Account-based Marketing (which is about way more than Marketing) is a challenging transformation. But it’s well worth the effort for companies that master it. Want to see if you’re ready? See how many boxes you can check below. If your answer is “not too many”, I can help.
Organizational Readiness
- Has your organization defined total addressable markets (TAMs)?
- Are executives in agreement about the need to address those markets at an account level?
- Is there agreement about the experience you want to deliver at the account and customer levels?
- Is leadership committed to financially supporting an ABM program through at least two full cycles?
Data and Technology Readiness
- Are your CRM (Salesforce) and Marketing Automation (MAP) platforms synched?
- Do you have a process or source for identifying and updating key accounts?
- Do you have a process or source for updating contacts withing key accounts?
Marketing Readiness
- Is your Marketing team practiced at multi-touch demand generation and nurturing campaigns?
- Is your Mktg group resourced for content, campaign and lead management?
- Is the Marketing Automation platform set to score engagement and surface Mktg Qualified Leads (MQLs)?
- Does Mktg have a process for transferring and tracking MQLs through the Sales process?
Sales Readiness
- Is your Sales team actively using the CRM as the system of record and keeping data up to date?
- Does Sales leadership encourage and reinforce daily use of the CRM? To accocate contacts with accounts?
- Does Sales have a process for accepting and qualifying MQLs?
Process Readiness
- Do Mktg & Sales coordinate on campaigns and follow up?
- Does Mktg enable Sales to follow up on campaigns by providing scripts, offers and assets?
- Are Sales representatives encouraged to use the materials Marketing provides to follow up on MQLs?
- Documented customer journey map with buying-center participants and roles.
Lead Management
- Do Mktg and Sales have common working definitions of MQL, SQL, Opptys/Deal stages, etc?
- Do Mktg and Sales have common working rules for how and when to recycle or renurture a closed-lost deal?
- Are the service level agreements (SLAs) that help Mktg & Sales understand their roles in lead management?
- Can Account Engagement Scoring be implemented with precise stage definitions and actions?
ABM Readiness
- Have Mktg & Sales leaders defined Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) for each TAM?
- Have ICPs been used to identify and tier a set of tier 1 and 2 accounts to pursue?
- Have buying group personas (BGP) been identified for those accounts?
- Do Mktg & Sales have a shared understanding of BGP information needs?
- Have Mktg & Sales assembled that understanding into key account journey maps?
- Have channels, messages and assets been aligned with stages on the journey maps?
- Have swimlanes been established with hand-offs and triggers for next-stage actions?
Pilot Readiness
- Have Mktg and Sales leaders sponsored an ABM Council to define and communicate the program?
- Have one or more ICP-like key accounts been selected for a pilot campaign?
- Have participants been given time to focus on the pilot?
- Is a project manager involved and maintaining both project plans and documentation?
- Do pilot participants understand the pilot’s goals and success metrics?
- Has a pilot campaign been designed to nurture BCP’s along their journey?
- Does the pilot campaign include account-specific customization and or contact-level personalization?
- Can account engagement across all BGPs be tracked and progress reported? (Account level scoring)
- Is the ABM Council communicating progress and celebrating success?
After Piloting ABM
- Implement target-account alerts and reports to SDRs and Sales.
- Develop scale account entitlements (amount of time, money and resources to be dedicated to each).
- Set up an account planning process that will let you add new targets and elements with speed at scale.
- Develop a research/thought leadership program that can be adapted for BGPs needs.
- Set up an efficient process for customizing and delivering content.
- Personalize digital channels for key accounts including the website experience.
- Create a one-to-one C-level campaign for a handful of top targets.
- Get sophisticated about account analytics – account penetration, coverage, awareness, engagement,
- attribution, journey analytics, velocity, win/loss rates, churn, cross-sell rates, retention, ARR, MROI.
- Consider investing in ABM-focused tools such as intent data, advertising automation, and AI-driven attribution modeling.