David Keene, the European CMO for Wipro, recently joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) on the ABM Done Right Podcast to discuss his ABM hot takes including:
- How ABM shouldn’t replace demand gen and brand marketing pillars.
- How we shouldn’t think so much about MQLs or even MQAs and how we need a narrow view of the funnel where we are focused on accounts that have a very low chance of losing and a very high chance of moving to revenue at a high ACV
- How 1:1 ABM is about the people inside the accounts, we want to land and expand, so it’s important to incorporate personality-based marketing into your ABM program.
Listen to this podcast with David Keene:
Here Are the Lessons Learned From This Podcast with David Keene and Eric Gruber:
- ABM should not replace demand gen, brand marketing and other marketing pillars. Forrester analysts have come out saying that ABM is winning. People have been talking about demand gen converging into ABM. But ABM shouldn’t replace any of the marketing pillars – it should be supporting all the different pillars to create an account-based GTM. ABM alone will not drive the revenue results you desire. Brand marketing and demand gen without ABM will lose and ABM without brand marketing, demand gen and other elements in your marketing mix will lose.
- The heart of ABM is about relevancy. Too many GTM teams focus on industry and persona relevancy and they do not have the right content, the right stories, the right messaging, the right interactions and the right account experiences. They are not increasing the relevance as they go from 1: industry to 1: segment, to 1: few to 1:1.
- You do not want a big, wide funnel filled with opportunities that do not move forward. Everyone focuses on MQAs and MQLs and they focus on getting accounts to pipeline. But, especially if you have limited time, resources and budget – you want to focus on those accounts that have a very low chance of losing and a high chance of winning at a high ACV. If accounts do not progress and if they aren’t closing at a higher ACV or staying and growing with you – then what good is that MQA. The focus should be on revenue and lifetime value and not MQAs. You want the customers that will stay with you and grow and become the back-bone of your business.
- We need to be agile. The thesis that we have around the future or existing customer, the data points we have, the understanding of the ICP and the buying community will shift over time and the fundamental approach to our ABM programs and engagement will need to shift as well. We need more agile thinking vs. the waterfall thinking that many traditional marketing teams take when it comes to ABM. This is where 1:1 ABM will be important as here you should learn from the individual interactions and account experiences to quickly make changes to your account-based GTM. You make changes based on what’s happening vs. a hypothesis.
- You can have 3 similar accounts with very similar value propositions but the buying committees are different. It’s like having 3 similar chess games, but the pieces are in slightly different positions on the board. We have to think differently about the 3 different scenarios as you have different people, different politics, different priorities. We need to understand the buyers in the companies we are engaging with. We have to understand their personalities so GTM teams can engage and interact with them in the right way. We need to understand how the different buyers interact with each other so we can navigate the account toward a revenue win.
- 1:1 is not for getting accounts to pipeline but its to get high-value accounts to revenue that have shown engagement or there are some “whispers” that something is happening. If you apply ABM before an RFP comes through, you can influence and create the buying vision vs. just reacting to predefined needs. Now, the competitors will have to prove that they can support the vision you created.
Lindsay Baggett at Tanium Provided Even More ABM Hot Takes in Her Episode Below: