Account-Based Marketing Implementation: Aligning Sales & Marketing for Success

Have you ever found yourself as frustrated as the marketing process when it is creating leads that the sales department does not want to hear, or the sales department lamenting that the marketing department does not know their needs? This lack of connectivity means that companies are wasting millions of resources and missing chances. The solution? True sales and marketing alignment through the use of account-based marketing.

I have assisted dozens of B2B organizations in adopting ABM strategies, and the trend is the same: it is not a fancy technology or a clever campaign that makes the difference, but rather a success of getting sales and marketing to work as a single team in achieving replicated objectives. I will demonstrate to you how to make account based marketing work in your organization.

Why Account-Based Marketing Demands Perfect Alignment

Account-based marketing is a fundamental shift in the way B2B firms go about their expansion. Rather than throwing large nets in hope of landing leads, you profile high value target accounts and organize personalized campaigns to reach them. This change demands sales and marketing to collaborate too tightly as compared to conventional methods.

The statistics are very straight forward 97% of marketers testify that ABM generates a better ROI than other marketing approaches, but merely 36% of businesses running an ABM program believe that their sales and marketing teams are very closely aligned. This is the gap that makes most ABM implementation projects fail to be as expected.

When alignment is achieved, the outcomes are spectacular. B2B firms whose sales and marketing efforts are closely integrated increased revenues 24 percent in three years as opposed to companies that have their teams operate independently. To be more exact, these companies grew profits 27 in the same period.

The Foundation: Pre-Implementation Essentials

The implementation of account-based marketing can never begin with campaigns but preparation. Omit these groundwork steps and your ABM program will not get off on the right foot.

Establishing Organizational Readiness

The bitter truth is that, just half of the companies that measure account-based marketing ROI, implying that, many organizations start ABM programs without knowing what success would mean nor how to measure it. Don’t make this mistake.

Building Your Ideal Customer Profile Together

Sales and marketing need to come up with Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Through marketing, there is information on which accounts interact most with the content. Sales provides information regarding the type of account that closes and has the greatest lifetime value.

Organizations that have high ICP win more accounts 68 percent more. It is not just a coincidence as when both teams decide on the traits of the perfect customers, all future decisions become more precise and unanimous.

Establishing Shared Goals and Metrics

The failure of sales and marketing alignment is mainly caused by the existence of different success metrics, the single largest cause of failure. Marketing glorifies MQLs and sales laments about the quality of leads. Account-based marketing puts the two teams on the same scorecard.

Establish common measures such as pipeline creation by target accounts, account penetration (number of engaged contacts by account), deals size of target account and revenue assigned by target account. Where the two teams are accountable to the same figures, artificial boundaries are broken.

The Implementation Roadmap

Based on foundations, ABM implementation passes through systematic steps that gain momentum and allow correction of the course.

Phase 1: Account Selection and Tiering

Target accounts are not all the same and worth equal investment. The accounts should be tiered according to the potential value and resources needed:

Tier 1 (One-to-One): Most valued accounts that are getting entirely customized campaigns, and specific resources as well as executive engagement. Typically 5-15 accounts.

Tier 2 (One-to-Few): Clumps of similar accounts that get semi-customized campaigns due to the similarity in their characteristics. Marketing average 15-50 per cluster.

Tier 3 (One-to-Many): More extensive pools of accounts that receive large scale personal content through automation and technology. Scales to hundreds of accounts.

Phase 2: Joint Account Planning

Here the sales and marketing fit is brought to reality. In case of each priority account, hold joint planning sessions mapping stakeholders in the account, finding pain points and buying triggers, creating account-specific value propositions, and organizing coordinated channel touchpoints, and creating account-specific success metrics.

Marketing is expected to know each account as well as sales. Their account knowledge should be reflected in the sales through marketing campaigns. This intelligence shared eradicates the wastage of handing over that plagues the traditional B2B marketing.

Phase 3: Coordinated Multi-Channel Execution

Account-based marketing works well when the marketing establishes air cover and sales performs ground operations. Some of the things that marketing initiates include launching display advertising to account contacts, developing personalized microsites and landing pages, generating custom content that will discuss account-specific issues, and organizing social media interaction with key stakeholders.

Meanwhile, sales has been doing direct outreach with intelligence of the contacts that were involved in what content. The combination is coordinated and not random as it is coordinated.

