00:03
Gowri N Kishore
Have you ever looked at smart people and wondered, hey, what is their journey like? How did they get to this point? Where do they find inspiration? What influences them? Welcome to 1000 paths, a series of conversations with professionals from all walks of life. Here we explore how they made the decisions that shaped their life and career. The series is brought to you by Datav Cloud, an all in one data platform for fast growing businesses. Because in a time of AI and bi, what still fascinates us is the stories of humans. Today's guest is Avishek Chakrabarti. 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 leading the global center of excellence for account based marketing at Kindrill. Let's hear from him. 

01:06
Gowri N Kishore
So, Avishek, you've had a pretty checkered career. You studied microbiology in your undergrad. So how did that move happen from microbiology to a career in enterprise sales? 

01:17
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think I'll start off right, like, in the final year of school. And I think there's a lot of, like, usually what happens? Like, there are people who are invested in doing engineering, the people who are invested in medicine. I never kind of had any inclination towards either of these two lines. I love biology and I was like, if I have to study and, like, get some good marks, I would rather stick to my area of strength. And microbiology is one of the subjects which I kind of found interesting. Picked it up, loved the three years that I was studying microbiology. And to this day, I remember a lot of the technicalities of microbiology. But I think in the final year of college, again, the standard route is you do a masters. 

02:04
Avishek Chakrobarty
Most of the masters happen outside because that's where you get the best facilities, best areas of research. So I was kind of trying to figure out what to do. And a lot of my trends, like, not in microbiology, but in other streams, they were like, into something called cat. I was like, what is this cat? Let's try it out. So I just learned what, when the exam dates are, how to get the forms, and just gave the exam just on a whim. I bought one book. They used to have those Pearson books that test papers and all. I just spent some time doing it and I felt it's quite interesting. It's like solving puzzles and all. So I gave the exam, got like pretty good, decent marks. But since I was not serious about it, I hadn't even applied to anything. 

02:51
Avishek Chakrobarty
So it was like, okay, cool. So now I know that I can do it. Like let's prepare for it properly. And I think the funny incident was like I got into masters but all the while doing masters. I used to spend more time preparing for cat then for masters bunked like almost every session. And November is when cat used to happen like way back in, like it looks like so far away, what, one and a half decades ago. That was the time when I kind of took out time from actual masters course and sat in college library with special permission and prepared and got a decent mark, got into IMT and got into MBA. It's when I got the results of cat is when I told at home that actually, by the way, I have not been doing masters. 

03:43
Avishek Chakrobarty
Now I have this, I want to go here, I want to drop out of masters. So that's how I came into MBA. And in MBA it was like another fun journey. Like getting to know different way of studying. Like it's more application oriented, more practical. I loved that. And campus hiring got me into banking. So that's how enterprise sales started. I still remember my interview where they were asking me like, what do you know about banking? I was like, I have a debit card, I can take out money. Someone puts money in my account. That's all about, I know about banking but thankfully they, I think they thought that, okay, let's teach this guy what banking is. Hired me and put me into I think quite a grueling role of enterprise sales, like dealing with large corporates getting their business. 

04:37
Avishek Chakrobarty
Though I still feel like after doing it initially I felt like it's quite tough. But after being in banking for almost five years, I realized the retail people have it harder than we had in corporate, but they're equally stressful jobs. So that's how MBA and enterprise sales happen. 

04:55
Gowri N Kishore
So you've landed in enterprise sales without having any particular interest or knowledge of the field, but you seem to have thrived in it. What do you think made you such a good fit for the role? 

05:08
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think what worked for me was like personally as a person, I am introvert. I don't like to kind of go out and make friends and talk to strangers. But somehow, like in that business context, when I am talking or connecting, I kind of felt that there is a connect which I was getting with the people I am talking to. I was able to kind of understand what read between their lines of what they say and figure out what can be pitched, what can be sold. So I think that gift of gab is something which helped me and I think the overall excitement of the whole stuff, like it's very numbers driven, right? There is no, there's no grade in between. Either you have done it or you have not done it. 

05:53
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think that kind of gave me a lot of clarity and focus on what needs to be done. So it's like you get a bloodhound to sniff the cloth and they are off hunting for that scent. For me, it was like that. You start of the quarter, start of the month, the numbers are given. And like, for us it was like, there's no negotiation on numbers. There is no, oh, you have to do, say, 100 crores. No, no, I can only manage 6000 means set in stone. That is the bare minimum you have to do. And so the whole energy effort of thinking goes into achieving that. Rather than thinking, oh, can I be doing something else? Can I be like, maybe like, look at other options because you don't have time. Like, there is no point where idle mind is devil's workshop. 

06:36
Avishek Chakrobarty
It's given, you have to, you have 30 days of which, what, eight days are holidays. So basically 22 days to hit your numbers and then it resets again. 

06:46
Gowri N Kishore
So you must have also built sales teams, right? Hired for sales eventually. What do you look for in sales? What do you look for when you hire in folks? 

06:56
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think especially sales and overall, like throughout, like wherever, whenever I have done hiring, for me, it's not as much as about what credentials you hold, what degrees you come with. It's more about the attitude. Like, there have been a lot of cases where people with five star credentials, they fail because they don't have the right attitude to fit into the role. So for me, that's the only thing that I look for, is that do you have the attitude to kind of pick up what is the role requirements, whatever skills is there that can be taught. Like, you can shadow people who are more experienced, you can undergo training, learning to upskill yourself. But if you don't have the attitude, and specifically in sales, because sales is pretty grueling, it's pretty thankless and it is of immense pressure. 

