“If you are making ten sales visits day in, day out, and everyone is saying no, does that make you look forward to the next day? Or does it make you want to take the next train back home?“

In this edition of One Thousand Paths, we chat with Avishek Chakrobarty, currently Head - Global ABM Centre of Excellence at Kyndryl. Avishek has over a decade of experience in enterprise sales and marketing, building teams and creating profitable revenue channels in multiple industries. His current role involves deploying and improving ABM programs for field marketing stakeholders in multiple territories.

We enjoyed this open, honest-to-goodness conversation, peppered with Avishek’s quips about his career graph, decision culture, sales, ABM, and much else. If you'd rather listen to this conversation, you can do that here.

ON CAREER DECISIONS

You've had a pretty checkered career, with an interesting start—you studied microbiology, but went on to do your MBA. 

Yes, I chose Microbiology in my undergraduation and I loved it, but my interest shifted and I went on to do an MBA at IMT. Campus hiring got me into the grueling, but rewarding role of enterprise sales at ICICI. 

What made you a good fit for enterprise sales, coming from a different background as you did? ‍

In my personal life, I tend to be introverted. But when I’d connect with people in a business context, I was able to read in between the lines of what they said, to figure out how to sell to them. I think this gift of perception helped me.

I was also driven by the sheer thrill of sales. Sales is a numbers game, and there are no gray areas: either you meet your numbers or you don't. That kind of concrete goal gave me a lot of focus. Once I received my targets at the start of the quarter, my whole energy would go into achieving that—kind of like a bloodhound that sniffs the cloth and goes off hunting. 

Across your career, you have also built sales teams. What do you look for in your sales hires?

I’ve always looked for attitude over credentials. Skills can be taught, but if you do not have the right attitude, it’s a no-go. Especially in sales, because it can be pretty thankless. 

One of my favorite dialogues, which I keep quoting to my team, is from the movie Rocky: It’s not about not how hard you hit. But about how hard you can get hit and keep getting up. 

That's the attitude that I look for: if you are doing 10 sales calls or visits day in day out, and everyone is saying no, does that make you look forward to the next day? Or does it make you want to take the next train back home? 

After ICICI, you went through quite a few career shifts. Can you tell me about those decisions, where you were like, ok I’m done with this, on to the next? 

After five years in banking, at ICICI and GE Capital, I was ripe for a change. While pitching to a startup functioning out of a two-story home, I was floored by the founders! Turned out they didn’t have a requirement for the product, but they did have a role for me—and I took it. Six months in, we got acquired by Practo as their enterprise business unit. 

Next, I moved to Urban Ladder to set up an offline B2B sales team from scratch. Till date, when somebody asks me what my best stint has been, my answer is—those insanely exciting 1.5 years at Urban Ladder!

My next role of marketing at Infosys was a sheer event of serendipity. I spent a number of years there learning the ropes of marketing. Once I’d done that, I wanted to put my learnings to use in a non-guardrail environment, and so joined Yellow.ai, an AI startup, where the mandate was to build and scale enterprise B2B marketing. 

From there, I joined Kyndryl, which was focused on large enterprises and hardcore Account Based Marketing.

ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

You've worked across a spectrum of companies, from a startup housed in a 2BHK house in Koramangala, to a behemoth like Infosys. What is the decision culture like across these organizations? Could you plot the pros and cons of each for me? 

Decision making can be quite black and white in the banking sector, since it's a highly regulated industry. There's not much ambiguity when it comes to decision making because you know very well that if a lead profile matches certain criteria, this is what you can do and this is where you can take an exception. It’s all quite structured.

Now, to contrast my startup and established company experiences. I know the common belief is that startups are much faster and agile at decision making than big companies. But I beg to differ, because even in the big companies that I have been part of, whether it's Infosys or Kyndrl, decision making is always business oriented. 

The one thing that we were taught at Infosys was that you are the CEO of your own role. So if you need to get anything done, don't be bogged down by designations, levels, seniority o r processes, just make a logical case for why it needs to be done. Yes, there are processes, guidelines and regulations that you need to work within. But there is elasticity around the edges of that, as long as you're making business sense. There are times that processes may drain your energy. But if you step back and take emotion out of it, you will see that without processes, scalability is not possible. You cannot keep doing things ad hoc in a fast-growing business.

I really liked what you said, that you are the CEO of your role. Have you seen organizations make conscious efforts to drive culture in terms of how people own their roles? 

I think Infosys is a great example of that. Infosys marketing as a vertical has its own micro-culture. This micro culture has been kept very flat, for example, the CMO is sitting on the same floor as anybody else and is accessible to all. 

I think culture is more than a manual. Culture is what your leaders do on a day to day basis. 

Leaders define your culture, and the team follows the leaders. So, if you see your leaders behave in a certain way, if you see that they are showing affinity towards a certain type of mindset, automatically, you will align to that. Culture only fails when it is no more than a poster with five points, stuck on a wall.  

