Targeted Account Strategy
Article | January 11, 2022
In any company, there is a sales function and a marketing function. They are supposed to work together to help the organization secure business, earn revenue, and facilitate growth.
Oftentimes, because of the nature of their business, sales and marketing work at cross purposes and they lose focus on their ultimate objective of identifying, creating, and retaining customers.
In this article, we will discuss how sales and marketing can work together to form an effective B2B sales funnel.
But first, let’s explore the roles of sales and marketing within an organization.
Sales are the function of driving revenue with salespeople who follow a defined sales process. A typical sales process involves a research phase to ensure that the intended customer is a good fit to the company’s Ideal Customer Profile, a discovery phase where the salesperson gets to know the customer, understand their needs, and see where their solution can help solve the customer’s problem, a demonstration phase where the seller lets the buyer envision how their solution for a product or service can satisfy the buyer’s need.
A proposal phase is proactive and where the seller provides the customer with an outline of the work they will undertake and at what price. Sometimes a seller will instead be responding to a buyer’s request for a proposal (RFP). Up until this point in the sales process, prospective customers are referred to as “suspects,” meaning that they may be a good fit, but they have not expressed any interest in the company’s solutions and the company has not proposed any ways in which it could be of service. However, once a salesperson provides the prospective customer with a proposal, that prospective customer becomes known as a “prospect.”
In sales, the measurement of potential revenue and its progress towards realization is called a sales “funnel.” In a sales funnel, the probability of the salesperson closing the sale is now weighted with percentages demonstrating the likelihood of success. In the sales process, opportunities are weighted based on their probability of closing. This is called opportunity management and it looks something like this:
0% of the prospect is identified by researching the intended sales target company.
10% of the prospect is prequalified as a potential good fit in alignment with the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (I.D.C.).
25% of the prospect is qualified via a discovery call, and the opportunity is loaded into the sales funnel.
40% is when the buyer agrees to a demonstration, shows genuine buying interest, and is open to receiving a proposal.
50% is the assessment phase where the seller determines if the buyer has Budget, Authority, Need, and the Timeframe for implementation, (B.A.N.T.). Another component of the sale to be addressed at this phase is “why,” as in, “Why is the buyer making this purchase decision, why is my company being considered, and why is this timeframe for implementation important?”
60% is when a proposal is submitted to the buyer for consideration. (Pro tip: A good salesperson will have the boilerplate components of the contract pre-vetted by legal and IT when the proposal is initially submitted to the buyer so that the contract does not get held up at the bottom of the funnel by any issues not within the buyer’s control when it is ready to close).
75% is the negotiation phase where the buyer/decision-maker(s) asks clarifying questions that show an intent to purchase or express some objections that the seller will need to overcome to move the sale forward.
90% is when both parties agree to all the conditions of the purchase and the final contract is submitted for signature.
100% is when the sale is closed and the revenue can be recognized.
If the funnel can be trusted, and oftentimes that’s a big “if” because salespeople are not always disciplined in opportunity management, then revenue recognized can be forecasted beginning at 75% of probability.
At every phase of the sales funnel, sales are conducted by calling, emailing, texting, or other outreach to prospective and existing customers to guide them towards making a purchase. The process might be consultative, taking place over a long period and involving multiple decision-makers in which the salesperson learns about the customer and their pain points, and then helps them understand how their product or service offering can provide a solution.
Sales could also be tactical and a very short process involving just a single conversation with a salesperson before an agreement is finalized.
Although technology and social media have certainly influenced how sales are conducted, the essential steps of the sales process have pretty much remained the same.
Whereas sales are hands-on, marketing is a much more comprehensive process that does not generally interact with an individual customer but is designed to increase awareness of a brand or product to target customers as a group.
Unlike sales, the methods, tactics, and channels used by marketers have evolved tremendously over the last fifteen years. Marketing today is primarily digital and includes content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, organic website traffic, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and the use of influencers and brand ambassadors.
The objective of the marketing department is to generate leads for the sales department. These leads start as “marketing qualified leads” (MQLs) and although these prospective buyers are not yet ready to purchase, they have expressed interest in a company’s product. When properly nurtured by the marketing department, these prospects become “sales qualified leads” (SQL’s) and are handed off by the marketing team to the sales team when they are likely to make a purchase.
This nurturing can occur via social media, email distribution, or other communication from the marketing team to keep the prospective client interested and engaged.
It would seem so easy for marketing to cultivate leads and hand them off to the sales team. However, this is often not the case. Too frequently marketing and sales are simply misaligned.