07:47
Avishek Chakrobarty
So if your mental makeup is not of that kind, to be able to kind of take it on the chain, move on. And I think one of the most favorite dialogues that I keep telling my team even now, not alone in sales, but in sales, it was very, is from Rocky Balboa. It's like, it's not how hard you can hit, but how hard you like, how many times you can get hit and keep coming back. So I think that's the attitude that I look for, that if you're doing ten visits day in, day out, and everyone is saying, no, I don't want, does that make you look forward to the next day? Or does that make you feel that, okay, let me catch the next train flight back home. I can't do this. So I think that attitude is what matters. 

08:27
Avishek Chakrobarty
Skills can be taught. 

08:28
Gowri N Kishore
Well put. So what, after icici, right? Because from there, also quite a few shifts, right? So each time, tell me about that moment, right, that decision where you feel like, okay, I'm done with this, on to the next, right? How does that, what is the trigger and how do you make that sort of decision? 

08:48
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think the change from ICICi happened because of the fact that I was actually in love with enterprise sales. My role at ICICI changed to more of a retail liabilities kind of role, like loans and cards kind of role. And though I liked that, I liked enterprise more. And I got an opportunity from GE Capital's joint venture with SBI. It was more of a hunter role. Like, the role that I was handing at ICSA was a hunter farmer, like, combined role, more of a hunter role. And I was, and you're young, you have like, you are more of a risk taker at that point of time. Like, why the hell not? Like, let's try it out. So that was the second stint into banking, a relatively more niche and focused area in corporate sales. Lot of learnings. 

09:37
Avishek Chakrobarty
But by that time, I had spent close to about four or five years in banking, and I was like, too much of banking now. Like, I'm like, can I, like, can I look at something else? And I. It was during one of my sales call that I had kind of visited a startup to just prospect and pitch and see, because one of our focus at that point of time when startup was booming was pitching to startups because their expense management requirements were there and there was a lot of forex transactions happening for which they needed payment solutions to be there. And I think it's not about dragging, but I think at that point of time, two of the startups that I kind of brought onto my portfolio, one was think and learn by juice. 

10:22
Avishek Chakrobarty
They used to operate out of a small place in Kormangala, and then they exploded after that. And the other was zoom card. Like, these are like good names, and they were showing a lot of promise in terms of the metrics that we tracked on usage and transactions, etcetera. So I was on a hunt for startups, and in Bangalore, any and every lane and alley will have a startup. And it was basically a two storied independent house with one small board. I was like, what the hell? Let's just drop in. In that discussion, I kind of got floored by the founders and the leadership team who were there, like talking, and they said, hey, we can't, we don't really have a requirement for this, but we have a role which you may want to explore. And I was like, yeah, sure, why not? 

11:08
Avishek Chakrobarty
That's how I got into health tech startup. Six months into joining that company, which was called Quickwell, we got acquired by Practo as their enterprise business unit. And I was with them for almost two and a half, three years, and fantastic. That was the first time I kind of got into a startup and then realized there are a lot of things which we took for granted in big companies which are already processed in set in place and job roles defined. And here it was like, I remember it's a tech platform, right? They used to do OPD management and they had the algorithms for managing the queue. 

11:47
Avishek Chakrobarty
And one of the product features was that the queue could be displayed on a tv where people could see what their queue is and who is next, whether the doctor is in or out of the graphical interface. To set that up, you had to put something called a raspberry PI. And I didn't even know what a raspberry PI is, that's when I came to know about it. And you have to kind of fit it to the tv and then put some basic starter code into it. So I remember on my second day, I was told that I thought, this hospital is launching, let's do a set it up, and this is how you do it. 

12:18
Avishek Chakrobarty
And I remember, like after OPD hours, 830 in the night when the OPD is empty, I was standing one of the benches underneath the tv, fitting the raspberry PI with phone on, and calling our product person, and he was dictating the codes that have to be put in onto the terminal and doing that. So it was quite a journey. Like, you're doing operations, you're doing sales, you're doing marketing to some extent, you're also helping out in admin stuff. So it was quite exciting journey. After that, I kind of wanted to take on a bigger role. That's when urban ladder happened, where their need was to set up a sales team from scratch, like an offline b, two b sales team. And that's kind of my area of expertise. 

13:00
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I moved out of pacto, joined Urban ladder, and I think till date, if someone asks me, like, what's your best stint like? Of all the places that you have been, that one and a half year in urban ladder was insanely exciting, insanely good. Ranks number one across every other role that I have held so far. 

13:19
Gowri N Kishore
So you then moved on to an AI startup, right? Yellow AI. 

13:23
Avishek Chakrobarty
So still urban ladder. I was into enterprise sales, hardcore b, two b sales. And with all startups, I think urban ladder was also going through that acquisition part. There was talks of either reliance or other players coming into play. And then slowly the focus shifted to more retail and things started kind of getting into a direction again, which was like maybe not in my area of best interest. And I started looking out. Getting into marketing was a sheer act of serendipity or luck. One of my colleagues from GE Capital days had gotten into Infosys and he said, hey, there's an opening in the marketing team, we want to apply. I was like, anyways, I'm applying everywhere, let's give it a shot. 

14:10
Avishek Chakrobarty
And in the interview, I remember talking to the head of vertical marketing and he asked me, like after all the discussions were done, he asked me, do you have any questions? And my only question was that, why are you sitting and talking to me? I am neither a tech person nor do I have any kind of marketing experience. Absolutely, like only theoretical experience during MBA. After that it's been sales all through the way. And his point was that we are getting into a specific area of enterprise marketing, which requires us to work quite close with sales. And with your background, I think you will be able to do well. And I think he also resonated that thing that I said, that attitude mattered more than skills could be taught. And that was my first experience into enterprise marketing. 

14:58
Avishek Chakrobarty
Learning account based marketing hands on with the people who are building it up at Infosys. I spent like a good three little bit over three years there learning the ropes again. After what I have learned, can I put it to use in a non guardrail environment? Was my motivation to move into yellow AI, which was an AI startup where the mandate was to kind of build and scale and work on the enterprise b two B marketing bit. And then Kindle happened after a year and a half because that was more focused on large enterprise, more focused on hardcore account based marketing. 

