In a recent Forbes article, “Rethinking How We Sell AI: From Transactions to Transformation”, the author (Jason Snyder) mentioned: “ AI isn’t a utility. It’s a transformation. And, transformation doesn’t come packaged in a SKU. The miracles people expect from AI – automating entire workflows, revolutionizing supply chains, predicting disease, ending hunger – don’t live in some pre-trained model you can swipe a credit card to access. These outcomes require time, trust, and tailored guidance. You can’t sell and market a miracle like it’s a microwave. AI demands context. Without it, all that “compute” generates noise. To avoid noise, we need to rethink how we’re marketing and selling AI and digital transformation with our ABM content.
Changing the Narrative – AI and Digital Transformation is Not the Story
As Jason Snyder also mentioned in his article, “We need to help clients imagine what’s possible before ever touching a line of code. AI transformation is a hero’s journey. The enterprise is the protagonist. The villain is inefficiency, fragmentation, or the legacy process/tech infrastructure. And, the AI solution / digital transformation program – that’s the sword, not the story.” But, at Personal ABM, we find that the story is often about AI or digital transformation.
The story needs to focus on account-specific gaps (the villain) and its impact on the different buyers/stakeholders, departments, the company as a whole, and their ability to compete and achieve strategic goals and objectives. The story needs to show why they have these gaps, why the gaps are impacting them in different ways, a new way using AI/digital transformation (the sword), and what the future can look like. We need to give them a vision for the future that’s specific to the account.
When you make the story about AI or digital transformation vs. focusing on making the story about specific accounts and the expected outcomes that align with their strategic vision, you start telling a story for “everybody.” You communicate your brand value prop vs. an account-specific value prop.
- Why would you continue to push out content and messaging that focuses on the brand value prop vs. content tailored for specific accounts that you selected based on 1st party data, third-party data, account insights, and qualitative input?
- Why would you use content and messaging that focuses on the brand value prop when you have a unique set of accounts that have been specifically chosen to land or expand, and have been specifically chosen as they meet certain criteria?
- Why would you push out content and messaging with your standard, one-size-fits-all value prop instead of focusing content and the narrative around the account’s agenda and an ABM value prop that lands with impact, solves specific account challenges, and provides relevant, unique value that is specific to an account’s situation?
By focusing on content with brand value props vs. account-specific value props, Uniphore (a conversational AI and contact center tech firm) struggled with tier 1 bank accounts like Bank of America and TD Bank going dark. These banks were not seeing increased relevance as they moved along the buyer’s journey. The GTM teams slipped into a zone where they were just disseminating thought leadership and being top of mind. They wound up sending out content that was confirmatory. They showed prospects that they are smart, up to date on the latest issues and trends, and that Uniphore is a savvy, knowledgeable organization.
But they didn’t sell and market change.
They didn’t show future and existing customers that they were missing something. They missed the commercial insight needed to change the buyer’s thoughts on their specific approach, process, gaps, and impacts. They missed the commercial insight needed to uncover the specific big risks that buyers have not considered before, and unseen opportunities. They missed the commercial insight that’s needed to cut through the thought leadership noise because it’s provocative, it’s relevant, and it tells the buyers their story vs. a generalized industry story.
Click here to read the complete Uniphore case study
Buyers Need Content That Provides Context and Tailored Guidance to Shape How Companies Use Your Solutions in the Long Term.
As more companies focus on selling and marketing AI and digital transformation solutions, we need to differentiate and compete with content that provides context and tailored guidance. Buyers are asking: What do I do with all this new tech, how do I trust it, and how do I govern it? The future of AI and digital transformation solutions is pay-per-trust, pay-per-outcome, and pay-per-transformation, which means we have to build a buying vision that goes beyond current needs.
