Notes on No Forms, No Spam, No Cold Calls by Latane Conant

I recently finished reading the provocatively titled No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls: The next generation of account-based sales and marketing by Latane Conant. A fellow founder had recommended it to me, and it was pretty interesting.

The gist is about treating buyers more respectfully and intelligently and meeting them where they are based on their buyer journey. It doesn't fully ban cold calls; it just wants them to be warmer and timed better to align with when prospects are actually interested, which makes sense. Also, at a meta level, I appreciated how the entire book kind of serves as an advertisement for 6sense (which is fine and expected).

I liked a lot of the concrete suggestions and plays in the book for field marketing, sales development, paid ads, email sequences, and more. It's definitely a thought-provoking book about how to most intelligently structure marketing, and I recommend it for marketing and sales leaders.

Below are my main notes and takeaways.

---

1 new era of sales and marketing
Diminishing returns of traditional methods
Customer driven process
Customer experience as backbone of success
Employee experience linked to customer experience
Buyers want to be anonymous
Buyers fragmented in buying teams
Decision by consensus
Buyers resistant
Gated content, spam, cold calls annoying
Dark funnel
Why MQLs useless
Someone filling out form or leaving a card at a trade show unrelated to their interest level
Time to engage when an account is in market
Don’t know what stage someone is at when engage with them
Target accounts
No signs of intent
Don’t engage
Awareness
Searching generic keywords
Help them get to know you
Consideration
Eager to learn
Make sure you’re the one they’re learning from
Decision
Prime time to engage
BDRs call and email
Purchase
Campaigns and content why you’re best solution
Inbound is too late
Different ads based on where account is in journey
Content map and keyword to buying stage
Online hub changes based on what you know about an account
Only send emails to prospects you know a lot about 
If you know nothing, do nothing
AI dashboard of intent keywords to generate content
Only call warm accounts where know value they need
Value card with keywords and personas and why it’s important to them
Dynamic territories based on account status and who is in market
Send competitors visiting your site to your careers page

2 it’s time for CMOs to play offense
Shrinking role of CMO
Advocate for market
Strategic plan
V2MOM
Vision
Aspirational 
Time bound
Values
Methods
Measurable 
Obstacles/owner
Metrics
Prioritized goals
Use historical data to build ICP
In market ICP
Total addressable in market 
Focus on customers with highest intent scores and use those sizes for forecasts
Category design
Need point of view 
Better doesn’t sell. Different does
What’s the relevant trend or undeniable shift in the world that creates urgency 
Name the enemy and customer challenges in making the change 
Promised land teaser vision 
Capabilities to help transition
Proof
Map your message
Consistent words for each part of sales narrative
Develop marchitecture
More far reaching than product feature roadmap
Blueprint to promised land
Quantify value of going from status quo to promised land
Always give internal deadline
Culture
Cheerleader
First Team

3 building customer first tech stack
Accounts over leads
Select the best accounts based on data
Know about them and their intent and buying journey 
Engage the right way personalized by account and persona
Orchestrated account engagement with AI
Customer data platform
Intent data
Account identification
AI predictions
ICP account fit
Persona Contact fit
Contact engagement model
Identifying in market accounts
Third party data
Data segmentation
Orchestration
Display advertising 
Fish with spear not net
Highly personalized
Personalization
Website personalized to customer 
Curated content
Chat bot personalized
Content hub personalized
High value offers 
Sales insights
Prioritize accounts
Put insights into crm
Prospecting dashboard showing which accounts in market
Analytics
Measure and optimize
6sense, drift, people.ai

4 bold new vision in action
Align on revenue operating model
Goals
Data
Metrics
Look at past 12-18 months of win rates and sales cycle times
Look at pipeline vs e venue to see how much needed to achieve goals
Segment out each channel
Figure out how many 6QAs needed to hit goal (ICP that enters purchase consideration stage and good target for BDR to reach out)
Target, awareness, purchase consideration, decision
Find the red
Spots where below plan and shortcomings
Winning by design consulting company
Insight partners case studies
Changing customer beliefs
Design gtm marke plan
Specific campaigns to run
Capacity plan
Three tiers
Tier 1 knock socks off and big deal, big launches, events
One per quarter max
Tier 2 smaller projects
Competitor takeout
Case study
Micro segment of ICP
Tier 3 are bread and butter and always running
Ongoing
Refreshed quarterly
Tied to overall segment
Define objective by campaign
No segment, no creative
Execute using 5 step account based formula
Select best accounts using buyer intent data 
Know about them
Engage the right way
Collab with sales
Track real stuff
Messaging tailored to buying stage
Personalized hub content dynamic based on buying stage
Personalized gift service Alice
Video first content strategy
Video series based on decision stage
Thought leadership content
Customer stories
Inspect what you expect
Accounts engaged
View through rate
Communicate and repeat
Red carpet campaigns
Sending iPads to high value leads with personalized portal in it for new hires at target accounts and bdr immediately reaches out

5 ready to break through
Goss should be difficult
Understand reason behind goals
Rev ops drives and owns virtuous cycle
Buying jobs of each buyer
Dynamic segments
Multi threading with key personas
Value cards for BDRs
Use multichannel strategy with mix of manual and automatic touches across call, voicemail, email, and LinkedIn
Personalize in templates 
Update cadences and content quarterly
Direct mail and Alice gifts
Engage entire buying team

References
Play bigger