15:36
Gowri N Kishore
I feel like you have worked on across the spectrum of companies, right from startups literally housed in a two bhk in Kormangala to an Infosys, to what is the decision culture like across, right? Like there would be good pros and cons for each. Sort of tell me, like if you could plot it on a sort of spectrum, right. And tell me what works here and how are decisions made and how. I'm very interested in that. How do these places work? 

16:06
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think I'll keep aside the banking part, because the decision making in banking, first of all, in sales, it's, as I said, it's very black and white. You have a strict guideline, and since it's highly regulated industry, there are rules and regulations. There's not much of ambiguity when it comes to decision making, because you very well know that if profile matches certain criteria, this is what you can do, this is what you can take an exception. So it's more structured in that way. Now, the common theme, like across, if you talk to anyone, would be that, hey, startups are much more fast, agile, and decision making is fast. Big companies take a lot of time. 

16:46
Avishek Chakrobarty
I kind of beg to differ, because the big companies that I have been part of, like whether it's infosys or Kindle itself calls itself as a $19 billion startup. So the thing is that in those cases, even in such a big company like Infosys, though, there are a lot of processes in place. The decision making is business oriented. The one thing that were taught at Infosys was that you are the CEO of your own role. So if you need to do get anything done, don't be kind of bogged down by designations level seniority. Processes make a logical case for why it needs to be done and people will rope in to get those things done or move forward. And same here at Kindred. Also because I think the misconception about decision making is around the processes. 

17:36
Avishek Chakrobarty
There are certain times when you will feel processes are like draining the energy out of you. But if you kind of step back and take the emotion out of it, you will realize that as you scale your volume of business, your impact of business has much more higher repercussions than at a smaller scale. Like the way decision is done in say a startup with say ten to 20 million ARR cannot be the same way you take decisions if you grow to a 500 million or 100 million error because the clients have increased, the nature demographics of your customers have increased. And without processes, scalability is not possible. Like you cannot keep doing things ad hoc once in a while it's fine, you take exceptions, but exceptions cannot become the norm. If it becomes a norm, your scalability is hit. 

18:22
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think decision making for me, that I have experienced across the spectrum of size of companies that I work, has always hinged on the business need so there are processes, there are guidelines, there are regulations. You work within that framework. There is elasticity around the edges of that. But to a certain extent, as long as you're making business sense, like, I can't suddenly go and say that, hey, we need to do this just because I want to get it done. Nobody will listen to you. And most probably you might get away with that in a startup for some cases. But even a startup would put their foot down because at the end of the day, business matters and scalability matters. So decision making processes have always been around that matrix that does it make business sense? 

19:04
Avishek Chakrobarty
What is the impact of it, what is the outcome that we are looking at it, and what is the time implications that are there? And based on that, it will happen. But exceptions occur on both sides of the spectrum. 

19:15
Gowri N Kishore
Sure. In fact, I really liked what you said about the Infosys learning, which is you are the CEO of your role. So to me that speaks of culture also, right? So there is a big part of you who is driving this, but also the culture of the organization. So is there something that is actively done to develop a sort of data informed or like how do you see organization? Have you seen any organizations make conscious efforts to drive culture in terms of how people own their roles, you know, and execute them well across? Any interesting examples? 

19:49
Avishek Chakrobarty
Absolutely. I think the most impactful examples of how culture is driven, how empowerment is driven, how kind of autonomy and ownership is given to individual employees. I think the best two examples, like more of more recent kind, will be of emphasis. As I said it was. So Infosys as an organization has its culture. Infosys marketing as a vertical insight has its own micro culture. That microculture has been kept very flat. Like the CMO. CMO of Infosys is a big role. And not just Infosys. Infosys group companies and everything would be sitting on the same floor, accessible at any point of time to all the people in that same floor. It's shown from the top. Like I have always felt that culture is more than maybe a manual that is written that this is our culture. 

20:41
Avishek Chakrobarty
Culture is what your leaders do on a day to day basis. 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, certain type of action oriented behavior, automatically you kind of align to that. Even a kindle. Like, it's no small feat to kind of break away from 100 year old behemoth like IBM and within two years, build your presence, build your kind of credibility in an IT services industry which already has giants playing, right? So that's all because of, from top down, that behavior is not told, it's seen. That's the thing. Like my managers or my leaders, I see them day in, day out doing, or to kind of use a common saying that they walk the talk. 

21:30
Avishek Chakrobarty
If you see them walking the talk, you obviously would want to emulate their steps to be in that path towards getting or achieving success. So I think, for me, culture has, like, places where culture fails is where it's kind of thought of as a plaque or a board with five points that we put up on every wall, but nobody kind of shows that kind of coming up. So that doesn't work. You follow your leaders define your culture. 

21:58
Gowri N Kishore
Excellent. So now I'm thinking, are there anything, what have you learned from anybody? Right? Anybody that you worked with as a leader or anybody that you look up to in terms of inspiration, smart person, you know? So any frameworks or any mental models, or even just anything that has inspired you at work, who have you learned it from? What is it? How do you apply it? 

22:21
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think there are few learnings across the different phases. I think the first was, how would I put it? Commitment. Like commitment to your deliverables and sticking to those commitments, valuing your commitment. That's something which I learned in ICICI, my manager, my one up manager, they all kind of led by that. So, as I said, numbers for me are sacrosanct. You can have a discussion if you feel that it's maybe unrealistic number, but that's also to a certain point, because how can you define what is unrealistic until. Unless you have tried it? So I have, like one thing which I have kind of built in myself is that no task is small, no task is big. A task is a task which needs to be done. You try it, you may fail. 

