When it comes to the adoption of Account-Based Marketing, it’s all over but the shoutin’. These days, about 95% of B2B companies report having an ABM program. After years of preaching ABM’s virtues, we evangelists can finally take a breather.
Then again, ABM adoption doesn’t mean ABM success. Of the companies surveyed above, only 13% said their sales and marketing teams are fully aligned on ABM. Further, a LinkedIn study revealed that only 10% of revenue pros say their teams are aligned on strategy and process. An anemic 3% said they’re challenge-free when it comes to messaging and content.
These disconnects are a waste of time, effort, and money for revenue teams:
- According to the Boston Consulting Group, this misalignment contributes to $2 trillion annually in B2B waste.
- Poorly aligned sales and marketing teams see 38% lower win rates and 18% lower customer retention rates.
Alex Olley, the co-founder and CRO of gifting platform Reachdesk, is upfront about his own misadventures with misalignment.
As he explained on a recent episode of 6sense’s Revenue Makers podcast, he previously struggled with achieving alignment and unlocking ABM success.
“I think the big thing I learned was that you have to map out the workflow first and foremost and get the process nailed down,” he said. “Try and test some of that if you can, before you try and put the system in. I think we tried to do it the other way around, so that lost us a bit of time.”
So how can organizations overcome misalignment pitfalls? Experts point out two foundational elements that provide the mindset and processes for success:
- Effective change management, and
- Smarter account targeting
If your company can successfully align itself — and its ABM strategy — on these efforts, it will solve common ABM issues that derail rev-gen efforts and free your revenue team to focus on what really matters: marketing, messaging, engagement, and execution.
Here’s how to set the foundations of alignment through change management and smarter account targeting.
Change Management Done Right
Coaxing an entire revenue team — from sales, marketing, ops, and beyond — to wholeheartedly embrace ABM is really hard. People don’t like change, especially when they’re convinced that traditional approaches work best for them and their organization.
But to make your ABM initiative truly transformational and successful, team members must adapt for big changes. Getting full buy-in may not be easy, but the upsides are clear and obvious: 60% of organizations that use a formal change management process meet their project objectives.
Four Change Management Pillars for Full ABM Buy-in
Let’s look at a few ways you can see the results you want.
1: Get Executive Buy-In
When Reachdesk successfully shifted to an ABM approach, the company’s win rate nearly doubled. But first the company’s internal champions needed buy-in from up top.
“Taking the board along for the ride, that’s not an easy one.” Reachdesk’s Olley explained. “It was that analogy of fishing in smaller pools with spears rather than trying to boil the ocean. That was the analogy that really resonated” with the board, which led to executive buy-in.
2: Build True Alignment Across the Revenue Team
Full alignment doesn’t happen overnight. Just ask the folks at Okta, a 6sense customer that successfully implemented their own ABM program several years ago.
“It all starts with a plan and having clear alignment around how we go-to-market in marketing, how sales is aligned to their territories, and how marketing influences those theaters,” explains Laura Wagner, a former Okta employee. That structure, coupled with communication on a regular cadence, helped to foster true alignment, she said.
Here are some concrete ways to start building alignment across your revenue team, and pave the way for successful ABM adoption:
- Align on common goals: A key component of successfully leveraging ABM is to abandon a lead-centric approach to marketing and align on unified KPIs. Later in the post we’ll talk about the actual metrics you should be tracking.
- Laser-focus on your ICP: Sales and marketing activities that don’t target your ICP are unlikely to move the needle. When sales and marketing both agree on the right accounts to target, they can work better in tandem. If marketing feels like they’re delivering enough leads, but sales feels like they’re not the right fit, then you’re misaligned. Work on your ICP, advises Alex Kracov, ex-VP of Marketing at Lattice and now-CEO of Dock.
- Fully track the buyer’s journey: Seventy percent of a buyer’s journey happens before they make contact with you. True alignment comes when marketing and sales both completely understand the buying journey. Intent data (more on that later) will align your teams from the beginning to the end of a buying journey.
