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Articulating a strong business case as to why your prospects should replace their existing lead generation motion with an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy is critical.
Your prospects are likely using outdated models, like the 2006 version of the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall attribution model, which delineates the concept that the buying journey consists of various stages where the marketing qualified lead (MQL) acts as a “hand-off" from marketing to sales.
These stages consist of Inquiry → MQL → SQL → Closed-Won.
This antiquated attribution model denotes that the buying journey is a linear process and each marketing qualified lead (MQL) represents a unique buying opportunity. This is important to understand as it was a catalyst for traditional lead generation’s meteoric rise and what your prospects are currently using.
This article will provide you with the narrative you can use while pitching clients as to why they should work with you to modernize their go-to-market (GTM) strategy with ABM.
The first step involves highlighting the core challenges your prospect is facing with their existing lead generation approach.
Outlined below are the four primary obstacles typically encountered. Note that each organization may experience unique issues within these categories; hence, customize your approach based on their specific feedback.
1. Non-targeted strategy: Casting a wide net instead of a targeted spear
Traditional lead generation often prioritizes quantity, pushing marketing teams to generate a vast number of leads without prioritizing their quality. This approach is akin to casting a wide net in fishing: while you may catch a larger quantity of fish (leads), the quality is markedly reduced since you are indiscriminately casting the net into the sea.
Furthermore, this method leads to misalignment with other go-to-market teams (sales, customer success), hindering a cohesive and strategic engagement strategy.
2. Siloed Go-to-Market (GTM) teams
Traditional lead generation employs a "sourced" attribution model, crediting the deal to the department that initially introduced the contact into the CRM, regardless of subsequent interactions or influence from other teams.
This approach fosters discord between marketing and sales regarding attribution, leading to conflicts as each team fights for credit. Furthermore, the marketing team’s emphasis on MQL quotas that generate low-quality leads cultivates distrust and dissatisfaction within the sales team.
3. Lackluster Customer Experience
Generic tactics and messages are no longer conducive to a strong customer experience and will alienate prospects who demand a personalized approach.
If you aren’t directly speaking to your client's needs, your messaging will fall flat. Given the maturity of tools and vendors who have enabled personalization to occur at scale, such as Propensity, organizations that are not leveraging this approach are already behind.
4. The Sales Cycle: Unbalanced Resource Allocation
Traditional lead generation centers primarily on capturing leads at the top of the funnel, resulting in sales teams lacking necessary support throughout the sales cycle.
This approach can lead to a disconnect between marketing efforts and the actual needs of the sales team, resulting in lower conversion rates and longer sales cycles. Moreover, it overlooks the importance of nurturing leads and strengthening relationships throughout the entirty of the buying journey.
The second step involves demonstrating why ABM is a more effective go-to-market strategy. It's crucial to clearly articulate how and why ABM addresses the issues associated with the traditional lead generation model.
1. A targeted and efficient strategy
An ABM strategy involves blending a combination of both 1st and 3rd party intent signals to curate a highly targeted list of companies that are ideal customer profile (ICP) fits that are in-market to buy. This list is then evaluated and finalized with the sales team, creating a data-backed target account list where all GTM resources will be deployed with precision.
When your marketing and sales efforts are focused on driving full-funnel engagement on this targeted list, it will far outperform the conversion rates of your traditional lead generation strategy that is focused on ‘casting a wide net’. This will also maximize the efficiency of your marketing and sales efforts as you’re no longer wasting your budget to attract low-quality leads that your sales teams won’t convert.
2. Aligned Go-to-Market (GTM) teams
ABM breaks down go-to-market (GTM) silos in a capacity that most organizations have never experienced before. This is accomplished by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success (if running an expansion campaign) around a data-backed target account list and unified campaign objectives revolving around revenue.
When GTM teams collectively concentrate their efforts on the same target account list, there is zero waste of resources or efforts. Adopting metrics based on revenue rather than lead volume shifts the marketing incentive from reaching a specific number of MQLs to focusing on the quality of MQLs, ensuring more efficient and effective outcomes.
3. Personalized customer experience
Integrating a personalized approach into your go-to-market initiatives will produce significantly better outcomes and offer your prospects the experience they demand. By employing a Tiered target account list (1, 2, and sometimes 3), you can vary the level of personalization to ensure that your most strategic accounts receive the highest level of investment.
4. Full-funnel resource allocation
Rather than placing all strategic marketing resources on the top of the funnel, leaving sales unsupported through the bottom, ABM takes a full-funnel approach. ABM uses personalized tactics throughout the awareness, consideration, and decision phases of the sales cycle, to hand off warm leads to sales which leads to faster sales cycles and increased deal sizes.
To support your claims that ABM is the better option, provide this statistical evidence to back them up.
When Momentum ITSMA asked 279 ABM leaders how their performance stacked up versus their traditional lead generation function, they found that ABM campaigns yielded:
Lastly, highlight the three main outcomes of implementing an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy to solidify the argument for its adoption over traditional lead generation methods.
1. Maximized GTM efficiency
By concentrating resources on a data-backed target account list, ABM ensures that marketing and sales efforts are highly targeted and efficient. This strategic focus minimizes wasted effort and resources, enabling your teams to operate with greater precision and effectiveness.
2. Unified GTM teams
ABM fosters alignment among marketing, sales, and customer success teams by focusing them on revenue-focused objectives and metrics, speaking the same language, and collaborating on a shared account list. This unity transforms go-to-market efforts from disjointed and conflicting to cohesive and holistic, driving collective success.
3. Higher-value deals, closed faster
Through full-funnel support and personalization, ABM enables the alignment of marketing and sales efforts from the top to the bottom of the funnel. This alignment, coupled with a focus on the needs and timelines of target accounts, accelerates the sales cycle and increases the average deal size, leading to more significant, more strategic wins for the organization.
In conclusion, making a compelling business case for your clients to transition from their traditional lead generation model to an ABM strategy hinges on clearly illustrating its superior effectiveness.
By addressing the inefficiencies of non-targeted strategies, breaking down siloed GTM efforts, enhancing customer experiences, and reallocating resources across the entire sales funnel, ABM presents a strategic alternative that aligns more closely with the evolving demands of today’s GTM landscape.
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