Just consider these statistics:
According to Upland, 55% of marketers don’t know which collateral their sales colleagues are most likely to use.
LinkedIn reports that only 46% of marketers describe sales and marketing as “highly aligned” at their company.
The Precision Marketing Group states that 25% of businesses describe their sales and marketing as either “misaligned” or “rarely aligned”.
This lack of synchronization between marketing and sales causes poor execution and lost opportunities.
According to LinkedIn’s Art of Winning Report, an estimated $1 trillion a year is lost due to a lack of sales and marketing coordination in the US alone.
An industry survey by InsideView found that the six biggest obstacles to sales and marketing
working together were:
Lack of accurate/shared data on target accounts and prospects (43%)
Communication (43%)
Use of different metrics (41%)
Broken/flawed processes (37%)
Lack of accountability on both sides (25%)
Reporting challenges (21%)
Simply put, marketing and sales need to collaborate more effectively to better manage today’s sales funnel. But how?
According to digital marketing strategist, Sujan Patel, there are three levels of marketing alignment:
The Emotional Level: Your Sales and Marketing teams should be working cohesively together and supporting each other. They should not be working at cross-purposes.
The Process Level: There need to be clear, measurable, sustainable, and repeatable processes in place to ensure that everyone within both the marketing and sales teams is pulling in the same direction and working in the same way.
The Feedback Loop Level: Marketing doesn’t always produce awesome leads. Sometimes they might suck. Nobody’s perfect. That’s why sales need to communicate back to marketing so there is a feedback loop between the two teams to either encourage good leads or stop wasting company resources on bad ones.
An effective partnership between sales and marketing is the #1 success factor attributed to achieving revenue goals. (Source: Heinz Marketing - Performance Management Report)
So, how can we get sales and marketing to work better together? It starts with having a project plan in place.
The first step is for sales and marketing to agree on what the ideal customer profile (I.D.C.) of a target customer should be. They need to agree on the characteristics that define the type of company (not the individual buyer or end-user) that will find the most value in their product or service offering. If done correctly, prospects that are aligned to the company’s IDC are most likely to become long-term customers who will give significant value back to the business in the form of possible subscription fees, upsells, and referrals. An easy way to identify the IDC of a company is to look at a list of their current best-performing customers and determine what attributes they have in common.
The next step is for sales to explain to marketing the steps of the sales funnel, how it works and what marketing resources are needed to migrate the prospective customer through it. Too often, marketing is concerned with branding and outreach, and they do not allocate sufficient resources to the sales team to give them the resources and collateral they need to expedite their sales.
Once sales and marketing are aligned regarding who the IDC of a company is and what marketing resources should be allocated to support the sales team, an organization can take its game up a level and begin to pursue account-based marketing (A.B.M.) opportunities.
Account-based marketing is when marketing and sales teams work together in a focused approach to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers. When done correctly, marketing and sales teams meld their expertise to locate, engage with, and close deals with high-value accounts that offer a high ROI to their company.
The primary components of account-based marketing include:
Reaching the right accounts
Engaging across marketing channels
Determining effective metrics and measurements
According to LinkedIn research, businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment are 67% more effective at closing deals, 58% more effective at retaining customers, and drive 208% more revenue as a result of their marketing efforts.
So, whether an organization is pursuing a traditional marketing approach or a more targeted account-based marketing strategy, it is essential for marketing to work more closely with sales in vigorous and meaningful ways.
Today’s buyer is more knowledgeable and has access to more information about a prospective seller, their competition, and the marketplace than ever before. As a result, sales leaders need to demonstrate subject matter expertise in their area of commerce and leverage the content, tools, and resources that the marketing department can provide them to enhance their sales efforts.
Although good salespeople will find a way to close business, having the support of a well-synchronized marketing team behind them will help accelerate the sales process, increase revenue, boost profitability and facilitate greater customer satisfaction.
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Targeted Account Strategy
Article | February 10, 2022
Gay Pride or LGBTQ+ Pride is the promotion of dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people as a social group.
Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBTQ+ rights movements. LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, while the '+' is an inclusive symbol meaning 'and others' to include people of all identities.
It's a celebration of people coming together in love and friendship to show how far LGBTQ+ rights have come and how there's still work to be done in some places. Pride events range from solemn to carnivalesque and are typically held during LGBTQ+ Pride Month or other periods that commemorate a turning point in a country's LGBTQ+ history. For example, Moscow Pride in May for the anniversary of Russia's 1993 decriminalization of homosexuality.