23:10
Avishek Chakrobarty
You can, you can achieve it, you can fail to achieve it, but have that good fight given to attain that. So I think that's one part of it that I have learned. Second thing, which I have learned mostly in the stints with startups and to some extent at infosys, is emphasis onwards, is data. Decision making has to be backed by data. To me, it's like 80% data, 20% gut feeling, not the other way around. And that was, and frankly speaking, I was very averse to building excels, doing pivots, doing vlookups, and finding out. But seeing it in action is what kind of got me hooked to it that much that right now, sometimes I come across as a kind of data nudge that I will not approve of doing something or take up anything until, unless it is backed by data. 

24:01
Avishek Chakrobarty
And data is giving me some views now. It's a double edged sword. Sometimes you can get into data paralysis, where you forget, focus on action and get into that rabbit hole of data. That's something which needs to be consciously kept in mind. Data is to assist you. It cannot tell you that. Do like. It's not a definitive outcome, it's just guardrails, or it's just indicators of what can or cannot happen. And kind of contrary to what I have been saying so far, many a times, what you will see is that whatever your data analysis has shown may not pan out on the real deployment or execution. But what data helps is that it gives you that direction. It gives you that framework within which you work. Your numbers may be off by like 10%, 15%, but your direction is same. 

24:53
Avishek Chakrobarty
You know, what are the probabilities? You know, what are the possible outcomes? One of them will happen, 99 of them will not happen. But once you have the data, you know, at least what are the possibilities? Where am I heading? What should I look out for? 

25:07
Gowri N Kishore
Very well put. In fact, do sales folks, right, people who have built their careers in sales, do they come with the strong data mindset? Or is it like, maybe they are great at the other parts, like you said, the attitude, or, you know, like the taking a number of hits and not going down? Maybe that. But they may not all be well versed with data or just comfortable, you know, with. They have their eye on the number, right. What I need to achieve, but not the analysis sort of thing. What is your observation? Is that correct? Or how do you build it also? 

25:40
Avishek Chakrobarty
So, in enterprise sales, data does play a role, but it all depends on the industry. Like, say, I will take example of banking versus it. In banking, as I said, the guidelines, the rules and regulations are set in such a way that, say, who do you want to target? Is kind of already predefined by the restrictions that are set in place. And it's a straightforward, I don't want to trivialize by saying straightforward, but your solution to product maps are easier than in a more amorphous place like an it, because in it services. What happens that many of the times the solutions are something which were not thought of before. The problems are something which even the person who is experiencing the problem would not have looked at it in that way. You might think that I have an attrition problem. 

26:29
Avishek Chakrobarty
And once you start getting into solutioning, you might realize that maybe attrition is the outcome. There is a different problem and you solve for that. So in those kind of cases where your solution and problem matches are relatively more amorphous, data comes into play. And those environments, even sales people are highly focused on those predictive data, the signals, the intent, the information that is floating around, like what is the organization talking about? What do I glean from that can be their pain point. How do I then kind of find more data to back my pitch and then go back with a solution which kind of wows the customer. So it depends on what you are selling. If you are selling a solution, you will need data to be able to figure out what solution or what can be a most probable solution. 

27:19
Gowri N Kishore
Understood? Understood. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, now I'll come to what you've been sort of specializing in the most, like your recent since, right, which is account based marketing. How is it different from typical marketing motions? You know, tell me, just sort of explain to me like I'm 15. 

27:40
Avishek Chakrobarty
See, when we talk about marketing has different functions, but what most people think is around the branding part of it, content part of it. But there's also a numbers driven, business driven part which goes hand in hand with three. Either of these three cannot exist without the other. Right? So that's the relationship in place now depending on maybe what used to happen 1015 years ago to what is happening still happening in some smaller environments or business cases which are on a demand generation model. In demand generation, what is that? That you do programs, you get leads, then your sales team will work on those leads to convert them. That's your traditional part of the business function of marketing. 

28:28
Avishek Chakrobarty
Like how the revenue generation part of our revenue creation part of marketing now in enterprise, that has started seeing a lot of shifts, especially in large enterprises which have like equally large customers with equally complex solutions in place or services in place. I think the reason behind that is that say a retail giant would be spending say $100 million a year on IT solutions. They will not be doing that hundred million spend only one provider. There are different bits and pieces which are plugged in by the different players. Some can be small startups providing a small piece of solution. It can be something like an accenture which is providing a bigger piece of solution. Kindred is doing something, Infosys is doing something, and so forth. 

29:14
Avishek Chakrobarty
Now in that case, what matters for a business is that how do I keep getting the larger share of PI of that hundred million. And how do I ensure that I continue this business relationship? Not like I continue and grow this business relationship. That is where account based marketing comes into play. Because account based marketing, there are like lot of definitions out there and lot of people are talking about it. But to me it's as simple as that. There is this age old saying, right? Like from b schools we have learned that it's easier and cheaper to retain a customer than acquiring a new customer. 

29:50
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think ABM, or account based marketing builds on that fact that if you have a large enough, big enough customer with enough potential, you would be wise to spend your efforts in building a relationship, a strong relationship with that account, so that you. So to put it in a very simplistic way, the objective of account based marketing is to build a partner relationship with your customer rather than a yemenite vendor or supplier. If you kind of get started to be looked at as a partner that I trust these people, I know that they have certain skill sets which they are very good at. They are good at handling mission critical systems in our organization. So if I have any problem, I would rather first go to them and figure out what my solution could be. That's where ABM works. 