What is it that you have learned from your leaders about culture? Anybody that you looked up to in terms of inspiration? Any frameworks or mental models you borrow from them?

I’d say my first big learning was commitment to deliverables. My leaders at my first sales job exemplified that. This is why I think I hold numbers and targets sacrosanct. You can have a discussion if you feel that it's an unrealistic number, but that's also only to a certain point—because how can you define what is unrealistic until you have tried it? 

Another thing I’ve learned is this attitude that no task is small or big. A task is merely a task and it needs to be done. Whether you fail or succeed is not the most important thing. What is important is that you put up a good fight. 

A third learning, which came from my startup stints and to some extent, from Infosys, is the importance of data in decision making. Of course, data can only assist you. It is not going to give you a definitive outcome. It's just an indicator of what can or cannot happen. 

For me, what works in decision making is 80% data. 20% gut feeling. Data does not give you a definitive outcome. It’s an indicator of what can or cannot happen. It gives you a framework and a direction to work.

Do sales folks usually come with this strong data mindset? What is your observation? 

Data does play a role in enterprise sales, but it depends on the industry. I’ll take the example of banking vs IT. In banking, guidelines and rules are so set that who you want to target is already predefined by restrictions. 

Whereas in IT services, many times, the solutions are something which were not thought of before. Even the problems statements are not quite what the person thinks they are. For example, you might think that you have an attrition problem. And once you start getting into the solution, you might realize that attrition is the outcome, but there is a different root to the problem. 

So in those kinds of cases where your solution and problem matches are relatively more amorphous, data comes into play. In these environments, even salespeople are highly focused on predictive data that signals the intent of the customer. 

ON ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING

On to your recent specialization: ABM or Account based marketing. Could you tell us in layman terms how this is different from ‘regular’ marketing? 

The traditional side of marketing is a demand generation model, which is that you run programs, you get leads, and then your sales team will work on those leads to convert them. However, this strategy has started seeing a lot of shifts, especially in large enterprises, which have equally large customers with complex solutions in place.

Let’s say a retail giant is going to spend $100 million dollars a year on its IT solutions. They will not be spending that entire amount on only one provider. Now in this case, what matters for a business is: how do I keep getting the bigger share of that pie? And how do I ensure that I continue to grow this business relationship? 

That is where Account Based Marketing comes into play. We have all learnt at B-school that it's cheaper to retain a customer than acquire a new one. ABM builds on the fact that if you have a large enough customer with enough potential, you would be wise to spend your efforts in building a relationship with that account. 

The objective of ABM is to build a partner relationship with your customer rather than a vendor or supplier relationship. If the customer looks at you as a partner, if they believe that you are very good at handling their mission critical systems, if they come to you first when they have a problem, to see what your solution might be—that is what ABM success looks like. 

Is ABM only effective when you’re selling to enterprises?  Does it still make sense if your ICP is more mid market or you're selling to smaller players?

An organization should only adopt an ABM strategy if they are into large enterprise businesses, with high deal value and long sales cycles. The focus of ABM is to build relationships, and sustained relationships cannot be built over a day. So you will need that much time to engage with your customers to build trust. If you are in a business which deals with shorter sales cycles, then ABM can become a hurdle for you because you will forever be chasing revenue and will not be able to build relationships. 

What are some of the levers that the ABM team has, to build these sustained relationships? 

ABM is a philosophy that ties together the individual units of marketing and it capitalizes on all the channels available to marketers: events, digital, email newsletters, analysts, PR, everything really. 

What exactly you do to execute ABM depends on the type of customer. When you have customers who are huge and very valuable to you, you deal with them on a bespoke, customized, one-to-one basis. Then you have the one-to-few model where you have a lot of big customers across different cohorts. So you treat each cohort as one entity, such that when you are talking to that cohort, each customer within it gets the sense that you are directly addressing their pain points. 

How do you measure whether your ABM efforts are successful?

The three pillars of ABM are reputation, relationship, and revenue. These are what we measure at a mature stage, where an ABM philosophy and strategy has been deployed successfully for many years. 

What you will see happen in such a mature environment is that deal velocities improve. It doesn't take as long as it used to, to close a deal—because you're not selling it to an unknown customer anymore, and you're selling it as a partner, not a vendor. There is trust, there is a relationship in place, and you have a reputation built as a thought leader. Deal sizes increase too, because what could have been a point solution now becomes an entire transformation business that is being handed to you. 

These are the main two results that you will see at the ultimate maturity level. But most of the organizations are on different rungs of this ladder. 

What you need to ask yourself is: Is my business growing relatively better in the ABM-focused accounts as compared to the non-ABM accounts? And that's how you start penetrating more: you might have started with 10 accounts to prove that ABM works. A year down the line, if you show that these 10 accounts have outperformed similar accounts outside of ABM, that’s your go-ahead to expand ABM across more clients. 

