The need for aligning sales and marketing for a successful ABM is arising. ABM is about having common goals and a personalized approach. That alignment between sales and marketing teams helps organizations to drive better ROI, but more importantly, it allows sales and marketing teams to come together over customer centricity. We discuss how aligning sales and marketing teams improves lead generation, opportunities for personalization, lowered costs, and better relationships with clients.

With the advent of digitalization and an increase in active customer base across multiple channels, the need to effectively connect the sales and the marketing team around the account-based marketing (ABM) goals has become more crucial than ever. Traditionally, sales teams used to target specific accounts, and marketing teams used to focus on generating more leads but recently, with the increased adoption of ABM, the market has started to witness a shift in how sales and marketing teams collaborate to identify and target a list of accounts.

Marketers have always been under pressure to generate ROI on their efforts and sales are always asking for more leads. To break free of this pattern, sales and marketing teams need to collaborate on a list of target accounts, targeting companies with the most potential for business, including customers, prospects, and partners, or a mix of all three. For too long, sales have focused on closed revenue and marketing has relied on things like impressions, web traffic, metrics, and conversion rates. While these metrics are crucial to measuring the impact of a campaign, they aren’t enough to truly understand the business growth and impact. To truly align sales and marketing at every stage of the funnel, both teams will have to be on the same page and work toward common business goals and objectives to fulfill the organizational goals. Alignment between sales and marketing is both a prerequisite for and a product of an effective ABM strategy.

Aligning sales and marketing for prioritizing customer accounts:

The process used by sales and marketing teams to evaluate and target customer accounts for ABM is frequently misaligned. The reason behind this could be that sales and marketing teams value different customer attributes, preventing them from seeing an account's full potential. Both sales and marketing teams can use several selection methods to target accounts, but it is crucial for them to be on the same page across both teams. Marketing starts with identifying the target accounts, which is very much like qualifying leads at the beginning. Sales reps know who clients are and can lend all kinds of detailed insights into the development of really robust personas. With ABM strategy, sales and marketing are no longer linear and there are reduced chances for an unqualified lead to land on a sales rep’s hands because sales and marketing have worked in collaboration and selected target accounts together from the very beginning and the additional information can be used to personalize the selection process and improve the quality of the account selected for targeting.

Identifying Target Accounts: This should only be done with the complete sales and marketing teams collaborating at the table and working together towards achieving a common goal. Sales and marketing can bring their lists of strategies to the meeting and design a common goal together to put everyone on the same page. Both teams should agree on a system of lead scoring and nurture the remaining potential target accounts to see which are more likely to close.

Developing Personas: Although sales and marketing were previously misaligned, they were still targeting and converting the same set of prospects. Creating personas together is less about overlap and more about understanding critical account details. While the marketing teams will identify companies, titles/positions, business priorities, and so on, sales insights will include FAQs and pain points that can only be discussed. All of it is crucial for ABM.

Finding the Right Content: Finding the right content for the right customer is the most crucial step for a successful ABM. Both sales and marketing need to come together and review key content pieces together. The teams can begin with the ones that are frequently clicked or used by sales and ensure that each piece corresponds to a persona and a specific stage in the buyer's journey. When the time comes to close an account, marketing will have data that shows which pieces got the best digital responses, and sales will identify which ones work best with real people.

Integrating ABM into Your Multi-Channel Strategy: Sales and marketing both participate in integrating ABM on multiple channels. Marketing will most likely have the bigger role here such as pushing out content on the website, social channels, email, etc. Sales, on the other hand, will continue to incorporate content into personal emails, phone calls, and meetings. Keeping this organized so that no target account receives duplicate or irrelevant content requires the use of a sophisticated marketing automation platform and CRM.

Measuring and Optimizing: This data may be prepared by marketing, but it should be shared and reviewed on a regular basis with the entire ABM team. Both marketing engagement metrics and sales pipeline metrics apply to ABM. Account-based strategies must also track and measure new contacts identified and mapped to accounts, as well as new leads engaged.

A unified approach will require a platform that brings together data, connects it to accounts, layers in insights and decision-making support, and informs execution channels. Unified analytics, insights, and pipeline forecasting/tracking will be critical. ABM is just an answer to everything. Organizations should adopt ABM as it facilitates making sales and marketing strategies possible, particularly with things like personalizing campaigns, lead nurturing, and retargeting. Therefore, different departments within an organization need to collaborate in order to see the best results.

Cross-team alignment and improved communication are beneficial for growth in any organization. In terms of account-based marketing, this transparency and alignment will ensure that marketing and sales teams are focused on the same goals, that the budget is adhered to, and that each internal stakeholder understands their specific roles.This alignment ensures that all communications, interactions, and content are relevant to the accounts with which organizations work. That is, regardless of how long an account has been with your company, your team members can pick up where others left off at any point in time without hesitation, resulting in a seamless and delightful customer experience.ABM is not concerned with increasing the number of leads; in fact, when using an ABM approach, the sales team will most likely have fewer leads than before. However, the key here is that these leads will be extremely relevant and much more likely to convert. This is the primary reason why sales and marketing teams must work in collaboration. Otherwise, sales teams may employ lead nurturing tactics that fail to convert these leads, slowing down the sales cycle and reducing profits.

According to Megha Rungta, Analyst at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, “Alignment between sales and marketing is beneficial for any organization as long as both sales and marketing can agree to work in unison. ABM requires sales and marketing to collaborate throughout the process, but that collaboration must be strategically planned. Marketing and sales must be on the same page in order to take a comprehensive approach to ABM and ensure target accounts have an engaging buying experience. The collaboration of sales and marketing is both a prerequisite for and a product of an effective ABM strategy.”

Before a team focuses on adopting an ABM model for their organization, leaders must understand this new strategic initiative and ensure that both teams are on the same page.  Organizations must make sure that the proper strategy must be put into place to cultivate this kind of partnership between the sales and the marketing teams. The end result would be everyone focused on same KPIs setting the business to succeed with ABM.

Author: Megha Rungta, Senior Analyst At Quadrant Knowledge Solutions