30:41
Avishek Chakrobarty
Across the three functions that I said that ABM relies heavily on branding to build your reputation. ABM relies heavily on content to be able to put the right information. Non kind of self aggrandizing, but thought leadership content out to your customers. It works with data analytics to be able to track those trends, track the signals that are coming out, do some kind of predictive decision making. That if these signals are coming, it equals to most problem, a certain stage of the customer. And this is how we need to do so. ABM is basically something which stitches across all the different functions of marketing to work in a single unified direction, which is solely focused on building the relationship and building the reputation with your customer, which in turns helps you in driving the revenue of that business. 

31:34
Gowri N Kishore
Understood. So is ABM followed or most effective in enterprise when you're selling to enterprises? Or does it still make sense if your ICP is more mid market or you're selling to smaller players? Like is there is who should focus on even developing ABM or even putting efforts into ABM? 

31:54
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think ABM, in my opinion, and in common belief is that ABmdez should be run or followed. It's not even a channel. It's basically a strategy or a thought process. So an organization should only kind of start thinking of doing ABM or getting into that account based marketing or account based experience mindset, if they are into large enterprise business, if they are doing business which has high deal value and long sales cycles, because like going back to what I said just earlier, that the focus of ABM is to build relationships and long lasting relationships cannot be built over a day. So you will need that much of time to engage with your customers to be able to kind of build that trust and reputation and relationship with the customer to see business coming. 

32:47
Avishek Chakrobarty
If you are in a business which deals with shorter sales cycles and your business goals are hit, if you are not able to deliver on those monthly quarterly numbers, then ABM can become a suicide for you because you will forever be chasing revenue and you will not be able to build the relationship. 

33:06
Gowri N Kishore
Yeah, that makes sense. So when you say, I mean, I understand completely right that this is about long term, slowly sort of building that trust, that credentials with the client. What are some of the levers that an ABMpheen would have to do this? So your, let's say your relationship building stage itself. So one of the things that you said is definitely a reliance on brand doing its job, content sort of doing its job. What are some of the things you sort of focus on and control? 

33:34
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think when it comes to ABM, again, there are different types of ABM. The two more common forms are one is to one where you are, you have like titan clients, like customers which are huge and which are very valuable to you. You deal with them on a very bespoke, customized, personalized one is to one basis, then you have one is to few where you have a lot of big customers, but they are dispersed across maybe different industries or different cohorts. So you treat those cohorts as one entity and you basically, the core behind it is that when you are talking to a customer, they should have that sense that hey, they are talking to me. My pain points, they are talking to my problems. So thats how you design it. 

34:22
Avishek Chakrobarty
Depending on the nature of ABm that you are doing, one is very high touch. Its more physical, its more bespoke and its more exclusive in its experiences that its given to the customer. And it's very done curated specifically for them, specifically for the problems or the use cases that are identified in that account. In one is to feel you look at the cohort as a unit and find out what are the information, messaging and touch points that are relevant for them. A simple example is, let's say if you are doing a cohort by industry, you will have, say, an industry is like automotive. Now, the pain points that automotive manufacturers face across the world are, if not all common. A lot of those pain points are common. 

35:12
Avishek Chakrobarty
Whether it's how to maintain cost efficiency, how to involve technology like IoT into their manufacturing processes, streamlining it where it can help. So that cohort as a unit has points which you can talk to them and they will still feel that they are addressing my issues once you start doing that, is when you have some of these accounts in that cohort may be engaging more, then you go into an account level discussion, because then the nuances of that problem, that industry or systemic problem has its own nuances in an organization, then you start solving for that. So in that, I think ABM utilizes almost all the possible channels that are known in marketing. Whether it's events, whether it's digital, whether it's email, whether it's newsletters, whether it's analysts, pr, everything. 

36:03
Avishek Chakrobarty
So, as I said, ABM is a philosophy which ties together all of the so far individual units of marketing. And it capitalizes on all of the channels and levers available to a marketer, the entire spectrum of it. Now, the mix of it depends on the problem statement, the program that you're running, the customer that you're doing it for, what is the situation on ground at that point of time? So those will define what the mix is, but your entire menu card will have all the possible channels and levers understood. 

36:37
Gowri N Kishore
Okay, so how would you, how is ABM success measured? Because I am understanding that the metrics should be different. Right. Given that it is different. So what are some of the metrics that apply? 

36:49
Avishek Chakrobarty
See, I think as I said, the three pillars of ABM is basically reputation, relationship and revenue. So these are the three pillars that you measure at a matured stage where an APM philosophy and strategy has been deployed successfully and@an.org level scale and has been running for n number of years to have kind of done those iterations and come to a point where the processes are in place in that point of time. I think the biggest metric that kind of shows that ABM is working is that your deal velocities improve. It doesn't take as long as it used to earlier, to close a deal, because now you are not selling it to an unknown, you are not selling it as a vendor, you are selling it as a partner. And there is trust, there is relationship that is in place. 

37:38
Avishek Chakrobarty
And you have a reputation which is built as a thought leader, as an expert in solutioning. So it takes the deal sizes increase because you tend to get because of their trust. What could have been a point solution now becomes entire transformation business that is being handed on to you because you have been able to build that trust. So deal sizes increase, your deal cycles reduce. These are the main two impact that you will see at a ultimate maturity level. But most of the organizations are in different level of that. Anywhere in this ladder. You are basically working to show that, say if we. It's like a b testing that. 

38:20
Avishek Chakrobarty
If I have apples to apple comparison of my enterprise customers, one going through the rigors of standard marketing, that they get some mail, they get some branding information and then there is a focused approach on similar organizations, but in a more ABM centric way. Is my business growing relatively better in the ABM focused accounts as compared to the non ABM accounts? And that's how you start kind of penetrating more like you might start off with ten accounts to prove that ABM works a year down the line. If you show that, yeah, my, these ten accounts have outperformed similar ten accounts outside of ABMD, then you get say okay, let's increase it to 5100. 