This will require teams to orchestrate a roadmap for future and existing accounts. We need to help buyers and customers understand what they need to optimize, automate, or reimagine now and in the future. We need content that helps sales and customer success/account management teams sell or gain adoption for solutions focused on current needs – but also helps them sell a much larger vision. We need to provide buyers with a vision that will embed our AI/digital transformation solutions across the organization, have accounts become reliant on our company (vs. sales teams), and drive greater CLV and NRR growth (the North Star). We need to change how buyers see us as the AI and digital transformation firms that will win will be the ones that change how their buyers view them and how they buy from them. The ones that will win will be the ones that are showing buyers that it’s not a tool roll-out, it’s a capability build that will continue to build and produce even greater outcomes over the long term.
We’ve been talking to the AVP of GTM at a GenAI firm with solutions to help software engineering teams along the software development lifecycle. Through co-creation services and its AI platforms, the company looks to change, redefine, and reshape how software development teams work by ensuring that AI is integrated into every aspect of the enterprise software development lifecycle – and that modernization is seamless.
They need content to show future and existing customers how they can positively impact the end-to-end scope (from ideation to deployment) for targeted accounts, where they will see improved productivity, quality, speed, and transparency. They need to show a roadmap on how they’ll reduce the minimum viable product development time, lower technical debt, free up capital, and drive innovation and growth across target accounts in the banking, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing industries. A recent HFS Horizons report even mentioned that the firm needs to showcase more examples of new value creation and innovation utilizing Gen AI. For each of the capabilities across the SDLC, they’ll need content that shows the new value creation that can be achieved that business, software development, and IT teams are not thinking about. Most importantly, they’ll want to show how the firm can provide that value, as many clients do not perceive the company to be a fit for different aspects of the software development lifecycle, including quality engineering.
As the firm’s GTM teams struggle to increase their relevance, association, recognition, and relationship within selected accounts, they are looking to change their approach to content so they can position themselves as a solid software engineering organization and retain and expand key accounts. They need to create a larger vision for their customers and provide them with a roadmap to achieve strategic outcomes.
Buyers Need Content Based on Their Readiness for AI or Digital Transformation Solutions
Most companies are not structured to succeed with AI or their digital transformation program. Silos are a top barrier to AI adoption, along with data fragmentation and unclear accountability. The CMO has some data, the CIO has other data, and the CTO is experimenting with its sandbox. None of the data and insights are connected and do not map clearly to the kind of collaborative infrastructure AI requires. The teams try to innovate, and the systems resist. They introduce a new model, and their legacy platforms can’t talk to it. They find the insight, but they have no mechanism to act on it. The teams struggle to organize around AI and digital transformation.
Instead of pushing AI and digital transformation solution content down the throats of accounts, we need to provide content based on the readiness of the accounts we’re targeting. For those accounts that are strategically ready and are operationally, executionally, and culturally aligned with our AI and digital transformation solutions, we need to provide them with the roadmap discussed in the above section. For accounts that have shown some signs of readiness, we need to help them see through our content, the next steps they need to take if they want a successful outcome with AI and digital transformation. We need to have content that meets where buyers are.
Buyers Need Content that Enables Alignment Across the Organization
Sumerian, an ITSM firm that provides AI-driven capacity planning as a service, struggled to move enterprise accounts to revenue as they did not have the right content and messaging to move accounts forward. Sales and GTM teams discovered that 4 out of 5 targeted companies outside the financial industry lacked senior executive understanding of the business issues the ITSM firm was trying to solve with their AI-driven, on-demand, cloud-based capacity planning subscription service. Senior executives did not see how their IT teams, the business, operations, P&L, and customers were impacted by their infrastructure visibility gaps, manual IT processes, homegrown technologies, and inadequate tooling like VMware that only looked at “current” infrastructure performance issues vs. where infrastructure challenges will lie in the months ahead.
More importantly, they did not see how the business “issues” were related to them because content and messaging focused on general industry assumptions and pain points. Their one-to-many and one-to-few campaigns missed the personal relevance needed to win over IT teams, the C-suite, and the CFO, who did not see a reason to change. As Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson mention in their book, “The Challenger Sale,” in most cases, buyer unresponsiveness is not because you failed to make a logical argument. It’s because you failed to make an emotional connection. It’s not that buyers didn’t believe your story. It’s because they didn’t see it as “their” story.
