From the course: Account-Based Marketing Foundations
Assessing whether ABM is right for you
From the course: Account-Based Marketing Foundations
Assessing whether ABM is right for you
- You might be wondering whether account-based marketing, or ABM, is right for your organization. To figure this out, you need to ask these three questions. What are the characteristics of your typical deals? What challenges are we facing that ABM will help us overcome? And, are we prepared to properly resource a program for a full deal cycle? Let's walk through these questions one by one. First, what does your typical deal look like? Consider average contract value, or ACV, and the complexity of your buying center. If your sales process is characterized by longer deal cycles, getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders, and a larger ACV, then ABM could drive incredible results for you. For example, take a company selling monthly software subscriptions to small businesses for 6,000 a year. The cost of focusing on specific accounts may quickly outweigh the benefits. However, if your annual contract average is $50,000, ABM can drive revenue more efficiently than traditional lead-based methods. Also, consider the deal complexity. That includes the number of steps and decision-makers involved in the process. Ask yourself, do you need to influence mid-level engineering staff in addition to CFO, CEO, and any other executives? If you're only marketing to a few leads, your ability to impact their decision is pretty limited. You really need to engage the entire buying center to influence their decision, and that's what ABM helps you do. The next question is, what growth challenges are you trying to address? ABM won't solve every problem, so you need to get focused on your goals. ABM can help you address an efficient new business acquisition, improve win rates, and drive expansion revenue. First, let's talk about acquisition. If you are struggling to drive best-fit accounts in your sales process and drive more up market, ABM can help in both of these scenarios. Another reason for moving to an ABM approach is to accelerate your pipeline and improve win rates. This works when your sales team is struggling to engage the right people, address competitive pressures, or drive urgency for in-progress deals. The final reason is unlocking more expansion revenue. Marketing's job isn't over after the initial sale is won, but reaching the right people with cross-sell and up-sale opportunities can be challenging. ABM can help you. Finally, ask this, do you have the resources and buy-in to implement ABM? You need to secure the right resources and buy-in before piloting an account-based program. ABM programs often fail when marketers are not able to get the right resources and buy-in. Don't make that mistake. Here's a tip, you don't have to go all-in on ABM. Many marketing teams have success by focusing ABM programs on a segment of their total business. This might be specific verticals with well-defined accounts or enterprise deals where engagement is traditionally more challenging. So, get your marketing and sales teams together and figure out the answers to the three questions we just talked about. Focusing on these three questions will help you figure out if ABM is right for you.
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