because you know, this is super relevant.

So I can appreciate sort of the challenge of someone writes the brief and then it goes over to this person and then it goes to that and you’re like. Oh my gosh. Can we just get, just get outta my way. Let me just do this.

[00:14:48] Craig Abramson: It’s funny you, you bring back some memories about when I was at another startup, it was the IT team that was controlling the website because they’d also had the customer login information.

[00:14:59] Matt Hummel: Ah

[00:14:59] Craig Abramson: yes. [00:15:00] So when I would make website updates, they would only process ’em a certain number of times in a week. So they only wanted to do it one or two times in a week at most. And it had to be at certain times and it just became such a bottleneck. I said, alright, I’m just gonna keep pushing things through and saying, Hey, you know what?

There was a mistake when that went live, so I need to correct that. And pretty quickly that team said, you take control of the website on the marketing side. Just don’t touch anything on the customer side. And then that actually helped when I was focused on SEO on that website and making quick changes to see the impact.

To really help drive first page results on the majority of our keywords. Because we were able to just quickly make changes.

[00:15:48] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Well, I’m half convinced that’s why, you know, companies like WordPress exists because just give it to marketers who don’t need to learn how to code and just give us our wizzywig and let us, let us have at [00:16:00] it.

It’s pretty foolproof. So well I want to transition to talking about, you know, your current world, A-B-M-A-B-X. So I’ve asked this to a bunch of people, but you know, I always say if you ask 10 marketers what their definition of a BM is, you’re gonna get 11 different responses. So. What is your definition of A BM and how is that different than, you know, a, BX in your, in your opinion?

[00:16:24] Craig Abramson: Yeah, so my role has shifted, so our A BX programs and everything, we’ve kind of distributed them across a couple of teams on our digital channel and I, I’ve, I’m now focused on lead management and trying to dig into data and optimizing programs that our teams are running, but that a BX question, A-B-M-A-B-X.

Matthew Miller on our team came up with a great example. He compared Demand Generation overall is a retail store where you are giving that mass appeal experience. You’re targeting every [00:17:00] single person that you can find, and you’re just hitting all those broad demographics and basically hoping someone comes in and buys from you.

Where the A BX experience is more like a personal shopper. It’s. A distinctive experience. You’re only focused on the top 15% of the people that you wanna focus on. In our sense, it was the top 15% of accounts and you really building everything up to specifically target those small groups. So it’s more like brand to demand where a BM is the bespoke clothier who’s giving you that white glove treatment.

They are only focused on the top 1%. It’s really personalized, uh, tailored to that specific accounts needs, and it’s just providing that high value touch that you’re not able to do with the other [00:18:00] programs.

[00:18:00] Matt Hummel: Yeah, no, I love that. Your current role, which it sounds like it’s more, you know, data-driven, lead management.

Do you still think about buying groups when you’re evaluating lead quality or what leads to push through? How do you score them? Are you thinking about buying groups and if so, you know, walk me through, you know, what that looks like.

[00:18:20] Craig Abramson: Yeah, it was, that shift actually took place when I was at Zimmet, and it didn’t come from me.

It actually came from my CEO at the time, who, uh, started talking about marketing Qualified leads coming in. And he said, I don’t care about marketing Qualified leads. ’cause you could tell me we have a thousand m qls from this program, but they could all be from the same account. Yeah. So that means nothing to me.

And it shifted my thinking. ’cause I he’s, he’s absolutely right about this. He’s right. So I start, yeah. Yeah. I, I started to focus on marketing Qualified accounts instead and seeing how many. Buying committee [00:19:00] members were we able to reach out to and engage them so that they’re either on our website or clicking on links on our emails or downloading content on the website.

And that shift was actually on the A BX team too. We’ve been doing a lot of talking about the buying committee members and making sure that we’re covering all those functional roles and getting the content in front of them. So that when they are ready to look for a solution, Workday’s top of mind.

[00:19:34] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

So how do you, how do you know who’s in a buying group?

[00:19:40] Craig Abramson: That’s a good, I You made me pause for a while because that’s a tough one. Uh, and we’re still defining it at Workday. Exactly who we think will be in those opportunities. Who we need to include. An interesting test that I ran when, when I was on a BX.

Was targeting OCIO titles, so [00:20:00] director plus titles in open opportunities where we didn’t have that coverage yet and we found that bringing in that lead actually led to those opportunities progressing further with higher A CV than those accounts where we weren’t able to bring a lead from OCIO. So it’s a lot of testing to try to figure out who’s actually in that buying committee.

