Unboxing ABM | EP4: From Demand Gen to Demand Shaping: ABM for Complex Sales with Anand Ramakrishnan

If you are measuring your ABM program by leads alone, you have already set it up to fail.

In this episode of Unboxing ABM, Ankur Saigal sits down with Anand Ramakrishnan, VP of Marketing at Tech Mahindra, to unpack what ABM really looks like for enterprise companies running large, complex deals and why most programs get the fundamentals wrong from day one.

Anand brings 20+ years of experience across IT services and product organizations, from Infosys and HCL to IBM and GE Digital, and shares a refreshingly honest take on what it actually takes to make ABM work at scale.

In this episode, we cover:
→ Why ABM should be your entire go-to-market, not one motion among many
→ Demand shaping vs. demand generation: a distinction that changes everything
→ What one-to-one ABM really demands from a marketer
→ Why the alter ego model is the right frame for account-level marketing
→ How to set expectations with leadership before you measure anything
→ The minimum martech stack to get started
→ Why small pilots, not big launches, are what get sales on board

Anand Ramakrishnan – VP of Marketing, Tech Mahindra
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand01/
Ankur Saigal – Co-Founder & CEO, BambooBox
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankur-saigal-b35313/
Snapshot of the Conversation:

0:00 - Unboxing ABM: Snippet
2:18 - Anand's marketing journey: From Infosys to Tech Mahindra across services and product companies
3:42 - The full-stack marketer: Why breadth across marketing functions matters
6:20 - Product vs. services marketing: The three non-negotiables (Product, Competition, Customer)
8:13 - Empathy as the #1 skill when hiring marketers
9:40 - What ABM means for large IT companies with complex sales cycles
15:48 - Demand shaping vs. demand generation: Why the distinction matters
19:55 - One-to-one vs. one-to-many ABM: How the marketer's role changes
29:26 - ABM playbooks that actually works
34:30 - The hardest part of ABM: Creating content that solves customer problems
38:56 - Three challenges in ABM: Sales alignment, infrastructure, and skills
43:04 - Minimum martech stack required to get started with ABM
44:55 - Advice for marketers: Start small, prove success, then scale

Видео Unboxing ABM | EP4: From Demand Gen to Demand Shaping: ABM for Complex Sales with Anand Ramakrishnan канала BambooBox