39:01
Avishek Chakrobarty
Then go ahead and segment your customers on those tiers that how many of them deserve, are big enough to warrant us to give them that one bespoke experience and how many we would kind of keep engaged with relevant information, thought leadership, content and touch points over the cycle of quarters and years and then move them as and when required. 

39:23
Gowri N Kishore
Got it. So currently you lead the global AB and centre of excellence for Kindred, right? What would be the purpose of such a center of excellence be and what is your mandate for the next, for the foreseeable future, let's say. 

39:37
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think the mandate is very clear. Like when I joined, I was told that, like, so we have field marketers across different countries and market cmos handling the business part of those markets. I think the mandate, we can put it in very simple, like plain crisp statement that I was told is that ABM CoE needs to become indispensable to the markets. So my job is to make ourselves indispensable by providing the support, help and innovation that helps the teams deliver on their goals and objectives. 

40:12
Avishek Chakrobarty
So whether it's data insights that we kind of collect from different teams, different sources, and spend time analyzing and give them actionable insights, or whether it's kind of coming back with innovative ideas which we either have thought of ourselves or we have seen happening across in the industry, what are the best practices that we can put in place. So it's basically as I keep telling. It's more of a consultancy firm inside the organization, which consults the ABM practitioners on any problems that they come back with, telling that, hey, this is what I want to do, but how do It? So me and my team will work with them to figure out the best way which they can achieve what they want to achieve. It's more of a service consultant organization inside the larger organization. 

40:59
Gowri N Kishore
Very interesting. You must be enjoying this so much, right? Because after having been a practitioner for a very long time now to, it's very cerebral also. But because you've been one of those on ground warriors, I feel like you get it also, right? What will work and, but also you're thinking and you're innovating. So this is just me sort of like, I feel like this must be so exciting for you. 

41:23
Avishek Chakrobarty
Yeah, it's absolutely, it's never a dull moment. And it's been just, what, six months that I joined this role, but it's been awesome so far. 

41:30
Gowri N Kishore
Yeah. Okay. Slight detour or whatever to aim because I feel like no conversation now can, you know, not touch upon AI. Right. Do you, are you already seeing AI changing the way sales teams work? Because there are now tools and tools for everything. Right. But what do you see right now already? What's happening? And what do you see as an outlook, you know, for the next few years within your sphere? 

41:59
Avishek Chakrobarty
Yeah, it's absolutely like in last one and a half years, that explosion of AI based tools or AI based processes have kind of exploded across sales and marketing. Sales people have now a lot of, what do you say, armament in their arsenal to their job. Even better than say, what I would have had like twelve years back. There are tools which can kind of help you engage with customers. You put in rules, you put in the logic behind it, and that AI platform will send out those follow up mails, ensure that your customer is kept warm, track any kind of engagement that is happening, give you a notification so that you know exactly when to reach out. 

42:43
Avishek Chakrobarty
And I think a lot of AI is also used for see, the biggest challenge as salespeople like, if I will tell my personal example is that I saw a profile who I know is relevant. Now, what do I write to him or her? I'll be sitting and saying, dear so and so I am from this, I don't know, it's sounding too salesy. So there'll be a lot of iterations that I would do to send one mail back in the day. Now you have tools which you, which will, once you have identified that okay, this is the person, this is the solution, or this is what I want to talk to them about. The content that AI can generate for you is top class. So those are like really helpful stuff that is happening now. 

43:25
Avishek Chakrobarty
Since I have not been in sales for some time, I don't really know what else is there. But these are the things which I have seen happening in front. What I can talk about from marketing perspective is that it's been crazy in last one and a half years how things have changed. Like, right from content, whether it's written content or video or media content, AI has kind of put its root everywhere. If one of the things that we do is also kind of say, tracking, like, what's the behavior of an account? When are they visiting my website? What is the activity that they're doing now? There are AI solutions which will track, analyze and give you insights. So you have everything at the tip of your fingers and you then take the action based on that. 

44:13
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think this is going to stay, this is going to get more evolved, it's going to get more embedded in all business functions. I am pretty sure there are, I have been part of us AI based startup which has solutions for HR. So they are using AI to be able to engage with employees, able to predict their state of mind. Are they engaged? Are they disengaged and give solutions? Not just that, it will not say, hey, Abhishek is disengaged. It will give you that Abhishek is disengaged most probably because of these reasons. And most probably you can do Xyz to kind of get him engaged back again. That's huge. Like for HR. Imagine the HR, BP's who handle large organizations and have like multiple departments, like 10,000, tens of thousands of people. 

45:02
Avishek Chakrobarty
It's humanly not possible for them to sit with 10,000 people and have that discussion, but these kind of platforms would be like a boon to them. I'm pretty sure. Finance also uses some sort of AI solutions to maybe build their budgeting model, predict, etcetera. Marketing definitely is using. We have tools which are dedicated in terms of content media. There are tools, AI tools which are used for insights. There are AI tools which are used for outbound activity. So I think it's here to stay and we need to kind of understand how to make the most use out of them because so far they have been a big boon. They made life much more easier. Having said that, the caveat is, again, that too much of everything is not good. 

45:49
Avishek Chakrobarty
So it's very difficult, but it needs to be consciously avoided that you don't go into that tech platform rabbit hole, that too many tech platforms all disjointed, maybe doing more than what is actually required and creating more noise than outcomes. So I think that's a conscious decision that every business needs to take and follow that. Take what is actually needed. Fresh out the noise, because there's a lot of noise in the system. Also pick only what is required and what solves the problem, not just go on a shopping spree and like sit with like ten different models of the same phone. 

46:25
Gowri N Kishore
Yeah, totally hear you. Okay, now I'm gonna switch to the personal side, right? So what do you do outside of work, Avishik? 