Currently, you lead the global ABM Center of Excellence for Kyndryl. What is the purpose of such a center of excellence and what is your mandate for the foreseeable future? 

At Kyndrl, we have field marketers across different countries and markets. The mandate of the CoE is simple: become indispensable to the markets. So my job is to provide all the support and innovation that helps the teams deliver on their goals. Our inputs could be in the form of data insights that we collect from different teams, or innovative ideas originating either from us or from other players in the industry. 

In a way, we are a consulting unit inside the larger organization, and we consult the ABM practitioners on any problems they may be facing. 

ON THE ROLE OF AI IN SALES & MARKETING 

Are you seeing AI impact how sales and marketing teams work? What is already happening and what’s your outlook for the years ahead? 

It’s an exciting time indeed! Sales people now have a lot of AI tools in their arsenal. There are tools which can help you engage with your customers. You put in the rules and logic, and these tools will send the follow up emails, and ensure that your customer keeps on track. 

AI is also great at helping out with one of the biggest time sinks that sales folks deal with. Let’s say I come upon a promising prospect. What do I write to him or her that’s just right, without sounding too salesy? Back in the day, I’d go through a lot of iterations before hitting send on that mail. Now you have tools that generate top-class content, once you have input the details of the person and the solution you want to talk to them about. 

Since I’ve not been in sales for a few years, I don’t know what else may be happening at the bleeding edge. However, what I can talk about is how exciting AI has been from a marketing perspective too. AI has completely turned text and video content on its head. There are also AI solutions which will track, analyze, and give you insights on the behavior of different accounts—when they are visiting our website, what they are doing etc.

AI is here to stay and we need to kind of understand how to make the most use out of it. So far, it has been a big boon and made our work easier. Having said that, the caveat is again, that too much of anything is not good. We need to be careful about not going down a tech rabbit hole with too many disjointed platforms that create more noise than outcomes. 

ON LIFE, LEARNING, AND PRODUCTIVITY

‍Switching over to the personal side. What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I have a full time job outside of work too :)  I have two dogs, so taking care of them and spending time with them is a big part of my life. Music is another significant hobby. I learned how to play the drum during the pandemic, and now I’m learning how to play the guitar. And my first and enduring love is reading, especially fantasy fiction.

How about learning in a much broader sense? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you read newsletters?

 My biggest source of information is podcasts, and I’m always listening to something. While I’m cooking or driving, I just plug in my headphones, and switch on Spotify or any Google podcast. I listen to a variety of topics - ranging from ABM, to the history of pirates and Crusades, to real life horror stories. 

As far as business podcasts go, Strategic ABM is a podcast I follow regularly. I have a daily dose of it, almost like medicine. I listen to one more called Businesses at Scale, and my go-to for bite-sized information is The Economist.

It feels like these days, everybody is either trying to be more productive or trying to slow down. Where on the spectrum do you fall? How do you organize your typical week? 

I’m somewhere in between. I don’t go berserk trying to do too much, nor am I trying to slow down. What I usually do is pick one or two impactful projects, and invest the time and effort it takes to bring them to completion. I only take up those things which I will be able to deliver. I keep a project tracker, with projects ranked on the basis of priority and timeline. 

Are you very organized in general or are you more instinctive in how you spend time?

Oh, my weekdays are like Army school! I wake up at six, walk my dogs, breakfast, get ready and go to work. I’ve found that without this structure, things quickly pile up and unravel. I think this behavior is hard coded in me from my sales days. Because if you’re in sales, you need to be disciplined. If you do not focus on what you're doing, or you try to take on too many things at a time, you're bound to fail. I still use a diary and write to-do lists everyday, and get irritated if too many things carry over. 

But my weekends are the polar opposite. I’m unwinding, so I allow it to go all over the place. I follow the flow, and do whatever I want. I think that kind of looseness is required to gear up for the week ahead.

Before we close, is there any life or career advice you’d like to leave us with? 

This is about the only bit of advice I keep giving my team—see things through to the end. I think it's important to choose what you are comfortable doing and what you like doing. But after you decide to do it, do it. Commit to it, instead of jumping to the next shiny thing. To me, that’s doing an injustice to yourself and the work. This is something I’ve been guilty of too, of course. 

Let me ask a follow up question. How does a young professional go about picking what to work on? How does one prioritize, and what is your personal process for doing so? 

From my personal experience, and from observing people joining the workforce—when you’re starting out, don’t be picky. Prioritize your time, of course, but take whatever comes your way. 

Try everything. Because that's how you will build your preferences. You’re too green to say, I like this and I don’t like that. Because, where is the data point that backs that statement? That’s how I found out that I liked enterprise sales over retail sales—by trying both. 

Even at this stage of my career, I’ll try anything new, so long as it’s related to my field of expertise. I might not agree to make a regression sheet for finance or produce some kickass content, or anything that’s far out from what I know. But if anything is in and around my foundational area, challenge accepted! 

That's a fantastic note to close on. Thanks, Avishek!