As Carlos Araujo (VP of Marketing) built and executed ABM programs for 13+ years in his past companies, including Assent, you’d figure that he’d come on to the ABM Done Right Podcast and discuss how his team at Swapcard is building pipeline and revenue growth with ABM. But, instead, he shared how his team is not yet doing ABM – even though most ABM teams would say he most definitely is.
In this podcast conversation, Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) and Carlos share the differences between what ABM should be – and what most GTM teams are doing today.
Here are the Key Insights From This ABM Podcast with Eric and Carlos:
- Most GTM teams are treating ABM as targeted campaigns to a target account list (TAL), or, in other words, list-based marketing. ABM is a GTM business strategy on how we’re going to engage, nurture from a sales, marketing, customer success and product perspective, land, and expand key accounts It’s about optimizing brand, demand, land and expand motions, the interactions that teams have and the account experiences that are delivered across the buying journey and customer lifecycle to create the greatest revenue streams possible YoY. ABM is not a campaign. If you’re focused on campaigns, then you’re just doing targeted demand gen or list-based marketing, which is what Carlos and Swapcard are doing today. Right now, the team is focused on building a pipeline of ICP enterprise accounts as they are beginning to shift from a mid-market GTM to an enterprise one.
- Right now, Swapcard is in the crawl stage as they test their messaging on a 1:many and 1:few basis with enterprise accounts and the key buyers they want to engage. At this point, they haven’t moved to a 1:1 program where Swapcard tells the account story vs. an ICP industry/persona story. They haven’t thought about how to use 1:1 ABM to create a buying vision based on current and future needs and to set up the expansion sale before the initial deal is even signed. They haven’t thought about how they will align the GTM with the buying journey and how they will provide bigger, more relevant value breadcrumbs as buyers progress and earn more attention. They haven’t thought about how they will penetrate the enterprise accounts they land to get into new business units, regions, and markets to increase the CLV of key enterprise accounts. This is what Carlos wants from the ABM program that he will create (as he has done in the past), but he recognizes that the company is not there yet. He needs to take an evolutionary approach to building an ABM program, as he failed 3 times when he took a revolutionary approach and tried to change too much, too fast. He needs to earn the trust of sales as they work together to create joint wins, as there is no such thing as “marketing-generated pipeline” or “marketing whatever. ” They have joint pipeline numbers and joint new business revenue numbers. But trust still needs to be earned before they have true GTM team orchestration and before marketing can truly enable sales to move away from their traditional “transaction” selling processes and interactions.
- With the crawl toward ABM, Carlos aligned the team on what their ICP should be when it comes to the enterprise and where they can get not only higher-value deals but also multiple-year deals. They tested their positioning and messaging to see what works when they go-to-market and what moves enterprise accounts to schedule a demo and enter the pipeline. They captured data that showed the teams can engage and generate initial interest among key enterprise accounts. They are moving toward “walking,” where the teams have joint metrics and where the orchestration between sales and marketing is improving, and the teams are leveraging the signals in a way that is impactful vs. just reacting to the intent data. They will now focus on how they will get pipeline accounts to revenue. The running is how do we get the account management teams to have the right interactions and to deliver the right account experiences to retain and expand more key accounts to grow CLV and NRR, which is what your North Star should be with ABM. It’s how do we orchestrate sales, marketing and customer success/account management teams. Then flying would be how to integrate product, where you have a feedback loop so product maps focus on key account needs and filling their gaps vs. building what the company thinks is cool. This way, Swapcard would be nurturing from a sales, marketing, customer success, and product perspective, which is what ABM is all about.
Additional Relevant Content to Read and Listen to:
- Article: How CMOs Need to Change Their Thinking of What ABM Is
- Article: How CMOs Can Have a Greater Influence Over Revenue By Fixing the Mid-Funnel and Last Mile Account Experience
- Article: An Account-Based GTM – A Modern Approach to Winning with ABM
- Podcast: How Prolific is Taking an Account-Based GTM Approach That is Anything But Meh
- Podcast: Pipeline360’s CMO Shares Why Marketing Needs to Invest More in the Mid-Funnel