I’ve always been a huge advocate of account-based marketing, or ABM. It takes a lot of effort, commitment and belief from all departments though – marketing, sales, and leadership – which means it often falters.

This excellent book has been written by two practitioners of ABM who know what’s needed to make it successful; Hillary Carpio and Travis Henry work together at Snowflake – Hillary is a marketer and Travis is in sales development. By joining forces, they worked out how to deliver successful ABM programs and in Busting Silos: How Snowflake Unites Sales and Marketing to Win Its Best Customers they explain how they do it.

What Is One-Team GTM?

• The book is called Busting Silos for a reason: ABM cannot succeed unless Sales and Marketing work together. You need trust, honesty and humility.
• For Sales, the hardest part of closing a deal is finding it – they need to work with Marketing to do that. Marketing must trace all their work back to revenue generation and focus on eliminating waste.
• “In a B2B context, both groups exist to grow top-line revenue for the company. These two teams have the same goal, it’s a shared objective, which means that these teams working against each other is equivalent to working against themselves.”
• “From the very start, we’ve created a culture at Snowflake that views Sales and Marketing as one big collaborative, cooperative supergroup that builds pipeline and drives revenues.”
• Snowflake is able to target the right accounts at the right time with the right message to the right people. They do this in a highly targeted 1-2-1 way, as well as with an at-scale approach.
• They call it “One Team GTM” = when Marketing, Sales, and Sales Development join together to engage the largest organisations in the world and maximise the odds of landing them as customers.
• One Team GTM = “the unified, scaled strategy and execution of an account-based motion across teams.”
• When Snowflake sells to a big account they deploy 1 x global account manager, 2 x account execs, 1 x territory account manager, 1 x SDR, 3 x sales engineers, 3 x professional services.
• ABM is the inverse to the wide net. It is popular because:
  • Data is available to identify who you want to work with.
  • Recurring revenue models allow you to show the value of spending on the right customers.
  • Need to differentiate – these days you need to stand out.
  • Buying committees are tricky – there will be a research group, influencers (eg end users), and an approver.
• Why organisations don’t do ABM:
  • They don’t know where to start.
  • Analytics/data is overwhelming.
  • Companies assume software is all that’s needed.
  • Marketers don’t feel empowered.
  • It seems tricky to measure.
  • Leaders worry about leads and ABM is not about leads.
  • There’s no patience to follow through.
• Which teams are included in OTGTM will vary by structure and size but it will need Sales, ABM, and Sales Development. For ABM, Marketing does the highly surgical demand gen. Sales does the deep account knowledge and human execution.
• In more general terms, Marketing drives demand by spreading awareness of products and services at a high level. Marketing educates on why to buy. Sales is responsible for bringing in revenue and engaging with customers. Sales enables the buying.
• Critical distinction: Marketing works on pipeline generation and Sales works on forecasting revenue. Marketing measures success on the health of the sales pipeline. MQLs, conversions, engagement rates don’t go away but they serve pipeline.
• SDRs report into marketing at Snowflake. Otherwise they just do what the AEs asked them to do and it wasn’t measurable.
• The questions that Hillary asks Sales:
  • What is your goal for the quarter?
  • What are you hearing from customers?
  • What’s keeping you up at night?
• To get started, find an ally on the Sales side, have a casual conversation and collaborate to net a small goal – eg using LinkedIn ads to get started.
• For Snowflake, they started in a small way by having the SDRs bridge the gap:
  • ABM team identified a handful of prime accounts for pursuit. This was done either by ABM bringing an account list sorted using data OR by Sales telling ABM which topic they are interested in and ABM generating a list of accounts OR Sales giving ABM a list of must-win accounts regardless of intent OR the SDR team seeing a spike around a specific buying group, OR the SDRs uncovering a relevant corporate initiative on LinkedIn.
  • Marketing then showed ads for long enough before SDRs reached out to move them through the funnel.

Minimum needed to get started: One marketer and one sales person.
Mistakes to avoid: don’t abandon what’s working for you; don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work immediately; don’t go too big to get started.

