It’s Valentines Day so let’s spread the ABM love! Depending on your Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, it can be challenging to give equal ABM love to every sales rep in your organization.
When you’re selecting accounts for your ABM strategy, it’s important to build your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and stick to it. Using data and insights to carefully select the most valuable accounts where marketing and sales will jointly focus resources is what differentiates ABM from other marketing efforts.
Remember: ABM is not for every account, it’s for the right accounts. ABM is a bigger investment than other areas of marketing, so choose wisely.
But if you want sales to love ABM as much as you do, it’s important to make an effort to allow multiple sales territories or sales leaders to experience the benefits of ABM.
Two examples:
Imagine your ICP is focused on large, banking and finance customers. You pull a list of accounts and see that most of the accounts are in the northeast US. You could…
1. Focus your efforts in the northeast US, but spread the ABM love by selecting 1 or 2 accounts per sales rep in that territory.
2. Even though most top accounts are in the northeast, you could spread the ABM love by selecting the top banking and finance accounts on your list from each territory. This could be 10 from the northeast US, 5 from the west US, 7 from the UK, etc.
Example 1 is a great option for an ABM pilot where you’re still looking to get buy-in from sales and the business. Find that sales leader that is willing to test ABM and concentrate efforts there. Once you show success in one territory, I guarantee the other sales teams will be asking for ABM in their territories.
Example 2 is a great option if your ABM program is more mature or if you know you’re going to expand ABM. You’ll need more sales leaders and reps to be familiar with ABM from the beginning so that it’s easier to scale. Then when it’s time to expand to more banking and finance accounts or expand to retail or another cluster that matches your ICP, your sales teams will be ready to go because they know the process pretty evenly across teams.
Shifting to ABM is often a big change and change is hard. Make that change easier and more fun by looking for ways to spread the ABM love.
What are some other ways you’ve spread the ABM love to your sales teams? Share your examples in the comments!
Love, Nicole
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