A short history of Pride
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month is celebrated every year in June to honor the Stonewall Riots that took place on 28 June 1969 – a rebellion led by trans women of color that acted as a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.
However, the Stonewall Riots weren’t the first time the LGBTQ+ community organized to stand up for their cause. The Society for Human Rights was founded by US Army soldier Henry Gerber in 1924 and produced the US’ first-ever gay rights newsletter, ‘Freedom & Friendship’ – inspired by the work of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, an organization dedicated to overturning Germany’s anti-homosexual rulings at the time.
In the 1950s, Harry Hay founded The Mattachine Society in Southern California to provide a space for gays and lesbians to gather and discuss their experiences as homosexuals. While The Daughters of Bilitis was one of the first lesbian organizations ever established in the US, formed in 1955 by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin.
And in the 1960s, riots at both Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco and Cooper Do-Nuts in Los Angeles represented the first time that LGBTQ+ people stood up against police harassment.
Take a journey through time to explore more of the obscure political history of Pride with them.'s video featuring Billy Porter on the subject below.
Pride in 2022
Today, celebrations include pride parades, picnics, parties, workshops, and concerts. LGBTQ+ Pride Month events attract millions of participants around the world. Memorials are also held throughout the month for those members of the community who have been lost to hate crimes or HIV/AIDS.
The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.
Pride Month is about acceptance, equality, celebrating the work of LGBTQ+ people, education in LGBTQ+ history, and raising awareness of issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community. It also calls for people to remember how damaging homophobia was and still can be.
Did you know?
American bisexual rights activist Brenda Howard is known as 'The Mother of Pride' after organizing the first-ever Gay Pride March in Chicago – The Christopher Street Liberation Day March on 28 June 1970
Common symbols of pride include the rainbow flag and other pride flags. Today, the Progressive Pride flag is flown and celebrates the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community
The São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade is the largest in the world, welcoming three to five million attendants each year
The suggestion to call the movement 'Pride' came from L. Craig Schoonmaker, who in 2015 said: A lot of people were very repressed, they were conflicted internally, and didn't know how to come out and be proud. That's how the movement was most useful, because they thought, 'Maybe I should be proud.
Since 28 June 1970, Pride events have grown bigger, bolder, and well more proud!
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Targeted Account Strategy
Article | November 26, 2021
Have you browsed about account-based marketing and how successful it has proved for businesses? Do you wonder whether your business fits in the ABM strategy? And even if you practice ABM, what is to be done differently for your business?
Well, we have answers to all your questions.
As Clive Armitage, CEO at Agent3, said,“We have to act as the eyes and ears of marketing innovation for our clients; they trust us to help them navigate the pace of change in the way that the process of marketing is evolving.”
Thus, your marketing and sales team should be on the same page to deliver an excellent and personalized customer experience.
The implementation of ABM in different industries may be different but the challenges faced are somewhat the same.
The baisc challenge for ABM are personalization and quality content.
So, let us dig deeper into how ABM works for different industry segments. And also focus on how each industry should strategize for successful account-based marketing.
How Is ABM Different for Different Industries?
Every company has different products to sell to various companies. Also, if you sell the same product to distinct companies, you need a unique tactic for every organization.
Account-based marketing is crafting such individual approaches for every client that matters.
For example, if you are an advertising company and you need a luxury car brand account, your ABM strategy will be different for different car brands. It can also be designed differently for every decision-maker.
Thus, you have to be very focused and delicately plan strategies for the target account.
Apart from the people you target, also keep in mind the industry segment that you target. It will help to align strategies with both brands.
Now let us discuss some different types of ABM strategies that work for distinct industry segments.
Types of ABM Strategies (with Real-time Examples)
ABM is a beneficial strategy for all types of companies. But it works wonders for organizations that target large companies who have relatively long sales cycles.
According to the State of Account-Based Revenue Engine 2019 report, organizations saw a whooping 91% improved ROI post-ABM implementation.
Hence, let us see how different ABM strategies have their way of working.
Events
Events have proved to be the most successful of all the ABM strategies.
Once target clients accept the personalized invites to the events, the sales team can easily have in-person meetings. Also, a souvenir, gift, or a creative way of a follow-up meeting should be an incorporated strategy of the event.
Example:
Thomas Reuters is an organization that provides news and information tools for professionals. Their challenge was retention and expansion with their key accounts. Thus, they created an event opportunity for these accounts.
In these events, the top executives of the exclusive accounts could speak. And Thomas Reuters would quote them in whitepapers, blogs, and more.
It ensured that the sales team would be in contact with the key accounts all year round. Thus, it increased retention and built good relations.