Is One Team GTM For You?

• OTGTM is the practice of picking a handful of top customers in conjunction with Sales, creating bespoke messaging for them, collaborating with SDRs to qualify them, and then bookending them with Sales execs to close the deal.
• If you have the following, OTGTM is for you:
  • You need to close bigger deals
  • You need to prioritise sales and marketing efforts more effectively. Your TAM will affect your GTM model as it dictates breadth and depth. Small TAM = focused, customised outreach. If you have a list of 75 accounts that you must land or die trying, OTGTM is for you.
  • You’re struggling to engage with buying teams – you need to engage with all stakeholders to stop them blocking the sale.
  • Diagram. $100k ARR sales – you need ABM.
• Frank Slooman, Snowflake CEO, is clear: You win markets by winning the accounts that matter. “This is because people are afraid to make decisions. They’re afraid for their job security and they’re afraid of becoming an outlier. So many will watch what industry leaders are doing and then they’re going to take a safe position by being a follower. It’s called herd mentality and it works across verticals, cities, regions, even countries.”
• “The world is always full of momentum. It’s either with you or against you, it’s never neutral.” Focus on key logos and momentum will be with you.
• Not ready for OTGTM? Start smaller – maybe one bit of your business needs it. Keep experimenting by retargeting lost opp accounts, competitor install-base etc.
• Be aware that compensation structure can hold you back with ABM.

Mistakes to avoid: Don’t do it because everyone else is doing it. Don’t be too general about why you want to do it – be specific. Don’t start without parameters. Don’t get bogged down on how big the work might be.

Forget Attribution and Focus on Metrics That Matter

• Attribution can be a zero sum game. Marketing is multi-media and multi-front and measuring individual contribution impact is virtually impossible.
• It also delivers a wedge between Sales and Marketing.
• Complicated attribution models don’t work. “Who deserves the credit for this win?” is the wrong question to ask. Right questions: “What is the total revenue that we drove for the company together?” and then “What tactics worked well to achieve this? What didn’t work well and can be divested?”
• Focus on pipeline. It’s both a leading indicator and a lagging indicator. A good quarter is not one where you make the number, it’s one where you also set yourself up for the next quarter.
• Pipeline = total number of potential deals that have been qualified as viable selling opportunities by an account executive but not yet closed.
• Pipeline coverage = a ratio used by Sales to measure how much of the revenue target is accounted for.
  • They calculate:
    • The average sales win rate (% of closed win deals out of total deals)
    • The average sales price (ASP) also known as ACV (average contract value)
    • The sales cycle time, the no of days from qualifying to winning
    • So if you have a $10m Q4 target and a 25% win rate with an ASP of $100k, you need $40m in pipeline to cover Q4. A 1.7 coverage means enough plus 0.7 over.
• Many people don’t think about when you need to start filling pipeline and leave it too late.
• Be aware of pipeline decay – Sales will clear out their forecasts at Q end, which can change everything. Expect fall-out so you can handle it. Snowflake uses ML to predict it.
• You need an account-based funnel instead of lead-based. There are 6 stages to an account funnel:
  1. Target accounts
  2. Engaged accounts – or MQAs
  3. Working accounts – one SDR/AE activity logged in the last 90 day
  4. Meeting accounts – at least one meeting has been had (it’s pipeline at this stage)
  5. Opportunity accounts – at least one open opp
  6. Won accounts
• Snowflake uses inspection metrics to understand how tactics are working. They then fix the inputs:
  • Engaged (Marketing) – how effective are engagement tactics? (Use account propensity and intent first and third party to gauge.)
  • Working (SDR) – how aligned is Sales/SDR/ABM?
  • Meeting – how compelling are CTAs?
  • Opportunity – how effective are our discovery calls?
  • Won – how successful are our AEs?
• You have to build each level of activity so it guides you to the next activity.
• Be clear on how you measure success? Main question is how much total revenue did we generate? Pipeline coverage is best leading indicator.
  • Other metrics – collaboration:
    • How often are Sales and Marketing meeting?
    • Are Marketing & SDRs being invited to QBRs?
    • Are your upcoming quarter initiatives driven by the needs of Sales? Or created in a void?
    • How many accounts have an account plan?
    • How many meetings have come from ABM targeted accounts?
  • Other metrics – efficiency
    • Time to first campaign responder
    • No. of calls to get first meeting
    • Deal acceleration
• Measuring waste: have good mantras, eg “SDRs touch every engaged account” rather than “let’s hit $100k”.
• Red flags:
  • Volume exceeds quality
  • “I didn’t know I was supposed to do that”
  • Sales/SDRs say they didn’t have time to prioritise an account
  • Off-message content is being used
  • You notice a marked lack of activities
• Attribution is for campaign tactics, not measuring your strategy. And it should be used to measure campaigns/plays and not for people.
• First touch attribution is great if you want to know what is working to capture early awareness.
• Last touch tells you what they looked at immediately prior to qualification.
• Attribution for ‘staking claims’ doesn’t work.
• Measure what matters most – that’s pipeline growth.
• They advocate “One consistent message. One set of accounts to achieve. One goal in Q4 pipeline.”
• SDRs are comped on meetings and pipeline. AE comped on sales and pipeline. For Marketing, comp needs to be specific about pipeline related outcomes. At Snowflake, they set goals at start of quarter.
• Bonuses also need to be recast. Snowflake has ‘What Matters’ similar to OKRs. At start of quarter, CMO identifies 3 or 4 top priorities. Building pipeline is always one. Company event success or product release success could be another. Then their direct reports create their “What Matters” and that cascades down. So for Snowflake Summit, the CMO might say x% growth over last year’s attendance and everyone works out their part.
• It’s hard to bust silos if people are rewarded for their specific role when it’s a group effort.
• “Pull yourself out the attribution quagmire and join us on solid ground where we can focus on how Sales and Marketing build and fill the pipeline.”