Phase 4: Personalization at Scale

Technology facilitates ABM strategies which cannot be practiced manually. Current ABM systems have the ability to present various content on websites to various accounts, tailor email workflows depending on the account level and activity, issue sales alerts when premium accounts demonstrate their buying behavior, and rank accounts according to collective activity in addition to individual leads.

Nevertheless, 45 percent of ABM program implementers are struggling to provide a personalized customer experience. The lesson? Begin with a smaller number of accounts and more personalization instead of making the resources too thin.

Measurement That Matters

Essential Account-Based Marketing Metrics

Monitor the following account-level metrics: account engagement score which sums all the touchpoints, account contacts (preferably 4 or more contacts), opportunity creation rate of target accounts, deal velocity (how quickly opportunities move), and average deal size of ABM accounts versus non-ABM accounts.

The companies with ABM strategies have seen their revenue increase in marketing activities by 208 percent; however, the difference is made by monitoring the correct metrics and taking action on them.

Attribution in Complex B2B Sales

Conventional last-touch attribution does not work in case of account-based marketing where the campaign may last months and have dozens of touch points. Adopted multi-touch attribution models where all major interactions are attributed, account-level attribution which takes into account collective account interactions as opposed to individual contact behavior, and time-decay models which assigns greater importance to recent interactions.

This is not the objective of perfect attribution, but rather good enough attribution, that will make the decisions based on optimization and establish the value of the program to the executive.

Technology Stack for Account-Based Marketing Success

Successful implementation of ABM means proper technology base. The number of tools or platforms that businesses use to support their ABM strategy is averaged to be 2 tools or platforms, but more established programs tend to incorporate integrated stacks of 4-6 dedicated tools.

Core Platform Categories

ABM Platforms: Account identification, intent data, advertising, and engagement tracking- Solutions such as 6sense, Demandbase, Terminus, or RollWorks are specifically built to support account-based marketing.

CRM and Marketing Automation: Your CRM should be able to support account level views and hierarchies. Account-based campaigns, and not only contact-based sequences, should be facilitated by marketing automation.

Intent Data Providers: Tools that are used to determine what accounts are actively researching in your category to give early indications when to contact the sales.

Sales Enablement: Solutions that provide sales with account insights, content recommendations, and engagement insights to have a more informed conversation.

Building the Right Team Structure

Effective implementation of ABM needs to have roles and responsibilities that cross across lines.

Key Roles

ABM Program Leader: Responsible in general strategy, team coordination, program performance reporting, and continuous improvement. This position should possess the power in sales as well as marketing.

Sales Champions: Top-level sales executives who make their teams adherent to the ABM approach, make sure sales are adopted, offer account intelligence, and hold sales responsible to engage.

Marketing Champions: Higher level marketing personnel who allocate resources to the program in the right way, maintain quality implementation, innovate tactics depending on performance, and protect ABM during the challenges that are bound to arise.

Account Coordinators: Tactical implementers who control particular accounts or account groups, organize the work between teams, monitor the engagement, and find ways to optimize it.

69% of the best performing ABM companies have a special ABM leader. This is not an option with serious programs, you need a person whose core business is to make ABM work.

Scaling From Pilot to Program

After you pilot the model, it is easy to scale the account-based marketing in a predictable pattern.

Expansion Phases

Phase 1 (Months 1-3): Tier 1 Pilot: 10-20 accounts, establish engagement and pipeline generation, internal capability and confidence, processes and rhythm.

Phase 2 (Months 4-6): Scale to 50-75 Tier 1, Tier 2, automate repeatable factors, optimize targeting and message, measure and optimize.

Phase 3 (Months 7-12): Expand into hundreds of accounts including Tier 3, develop self-service ABM, sales, and integrate ABM into standard go-to-market motions and prove the clear ROI worth continued investment.

Patience is important. 76% of marketers realized greater ROI with ABM compared to any other marketing type, although 23% of marketers realized vastly greater ROI in 2 years, and 55% in 2 years.

Your Implementation Action Plan

Ready to implement effective implementation of account-based marketing that will have high sales and alignment of marketing? Here’s your roadmap:

This Month: Hold sales and marketing leadership meeting to agree on the Account-based Marketing targets and commitment, establish ICP criteria, together, and find 10-15 pilot accounts.

Next Month: Plan pilot accounts, develop shared dashboards and KPIs, as well as choose preliminary technology platforms.

Month 3: Implementation Initiate pilot-account campaigns, create weekly sales-marketing review rhythm, and start monitoring engagement indicators.

Months 4-6: Analyze pilot outcomes and streamline approach, add more accounts in waves and develop repeat processes and templates.