And there’s a ton of data and we’re still working on defining that. At startups it’s a little easier because obviously you don’t have as much data.

[00:20:37] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:20:37] Craig Abramson: To have to comb through and you can reach out to any of the account executives and ask, and your opportunity who, who do you need to talk to in order for this to convert?

At Workday. I mean, there’s so many add-on solutions that just complicate a deal that drilling into that data takes a lot of work.

[00:20:56] Matt Hummel: Well, you know, I know you paused a little bit, but [00:21:00] I mean, that’s a really tough question and I can say that because so many people that I talked to, so many of our customers have the same question.

How do we actually know? And I know you guys are a demand based customer. I know Demandbase has sort of their point of view, but. They’re still figuring it out. And same with Six Sense. And I think there’s the classic, you know, go back and look at what the data says, approach of Take a hundred wins and go back and see who was part of, you know, who engaged with content or at some point along the way.

And then I think there’s also, and it, I don’t think it’s either or, but there’s also your approach of. Hey, let’s look at a potential title that’s missing and let’s go test driving engagement with that. And so, you know, for you guys that worked, and I think that’s often the answer. I don’t, I don’t, there’s no, there’s no one size fits all when it comes to buying groups.

I think that’s the challenge that a lot of companies are facing. So where like, well, how do I know how many, like if you think about content syndication, how many individuals at a company should I target? [00:22:00] I hate to say it, but I don’t know. You know, let’s test and let’s iterate and let’s see. To your point, is it, if you get certain titles, does it improve your velocity?

Does it improve your win rate? Does it improve your a CV? If the answer’s yes, then keep going down that direction.

[00:22:16] Craig Abramson: That is one of the things that we found was when I started to dig into the data of the content syndication programs that I was running, we were bringing in a lot of manager titles. But those managers weren’t having conversations with our SDRs, what Director Plus titles were.

I know I, I covered that a little bit before, but just taking out those manager titles and focusing on the higher level, weeded out a lot of the titles that there’s no chance of them being in a buying cycle and being the ones who would be talking to Workday about. Human Capital Management or,

[00:22:53] Matt Hummel: yeah.

[00:22:53] Craig Abramson: Or any of our other solutions.

And once we went director, plus all those titles disappeared [00:23:00] and it just increased the quality that we were bringing in.

[00:23:06] Matt Hummel: That’s such a cool use case because you know, I would imagine a lot of managers are hands on keyboard users of your tools, and then typically the higher title you go, the more expensive a lead or the engagement can be.

But to your point. You know, it’s focusing on quality, and so I appreciate sort of that data-driven approach to figuring it out and testing, because a lot of times companies will just say, gosh, these manager leads, they’re just not converting. They’re not talking to our SDRs. They’re not blah, blah, blah.

It’s like they’re not bad leads, they’re just not, you’re not, in your case, you weren’t targeting the right people who were actually going to advance your deal. But I think a lot of companies will skip over sort of having someone like you who’s really assessing that data to understand. You know, what adjustments do we need to make?

Because you can go all the research and say, our ICP and target personas are, you know, X, Y, and Z, and we’re gonna go after them. And if they’re not working, then [00:24:00] it’s the vendor’s fault, or maybe the content’s bad or whatever. And there’s tons of variables. And so it’s never pure black and white. But if you’re not looking at the data, then you’re not gonna get any smarter and you’re just gonna get more and more frustrated.

[00:24:13] Craig Abramson: Right. But actually that, that’s where the startup experience helped too. Yeah. Is because. At different places. I had to integrate the CRMs somehow. By default, I was the one who was implementing Salesforce. And then when I would bring in HubSpot, integrating HubSpot, and then taking that out and integrating Marketo and just getting a sense of all the data that’s in there, and that actually carried over to Workday and going into all the different systems and figuring out what information do I need and what’s the best place to get it from.

So that that experience helped.

[00:24:50] Matt Hummel: Well, as much as you are in the data, I’d imagine especially given your startup background, you’ve got an appreciation for, you know, the role of sales and marketing [00:25:00] alignment. What’s your take on, you know, what good sales and marketing alignment truly looks like.

[00:25:04] Craig Abramson: So that has definitely changed over the years when I.