Webinars
A webinar is an option when the physical presence of clients at a similar geographical location is not possible.
But a webinar allows curating a more personalized experience and at convenient times with less utility of resources.
Example:
HotJar Lightning Talks conference is a webinar hosted by HotJar. This webinar gives the speaker maximum of five minutes to address a particular topic. Thus, no long presentation but just a short glimpse of informative or marketing strategies.
Businesses participate in the webinar to present the challenges and solutions to their prospective clients.
Thus, HotJar had many B2B clients participating in the conference and, the idea became a big hit!
Direct Mails
Gifts, marketing material, and creative packages sent through direct mail are a success in ABM. However, account-based marketing requires personalization and direct mail is the best tactic to deliver that.
Example:
Billing Tree is a technology-driven payment processing organization.
It faced the challenge of scheduling meetings with the targeted accounts. Thus, they mailed 100 locked cases secured with two combinations of padlocks. These cases contained US$ 100 Amazon gift cards. Billing Tree gave the combination once they got the appointment with the account.
And once the client opened the case, the lid had a video player embedded in it that played the video pitch for the account.
Billing Tree generated an account engagement rate of 60% with the ABM strategy of direct mail.
Advertising
Personalized advertising has become an easy thing, thanks to IP targeting and re-targeting technology. It allows you to target the big fishes rather than the traditional wide net fishing.
Example:
DocuSign is an eSignature transaction management and solution provider company. It wanted to generate more traffic and click-through rates to form gated content.
The company executed personalized ad campaigns to the target accounts that contained industry-specific images, content, and peer logos. And with detailed web analytics, they targeted the accounts at specific times.
This personalized ads ABM strategy boosted DocuSign’s age views by 300% with a massive conversion rate!
Personalized Website Experience
Technology these days has expanded its horizons to provide incredible experiences, and personalized website experience is one of those. Once you get the technicalities right, your target accounts can have an out-of-the-world personalized experience when they visit the desired page or the website.
Example:
Savi provides sensor analytics solutions for organizations. Their main client bases are the ones that give critical decisions based on the location and status of people. Thus, Savi has to deal with private and government organizations.
Therefore, as a part of specific marketing and sales strategy, they personalized their home pages differently for different clients.
Thus, when government organizations the homepage was:
And for the corporates, the page was:
Ways to Implement ABM
According to the 2020 State of ABM Report, 94.2% of respondents have successfully implemented this marketing strategy.
Thus, you too can implement account-based marketing with these simple steps.
Identify your high-value clients.
Conduct extensive research on those clients.
Strategize your personalized ABM campaigns.
Implement the account-based marketing strategy.
Analyze the campaign regularly.
Importance of Personalization
Personalization is a crucial part of account-based marketing. Your extensive research about the clients helps you craft unique, creative, and personalized content for them.
A personalized experience ensures an enriched and engaging customer experience.
If a campaign exclusively provides solutions to pain points, clients become customers for life. It also helps to develop good relations.
Remember, account-based marketing is not only about conversions but also about creating brand awareness and relationships.
As Andy Bacon, VP Consulting at Momentum, has quoted, “ABM is all about building better quality relationships; the ROI will follow.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Do different industries need different account-based marketing strategies?
The meaning of account-based marketing is to provide tailored solutions to exclusive clients. So yes, different industries will require different ABM strategies.
One should use distinct and personalized approaches to target different people of the same organization. However, you have to ensure that the marketing message is the same for all, despite the personalization.
What are the different types of account-based marketing methods?
The different types to implement ABM strategies are:
Events
Webinars
Direct Mails
Advertising
Personalized Website Experience
Social Media
What role does personalization play in ABM?
ABM is all about personalization. The more personalized your content is, the more likely the chances are for conversion.
Imagine someone selling you a product designed just for solving your problems. You do not even need convincing if it is the answer to all your pain points. That is the same way in which ABM works.
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Article | April 10, 2020
As COVID-19 became increasingly widespread in the U.S. last month, Senior Account-Based Marketing Manager Kristin Kolb had to quickly shift her department’s planned Q1 pilot. Originally, it had involved direct mail that the Matillion team was going to send to target audiences in their office. Kolb said they decided on an alternative digital approach, upping the ante with personalization efforts. “You don’t need the latest and greatest technology or idea to create a hypothesis and run a small test to see if it works,” Kolb said. Billtrust’s Director of Revenue Marketing Deirdre Mills also champions personalization. While she believes that ABM is more of an art than a science, she ties relevant prospect information into program data, keeping company initiatives in mind.
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