Honni Marks (1:1 Strategic ABM Lead at Red Hat) joined Eric Gruber on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss:
- What it means to take a strategic 1:1 ABM approach.
- The role 1:1 ABM should play in an account-based GTM program and how it should be used to expand key accounts.
- The executive engagement that’s needed for a 1:1 ABM program and how we should enable executive engagement teams.
- How to leverage data to tell the account story vs. the industry and persona story
- The 1:1 ABM content that’s needed.
Listen to the podcast with Honni below – and then check out our lessons learned from the podcast and our additional 1:1 ABM podcasts:
Here Are the Lessons Learned From This Podcast with Honni and Eric:
- Instead of doing 1:1, most teams are taking a camouflage 1: few and 1: many approach as GTM teams miss the personal relevance. They may personalize landing pages or have digital sales rooms and ads that have the look and feel that it is personalized for target accounts. But, content, messaging, outreach and interactions are all focused on the industry and persona story vs. the account situational story.
- Strategic 1:1 ABM is a highly targeted and customized sales, marketing and customer success team program where everyone is having high-value, relevant interactions with your top, most valuable customers. You’re providing marketing that is working toward a common goal with a customer. Unless you have a deep understanding of what the future or existing customer is trying to achieve and what their business objectives are, it’s one-way marketing. You need to look at 1:1 ABM as a 2-way conversation where both the customer and your GTM teams are working together for a common goal. ABM is not about campaigns. It’s about the individual and collective interactions that GTM teams are having, and the account experiences they are delivering as they create deep, meaningful relationships.
- 1:1 ABM focuses on the specific business concerns and the specific business problems that specific accounts are struggling with – and not industry and persona pain points. That’s automatically a 1: few or a 1: many program.
- With 1:1 ABM, you do not focus on scaling activities, tactics, interactions and the account experiences. You scale the impact you have on revenue because you’re so aligned with the customer, and you value engineered account experiences to match their needs where you can provide them with the most relevant value and at the same time provide you with the greatest revenue streams possible YoY.
- 1:1 ABM is not for sourcing new accounts to the pipeline – that’s what your 1: few and 1: many programs should do. Your 1:1 programs should be about getting accounts to revenue and about expanding your top customers. At Red Hat, they are mostly reserving 1:1 ABM programs for current customers that have a lengthy history with the company, lots of engaged contacts and lots of data. The goal is to further increase adoption across the company and to drive expansion as most of the companies are on a global scale.
- Executive engagement is absolutely key to the success of 1:1 strategic ABM programs for account expansion as conversations need to happen at every level of the organization. But these teams need the understand the account story and have the data and insights at their fingertips. The teams need to know where they may have to potentially reframe the buyers’ thoughts so they can create the a-ha moments. They need to know the situational stories to tell that match the account story
- To help tell the account story, Red Hat creates account specific reports with the goal of helping the customer see their journey with Red Hat so far, what the present state is, and what the next steps are. It addresses the why stay, why evolve and why expand conversations. These reports can be challenging when you have 20+ years worth of data but you have to think about the story that the data is telling and spell it out.
- GTM teams also need the 1:1 ABM content for the selling conversations that need to happen and the internal conversations that buyers are having. GTM teams are delivering great thought leadership in silos but it doesn’t support the acquisition, retention or expansion conversation.
Additional 1:1 ABM Podcasts to Listen to:
- Podcast with Nancy Carlyle Harlan shares how UiPath uses 1:1 ABM to drive account expansion
- Podcast 1 with Tyler Pleiss at Movable Ink on how the ABM triangle is irrelevant and the role 1:1 ABM plays in an account-based GTM
- Podcast 2 with Tyler Pleiss on how he used 1:1 ABM at Clari to win in 3 new markets that are years behind when it comes to RevOps