Chris Burke outlines strategies for conducting effective virtual ABM workshops, emphasizing collaboration to align organizational goals and build internal relationships. Key recommendations include maintaining a focused agenda, selecting appropriate collaborative tools, and encouraging audience interaction through exercises and polls. Additionally, he underscores the importance of post-workshop feedback and maintaining rapport among team members to enhance long-term success.

1. Chris Burke, Senior ABM strategist
Running virtual ABM
workshops

2. © The Marketing Practice 20202
You and your team. Your organizational goals, and
your internal relationships.
For top tier accounts, face to face account
workshops have become a go-to tactic to bring
together key internal partners like sales,
proposition knowledge holders and other relevant
teams to establish the foundation for a true
strategic alliance.
The role of the workshop has become core to
aligning organizational goals, program and
account objectives and building the right internal
relationships to deliver a successful ABM program.
ABM is about people

3. © The Marketing Practice 20203
Re-thinking the
experience
The workshop outputs required to build the
foundation of a successful ABM program
can only be achieved one way –
collaboration!
In a digital first, digital only world where
face to face workshops are not an
option, here are some of our tips for
running virtual workshops to encourage
collaboration, build and maintain
engagement, and ensure output quality.

4. Tip and tricks from our own ABM
programs

5. © The Marketing Practice 2020
Be ruthless with your
agenda
One of the great things about F-2-F workshops is
that you can get everyone in one room together with
no distractions, focused on the task ahead.
When interacting virtually you have to work harder to
maintain the focus.
• Re-focus - take out anything from the agenda
which doesn't support the program objective.
• Plan short focused sessions with clear outputs.
• Schedule regular breaks to deal with children,
dog, cats etc. Being on video calls is intensive!

6. © The Marketing Practice 2020
Pick the right tools for
the job
Virtual whiteboards are a great way to replicate
the experience of writing down quick thoughts
and ideas.
Technology can support collaboration but
shouldn’t drive it. If an editable PowerPoint slide
does the job, then that’s all you need to use.
With the swarm of collaboration solutions hitting
the market its easy to get seduced by shiny
features that are a distraction rather than a value
add.

7. © The Marketing Practice 20207
Building in audience interactions throughout will
stop attention drifting and avoid it feeling like a
webinar rather than a workshop.
• Use short exercises to build on knowledge and
solicit marketing ideas, with a prize for best
submission
• Incorporating polls is a great way to collect
relevant data / test the temperature on certain
topics, challenge group think perceptions and
spark discussion.
• Don’t over do it though (see previous slide)
Plan points of
engagement

8. © The Marketing Practice 20208
When you have many people on a virtual call it
can get overwhelming and the ability to brainstorm
and bounce ideas around and really interrogate
the insights uncovered in the session are inhibited
as a result.
Think about breaking the session into smaller
groups (each moderated) to encourage wider
participation and free-flow of ideas.
After short breakouts bring the groups back
together to share ideas.
Divide and conquer

9. © The Marketing Practice 2020
Prepare your audience
There’s nothing worse than spending the first
half hour of a session trying to get everyone's
technology to work!
If they need a certain app or to set up a login
then that needs to be established ahead of the
session - make sure that any technology is
compatible with security settings across the
organization.
Be prepared for a bit of trial and error!

10. © The Marketing Practice 2020
Don’t forget about the post-
workshop experience
Actively encourage feedback on the technology
and experience – what did attendees feel worked
well, what could be improved?
Surveys are a great way to solicitate feedback
and capture any additional ideas and insights.
When sharing outputs why not get creative with
delivery through a personalized video message
that highlights the key points and next steps.

11. Have fun!
Where ABM programs fail, 90% of the time it’s because
the time wasn't taken up front to establish the right
relationships, and understand and establish mutual
objectives and responsibilities.
Because of coronavirus, we are suddenly being
transported out of the conference room and into each
others' homes. Take the opportunity to have some fun and
build closer relationships with the whole team.
Whether that’s comparing virtual backgrounds or sharing
your most embarrassing meeting interruption, taking a
second to build that rapport is invaluable in the long game.

12. All content in this presentation is the intellectual property of The Marketing Practice and cannot be reproduced without written permission
If you’d like to hear more about any of the ideas in this deck,
reach out to me at:
cburke@themarketingpractice.com
Chris Burke, Senior ABM Stratagist