Talking about “the buyer” no longer makes sense for most B2B sales organizations. “The buyer” is no longer a single person; it is a unit, a whole group of decision-makers that participate in the sale each playing a unique role… To market and sell to all those people, companies must change their strategy from focusing on individuals (traditional demand generation) to focusing on accounts (ABM).
Account Based Marketing (ABM) is the latest buzz word but it is not a silver bullet. It is not a silver bullet because it only takes into account how Marketing has to change what they do. The part that is missing from most ABM strategies is the fact that sales has to change the way they sell too.
At the end of the day if the strategy doesn’t result in revenue, who cares? #
That is why we are on a mission to move the market to an acronym that makes more sense. ABR for Account Based Revenue.
ABR starts with one question: where do you want your revenue to come from? It’s a matter of focusing on the accounts most likely to bring in big revenue and get you to your goals faster. Do you want to run faster and harder to stack up dozens more SMB and mid-market logos? Or do you want to expand your average selling price within bigger accounts?
An ABR playbook that gets you wins #
ABR is a lot of work, and it’s probably not the right strategy for a startup or a company with an average contract value (ACV) of $50,000 or less. If that’s you, just getting better at traditional demand generation can get the job done. But if you have an enterprise organization or you’re selling into a finite set of accounts, you need to be thinking about ABR.
ABR requires collaboration between your sales, marketing and customer success folks, as well as your executives. Together, this team determines a series of plays that are hyper-personalized to the target account. That might include lunch invitations from your CEO to the account CEO, super-targeted ads or even good old fashioned direct mail. You’ll use those tools in your toolbox that make the most sense for the particular business you’re selling to. This is what it takes to get to engagement, which nowadays, is the hardest part of the sales process.
Artificial intelligence for the ABR organization #
If ABR makes sense for your organization, it will require that your team have numerous sales conversations. Let’s say your SDR finally gets someone on the phone, then sets up a discovery call with an AE, who takes a deeper dive. The content in those conversations is gold and should be used to further personalize your emails, the content you deliver and your next conversations. If you ignore all of that engagement information, you’re personalizing your ABR plays based on guesstimates alone. This is risky, especially when there are better options.
For more meaningful insights, better conversations and the best ABR results, take advantage of AI tools that let you X-ray every conversation and meeting. Rise above the noise and be that one company that makes hyper personalization a reality. No two companies are exactly alike and neither should one ABR play be a mirror image of the next. Be different, be better and win bigger deals!
Trish Bertuzzi is the Best Selling Author of The Sales Development Playbook and founder of The Bridge Group, Inc. She and her team have worked with over 350+ B2B technology companies helping them to unleash the power of Inside Sales. They are on a mission to help companies build repeatable pipeline and accelerate growth using both traditional and account based strategies.