Mistakes to avoid: Don’t measure too many things.

How To Segment the Market

• As campaign responses come in, you segment them:
  • Non-TAM (Nurture)
  • Active Prospects/Customers (AE-owned)
  • Tier 1 Prospects (SDR owned)
  • Tier 2 Prospects (SDR owned)
  • Tier 3 Prospects (SDR owned)
• ABM is about all accounts but not all accounts deserve ABM.
• Start with your TAM = TARGET Addressable Market, not Total. The accounts that are a good fit for your product using firmographic or technographic data.
• TAM cheat sheet – make a spreadsheet and capture as much as you can:
  • What are the common features of companies that have a problem we can solve?
  • What products are those companies using that are complementary or competitive?
  • Which industries have we historically sold to?
  • Where are current customers located?
• Once you have the TAM, you segment. You will need a data intelligence service to enrich your data. Choose a segment, eg clinics that have more than 6 locations that have legacy billing software and our product could save them $500k a year.
• Then decide how Sales and Marketing will activate them. Who to contact first and why? Which will get customised treatment and which get more general treatment?
  • Targeted DG = target 100s of accounts that share traits. Use content, paid ads, event promotion. SDRs do lead follow up.
  • One to Many = is it ABM or not? If it works, do it. Time sensitive plays that are unique to a region. 50-250 accounts.
  • One to Few = Snowflake don’t do this often but joint partner programs with 10-20 accounts.
  • One to One = the bread and butter. Used for accounts that are high priority – they are either make or break or they haven’t responded to other marketing.
  • To decide which to use, go for the minimal one as resources matter.
• At Snowflake, the Sales team reorganised accounts by vertical (each AE got 45 accounts in a certain vertical) so they can understand the industry and be credible. They had used territories before.
• How to divide the work:
  • How many accounts can an AE work? How many touchpoints do you need/how long does a touchpoint take/how many hours in a day?
  • How many AEs should an SDR support? 121 for growth. 1-to-3 as you’re growing. At Snowflake, SDRs target 80-100 non-automated touches per 8 hour workday. SDR account capacity: contacts per account/manual touches per contact per week (2-3) – how many can they do?
  • ABMs – Hillary has 1 ABMer for 12-15 AEs. An ABMer can do 20 accounts 1-2-1, 10-50 of 1-2-few, and 50-100 of 1-2-many.
• Avoid false positives – if you don’t segment, you end up with a leaky funnel. It’s exhausting.

