ABM is not about getting accounts to the pipeline. It’s about getting accounts to revenue and existing accounts to even greater revenue growth. ABM should impact ACV, ARR, GRR, and, most importantly, NRR. But, many GTM teams struggle with moving high-value accounts to revenue. They’re challenged with accounts going dark after sales engagement. This is why Spencer Wixom (CEO of the Brooks Group and former SVP of Marketing and Sales and Chief Customer Officer at Challenger) joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) on the ABM Done Right Podcast below to discuss account-based selling approaches and the account-based enablement that’s needed to accelerate stuck accounts to revenue.
Here Are the Key Points from This ABM Done Right Podcast with Spencer and Eric:
- According to studies by The Brooks Group, sales and GTM teams are the weakest in these two capability areas: understanding the problem that target organizations have and influencing late decision-making to drive a consensus and move accounts to revenue. Teams are not getting the account intelligence they need to dig into the needs of the business, the concerns of the business, and what the business wants to do so they can be relevant across the buyer’s journey and ensure that the deal actually happens. Click here to see the account intelligence that’s needed.
- No one ever needs to buy unless they want to do something. The question is not what companies need to buy. It should be – what do they want to do? By focusing on what companies need to buy, GTM teams are missing a big part of the story that is relevant and critical to solving the problem that the business has. This is why GTM teams need to go three deep in capturing account insights:
- What do they need to buy?
- What is it that the account is trying to accomplish as a company, as a department/division, and as a buying team?
- What is driving them emotionally to the action?
- GTM teams need to go beyond pain points as they make your solution a nice-to-have vs. a must-have. You can only become a must-have when sales and GTM teams align with key accounts’ specific, strategic priorities vs. relying on industry and persona pain points. Plus, when companies fear pain and panic, they shut down. They don’t take risks and capture opportunities.
- The emotional center that is a high dopamine-rich center is….” Seeking.” All human beings are seeking something in their situation or business that is better, further, and more advanced than what they are today, If sales and GTM teams can figure out what buyers are seeking and align a solution to support that want – then sales and GTM teams can align with something that is driving the buyers which automatically creates urgency. The C-suite and VPs are seeking to do something different and be something different. When sales and GTM teams align with these motivations, they become a must-have, and GTM teams can create the buyer experience that the C-suite and VPs want. Buyer groups disappear because they do not feel that we are supporting them in the “seeking” they’re doing. Buyer groups that go dark do not see sales and GTM teams as a resource in supporting what they want to do. This is why teams need to take a more personal account-based approach. Read this article on how a 1:1 personal account-based approach wins with status quo accounts.
- Sales enablement today is not enough. It’s too general and does not support account-based selling. It is not agile to change GTM interactions and delivered experiences based on how buyers engage with sales and the business case. It doesn’t help sales and GTM teams win the internal conversations happening behind closed doors where you’ll have champions that have hopeful possibility and naysayers that are doubtful. While sales and GTM teams cannot resolve all of the doubts, they need to be able to respond to the struggling moments that sit at the center of every deal. Moments that need to be listened to, understood, solved, catered to, and reframed. With the right enablement, sales can reframe buyers and build enough hope, possibility, and excitement that enough buyers can push the deal forward despite the risk. Click here to learn about our account-based enablement services.
- We need to lay the foundation with content that focuses on the account story, the reframes that need to take place, gaps across the company, and impacts. We must ensure we’re relevant and represent the facts in their specific business so sales and GTM teams are relevant. We need content that fits the purpose, connects the dots, shows how the content is contextually relevant to target accounts – and is driven by account intelligence. Content must reflect insights based on research and what we learned in interacting with them. Listen to this podcast on the 17+ data sources you should use when creating ABM content, messaging, and motions.
- Sales, marketing, and customer success teams must align with what customers want to do and the outcomes they want to achieve. Because GTM teams are not aligning with what future and existing customers want, they lose VP and C-suite engagement. There is a stall out. If we’re not showing how our solutions adapt to their evolving and shifting priorities, they will find someone who will.
Here’s a Podcast with Spencer’s Former Colleagues at Challenger That Have Also Moved On…