Started leading marketing. It was a lot of headbutting. You know, you would get the, the account executives saying these, these leads are no good and I’m not following up on on white paper leads. And then you would have to dig into their data and show, you know what your biggest deal in your pipeline right now came from a white paper lead.

But it was that kind of finger pointing in a way. Yeah, that just was counterproductive. And it was where I was at, at another company. Where the CEO kind of wanted that friction between marketing and sales. And at one point I kind of went around him, went right to the CRO and said, look, we’re trying to accomplish the same thing.

Let’s work together. And he was on the same page. And anytime that, you know, there, there was [00:26:00] friction created, we would talk to each other on the side and figure out what was going on and figure out. What leads are actually working? What’s converting? Let’s do what’s best for the company and the teams to make sure that marketing’s driving the right leads and sales.

You know, we trust that they’re following up on them. So building that trust really carried over from that company to, uh, Zim it. Uh, and I had a really good relationship with the director of sales at cement. He trusted the, the leads I was bringing into the team and they were doing a great job of following up and, and we wouldn’t have had that pipeline flip to more marketing driven if it wasn’t for that sales team, trusting that we were driving the right leads and, and following up and they would provide feedback.

If we gave them something that wasn’t as strong, they, they would let us know. And it wasn’t because they were frustrated that we gave them that lead. It was just, Hey, you targeted this. But maybe targeting that is better. [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Matt Hummel: Yeah, I love that. I think, I think sales and marketing alignment can often get over complicated.

You know, I, I kind of liken it to a relationship, you know, to marriage where it’s just learning, you know, the whole minute from Mars, winner from Venus. I had a chief growth officer on the podcast a few months ago, and he was talking about. You know, he’s like, Matt, you, you may not have thought about this before, but there’s a college degree for marketing.

There’s not a college degree for sales. So most marketers sort of come in with this structured framework and they’re, you know, jargon and campaign structure and this and that, and sellers are, they’re, they’re hunters. They just want to go hunt and bring in revenue. And they’re gonna scrap their way to do it.

And so when sales and marketing start to, you know, talk, you’re speaking two different languages, and it’s a lot like in a relationship where you may have the best intentions, but you’re just not speaking that same language. And so a lot of times it’s just to your point, like, Hey, let’s go break bread.

We’re trying to do the same thing here. What [00:28:00] you want is what I want. What I want is what you want. Let’s not point fingers, let’s not, you know, take credit or take blame. Let’s figure out, I know I play a role and you play a role, but collectively, let’s just work together. You know, you’re not the one calling the customers, but you’re the one helping drive that initial engagement in the targeting.

And so if we can just, you’re examples, so spot on of they’re bringing feedback, not in a, Hey Craig, what are you doing? Why are you giving me these manager titles? But in a way of saying. Hey, this doesn’t seem to be working. Can we try something else? And so for your, even just for you to have the willingness to say, Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Let’s do something with, this is different than a lot of marketers I’ve encountered where they’re like, okay, I’ll do the targeting. You just make the phone calls and maybe do a better job of following up faster or having a better script or whatever.

[00:28:46] Craig Abramson: Well, I, I would say it depends on the approach that the sales team takes.

It was, uh, because you’ve already built up that trust, it makes it a lot easier, but. Prior to that, yeah. There, there was a lot of [00:29:00] finger pointing and we’re driving the right leads. You’re not following up and, and those kind of accusations and, but being in a startup at one company, I had an SDR team reporting to me, which made it a lot easier to get feedback Yeah.

And work on things, but. Prior to that, I had to make some calls and follow up on the leads because we just didn’t have enough bandwidth to do it.

[00:29:20] Matt Hummel: Yep.

[00:29:21] Craig Abramson: And it hits home how hard that job is. It’s,

[00:29:25] Matt Hummel: it really does. There’s,

[00:29:26] Craig Abramson: yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of money that can be made if you’re top salesperson, especially in tech.

You know, I kind of look at it as that would be a much more lucrative role to go into. If you could do that.

[00:29:38] Matt Hummel: Oh, yeah.

[00:29:39] Craig Abramson: Than marketing. So it’s a different skillset.

[00:29:41] Matt Hummel: It really is. Such a great point. I remember before I had kids, I was the greatest parent you would’ve ever met. I would never let my kids do that.

They would be so well behaved and they would eat, you know, their fruits and vegetables, go to bed on time, never be disrespectful, et cetera, et cetera. As soon as [00:30:00] I had kids, I’m like, oh, this is really hard. And you know, it’s funny, that’s, that’s kind of how I think about sales, where. Before I ever, you know, took the opportunity to start calling into some accounts.

Not, I never had a quota, but I just wanted to get the experience. I’m like, kinda like you, your experience, oh, this is a lot harder than what I thought. I’m gonna give more grace. I’m gonna appreciate you for what you bring to the table sellers because it is, it’s a completely different skillset to your point.

[00:30:31] Craig Abramson: Yeah, it’s still, you’re dealing with a lot of rejection every day.

[00:30:34] Matt Hummel: You are. You are. And obviously guys like us, we’ve never seen rejection in our life. Just kidding. I’ve seen my fair share, but that’s neither here nor there. Last question for you on this topic. You talked about how you’ve managed SDRs.

Curious your take on, you know, the role of AI with SDRs and just AI in general. Like how are you seeing success within your own role using ai? And what is your [00:31:00] take on, you know, moving more towards an AI SDR model?

[00:31:03] Craig Abramson: Well, I think for SDRs they can do a lot of due diligence in 30 seconds. That used to take a couple of hours.

So, you know, they could go into a, a Gemini prompt and just say, I’m calling into this company, giving me all the background that I need to know about this. For this call, and then you’ll get a couple of paragraphs back that hits on everything that’s pertinent to that conversation. For me, I’ve been using AI to clean up my communications, especially with email.

I, I’ll end up writing paragraphs and I’ll put it into Gemini, uh, and it’ll consolidate everything and I’ll have to strip out some of the, uh, m dashes and stuff. But it really does a good job of taking out. Marketing fluff.

[00:31:53] Matt Hummel: It

[00:31:53] Craig Abramson: does. And just hitting on the key points. But I’ve also used AI for intent keyword search, [00:32:00] where for Demandbase, we were looking at what keywords would someone who’s in a buying cycle use for this solution.

And that used to take a week or two to be able to do that and using ai. Cut that down to. It still took a couple of hours, but compared to what I had been doing it a huge shift.

[00:32:27] Matt Hummel: Oh yeah.

[00:32:28] Craig Abramson: It just, it just makes it much more productive.

[00:32:31] Matt Hummel: That’s awesome. It is funny with, you know, people think, oh, Jenny, I something should take you five minutes and if you’re spending more than five minutes, you’re not doing it right.

And I’m like, I don’t think people understood, for example, to write a blog. People would take, you know I mentioned earlier you need three weeks, but some writers would spend, you know, a week researching and then a week writing and editing and qa and you know, if I ever use a Gen AI tool to help create content, I’m typically doing it based off of original research.

So [00:33:00] it’s still pulling in from some of my own thoughts or you know, first party research. I’ll still spend an hour tinkering back and forth with the AI to get it right. I won’t agree with the way something is said. I don’t, I don’t like the way something is said, or I want a better flow and, and maybe the part of that is just on me getting better at the prompting and the edits.

But I’ll spend an hour and I remember I told someone, I’m like, yes, it takes me about an hour to write a blog now, like an hour with Jen Ai. Because I’m not taking it at face value. And so, but, but an hour compared to, you know, 10 days or longer, or even just eight hours of a day, which I cannot, I could not spend eight hours sitting down trying to research and write something.

So I think yes, it just, it’s definitely accelerated, things like that. And I love your example too, of just more concise emails. Sometimes I will just go in word vomit. If my AI par, my AI friends, I’m like, look, I need you to help me create a cohesive thought. And it’s always so nice. They’ll say, Hey, yeah, you’re a little scattered, so here’s your key [00:34:00] points.

I’m like, yes, thank you. This is, this is what I needed. So thank you for doing.

[00:34:06] Craig Abramson: I was think I, I don’t hear my voice in what’s written and it looks good. So that works. Marketers are always the harshest critics of the of their own work.

[00:34:16] Matt Hummel: We are no doubt. Well, as you know, I always like to talk to each of my guests about more than just their work.

So it’s time to jump into our final segment called What’s On Tap. So what’s on tap for Craig? So at the top of the show we talked about your favorite pick me up beverage, which is a cold Coke. I’m gonna flip the question around and I’m gonna hope the answer’s not Sprite, but, but if it is, that’s cool.

What’s your favorite drink when you need to unwind?