46:35
Avishek Chakrobarty
Outside of work I have full time job. I have two dogs. So taking care of them, spending time with them, is there. Music is another big part. Like I, during pandemic, I learned how to play the drum. Now I have picked up trying to learn how to play a guitar. So that kind of keeps me busy. And since childhood, like the first love, if you speak of it, is reading and fantasy fiction. So always there will be at least one book on fantasy fiction in pipeline at some stage of completion, multi reader. 

47:12
Gowri N Kishore
Or one book at a time, or. 

47:13
Avishek Chakrobarty
One book at a time. Very dedicated, one at a time. 

47:16
Gowri N Kishore
Kindle or physical books? 

47:18
Avishek Chakrobarty
I. So there was a phase where I was very excited. With Kindle, it has its benefit. Like, especially when you're traveling, you don't want to say if, say for example, Lord of the Rings. It's a this fat like thousand pager book. You can't, like, you have to pay excess baggage if you want to carry it. So their Kindle comes into play. But if I'm at home, I would always prefer a paperback. But in travel, it's always preferred to have a Kindle or digital format. 

47:48
Gowri N Kishore
So that's for sheer pleasure, right? The fantasy and music dogs. How about learning in a general, in a much broader sense, right? Are you, do you listen to podcasts? Do you read news? What is that side? 

48:05
Avishek Chakrobarty
Newsletters? Not so much. But I think my biggest source of information is podcasts. Like, while doing all of these things you like. The other thing, which I spend a lot of time mostly on weekends, is cooking. I love cooking because I love eating. I will experiment new things and I just do fancy stuff. Some come out good, some are like disasters. But during all these things, you just plug in a headphone, switch on Spotify or any Google podcast and pick up. And that's again, a variety. Like, my podcast playlist has podcasts which are specific on ABM, on business, on history of pirates, to history of crusades, to horror, real life horror stories. So it's like a spectrum of stuff, but it's. It's good to have that information flowing in, then newer things coming into mind. 

48:59
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I don't have a specific focus, but podcasts do. So even in drives, like, you switch on a podcast and forget about Bangalore's traffic. 

49:09
Gowri N Kishore
So what's your favorite podcast currently? 

49:13
Avishek Chakrobarty
Right now, I just started with the history of pirates, the whole, like, the golden age of piracy and. And how it's kind of come to modern, like, the somali pirates and houthi pirates, and that whole journey of pirate piracy on high seas is something which I'm, like, extremely into right now. 

49:36
Gowri N Kishore
And how about a business podcast that. 

49:40
Avishek Chakrobarty
You really think, for me, strategic. ABM is something which I kind of have a daily dose of, almost, like medicine. When new episodes come out, there is a podcast on built to scale for businesses at scale. So that's also. It's been some time since I actually listened to them, but that's also good. Like, they have, like, really good episodes coming in, mostly on talking about how, like, how to scale. Like, how to scale and how to have processes at scale. So I think that's a good source of knowledge. And I think the other go to, like, mostly in small bits, bite sized information bursts, is your economist. They have, like, a wide variety of news podcasts coming in. Sometimes it gets a bit too heavy, so I'll pick and choose in those cases. 

50:30
Gowri N Kishore
Nice. So where do you waste time online? 

50:34
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think more than online. I waste a lot of time on Netflix. 

50:38
Gowri N Kishore
Okay. 

50:39
Avishek Chakrobarty
Like, there are days when this just goes on binge. 

50:43
Gowri N Kishore
Okay, so what are you watching right now on Netflix? 

50:46
Avishek Chakrobarty
Right now? I finished the three body problem book, like, last year, and now I'm just. Just started watching it on Netflix to see how they have adapted it. But unlike books, where I am a single book reader, Netflix is, like, all over the place. There is some half consumed comedy sitcom, some half consumed science fiction. So it's. It's all on the mood. Like, when you're sitting down to eat and you like, what do I do? Like, pick and play something. And sometimes you go into that spiral that you're, like, watching, watching. 

51:18
Gowri N Kishore
One more question. This is about how you organize your week or your time, right? Because everybody now, either they're trying to be more productive, or they are trying to slow down. I feel like people are now divided into these people who feel like I should do more or I should do better, and people were like, I should do less. So where on this spectrum do you fall and how do you organize your typical week? 

51:43
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think for me, it's not about going berserk on doing a lot and also not going into that other end of the spectrum that, okay, I'll slow down. What I usually do is that I would pick up certain projects, maybe one or two, and those are big, impactful projects, but invest all the time, effort into that to kind of bring it to completion and bring it to completion in the right way. So to some extent, yes, I do kind of have a selection criteria that what all do I need to take up on my plate? And I only take up those things which I will be able to deliver. And even if it is a stretch, it's not that, okay, I'll just undercut my bandwidth and say I'll take the easier stuff. 

52:29
Avishek Chakrobarty
It's a mix of what's the impact of that program or activity? How can I do it the best way? I think that's how I would define, and there are different projects which are in different stages. So I think the way I do it is that keep a kind of a project tracker and ranked on the basis of priority and requirement of timeline and kind of eat away from the edges and come to the center kind of thing. 

52:56
Gowri N Kishore
What about the personal side of things? Are you very organized in general in life? Do you like time? Block your calendar, all of that? Or very instinctive mood based on weekdays. 

53:07
Avishek Chakrobarty
It'S like army school. Wake up at six, take the dog out, make, have breakfast, get ready, go to work, do these things. Weekdays. Like, you cannot unravel because you won't have, like, you will have things piling up, which kind of creates a lot of chaos. Weekends is polar opposite. Weekends is like all over the place. Because that's the time when I'm like, this is unwinding time. Follow your heart, follow the flow, do whatever you want. Because weekends, you don't kind of keep too much of pressure. That's, that's required to kind of unwind for those two days and be ready for the next week. 

