Beyond Lead Generation: Business Success with Account-Based Marketing

By Stephen Phanco

Are you tired of traditional marketing approaches that cast a wide net and hope for the best? Do you feel like your sales team is wasting time and resources on leads that may never convert? Let's face it, in today's highly competitive B2B marketplace, businesses can't afford to waste time and resources on leads that don't pan out.

What’s needed is to create energy in the middle of the funnel to break down silos between marketing and sales teams, so they work together to drive revenue. It's about creating a full-scale marketing and sales plan for each high value account, leveraging insights and data to tailor your messaging and offerings to their specific needs.

That's where Account-Based Marketing (ABM) comes in. By identifying specific high-priority accounts and providing personalized experiences to key influencers, you can accelerate or bypass the initial stages of the sales funnel and focus on closing deals.

The Problem

In the early stages of your buying cycle, your most valuable accounts are lurking in the shadows of the internet, scouring through your competition's offerings, and considering whether your company is really worth their time and money. They are most likely on your radar and in your CRM.

They are not your typical high-level execs who make the final call on your proposal. Instead, they're the managers and directors of departments that will have a big say in how your product or service will be considered. They are subject matter experts, who rarely volunteer their contact information and will only engage with sales reps late in the buying cycle, often with a preferred vendor already in mind.

Moreover, most B2B buyers do not make decisions individually anymore. Rather, they are usually part of a buying group, which makes it difficult for sales & marketing teams to position their offerings and shape their thinking.

It's not just your company that prospects are researching. With the vast amount of information available online, buying groups can easily check out your competitors and what they have to offer. Once they start comparing specs, features, and functions, it can be tough for you to catch up, and that could mean your prospects miss out on your latest strategies, solutions, and products. This could leave your sales and marketing teams scrambling to figure out what went wrong and why.

The problem? A lot of B2B companies are still purely sales-driven. Especially in industries that are experiencing rapid growth. The old assumption that salespeople control 80% of the B2B buying journey after a prospect becomes a sales qualified lead (SQL) is not entirely accurate. That's why it's important for marketing teams to step in by partnering with sales teams after the SQL qualifies to introduce new strategies to cut through the noise and get your sales team noticed. By shifting towards a personalized ABM strategy, you can help your team stand out in a crowded marketplace, build better relationships, and drive revenue at a higher rate.

Account Based Marketing – What It Is and What It Is Not

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is the most efficient B2B marketing strategy that can really make a difference. Essentially, ABM helps companies align their marketing and sales efforts around their most high priority accounts. This approach engages key individuals and provides valuable insights back to your sales teams, ultimately leading to higher win rates and bigger deals. And, as a bonus, ABM often shortens the sales cycle.

Let me be clear, AMB is about accelerating accounts to revenue rather than being a targeted lead-gen program. Lead-gen programs require longer cycles of influence and will feed the middle funnel ABM strategy. They are composed entirely of campaigns and tactics (retargeted ads, emails, outreach campaigns, etc.) on getting leads into the pipeline. There is little focus on influencing buying decisions along to complete the buyer's journey.

In my experience, I have collaborated with several companies that had many leads entering their sales funnel. However, it often took several sales cycles for them to qualify or drop out of the funnel entirely. After analyzing the sales conversion rate, deal velocity and revenue generation, we noticed that marketing did indeed influence the opportunity and have an impact. However, we couldn't trace the exact timing or progression of marketing events that led to a sale and revenue. This happened because marketers often overlook the crucial middle-of-the-funnel activities and principles of ABM.

ABM brings together different teams, such as leadership, sales, marketing, customer success, and product teams. It's all about collaboration and working together towards common goals and objectives. It's important to note that ABM is not a technology platform, but rather a comprehensive approach to addressing the underlying revenue fundamentals that drive business success.

This includes metrics like win rates, deal sizes, velocity, stage progression, timing, retention, and more. By focusing on these revenue fundamentals, ABM is ideal for certain industries or verticals where the potential value is higher than others. Companies can allocate their resources to the accounts that are most likely to generate significant revenue.

It is about improving the sales process, enhancing interactions between go-to-market teams, and delivering outstanding experiences to key accounts. It requires marketing to feel the responsibility of the entire buyer's journey and customer lifecycle, beyond just generating MQL leads.

Because ABM is a strategic approach, marketing will need to provide individualized attention to specific high-value accounts and their human buyers. The idea is to address pain points and highlight your company's unique value and expertise by offering targeted information as they consider solutions.

You could start by offering a white paper, then use more targeted messaging such as spec sheets, virtual demos, and so on to provide differentiation and depth for your products and services. The ultimate goal is to convince them that it's time to have a deeper conversation with your sales team, and every interaction should be tracked and documented.

The key to successful ABM is creating a personalized experience for the account with messaging tailored to their specific needs and challenges, which requires a full synchronization of marketing and sales activities right from the start.

Fundamentally, marketing and sales go hand in hand. If you want to close bigger deals, navigate complex sales cycles, or just looking to grow, it's crucial that everyone be working together and be on the same page by aligning and collaborating to bring potential customers through the late stages of the buying cycle to close deals and realize revenue.