3: Address ‘Residual Hesitancy’
Even long after you’ve activated your ABM program, some members of your revenue team may still be skeptical and resist using it. Rachel Tiow, an outbound advisor who successfully oversaw the implementation of 6sense when she worked for Auth0, calls this cynicism “residual hesitancy.”
For these folks, Tiow advises:
- What to say to outspoken ABM skeptics: “The cake won’t eat itself, and you won’t know how it tastes until you take a bite,” Tiow says. In other words, you won’t know how useful a new tool is until you use it for yourself.
- Acknowledge that some aspects of ABM may not benefit every team or individual. But be willing to find ways around things that may appear to be roadblocks.
- Follow the sales tactic of stacking up objections in advance and handling them before they come up.
- Build allies who are raving fans of the tool and can influence any naysayers when you aren’t there.
Constant, open communication is also crucial. Soliciting feedback should be an ongoing effort. Communication channels such as Slack group chats and regular office hours should remain accessible, and there should be opportunities at regular intervals — such as QBRs and Sales Kick-Offs — to talk about ABM strategies, use cases, and case studies.
4: Use Metrics that Actually Matter
Ditching traditional marketing and sales approaches means ditching hand-wavy analytics and vanity metrics. To get a truly accurate view of your ABM program’s success, start tracking influence and opportunities at the most ready-to-buy accounts.
Here are some of the common shifts you should make in your reporting:
- MQLs to In-Market Accounts: MQLs are dead. Because you’re shifting to full revenue team alignment, you want to measure how many accounts are in-market and being influenced by all your activities.
- Contacts Reached to Buying Team Members Engaged: Modern buying teams are large — 14 to 23 people according to Gartner — and deals are complex. The more of the buying team you are actively engaging, the higher your chances of success.
- Page View to Relevant Content Consumed: Generic page views — without any insights into who is viewing the page — don’t reveal if an active buyer is viewing your content. Track what content active buyers are reviewing to reveal the products and solutions they care about.
- Number of Leads to Account Velocity: Rather than counting leads, count accounts and watch how closely in-market accounts progress through buying stages. Account velocity is an indicator of pipeline health, and measures how quickly you convert opportunities into revenue, and is a much stronger indicator of where you have opportunities to improve your revenue generation processes.
(Check out this blog post to discover additional metrics that are more relevant and impactful for revenue teams to track.)
Account Targeting Done Right
The number one thing GTM teams can do to start increasing win rates? Targeting the buyers that are interested and in-market.
It sounds easy, but it’s a big change from traditional sales and marketing tactics.
Because only 10% of your TAM is in-market at a given time, it’s crucial you can find those accounts — because any GTM activities targeted at the other 90% won’t generate immediate results.
Reachdesk’s Olley stressed the importance of targeting in-market accounts during his Revenue Makers appearance. “Power forward with your go-to-market motion by not selling to cold accounts and really focusing on those ones that are in buying stage.”
According to 6sense research, companies looking to identify these accounts should be investing in intent data to spot which accounts are in-market and predictive analytics to help prioritize outreach.
Finding in-market accounts requires capturing the research buyers are doing — revealing their interest in products and solutions like yours.
6sense helps you find real-time buying interest through buyer activity like:
- Visiting your website, reading your content, and browsing your product pages.
- Searching the web for keywords specific to your industry and products.
- Browsing review websites like G2 to compare you with your competitors.
All of these activities add up to reveal the picture of a buyer that’s interested in you, making it easier for your GTM teams to target and engage with the right prospect at the right time.
Conclusion
ABM is everywhere today. But not every organization doing ABM doing it right, and that’s hurting their performance.
Your organization needs to set a strong foundation with smart change management principles and unlock stronger sales and marketing alignment through better account targeting. Nailing those two areas will pave the way forward for ABM success.
Interested in learning more about implementing ABX across an entire organization? Watch this real-life success story.