53:43
Gowri N Kishore
Nice. I was reading this newsletter called things of Internet, and in that the author had mentioned about two kinds of people in the world, one kind who do exactly what you said, that, okay, weekdays is very regimented. Also, separation between work and other stuff. Right here, the priorities. So these are people who sort of go like this. Time is meant for this, weekend is meant for this. And so it's kind of alternating, and there are people who follow completely, like, a fluid approach. 

54:12
Avishek Chakrobarty
Right. 

54:13
Gowri N Kishore
Every day is a, you know, little bit like, the boundaries are very fluid. I totally don't block. So every day I will try to get a little bit of all of it. And actually not two kinds. The third kind was who do this for the year? You know, like, people who are like, okay, these three months or four months of my life is dedicated to one thing, and then they will take six weeks off to do something completely different. So life works. So how do you sort of time block? And since then, I've been thinking about how other people see it. I don't know where I fall, by the way. I think season by season, I know what you do. And sometimes I'm like, let's do everything. 

54:51
Avishek Chakrobarty
So for me, I think it's also a bit of a, like, kind of hard coded from sales, because one of the key things that you need to be able to do well or manage in sales is discipline. You. If you do not have focus on what you are doing and you try to take on too many things at a time, you are bound to fail. So I think from that onwards, it has been like, I am still one of those people who uses a diary. So every day I will have, like, two to for this tick of things that are done carry over and get irritated when too many things are getting carried over. So a little bit of OCD in that space. 

55:30
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think that's why it's, like, more of a daily or weekly regime repeated over 52 weeks, is what my style is. 

55:40
Gowri N Kishore
Thank you so much, Avishek. This was a lovely conversation. Any last thoughts? Anything you want to leave us with? 

55:49
Avishek Chakrobarty
I really love the free flowing nature of conversation, and I think the only thing which, like, it's a human tendency to kind of give free advice, the only advice, like, I would say, is that, like, whether it's work or your personal life, I think it's always important to choose what you are comfortable doing, which you like doing, and while you're doing it, have that commitment towards it, because it's very easy to pick up things. And I have been equally guilty of doing that, like, looking at fancy jazzy stuff, picking it up and then discarding it. To me, it feels that you are not doing justice to what you have picked up and you are not doing justice to yourself. So be very. 

56:37
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think the only advice that I kind of keep giving my team is that pick up things that you want to do, and once you have picked it, up, do it. See it through to the end. Don't pick up things which you're going to abandon in, like, halfway and then just try to go to the next shiny thing. So I think that that's one of the three advice that I want to give. Outside of that, I'm cool. Like, I love the discussion. 

57:01
Gowri N Kishore
Given that advice, let me ask a follow up question. How does a young person, professional or anybody early on, or even me, actually, you know, it's a good question, right? How does one. How do you go about picking what to work on? Because it's almost, like, ruthless. Is it only prioritization or what else? What is your personal process? 

57:22
Avishek Chakrobarty
So I think, like, this is from my personal experience and also seeing, like, people, like, fresh people joining the workforce. And at the beginning of your career, if you are getting into the workforce for the first time, don't be picky there. It's not about your option. You need to prioritize. You need to be able to prioritize your time, your effort to be able to deliver on what is being given. But in those cases, pick whatever comes to, take whatever comes your way, try it, because that's how you will build your preferences. Because you are too green to say that I like this and I don't like that. Because you have tried neither of those. Try everything. Maybe few years down the line, you will start forming that focus that, hey, enterprise sales is my thing. Retail is not mine. 

58:10
Avishek Chakrobarty
I came to that conclusion only once I had the exposure to retail. Otherwise, to me, sales is sales that kind of shaped my journey that I want to be in b two B. I don't want to be in b, two C. But not having seen either, it doesn't make sense to tell that, hey, b two C is my thing. How. What is the data point which bags that statement? So I think initially pick up whatever comes your way, see what you like, and slowly start building your skill set, expertise, and your area of focus accordingly. 

58:42
Gowri N Kishore
What about at your stage now? How do you pick now? 

58:45
Avishek Chakrobarty
I think I am a little bit more. More picky, but I still have that mindset that as long as it is in my, like, if tomorrow someone comes and says that, hey, you have to make a regression sheet for finance, I can't. I don't know, like, that's not my a or, like, you have to make some, like, kick ass content, I will still kind of go, that's not my core area of expertise. But if it's an unknown challenge, but in the field that I am in, I am always up for it to try it. Like I think another other things that you kind of learn in startups and startup mindset organizations is that failure is not a setback. Like experimenting can lead to failure, but the courage or the mindset to do that experiment is what matters. 

59:32
Avishek Chakrobarty
So what if I don't know, what is the outcome? So what if I don't know how to do it? Let's, if it's in the same area, it requires the similar skill sets. I am sure some outcome will come out of it. And if it's a failure, you know that. Okay, this route doesn't work. Next time when you try it, you will have maybe a relative lesser probability of failure. So I think for me it's being picky about area of expertise rather than the task. If it's falling in my view or my area of interest and expertise, whether I know about it or not, I still pick it up. But if it's completely different, like tomorrow, if you come and say that like microbiology experiment, you have to do like find a cure for some method I like, it's not mine. Cup of tea? 

01:00:17
Avishek Chakrobarty
I don't even know the fundamentals of it. I think that also kind of builds into that whole thing. Like you keep hearing a lot about this jargons in startup, right? Like first principles. So for me, first principles is nothing but what? Like from childhood, parents, teacher, your mentors keep telling that, build your foundation should be strong. So anything that is in and around that foundation area is challenge accepted. 

01:00:44
Gowri N Kishore
Lovely. I think that's a lovely note to close on. 

01:00:48
Gowri N Kishore
Hello listeners. If you found this conversation interesting, do look us up on datavcloud.com. You can also follow us on LinkedIn for more great perspectives about data analytics, business intelligence, and just making better decisions. See you next time. 

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