Sumerian’s sales and marketing team did not align their content and messaging with the specific retailer, airline, and online service accounts they wanted to win. As Doug Landis mentioned in a recent Forbes article: “When selling to larger companies, you must come to every social, email, and live conversation with a point of view about their business.” Sumerian’s GTM team needed account intelligence to know what their target accounts focused on as those strategic initiatives for the business trickled down to every department across the organization.
Sumerian needed more than persona-based content and messaging. The airlines, retailers, and online service firms needed to see their specific gaps and how they would impact the success of their strategic initiatives. And, they needed content that would drive top-to-bottom, left-to-right Engagement. In many cases, the GTM teams were single-threaded with the IT managers who were responsible for capacity management. They were not penetrating accounts and building relationships with VPs, CTOs, and CIOs. They were not extending beyond IT managers to drive engagement with business strategy, CX, and finance teams.
The GTM teams needed content that….
- Makes a stronger case for capacity management and shows how IT was misaligned with business objectives.
- Influence the internal conversations that sales teams were not privy to and have teams discussing how last-minute reactions to threshold crossings impacted IT finance, IT security, IT operations, eCommerce, revenue, and customers.
- Enables buyers vs. interrupting them so they can have the right conversations and come to a consensus in Sumerian’s favor.
- Enable a team-to-team connection that ensures closed deals, adoption, retention, and expansion.
- Proves to buyers across the organization that Sumerian is aligned with them.
Because the ITSM firm changed its approach to content to drive alignment across the organization, the GTM teams were able to gain new customer logos like GoDaddy, JCPenney, British Airways, and others. They were able to create partnerships with companies like ServiceNow, IBM, DXC Technology, VMware (which recognized their own gaps), and many more. They became an international player that positioned itself for acquisition. Now, the ITSM firm is part of ITRS Group, a larger firm that has:
- 800+ clients worldwide that rely on their IT estate monitoring, capacity planning, analytics, and load testing platforms.
- Offices throughout North America, UK, Europe, Nordic/Benelux, and Asia Pacific regions.
Click here to read the case study
Buyers Need Content that Builds Trust and Removes Risk
Trust must be built before architecture can be built. Last week, I talked to the sales leader at a digital transformation firm. One of their biggest prospects spent half a billion dollars ($500M) on transforming with firms like McKinsey, and they failed twice. The sales leader gave a proposal price of $4M (pennies compared to what the prospect spent in the past), but he still can’t get the company to buy.
- The company is so afraid of failure again.
- They’re afraid of disruption.
- They’re afraid of risk.
The sales leader has to deal with the burden that the team failed before, the fear of risk, the uncertainty, and the conservative decision-making. As Clark Barron mentioned below in his post, you cannot just sell value. Buyers do not just care about value – they also care about perceived risk.
Buyers fear the risk of failure and the risk of disruption to their operations. They need to believe that you have the right processes in place to mitigate the risk. They need to see the proof. Too often, case studies do not tell the whole story. They don’t share where challenges arose and how the vendor and the company overcame the challenges. They show a rosy picture without the thorns, but it’s how you deal with the thorns that helps companies see that you actually mitigate risk and that you will provide them with the promised value.
GTM teams and their content need to be architects of trust. You must demonstrate that you can remove the risk of failure, disruption, and spiraling costs. You have to show how staying the same is riskier than moving forward with you — and that you are the safer choice. Unless you do that, you will not displace legacy tech, and you will not win over those that failed before or are indecisive about moving forward with AI or digital transformation solutions.
Final Thoughts & Opportunity for a Free ABM Content Assessment
If AI and digital transformation firms want to win more enterprise accounts, then we need to increase our content’s relevance, provide tailored guidance and context, change the narrative, create a larger buying vision, align teams across the organization, and build trust. We need to go beyond top-of-funnel thought leadership and create content that addresses the why change, why now, why you, why stay, why evolve, and why expand conversations.
If you are struggling to drive stage progression, go upmarket, expand key accounts, and drive greater NRR growth for your AI or digital transformation solutions, book a free ABM strategy session with us. We will assess your ABM content, show you where gaps lie, and your growth opportunities.
Schedule a call below.