Richa Pande (Global Head of ABM and Content Strategy for HP) says that ABM demands absolute customer obsession. To us at Personal ABM, this means that sales, marketing, leadership, and customer success teams need to be relevant at each touchpoint to the accounts they want to win, protect, and expand. This includes LinkedIn profiles, as more than 65% of buyers will review profiles before they consider connecting with sales and marketing. Yet 95% of LinkedIn profiles are irrelevant to buyers. This is happening even though organizations like NetApp are busy turning their inside sales teams into digital sales response teams. In the podcast below, Kristina Jaramillo shows how most teams are irrelevant on social.
Here Are the Key Points From This ABM Done Right Podcast with Kristina Jaramillo:
- While many teams are adopting approaches like Challenger, it is not being adapted for social as teams are not tailoring for relevance and teaching for differentiation. If there is any information for buyers, it’s usually focused on highlighting their company’s products, services, features, and generic benefits for mass audiences. Profiles are not delivering personal relevance and not speaking directly to the accounts the team wants to win, protect, and expand. It doesn’t teach for differentiation against the status quo and competitors and doesn’t use stories to help prospects see their specific and competitor-specific, unconsidered gaps and impacts. The profiles do not reframe the specific thoughts of specific prospects, make a business case, and build confidence or trust.
- Most LinkedIn profiles do not have a relevant business story for prospects to make an emotional, human-to-human connection. There is no origin story that shows target accounts that your team understands their business and their specific challenges. And profiles are not filled with relevant customer stories that targeted prospects can see themselves.
- Many profiles are written in the third person, which creates an automatic disconnect. No one talks about themselves in the third person at a live event. So why do business leaders and sales and marketing professionals talk about themselves in the third person on social media where they should be making a human-to-human connection?
- Many profiles are focused on the past versus the present and the future. Prospects need to see how you can help them now with their current situation and that you will continue to evolve and help them achieve their future, long-term goals.
- Many profiles are written without intention. We find that most profiles are designed without thinking about who sales, marketing, leadership, and customer success teams want to attract with their profile and “why” they are writing it. They’re not thinking about “why” target accounts need to buy from them so they can put together the right stories to attract those prospects.
- Most profiles are designed in a set-it and forget-it manner. The profiles are not evolving as the target list evolves. The content included on the profile (and the content you share, as well as your interactions with other users) should be constantly tailored for relevance to the specific accounts and the human buyers you wish to attract. Profiles should speak directly to the human buyers and influencers at the accounts you want to acquire. That means profiles need to be written with specific accounts in mind – and not accounts like X, Y, and Z. You’ll need to appeal to your target prospects and ensure that every piece of information is relevant to their buying needs.
