ABM: gone too soon?

An all too familiar story

There are hundreds if not thousands of successful B2B or specialised services companies around Australia that have grown rapidly off the back of paid search and inbound leads. But at growth inflection points, their reliance on only inbound leads from paid has scared them into trying other activities like ABM. 

Those companies usually at one time or another end up in a conversation like this:

“ABM is not working.” says Chaz, the head of sales. “We need to do something else”.

“You are getting leads, no?” Alanna the marketing leader replies. “What’s wrong with them?” she adds exasperated!  

“They’re not closing fast enough. Inbound leads are better…” Chaz says reddening. “We’re wasting time! Just give me more inbounds.” 

Meanwhile, Charlie, the CEO, is grinding his teeth thinking “knuckleheads, why cant they just do their jobs”. Out loud he says to the room “Let’s ramp up inbound again through paid search. Sales needs leads, now.”

And with that, to Alannas’ chagrin, and despite the fact she has data to show that the ABM leads are better quality, the volume is right and that the sales org aren’t following the right processes, ABM is dead. Almost dead on arrival in the scheme of things. The program hasn’t lasted more than six months. 

Could she have done more? Probably. But, then again, maybe not, she probably had shared the results of the campaigns operational deficits with the sales team leaders. So what is this article all about? 

To start with, to remind y’all that ABM is more than just an acronym. It is a methodology, a way of going to market and if done right — exceptionally lucrative. But it is also about why ABM fails so often. 

So, why does it fail so often? After all, from a first principles perspective, isn’t ABM just old fashioned prospecting supported by marketing but in another name? Either way, we believe ABM programs fail for one reason – misalignment. And misalignment can be broken into three parts:

 Short term’ism

ABM is a strategic program. It is a long term investment in creating a systematic approach to targeted acquisition. ABM is as a result the yin to the we need revenue “NOW goddamnit” yang. 

Although they should exist together in harmony often times the squeakier wheel of needing to hit tomorrows targets wins out over next year or next quarter. As a result of this short term thinking, ABM is turned into rushed test campaigns. This results in poor outcomes that look like failures. 

As an aside, why does ABM take time?
Although you can apply frameworks and approaches, there is no silver bullet program that will work across different audiences. This means that to execute there is a truckload of both preparatory and ongoing effort that needs to be engaged in like persona and segmentation messaging and positioning work. New technology learning curves. Not to mention organisational change. Don’t worry though having bucked this bronco a few times it does get easier and faster!   

 Reporting 

The second most common failure businesses make is embarking on journeys without clear ends. The first is knowing when you’ve arrived at that end and reporting is the mechanism by which you’ll know when you are there. How else will anyone know if things are working the way they should be if you aren’t looking at the data you are receiving. Derp.

The secret sauce here is deciding on what data is interesting to explore. Quantity is often rigorously considered, but often quality is thought about too late. Similarly, are you looking at leading or lagging indicators, oh and don’t forget to ask if you can you actually get the data! But, almost more importantly are you all agreed on what success looks like? 

 Execution 

Even though ABM has the word marketing in it, marketing is just one aspect and team involved in any ABM journey. In fact, we believe in this so much that whenever we engage companies on ABM we re-educate folks to think about ABM as ABE or Account Based Everything. Unless all stakeholders across the business from sales, to ops and finance are included in this effort, you’re going to end in being an ABM hater rather than a long term lover of a critically important component of any GTM motion.