Stop the Sales Insanity - How 5 Simple Stages Can Transform Your Sales Force
5 Steps to Getting Started with ABM
1. The 5 Steps to Getting Started
with Account Based Marketing
Sydney Sloan
CMO, Alfresco
@sydsloan
2. 1 Prepare: Sell the Idea
2 Prioritize: Set Your Target
3 Plan: Determine the Program Mix
4 Communicate: Integrated Planning
5 Measure: Execute, Optimize
9. • Coverage: do we have sufficient data, contacts, and account plans for each
target account?
• Awareness: are the target accounts aware of Alfresco and its solutions?
• Program Impact: are marketing programs reaching the target accounts,
and are they having a long-term effect?
• Engagement: are the right people at the account spending time with
Alfresco, and is that engagement going up over time?
• Results: how are the ABM activities improving sales outcomes such as
deal velocity, win rates, average contract values, retention, and satisfaction
scores?
5 Measure: Execute, Optimize
(1) Sell the Idea: Why are we doing ABM? Why Move to a Target Account Model? Why then ABM, and what level do we segment? Goal setting // Start to forecast that your pipeline model is going to change. They're going to be less leads but ideally more leads within your target accounts. Value contact acquisition within target accounts, penetration of your lead programs within target accounts and start to segment out
(2) Select and Prioritize Accounts: Selecting target accounts and it's not a trivial exercise. What data do you use to select accounts. Even though there are scoring models who ultimately decides? Selection of A/B/C accounts.
(3) Setting up the Program:
(4) Communicate: Account Planning Clinics (early, ongoing, w/ the customer)
(5) Execute: Document early success and get your key sales leaders in board. Strategic account briefs, customer councils, customer value assessments
How to segment your market…. That day Thomas was the only buyer of his sisters’ lemonaide – the ultimate in ABM!
Really though, other than being the hot topic in the B2B marketing world today why should you consider Account Based Marketing? Why Move to a Target Account Model? Who has to buy in? How does this change our business model and metrics?
At Alfresco we had been in a territory model for many years -- but the market changed. IT was no longer the primary buyer of platforms and we needed to align our precious sales and marketing resources on the accounts that are most likely to buy from us. We had options, many options, so we had to bring together the key leaders sales, marketing, product & customer success and our CEO to determine how we were going to align. And in our case we went vertical. Even with vertical and companies in our major markets we had 55,000 accounts we could select…
What the CRO said when rolling out to her team:
ABM Primary Objective
Develop FY17 / FY18 Strategic Accounts
Establish relevancy & momentum to gain Strategic Partnership Status
Outcomes
Land multiple beachheads within an account
After one or multiple beachheads, motivate them to aggregate into a big deal, for a LOB or the entire enterprise
Prioritization Criteria – need to complete this part of the process
Select Target Account in focus verticals – FSI, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing
Solution use case defined
SME and / or partner exist to work with sales and marketing to advise on message & content
Reference Customer – even if they’ve just recently purchased
We had just started using predictive analytics.
Sirius Framework on ABM structure (e.g. large account ABM, named-account ABM, industry ABM, customer marketing)
Within the vertical we had to segment further (Banking, Insurance, Wealth Management … Discrete vs Process Manufacturing…) I’d say we still have too many “target accounts with over 4,000 “parent companies” but we had to start somewhere and that was the number sales was comfortable settling at.
Start to forecast that your pipeline model is going to change. They're going to be less leads but ideally more leads within your target accounts. Value contact acquisition within target accounts, penetration of your lead programs within target accounts and start to segment out
Lesson: Sales leadership wanted to equally distribute Global 20 across as many sales reps as possible, but marketing advocated to prioritize based on account potential, but how is that determined? (Total lifetime value, Customer Health, Current Pipeline…)
Begin to codify your program one size doesn't fit all but have a lot of options of tools that you can use to see what's going to work across the different account.
Marketo - Opportunity Analyzer shows us with opportunities the level of engagement across the buying cycle and the number of people involved in the account. When a big deal gets promoted we follow up with a view to show them the amount of effort / time it takes to close a big win.
Insight: Do you have the right content & processes to start with personalization? We started with existing top accounts + vertical.
ABM used to be about analog now you can add in digital
We had just started using predictive analytics.
Within the vertical we had to segment further (Banking, Insurance, Wealth Management … Discrete vs Process Manufacturing…) I’d say we still have too many “target accounts with over 4,000 “parent companies” but we had to start somewhere and that was the number sales was comfortable settling at.
Start to forecast that your pipeline model is going to change. They're going to be less leads but ideally more leads within your target accounts. Value contact acquisition within target accounts, penetration of your lead programs within target accounts and start to segment out
This flows through multiple levels and interlocks
(1) Overall Executive Alignment (me and my peers)
(2) Account Planning Level (Coordinated Account Planning Clinics in region with stakeholders from each team assigned to the customer account to collaborate on a plan)
(3) Account Management Level (ongoing cadence of QBRs – one in person @EBC, then over phone, then on customer site, then phone, … repeat)