[00:34:41] Craig Abramson: So, I’m not a big drinker, but. Uh, gin and tonic is usually the downtime one.

[00:34:47] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:34:48] Craig Abramson: And then, uh, it’s probably embarrassing to say, but a fireball shot too.

[00:34:53] Matt Hummel: Oh, well you live, you live in New Jersey, right?

[00:34:55] Craig Abramson: That’s, that’s a good wait on wine.

[00:34:57] Matt Hummel: Yeah, so it gets chilly there.

So I mean, that’s, [00:35:00] that’s reasonable. I, I’m not gonna judge you, that’s all I’m saying. That’s awesome. It’s

[00:35:04] Craig Abramson: not top shelf flicker, but it’s, it’s still, uh, it’s still good. Oh,

[00:35:08] Matt Hummel: absolutely. And hey, it’s cheaper and it’s a good time, so. Well good. Well, I like to talk about folks, kids, because you know, as you know, I have twins, but you had to go and one up me.

It’s my understanding you have triplets. I can’t even imagine because, you know, my wife and I, we can trade off kids. Our, our boys are now 13. But if, like, if one of ’em was giving me a headache, Hey, hey babe, can you take this one? I’ll take the other one, three on two. How do you do it? Any fun stories? Like, tell me what it’s like being a father of triplets.

[00:35:44] Craig Abramson: Oh, it was foreign too. ’cause I, I have, uh, an older son too, but. The trio were really good. They were sleeping through the night within three months, which saved us. Uh, ’cause our oldest was not, he was up every two hours for the first year. And, [00:36:00] and that killed us. But they were, uh, very mischievous and they worked together.

So at one point, my daughter, I think she was 16, 17 months, she, she broke her leg.

[00:36:14] Matt Hummel: Oh.

[00:36:15] Craig Abramson: And. She was put in a cast. The doctor said after six weeks, took off the cast said it’s still broken. Just make sure she doesn’t do anything crazy. My wife came home, put her in her crib for a nap, and she jumped out of the crib.

It was the first time she ever jumped out of the crib, so luckily she didn’t do any anything to her leg. But then we’re like, you know what? We gotta put those crib tents up around. So we did that. We had, we. For the first two years, we kept them in the same room, so we had three curbs in there. We had the crypt tents all around.

And they would work together where one would figure out how to unzip the crib tent, climb out of the crib, and then just [00:37:00] laughing hysterically would then unzip the other two. Then they would, you know, have a little party in their room. They would open up the closet, throw all the diapers around. You just had to sit back and laugh at the chaos.

[00:37:12] Matt Hummel: Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. Well, how old are your triplets now?

[00:37:15] Craig Abramson: They are 15. They turned three 16 this year.

[00:37:19] Matt Hummel: Congrats. That’s awesome. I, I feel like you need to write a book on, you know, fathering triplets. And are they all girls?

[00:37:26] Craig Abramson: Two boys and a girl. So the two boys, two boys and a girl, two boys are identical.

And that’s where we really saw the difference was, uh, the boys would get in trouble at bedtime because they would be up fighting. And she would get in trouble at bedtime because she would be up reading. That was the big difference that we saw.

[00:37:44] Matt Hummel: Sounds about right. The difference in boys and girls. So, yes.

Uh, my twins are fraternal, so they look very different. I, I cannot imagine the utter chaos it would’ve been if they were identical. Just them playing tricks on us. Pretending they were the other person. I, I, [00:38:00] I bet you’ve got some pretty great stories.

[00:38:02] Craig Abramson: It’s fun. They never really tried it. Uh Oh, wow. They did it once to, to a teacher in preschool.

[00:38:08] Matt Hummel: Okay.

[00:38:09] Craig Abramson: But they could, but they couldn’t stop laughing when they tried to do it, so it didn’t, it didn’t work. And the teacher thought it was, was pretty funny too. So she just played along and then reached out to us afterwards. But yeah, they, they’d never, they’d never really tried.

[00:38:23] Matt Hummel: That’s fun. Well. You like to travel a little bit, what are, what are some of your favorite places you’ve been to?

[00:38:29] Craig Abramson: We actually just got back from Hilton Head in South Carolina. It was the first time where I was able to take two of my kids out on the golf course because, uh, the trio all decided to play golf this year and made the, the development squad on the high school team.

[00:38:46] Matt Hummel: Wow.