Know Your Personas By Name

• Personas are the foundation of a one-team GTM. You need to know how your product adds value to each type of customer. Who are they and why would they buy from you? You’re trying to reach them on a motivational, psychological level as well as a professional level. People buy when they feel known.
• Sales & Marketing must align on persona messaging. You need a core message for each persona. They need to see the message repeated in different forms and across different media so it has time to resonate and become memorable. In small companies, Sales and Marketing do this together. In mature companies, Product Marketing lead it with input.
• You put the agreed messages in a robust solutions selling enablement document for Sales to use.
• Personas are good for quality control:
  • Create variants of data scientists at X and data scientist at Y
  • Ensure all messaging is correct
  • Create metrics that apply to all
  • Measure and optimise
• What do you need to know about personas/what does an SDR need to know:
  • Role – understand their painpoints. What could they do better?
  • Title and aliases – have a list of every possible title.
  • Tenure – average tenure is vital. If a CMO tenure is 2.5 years, you’ll be ripped out – how will you help them extend their tenure?
  • How they get info – publications online and offline, associations etc.
  • Role in buying committee – end users are often best entry point.
  • Performance metrics – how is performance measured? Markers of success/failure? Paid/compensated?
  • Name them, eg Data Scientist Dave.
• Create matrix with one column for Work Profile (e.g. title, tenure, KPIs, why they get promoted/fired) and then one column for Content/Engagement Profile with preferences for go-to-source for info, preferred content type, technical vs business, formats, content length etc.
• Call up people you sold to 6 months ago and ask:
  • What was the thing that made you want to spend with us in the first place?
  • What have you discovered about using our product that has delighted you?
• The Magic Matrix helps you guide messaging – it distills the key value of each persona in long and short form copy: Persona 1 and then columns for ‘Why?’ and ‘Intent Keywords/SEO’ and ‘Ad Copy’ and ‘SDR Sequence’.
• Start with whatever existing persona info you have. Write one or two sentences of core messaging for each persona using outcomes they can expect. Then do long form copy. Use metrics to create consistency of messaging. When you’re ready to scale, repeat. One persona per industry.
• Now turn your personas into people – once you’ve done the segmentation, bucketed the personas, you need a database of contacts.
• Who is marketable? Opted in or not opted out. Then fill it out: pay to supplement it, or outsource contact discovery or get contacts to opt in. Snowflake uses all three.
• The personas become contacts and the database is used by everyone.
• Keep the GTM in mind with all of this: how are you orienting yourself towards the market? How do you define your offering? Who do you want to use your product? What are the painpoints?
• Positioning is all about competitors, capabilities, benefits, differentiators.

