Subject matter experts are often scientists, coders, founders, or salespeople who never planned to live on camera or spend their days writing, yet the revenue team still needs their stories. On Scrappy ABM, host Mason Cosby and Phil Pilalas, content strategist at Scrappy ABM, get practical about how to create content with people who don’t think of themselves as “content people.”

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Phil walks through how to get buy-in by generating passion and giving confidence, starting from an environment that already feels natural to the founder or SME. They talk about simple ways to record real conversations, give SMEs a strong hand in review, and place each piece of content at the right point in the progression model. From faces associated with brands to “something is better than nothing,” this conversation shows how 30 minutes a week or an hour a month can turn SME time into subject matter expert content that actually moves accounts forward.

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👤 Guest Bio

• Phil Pilalas is a content strategist at Scrappy ABM who helps subject matter experts document why they do the thing, why they want to do the thing, and why it matters. He produces podcasts, creates micro content, and supports social media so ideas are presented in an efficient, confident way. Phil focuses on giving founders and SMEs a natural venue to talk, helping them feel comfortable on camera, and building a regular cadence of subject matter expert content. He is pretty regular on LinkedIn and points people there to find him.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why getting buy-in from subject matter experts is “a big deal,” and why it starts with generating passion and giving confidence around a specific problem, product, or solution.
• How to find the natural setting where a founder or SME already opens up—one-on-one, a small room, or a simple back-and-forth—and then figure out how to record it without throwing them onstage before they’re ready.
• The role of clear expectations: what the content will look like, how it will sound, the purpose of it, and how a strong approval process keeps SMEs from being surprised when someone says, “Hey, I saw you on LinkedIn.”
• Expectation versus reality in content quality, and why “a couple of people sitting in an office having a conversation” is often good enough compared to heavily produced, studio-style content.
• How SME content fits in an account progression model: founder energy at the top of the funnel, technical depth and numbers at the lower, more meaningful engagement parts of the progression.
• Why it matters to have faces associated with brands—because there is no building sitting on a Zoom call, only human beings with eyes, words, and passion about the problem they want to solve.
• Practical time expectations: 30 minutes a week or an hour a month of recording can fuel a full month of micro content when paired with production, outlines, and a focused theme.
• Messy but real ways to communicate success: podcast growth, opportunities where people say they heard the show, DMs from peers, and correlations between regular SME content, engagement, and pipeline.

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Resources:

• Phil Pilalas on LinkedIn: Phil is pretty regular on LinkedIn; he tells listeners to look for “Phil plus...

Scrappy ABM brings together host Mason Cosby and Yadin Porter de León, Director of Customer Stories and thought leadership over at Heroku, which is a part of Salesforce, to talk about going straight to the top of your target accounts without getting blacklisted.

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Instead of getting stuck in email blasts and third-party events that promise “rubbing elbows” with executives, Yadin shares a high-level framework that starts small with relationships your own C-suite already has, then builds proof points through web stories, webinars, podcasts, and thought leadership videos. The conversation walks through going top down from your CEO and bottoms up from directors and senior managers, doing the hard “eat your vegetables” work of segmentation, and mapping LinkedIn so you make it easy for leaders to say yes.

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Through stories from Angel Med Flight, JetBlue, GE Healthcare, NASA Jet Propulsion Labs, Wells Fargo, Michael Dell, and a seven-figure deal, Mason and Yadin show how time and trust, podcasts, and truly helping individuals with their own goals can turn a focused ABM program into a powerful path to the C-suite.

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👤 Guest Bio

• Yadin Porter de León is the Director of Customer Stories and thought leadership over at Heroku, which is a part of Salesforce. He has built ABM programs in multiple organizations, including smaller companies and large brands, and has engaged C-suite leaders such as the CIO of GE Healthcare, the CIO of NASA Jet Propulsion Labs, the CIO of Angel Med Flight, the new CIO at JetBlue, and senior leaders at Wells Fargo, along with conversations that include Michael Dell. Through podcasts, virtual events, and thought leadership videos, he focuses on making executives look good, delivering value to them as individuals, and creating proof points that help highly focused teams reach their most important accounts.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why so many smaller companies feel frustrated when email blasts and third-party events fail to spark any response from the C-suite—and why “don’t be discouraged” matters.
• How to “start small” by finding C-suite peers who are already “bosom buddies” with your CEO or CTO, and turn a simple web story or webinar into a powerful proof point.
• Using your own C-suite’s LinkedIn connections plus account reps’ insights to identify specific executives, line up warm intros, and make it easy for leaders to say yes.
• Combining top-down and bottoms-up ABM: working with your company’s executives while also delivering value to directors and senior managers inside target accounts.
• Treating segmentation and ABM list building as the “eat your vegetables” work that makes it possible to attack a CIO, CEO, or CMO from both sides with focus.
• Real stories of value: a 45-minute podcast with the CIO of Angel Med Flight that led to a virtual event, a news story, an influential innovators list, and a thought leadership video with a Wells Fargo SVP that helped close a seven-figure deal even though it never went live.
• Why helping individuals switch industries, elevate their brand, or grow an audience often matters more than a gift card—and how that mindset builds long-term trust.
• Mason’s example of following CROs as they switch jobs, helping them land their next gig, and then being brought in to develop their new sales...

Scrappy targeting, small segments, and extreme empathy for the audience sit at the center of this conversation on Scrappy ABM. Host Mason Cosby sits down with Tyler Lessard, CMO at Technology Advice, to move from a broad “B2B marketing leaders or demand gen leaders” ICP to focused clusters of accounts where the team can win day after day.

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Tyler walks through breaking a market into specific industry subsegments like cybersecurity software vendors and HR tech vendors, backing those choices with win rates, average deal size, and field-level sales feedback. The discussion follows how in-person activations at industry conferences, niche newsletters, and original buyer insights research become “reasons to reach out” for sales and SDR teams. Along the way, Mason and Tyler highlight small, specific ABM programs with one rep and a handful of target accounts, measuring success by whether the right people at the right accounts show up, engage, ask questions, and move into real conversations.

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👤 Guest Bio

• Tyler Lessard is the CMO at Technology Advice, a marketing leader who has built ABM in a couple of different organizations and worked with clients that have ABM use cases. In his role as CMO at Technology Advice, he focuses on B2B software, working with segments like cybersecurity software vendors and HR tech vendors. Tyler has spent a lot of time as a head of marketing running different ABM programs, partnering with sales reps, CROs, and CEOs, and helping companies across the board activate their ABM programs by reaching audience members across an ecosystem.

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📌 What We Cover

• Moving from a broad target market of “B2B marketing leaders or demand gen leaders” to specific industry subsegments inside B2B software.
• Using data on where you win—like cybersecurity software vendors and HR tech vendors—to pick two or three segments and identify the top accounts to start with.
• Bringing a focused ICP story to the CRO and CEO with clear context, tactics, and programs instead of just saying, “We want to focus here.”
• Getting buy-in from field-level sales reps by asking them to poke holes in the strategy, combining their anecdotal feedback with quantitative data.
• Building an efficiency story using win rates, average deal sizes, ACV, and the idea that “if we spend a dollar here, the ROI will be higher.”
• Finding channels that actually get in front of the right people when attention is harder than ever, including in-person activations and local events.
• Treating original thought leadership and primary research as genuine value, not “lipstick on a pig,” and using it as an anchor for ABM programs.
• Creating a micro program of “reasons to reach out” so marketing intentionally gives sales and SDRs multiple touchpoints tied to research, webinars, and events.
• Using an in-person happy hour at RSA as a scrappy way to meet marketing leaders from cybersecurity vendors without buying a big conference sponsorship.
• Thinking in terms of watering holes, niche influencers, and newsletters like The Hustle instead of only chasing massive reach.
• Building an annual buyer insights report from first-party data and survey-based data to become a trusted source of market and buyer trends.
• Slicing research by segments like SMB to run smaller, niche activations where even 5–20 of

Scrappy ABM brings practical playbooks that don’t break the bank to B2B teams who want more pipeline and revenue without wasting time and budget. In this conversation, host Mason Cosby sits down with Briana Manrique, head of marketing at Bench Prep, to walk through how a very small marketing team went from casting a wide net to getting more niche and seeing more impact.

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Briana shares how seven years at Bench Prep created space to take a hard, long look at who they serve and where they find success. The team moved away from trying to work with training companies and enterprise software companies and chose to go all in on nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high-stakes learning and exam preparation.

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From doing completely away with paid ads to doubling down on webinars and conferences, Briana explains how channel mix, content, ABM, and brand awareness all had to shift. She talks about the mindset shift from quantity to quality, the slow burn of long sales cycles, the time it really takes to run one-to-one ABM, and why every piece of content now needs a defined objective, audience, and CTA.