[00:38:47] Craig Abramson: So they’re, they’re learning. We went out on the course and yeah, it was just fun to, uh, be able to take them out

[00:38:54] Matt Hummel: and

[00:38:54] Craig Abramson: do that on vacation.

Typically, we, we haven’t taken those trips where we’ve [00:39:00] been flying, but this year for their, their 16th, we’re gonna, we promised to take them to an island and not Hilton head, so not somewhere we could drive.

[00:39:09] Matt Hummel: Yeah.

[00:39:10] Craig Abramson: Uh, so they’re looking forward to that. But it was, yeah, for them it was usually a lot of.

Disney Vacations, Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach, those types. Yeah.

[00:39:19] Matt Hummel: Ah, well that’s awesome. I’ve not been to Hilton Head, but I’ve heard great things about it. And we’re recording this in April, so I imagine the weather was pretty beautiful when you were there.

[00:39:27] Craig Abramson: It was, it was mid seventies. It was pretty nice.

[00:39:29] Matt Hummel: Oh, that’s awesome.

And then coming back to, uh, probably a little chillier in the home state.

[00:39:34] Craig Abramson: Yeah. I think the, the week we were away, New Jersey was in the eighties. Then we, we got back and it was 30 and, uh. It’s still cold. It’s still 30 to 40.

[00:39:45] Matt Hummel: Culture shock. Yeah. Oh, that’s too cold. That’s too cold.

[00:39:49] Craig Abramson: Yeah, I’m ready to go back.

[00:39:51] Matt Hummel: I bet you are. I’m sure the kids are too. So, well, one last question for you. Hobbies, I mean, obviously four kids, full-time job. I [00:40:00] often joke when people say, Hey, what are you into? I’m like, uh, my kids track meet. But you know, outside of work, anything and, and your kids, or even if it’s, you know, part of something you do with your kids, any hobbies that you have.

[00:40:11] Craig Abramson: On a personal note, I’ve been using AI a lot. Yeah. On the side to, yeah, just trying to build things on, on the side and, and fix things around the house and using AI with things that I couldn’t figure out before. So it’s helped a lot, surprisingly, a lot. It can give you step by step on how to get things done, and it’s right.

I used to be a musician. I, I still have all my instruments and still play on my own. But one of the things that I had a cor gam, one synthesizer that the battery inside, I didn’t even know it had a battery. It died. So all the sounds died. And for a couple years following all the instructions, I could never figure out how to get the sounds back.

And finally it was using, uh, I think I used cloud AI and step by step it [00:41:00] told me what cords I have to buy. To sync from the laptop to, to the set to all that. And it was, it actually worked.

[00:41:09] Matt Hummel: That is awesome.

[00:41:11] Craig Abramson: Yeah. So find new ways to use ai and it, it continues to surprise me. How, how helpful it is.

[00:41:18] Matt Hummel: I couldn’t agree more.

It’s wild. Um, just, just think about how we used to try to search in Google. You have to put in the right search term and then, you know, if you’re lucky, maybe you’d get a result. We had. I was helping with some laundry the other day, and one of my kids, his favorite sweatshirt, got stuck. The, the cords on it.

Uh, the Drawstrings rather for the hoodie got stuck in like the, the agitator. And if he look like, we’re like, oh my gosh, he’s going to lose his mind. And what are we gonna do? So what do I do? I, I asked, you know, Chacha, bt I think, and I’m, I, I was like, Hey, this, I took a picture. I said, Hey, this happened. And of course, Chacha, BT was very empathetic.

Oh. First take a breath. [00:42:00] We got this like, okay, what next? Chat, bt. And so, you know, it gave me literally step-by-step instructions. It said, if that doesn’t work, let me know and we can, we can troubleshoot. Sure enough, I followed it to the t, it worked. I would’ve never figured that out googling it because I wouldn’t have known what to Google, um, and I wouldn’t have gotten to put a picture in there and it’s, it’s phenomenal.

Those are, you know, a silly use case, but still it is. It’s, it’s crazy. I don’t know what we would’ve done in the past. I would’ve had to cut it out.

[00:42:30] Craig Abramson: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:42:31] Matt Hummel: Well, Craig, this has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time today, and I know our listeners are gonna get a ton out of the show.

So thank you again for coming on. It’s great to connect with you.

[00:42:41] Craig Abramson: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it.

[00:42:45] Matt Hummel: Thanks again to Craig 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 [00:43:00] time.