The foundations for long-term success
There has always been a battle between sales and marketing which drives from ROI, KPIs and conversions. ABM will allow you to remove this and have them working as one cohesive unit. It's been reported that 56% of aligned companies meet their revenue goals, and an additional 19% manage to beat their targets.
Sales are vital in providing marketing teams with key insights into the market and customer. As a result, setting the right foundations in place by ensuring everyone is aligned in their roles and responsibilities is essential for the long-term success of ABM. I’ve implemented ABM campaigns and worked with sales and marketing teams from the UK to the Silicon Valley, and having two teams who are used to working in silos, suddenly expected to work as one, is never easy. From experience, you need to ease teams together and get their buy-in first.
It’s hard work breaking old habits, but I would try to embark on the following:
Team workshops
Get the teams together regularly to review marketing and sales approaches. This gives you a perfect opportunity to frame the conversations and get the teams talking. Highlight how the buyer has evolved in their expectations, how we now need to communicate, build trust and engage with them. They will soon see that a new approach is needed, and that ABM fits the bill.
Target Accounts
Encourage the team to create a list of target accounts together. This will allow them to look for overlaps and create a clear picture of what the ideal account looks like, building a tiering system. Off the back of this, you can open wider conversations around lead scoring systems.
Personas
Marketing needs insight, so work with sales and start to create some solid personas. This process is all about the details. While marketing can get the basics, the real insights are held by sales, so again, this exercise is great to get the teams interacting and collaborating.
Content
Marketing has the data on which pieces perform the best in a digital world, but sales will have the insight as to which approach works best with real people when it comes to conversations, meetings and closing deals. Work as one when it comes to creating content plans, researching subject matters and creating an authentic tone of voice.
Integration
All the principles of ABM can and should be applied to your multi-channel strategy, tactics and outreach. Be it pushing out content via your blog, social channels, PR, ads, retargeting, OOH, direct mail, calls or emails, it all needs to be integrated. This will help you influence the culture of your business and mindset of your teams to appeal to the customers of today.