How to Use the Six ABM Processes to Align Sales and Marketing and Drive Real Results. ABM is built on six processes that flip the focus from generating leads to courting the companies you want to do business with. But you can drive real results by effectively using the six processes: Selecting accounts Discovering contacts Developing insights Generating account-relevant content Delivering account-specific interactions Orchestrating account-focused plays 1. How it aligns Sales and Marketing Account selection as a first step brings your marketing and sales teams together from the start, because both have valuable insights about accounts and communications. Sales has the direct experience with clients to know what makes a good target account, and where your company already has relationships within the target account. How it aligns Sales and Marketing Good salespeople learn and remember as much as they can about their clients—from their business needs to their favorite sports teams. Create hyper-personalized content for Tier 1 accounts that uses their specific business model, data, industry trends, challenges, etc. For Sales, the core interactions include human email, phone and voicemail, and personalized social outreach. But when the interactions are coordinated across channels, alignment is the result. How it aligns Sales and Marketing Orchestration is all about Sales and Marketing working together in coordinated, account-focused plays.
Account-based marketing (ABM) addresses the biggest problem faced by B2B marketers in the last decade: Traditional strategies focus on high-velocity, low-value deals, and not enough on the major accounts.
ABM is built on six processes that flip the focus from generating leads to courting the companies you want to do business with.
ABM isn’t a quick fix: It takes patience and a long-term commitment. But you can drive real results by effectively using the six processes:
- Selecting accounts
- Discovering contacts
- Developing insights
- Generating account-relevant content
- Delivering account-specific interactions
- Orchestrating account-focused plays
1. Select accounts: Get Sales and Marketing Together from the start
Selecting your target accounts is the most important step in any ABM program. An effective plan will focus on a limited number of accounts; if you choose unwisely, you’ll be wasting time and resources on accounts that don’t amount to anything.
How to do it
Start by creating a profile of your ideal client, based on past business experiences, business compatibility, a growing market, and committed account managers. You can use a combination of analytics—such as firmographics, technographics, and intent data—and old-fashioned gut instinct to make your selections.
Depending on the number of accounts you want to target, prioritize them into tiers that range from one-to-one campaigns to industry-specific campaigns. This process is as much an art as it is a science.
How it aligns Sales and Marketing
Account selection as a first step brings your marketing and sales teams together from the start, because both have valuable insights about accounts and communications.
Marketing will have a lot of data available. Sales has the direct experience with clients to know what makes a good target account, and where your company already has relationships within the target account.
The process of agreeing on the target accounts will necessitate alignment.
2. Discover contacts: Pool resources for greater wins
After Sales and Marketing generate a list of target accounts, the team will need a list of actual people at those companies. Discovering contacts is a process of finding the right people for each key persona at each target account.
How to do it
Start by researching your existing data to identify ideal buyer profiles, followed by an investigation of information sources, such as…
- LinkedIn and other social media channels
- Company websites
- Industry forums
Other methods include setting up a call program that has sales reps call the accounts directly, purchasing contact data from reputable data providers, using predictive data sources, establishing list-building partners, and using a company’s email format to figure out email addresses based on names.
Scores of great brands provide software and service platforms for all those tasks, and more.
How it aligns Sales and Marketing
To discover the most contacts, Sales and Marketing will need to pool their resources. Sales has data from past sales calls and networking; Marketing has data from previous lead generation efforts. Both are valuable sources for identifying ideal buyer profiles.
3. Develop insights: Two heads are better than one
Accounts are more likely to respond to marketing that is customized to their specific needs. Once a list of contacts at each target account is…
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