Megan Bowen (CEO of Refine Labs) mentioned on LinkedIn
“The most important discipline that mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS companies need to be cultivating is…Change management. This is especially true for successful companies that have been around for 1-2 decades, that have been able to more easily manage the recent turbulence in B2B SaaS over the last few years and are still executing an outdated GTM strategy.
The relative success of companies at this stage is hiding GTM inefficiencies so many don’t even perceive it’s a problem. This is the biggest risk for these companies. They are not seeing and acknowledging this is a real threat to their long-term survival. If companies don’t start to change now, their ability to grow sustainably will degrade with increasing speed.”
At Personal ABM, we believe that change goes beyond evolving just the digital marketing strategies and it must include a mindset shift, a measurement shift and changes across the entire GTM strategy and execution. The issue we often see is that GTM teams retrofit ABM on top of existing sales/marketing processes, content, messaging and experiences. They make ABM about better targeting vs. changing the account experiences that are delivered.
ABM should change…
• How you think about your business
• How you differentiate from competitors
• How you package your solutions
• How you communicate your value
• How you engage buyers across the organization across the buying journey and customer lifecycle
• How you structure your GTM teams
• How you win, protect and expand accounts as 1 team
• How you measure success.
• Plus much more…
During this episode, Kristina Jaramillo, Eric Gruber and Joel Harrison (Founder and Editor-at-Large at B2B Marketing) discuss the changes that ABM should bring:
Here Are the Key Insights From This Podcast:
• While there are many agencies that will bolt-on ABM to their extensive list of services, ABM is not something you just bolt on. It’s not just something to do in addition to your programs or just another approach where you are targeting better. At the B2B Global ABM Conference that Joel Hosted and Moderated, marketing leaders shared how success was not coming from bolting on ABM alongside other things and hoping that it works. Success happened when ABM was embedded across organizations and it was used as a vehicle for change – including how teams thought about marketing.
• The problem that many GTM teams face lies in the fact that teams are going right to identifying their ICP (not even making it predictable), selecting their account list and putting together campaigns without even assessing the current state of the GTM and addressing where changes need to be made. Teams are just retrofitting ABM. Click here to read our article on how most teams are not ABM ready.
• ABM should drive sales and marketing alignment transformation. For example, Joel discussed how David Keene, CMO, Wipro mentioned at the conference that they eliminated traditional lead attribution battles between departments by stopping pipeline source tracking and instead focusing on total pipeline as a shared goal. Previously, marketing claimed 50% of pipeline, alliances 20%, etc., leading to unproductive competition. Click here to listen to the ABM Done Right Podcast with David to get even more info about their ABM program.
• ABM should change how you use and compensate SDRs. At the conference, Nick Webb, CMO at CloudPay shared that they transformed the SDR function from inbound lead management to proactive outbound targeting of strategic accounts. They also changed compensation models to incentivize focus on ICP accounts rather than lead volume.
• Sales, marketing and customer success teams are working on different timelines, different metrics and different goals. They are working on different models and systems. They have different expectations and are incentivized differently. They are operating on 2 completely different planets. ABM should remove the silos, change how the teams operate and change how they work together. It can even change the structural organization of your GTM teams. Doing a complete GTM assessment, uncovering the hard truths that all teams need to see and understanding where the red in the business is can help bring the teams together. Click here to see what we include in our GTM assessment.
• ABM should drive GTM strategy transformation – For example, Joel talked about how Ryan Almond, global marketing and ABX leader for Henkel discussed at the conference how they shifted from product-centric messaging to outcome-focused industry solutions. Ryan talked about how they used ABM to elevate conversations from technical specifications to business value, particularly in the data center industry. He discussed how they created cross-functional integration, defined the role that each team would play in ABM and created a village approach to account management. And he stressed that ABM was not about changing campaigns – it’s fundamentally about changing how you GTM.
• Kristina shared during the podcast that she recently talked to the CMO at a channel sales tech platform and they described their ABM program by the tech they used. They talked about being a case study for 6sense. But when she dug in deeper, she learned that they consistently win deals that are $70K and below but consistently lose deals to Salesforce and others that are above $70K a year. Now, they should see if they have the capabilities that larger enterprises are looking for – if not they need to do better ICP management to make sure that their targeting is with accounts they’d predictably win. If they have the capabilities then they need to change how the teams interact, the stories they tell and their content to teach for differentiation against Salesforce and show how the gaps in legacy platforms will impact the accounts strategic objectives. We have to focus on how buyers feel after each engagement and each touchpoint and change the account experience so buyers feel more confident in moving forward with us.
• ABM should drive customer engagement transformation. For example, Joel mentioned that Annelie Kniep, senior marketing manager at Splunk, discussed at the conference how they transformed customer workshops from technical product demonstrations to business-focused immersive experiences to drive C-suite engagement. Eric also shared how ABM should focus teams and future and existing customer engagements on driving the greatest revenue streams possible YoY vs. focusing on whitespace and the next product should we sell. It should be about creating the most value for customers while providing the greatest revenue and CLV growth.
• ABM should change how we measure success. Too often MQAs have become the new MQLs and teams are focused on pipeline. But, ABM programs should be focused on are we able to go upmarket, are we able to get C-level and VP engagement, are we able to drive stage progression with high value accounts, are we able to improve enterprise win rates and increase deal sizes and most importantly are we able to impact NRR growth.
Here Are Additional Resources to Help You Drive Change with ABM:
• Joel’s article: Forget tactics and technologies: the point of ABM is transformation
• ABM Done Right Podcast: How to Assess Your GTM and Increase Your ABM Readiness
• ABM Readiness Article: Real examples of how ABM teams are not ABM ready
• ABM Done Right Podcast with Alex Pappas: How he overhauled Venafi’s ABM program
• ABM Case Study: How DAT increased their ABM readiness to win with more top Gartner rated supply chains