Design a Hyper Targeted Content Ecosystem

• “Building trust with a prospect is all about making deposits – offer them valuable information, show them shortcuts and little known resources, give them goodies to show that you’re honestly invested in supporting them.” You need to make many deposits before you make a sales request.
• Emails must be personalised and relevant. You need to solidify your core message and speak to it across media. And then you need a personalised webpage with 5-7 pieces of content that speak to different elements of their business and tech stack, partners, company references from peers and CTAs that suit the stage of the buying cycle.
• Start with existing assets:
  • Organise it based on what you know about personas and buying habits.
  • Anything that has been well received can be repurposed for ABM.
  • Organise into categories – Problem Education (don’t sell), Solution Research (don’t sell), Solution Selection (sell) – see The Sales Acceleration Formula book.
• Email drips, social snippets, display ads, prospecting sequences all go through Problem (trends), Research (case studies), Selection (features)
• You will need an ICP to build a content ecosystem – identity the painpoints so you can address which topics you need.
• People will come in wherever they want to – you can’t control it so make sure you have a range of topics and multiple types of content delivery tactics. Snowflake always starts with a webinar, as it can be repurposed more easily than an ebook. For problem pieces, start with numbers.
• Organise and tag – once you’ve sorted the content you have to examine it from the customer POV. Basic tags: persona, industry, solution, journey stage.
• Now content is organised you look for opportunities to personalise it.
• Can the content/messages be personalised by industry? How are you reaching out? Do you have a database to handle the personalisation elements?
• Next you need to refine your sequence library:
  • The sequence = the touch pattern of emails, calls, social connections and other outreach that defines how SDRs engage with contacts. Firms often expect SDRs to do this themselves or they automate the whole lot. Sales engagement platforms are key.
  • Snowflake has a content committee of SDRs, Product Marketing, Sales execs. If you don’t lock down sequence creation you get duplication, missing best practice, outdated value propositions, sequence sprawl where no-one knows what’s working.
  • You should aim for a set of sequences that speak to the primary factors that change your value proposition, e.g. you sell to 5 personas and each has 3 value props so you have 15 sequences to cover those combinations. SDRs tailor the last mile so they remain fresh.
• At Snowflake, sequences start with heavy personalisation to build credibility. they then shift to semi-automated and automated CTAs to get meetings or event or free trial.
• Other ideas:
  • Force personalisation in email templates for SDRs
  • Subject lines should not be more than a few words
  • Avoid single channel sequences, e.g. no 100% automated emails with no calls
• Writing compelling email templates: they should be brief and packed with value. Include an account or persona-specific trigger – like a job posting – and then add relevant value and CTA.

Timing

• Timing is important. Accounts might ignore you for years but then they’re in the market and you need to swoop.
• For the bulk of your TAM, timing drives relevance. Snowflake SDR trainers tells their students: “Your potential customers are getting the job done today without you. They are getting from points A to B. It’s not your job to get their motivation to change, it’s your job to align with it.”
• Inbound = pull via search, blogging, social media, digital marketing.
• Your timing depends on intent data. Marketing is a two-way street. We need to listen to what those customers are telling us. Badgering makes them hate you.
• Intent = the collection of behaviours that tell you when the other party is showing interest in your offering. It’s a compass, pointing to accounts you need to focus on. Which companies and which subsidiaries/buying centres are showing intent?
• Intent can be broken into two categories:
  • First party intent data – activity you own, firmo/techno/behavioural. You can answer the question ‘how likely is this account to further engage with your marketing and sales efforts based on behaviour on your properties?’ Web traffic, engagement on ads and at events, replies to Sales’ mails, answering calls, email opens, product telemetry.
  • Third party data – use natural language processing tools to look for abnormal surges in research on other websites. Also job changes, new hires, funding rounds, corporate news announcements, social media engagement.
• Track growth from a baseline – has it changed/increased?
• The Snowflake Intelligence Director:
  • Says to start by tracking engagement – do it yourself if you have nothing else.
  • They used to use propensity scoring – likelihood of an opportunity opening up – and creating MQAs. Then maturity scoring gave a predicted close date.
  • Machine learning is the final stage – prediction level using historical data and inference level, which provides an output of a single numerical score using an algorithm.
• How to use intent data:
  • Keep it in one place (CRM, spreadsheet)
  • Once you’re tracking intent data you can use it to build predictive models. Propensity is their gold standard – web signals gleaned from wins to predict new ones.
  • You can hire an agency to build it or buy an ABM platform or hire data scientists.
  • Sales-facing output is an action board (they don’t have dashboards) called Arctic Insights.
  • MQA scoring threshold shows that Sales outreach is needed.
• Examples of segment + intent + message at work:
  • Segment of hospitals with 4+ locations and 15,000 patient transactions per month.
  • Communality: disparate locations and disconnected billing.
  • Relevant intent signals: job postings for billing employees.
  • Relevant message: decrease employee overload.
  • Tip: reference job postings in SDR outreach.
  • Segment of healthcare providers in specific states rolling out new compliance.
  • Communality: need to migrate tech to maintain compliance.
  • Relevant intent: the segment is the intent.
  • Relevant message: adds working hours.
  • Tip: resource library as go-to.
• Example of play centred on timing:
  • Arctic Accelerator monitors all accounts and if they see a surge in score (top 5%-10% of scoring range) they move the account into ABM. They discuss these weekly.
• Leveraging timing in must-win accounts:
  • Hillary uses robot vacuum cleaner metaphor for OTGTM – if it hits a wall, it switches direction.
  • Snowflake uses strategy of tracking intent signals related to individual subsidiaries and identifying which door to open first. An ‘in’ with a single subsidiary lays the groundwork.
  • Job changes are great for must-win accounts – send them a welcome box. Get to know the persona inside out. Funding, acquisitions, spin-offs.
  • If a must-win account is showing no intent, it makes it much harder – your problem education work must become the focus.
• SLAs are tied to timing: outbound has to be as timely as inbound. They get documented commitments from SDRs/Sales that they agree with the play and will follow up in a timely manner. “If account X does Y, Sales must respond in Z timescales”. If you don’t have SLAs, everything gets treated the same.

Plan Your First Plays

• They launched a program and it was chaos. Then they wrote a playbook and got meetings with 1 in 3 accounts they targeted, up from 1 in 13. You have to keep going.
• What is a play? A defined set of tactics executed between ABMs, SDRs, Sales to drive a specific outcome with a target market.
• What are the components?
  • Who? The persona.
  • What? The message.
  • How? Content.
  • How to deliver? SDRs and Marketing
• Establish baseline metrics and program goals – account engagement rate, contacts sequenced, SDR response rate, meetings
• Identify roles and responsibilities – who is responsible for what in what time frame?
• Calendar reminders – have a shared calendar.
• Select accounts – refresh your TAM at least once a year. Select cohort 4 weeks ahead of launch.
• Complete targeting – messaging matrices.
• Work on program development – choose content, develop messaging, enrich contacts.
• Launch advertising – 1:1 or 1:few.
• Launch SDR prospecting.
• Optimise – weekly look at sequenced contacts, response rates, booked/completed meetings, opps.
• You can have 2-year plays, 1-month plays, one quarter play etc.
• Example OTGTM plays:
  • 1-2-1 as a door opener: only use this if it’s a very high spending account and other activity has not worked. Who? Identify paths of entry via a partner or focus on an end user that you can turn into a champion. What? Problem education tailored to individual. How? A well-curated library of content that you know will get shared. Measure what is and isn’t getting engagement. How? Digital ads, webinars/eBooks, AE outreach to VP and above. SDR to senior directors and below. Timing: Which ones are must-win. Goals: get first meeting. Inspection metrics include anonymous engagement and known engagement.
  • 1-2-1 for opp accelerator: Works best for accounts with open opps. Who? Personas will vary and you need to be specific, eg FDs will save money etc. What? You communicate with content libraries (which need to become more robust) and you’ll create microsites that offer something to each member of the buying committee. You can upload decks and call recordings as well. How? Marketing needs to tread lightly here and let SDRs/Sales lead.
  • 1-2-Few feature adoption: Used for high value accounts that are using freemium/free trial versions and you want the upgrade. Who? The persona depends on users. What? The message is around product telemetry. How? Communicate via microsites on specific products. You can deliver message by adding in-app messaging maybe.
  • 1-2-Few competitive takeout: Who? Personas need to avoid the person responsible for the competitor’s install. What? Message is about similar companies that moved over. How? It’s all Solution Research/Selection content. Retargeting ads, SDRs, competitor weaknesses. Timing is when they’re coming to renewal.
  • 1-2-Many: You’re trying to identify accounts with active buying interest in specific topics in each region. Focus on specific topics or industries. Start with 50-200 accounts that are showing buying intent on a topic chosen by Sales or ABM.
  • 1-2-Many warm calling: All about the 1-2 punch. You need very consistent messaging. Run the ads 2-4 weeks before. Timing is everything – use third party intent data to qualify accounts. Always use data to identity accounts – intuition does not work as well. Sales pick the topic.
  • 1-2-Many EOQ push: look for who is at risk of missing quota. Who? Target individuals that are in sequence but haven’t replied. What? Use the hypothesis of need and then personalise. Spin up landing pages and measure engagement. Can you send swag? Goal: move to meeting status.
• Don’t let ABM sit on a strategy shelf. Jeff Bezos’ “two-way door” analogy: ABM can be reversed. You need defined roles and codified processes to create lasting alignment.

Activate

• Execution beats strategy every day of the week.
• Start with cross-functional knowledge sharing. Get everyone together that is involved on the accounts. Hold meeting where marketing lead on data insights, SDRs lead on messaging and what has worked. By the end of the meeting you have:
  • The problem you can solve in accounts.
  • Which products will solve it.
  • Who are you focusing on – persona/LOB/subsidiary.
  • Messages across the buying team.
  • What content is recommended by Sales.
  • Challenges and objections you expect.
  • Tactics to employ.

Activate Content Experience

• Begin by activating the microsite or landing page for visitors from the account.
• It could be industry personalised as a minimum or have the account name on it. Handpick the content. 7-12 content pieces, 2-3 CTAs, link to Sales rep calendar, 1 customer reference as minimum.

Activate Digital Touchpoints

• Agree on the value message and copy.
• Channels: display ads, inmail messaging, web personalisation…all point to the microsite.
• Ad tool with account targeting capabilities is needed – plus LinkedIn, Reddit, chat tools, email signature banners.
• ABM is 50% getting buy-in and 50% doing it. It stalls if teams don’t trust the data or doubt their ability to talk about the topic.

Activate Offline Tactics

• Includes direct mail, events, billboards.
• Events can be targeted to one account or multiple accounts.
• DM – swag a gift with QR code.
• Out of home: send a food truck to their campus.
• ABM & Field create the concepts and then ABM does the logistics.

Activate SDR Sequences

• Once you have the hypothesis of need agreed in the meeting, SDRs start research on the accounts.
• Sequences are the building blocks that reduce the repetitive work. They’re looking for ways to customise, eg executive quotes, company facts, comparative company success, who they’re using. All of this is catalogued in spreadsheets or sales engagement platform.
• Email writing is an art: subject line, hook, value prop, CTA. You can use A/B testing but only test one thing at a time.

Activate Measurement

• Target accounts, engaged accounts, working accounts, meeting accounts, opportunity accounts, won accounts. How are you reporting on all this?
• She advocates setting out statements: “If we achieve X by X date, this program was successful. This would represent X over the baseline.”

Activate Your Plays

• Quarterly meetings for Sales, ABM, SDRs.
• Leadership prioritise segments and define themes for the quarter.
• Meeting takes place 6 weeks before quarter begins.
• ABM creates and audits database to ensure volume of accounts is there.
• Then nail down messaging and content.

Scaling your ABM

• Building the ABM team – start with 1 x ABM, either senior or junior. Then grow to 3. Then get a player-coach. Then a lead who will report into Growth Marketing or maybe Demand Generation but they must agree not to measure on leads.
• Building the SDR team – once you have a couple of SDR managers and 20 SDRs you can justify SDR ops.
• Securing budget relies on getting a cost per account and being able to show engagement and pipeline as ROI.
• ABM will work with Demand Generation – DG is focused on qualified responses from generating campaign responses from the personas that are most relevant to the business offerings.
• ABM will work with Field – Field is focused on pipeline from sales-aligned activities in region.
• ABM will work with Product – Product defines the value prop and decides how you talk about benefits, problems, personas. They crystalise expert knowledge into customer-ready talking points. They measure on customer and Sales consumption of content and product/feature adoption.

Your next steps:

If ABM is of any interest to you, you should buy and read Busting Silos as soon as possible.