Pattern interrupt earns the right to the next conversation.
Ben Smith Director of Global Marketing, Reachdesk
Interviewed by John Horsley
Published
Ben Smith is Director of Global Marketing at Reachdesk, the gifting and direct-mail platform he joined when it had zero customers and no platform. Reachdesk now serves customers across roughly 180 countries with warehouses in Australia, Europe, the UK, Canada, and the US; main target markets are the UK, US, Canada, Israel, and Ireland. Around 80% of customers are in the United States. Smith's pre-marketing career: five years touring as a professional ice-skater with Disney on Ice. From the rink to a PR career in London working on B2C brands with corporate gifting and direct mail to journalists, then into Reachdesk pre-launch. In this conversation he sets out the all-bound go-to-market model; the 70% pipeline, 30% revenue commission split that aligns marketing with sales; the 6 to 8-person buying committee discipline; the give, give, give ungated content approach; the unforgettable pattern-interrupt event strategy with pre-event gifting; the fail fast, fail forward leadership carried over from ice-skating; the word-of-mouth is our second-highest source finding from the self-attribution form-fill; the 88% pre-sales completion before sales gets in the room Dreamdata signal; and the closing advice to anyone earlier in their career: get your voice in the room.
From Disney on Ice to growing Reachdesk
The setup.
My background: I was a professional ice-skater. I toured with Disney on Ice for five years. From there I moved to London and started in PR working on B2C brands, doing corporate gifting and direct mail to journalists to get their attention. That's when I found out about Reachdesk.
On the ice-skating principle in business.
Ice-skating teaches discipline. It's okay to fail because as soon as you fall over, you have to pick yourself back up. When I look for companies to join, I look for people who aren't afraid to fail. That's why I love startups. You have to fail to find the biggest wins.
My leadership style: actively encourage the team to fail. The biggest growth moments come from those failures. Always experiment. Always find new ways to move the needle and find the next best thing.
70% pipeline, 30% revenue: the commission split that aligns marketing with sales
On the structure.
I'm a marketing leader compensated on revenue and pipeline. 70% of my commission package is on pipeline, 30% on revenue. The pipeline component is specific with tier-one and tier-two and a focus on quality.
When marketing and sales are compensated on exactly the same things, you end up with shared goals and in it for the same reasons. That's why all-bound matters.
On the all-bound model.
Reachdesk is a sales-led organisation. We run all-bound: inbound, outbound, partnerships, and marketing all working together to generate revenue.
Growth for us is about new business and adding significant revenue. We make it hard to find a qualified opportunity. The ICP has to be right, the right people, a compelling reason to work with us, and the timelines aligned. Strict qualification means less pipeline but higher close rate.
The 6-to-8-person buying committee, and the give-give-give content discipline
On the committee.
We see between six and eight people on the buying committee. The champion (feeling the pain of gifting on global scale). End users (sales, BDRs, customer success). The wider committee (budget holders at C-level or VP-level in marketing, finance, procurement). Each person has different pain points.
On the content model.
A relatively uncompetitive space: swag companies exist, but few do integrated swag, gifting, direct mail, and creative ABM. Education is the focus. We don't gate. The more we give, the more people learn and trust the brand. Events, ebooks, case studies, the whole buying process mapped to the buyer and the personas.
We work closely with our partners. Their content calendars let us be in the same conversation. When a partner is involved in a deal, our win rates are significantly improved.
Make your marketing unforgettable: the pattern-interrupt event strategy
On the campaign.
Many brands do what is expected. Pattern-interrupt is the discipline: amplify what's working, stop what isn't. The event strategy used to be a table, tablecloth, and banner. No pre-event game, no during-event engagement, no post-event follow-up.
Now we create pre-event lists, know who'll be in the room, the revenue in the room, the pain points. We send a gift voucher for a £100 spa day to people who book a meeting before we even turn up. We arrive with 20 meetings already on the calendar. The attendee then visits our swag store (an e-commerce store for the swag) and selects items shipped back to their home. The follow-up: the gift arrives when they get home. They're not carrying the swag around. We're not competing for attention in the inbox. We're moving the conversation to a different place that earns us the right to it.
On the principle.
B2B sometimes forgets that buying decisions are still deeply human. We're marketing to buyers and individuals. There has to be a business outcome, but at the end of the day we're humans and people still buy from people.
Word of mouth, AI, and the 88% pre-sales completion finding
On the inconvenient truth.
We recently added self-attribution to the form-fill. Word of mouth is now our second-highest reason for people learning about Reachdesk. Terrifies me because I can't control it. Also terrifies me because I can't tell the CFO what's generating it. Word of mouth happens through communities. Be in the room more, show up in the communities, tie word-of-mouth back to the bottom line.
On where AI sits.
A Dreamdata report shows the buyer is roughly 88% of the way into the buying process before needing to speak to sales. Marketers will have to be more present in the room and use AI in different ways to focus on content and educate buyers differently.
I haven't yet spoken to a marketer who can say AI activity increased pipeline tenfold. We're stuck in a loop of busy work, more distracted, and AI hasn't fully automated everything.
The question for the board
If the buyer is 88% of the way through the buying process before talking to sales, what share of marketing spend reaches them in that 88%?