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👤 Guest Bio

Briana Manrique is the head of marketing at Bench Prep, where she has stayed for almost seven years and seen the evolution of casting a wide net and then getting a little bit more niche year over year. Leading a very small marketing team, she focuses on nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high-stakes certification and exam preparation.

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A former demand gen marketer, Briana leans into one-to-one ABM, brand, and content that is created with intention and tied to clear objectives, pipeline, and revenue. She is always happy to talk about marketing strategy or ABM and loves learning from others. Connect with Briana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianamanrique/

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📌 What We Cover

• How Briana’s seven years at Bench Prep led from casting a wide net to getting more niche with nonprofit associations and credentialing organizations that serve professional learners with high stakes learning.
• The mindset shift required to niche down, intentionally work with fewer kinds of people, and focus on quality over quantity so the juice is worth the squeeze.
• Why Bench Prep decided to do completely away with paid search and paid social, then double down on webinars and an evolving conferences channel as one of their best performing channels.
• How an inflection point with new and exciting features and use cases outside of just exam prep is pushing the team to reconsider brand awareness channels and re-explore programs that didn’t work in the past.
• The importance of setting expectations that ABM and brand are a slow burn, especially with six- to eighteen-month sales cycles, seasonality, and buyers who may not even know you exist yet.
• How Briana measures success beyond pipeline and revenue, tracking engagement, responses, LinkedIn activity, and any type of win week over week to show traction.
• What it really takes to run one-to-one ABM: the surprising time commitment for account and contact research, ongoing content creation, daily engagement, and why weeks...

Scrappy ABM brings together host Mason Cosby and Jess Martin, head of demand gen and former head of marketing at Metaphor Data, a new data catalog on the block. At a tiny seed round company trying to punch above its weight, ABM was not a nice-to-have; it was the go-to-market strategy to secure specific logos and move on to the next level.

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Jess walks through how she built a really lean but scrappy program focused on hyper-targeted accounts from a reverse-engineered ICP, account prioritization, and a tightly validated target account list. The conversation covers personalized outreach, founder-led thought-leadership ads, tiny virtual events, cold calling, surveys, and a buying-committee-first approach. Mason and Jess highlight account penetration, alternative lists, and the idea that less is more, especially at an early stage. They close with “scrappy does not necessarily mean cheap,” testing, and using founder branding as a powerful part of ABM.

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👤 Guest Bio

Jess Martin is the head of demand gen who stepped in as head of marketing for Metaphor Data, a new data catalog on the block. She built a really lean but scrappy ABM program for a tiny seed round company trying to punch above its weight, where ABM was the go-to-market strategy to lock down more customers and get the right logos on the site. Jess focuses on hyper-targeted accounts from the ICP, personalized outreach, tiny virtual events, surveys, cold calling, and thought leadership ads. She loves early stage, demand gen, and ABM, and invites people, especially in early stage, to hit her up on LinkedIn to talk demand gen and ABM.

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📌 What We Cover

• How a tiny seed round company made ABM the go-to-market strategy to get specific logos on the site and secure a Series A round.
• Reverse engineering the ICP by looking at who they win with, who they lose to, and who they never want to waste time on again.
• Using Keyplay, Apollo, Sales Nav, and BuiltWith to build and enrich a two-tier target account list of about 170 accounts, plus internal validation with initials from sales and product.
• Setting tier one at 20 “white glove” accounts and tier two from 21 through roughly 150, and aligning this with limited headcount and bandwidth.
• Minimum viable list size thinking for LinkedIn and Meta audiences, and aiming for three to five contacts per account on the buying committee.
• Running thought leadership ads on LinkedIn with founders, focusing on impression share, awareness, branding, and targeted air cover rather than driving clicks.
• Tiny virtual events and round tables for specific verticals, using timely issues like compliance and new laws to pull three highly valuable attendees from the target account list.
• Filling the outbound gap by having marketing do cold calling with a simple Google Form survey, branding the company, complimenting senior data leaders, and proving the need for an SDR.
• Creating a custom ChatGPT “BDR” prompt to scan 10-K reports, press releases, and news for each account and generate study guides and personalized messaging for every member of the buying committee.
• Measuring success with account penetration, website visits, engagement with thought leadership ads, and swapping in an alternate list when accounts stay dark or become customers.
• Lessons learned: scrappy does not necessarily mean cheap, budget and time are both crucial, less is more on accounts and AEs, and founder branding can be more valuable than company branding for a long time.

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🔗 Resources...