Most companies have dived into ABM tech and other platforms that promised a path to greater growth with more focus and partnership with sales leaders. However, ITSMA, Tech Target and others report that only 17% have a mature stage 4 program and 69% of ABM programs under-perform when it comes to revenue growth.
According to Etai Beck (CEO of Folloze), “Most GTM teams are still trying to build the foundation. Unfortunately, even though we live in the experience era. GTM teams are creating disconnected experiences, wasting sales and marketing dollars, and creating an anemic sales pipeline that goes dark after engagement.”
As teams are not thinking about how they make their future AND existing customers feel with each interaction and each touchpoint along the journey and lifecycle, Etai Beck joined Eric Gruber (CEO of Personal ABM) on the podcast below to discuss why experiences are disconnected. They also cover provide a sneak preview of how teams can improve buyer and account experiences across all touchpoints (social, digital, email and live).
Here Are Some Key Points From This Podcast with Etai Beck and Eric Gruber
- The core of having mature, optimized buyer experiences where you have a proven, strong track record of driving engagement and revenue across all touchpoints and phases of the buyer journey is…to become a customer-centric company across everything you do. But in many cases, companies are thinking about their sales and marketing motions vs. their customers. They are thinking about the products they want to sell and market, their own needs and their own challenges instead of thinking about what the customer needs and thinking about it in small cohorts at scale. Every interaction and every sales and marketing motion should be designed around the customer where GTM teams are coming to each touchpoint with relevant value.
- As most companies are putting ABM’s focus on fixing the pipeline vs. getting accounts to revenue at a faster rate and at a higher ACV, there is a large disconnect between field teams (sales and marketing) and marketing teams at the core. As a result, teams cannot orchestrate a cohesive buyer experience across the buyer’s journey – and it’s why accounts go dark.
- As teams are elevated with a buyer-centric mandate, marketing must rethink their teams and operations. In the old selling model, each stakeholder had just one role in the process. Marketing took the first stab at engagement, then passed it on to SDRs, then to sales and support functions. Now, frontline marketers should be empowered to architect and deliver the full buyer experience (tailored to each specific audience) with complete visibility into every stage of the buyer journey and the tools to orchestrate cohesive account and buyer experiences. In the new frontline marketer operational model, marketing stakeholders assume greater ownership across the lead-to-revenue lifecycle, working closely with account teams to discover micro-signals from buyers (behavioral data) and architect personal experiences that engages prospects, support buyer self-learning, and advances buyers through each phase of the customer journey. They focus on local execution and agile response to customer needs, designing the friction-free journeys that build trust and advance buyers through every step of their unique buying cycle. Front-line marketing features a more democratized GTM model that rightfully puts the buyer at the center of the universe. The buyer experience may begin at the customer journey, but it doesn’t end there. It is an ongoing process of engagement that feeds the buyer the information and insight they need to progress through the buying cycle and maximize what they spend in the long term.
- Teams do not have the engagement data they need to better understand their key accounts. They don’t understand who’s engaging, how they are engaging and collaborating with their peers and why they are engaging. Without that data, teams cannot bridge the gap that lies between customers and GTM teams. They cannot prioritize accounts to see where they should spend time and resources to increase sales and marketing efficiency and effectiveness.
- Teams are focused on scale vs. scaling the right interactions. They are pushing out more content and messaging vs. changing interactions and the experiences that are delivered. They’re thinking about campaigns vs. looking to see how GTM teams are making the human buyers feel after each interaction and each touchpoint. They’re not thinking about being agile – and making changes quickly based on how buyers are engaging or not engaging.
- Most content and messaging is not guided by account intelligence – so content and messaging does not tell the prospects’ story. It doesn’t align with the key priorities that target accounts focus on. Most content and messaging focus on industry and persona pain points that do not move accounts forward if the pain points are not tied to account-specific strategic priorities. The Challenger Sale is no longer just relevant to sales. GTM teams need to be an expert in their prospects’ businesses to speak to them at their level. The challenger sale is now an account-centric methodology where all teams need to tailor for relevance and teach for differentiation at all touchpoints.
- The buyer’s journey is not linear – it’s like a pinball machine with many twists, turns and gutters. Instead of thinking about the sales process stages as “awareness, consideration, etc.”, we should be thinking about what do we need to do to create demand, capture demand, expand demand (build a consensus), map demand, accelerate demand, close demand, retain demand and then expand demand further to drive GRR and NRR.
After, you listen to the podcast, sign up for our webinar with Etai on improving the state of the buyer experience across all touchpoints.
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