• by Manny Medina , December 18, 2018

Not everyone has joined the bandwagon yet, but a tidal wave of account-based marketing (ABM) adopters, empowered by new technologies, will forever transform the enterprise market. 

The reason is simple: ABM is just common sense in action and it delivers the kind of results that make heads turn, eyes pop, and legacy mindsets shatter. When conclusive evidence -- presented as ROI -- consistently backs a hunch everyone seems to sense but dare not speak, the entire calculus of B2B selling changes. 

Intuitive and successful customer-facing professionals have already been practicing ABM for a long time, albeit in a rudimentary and unassisted form. They knew it worked -- so they kept doing it, evolving to suit their corporate clients. 

To close deals, sales teams sometimes need to get the nod of multiple decision-makers in one client account. ABM emerged in response to this customer-centric environment, where marketing and sales needed to work in synergy to convert multiple stakeholders in a single account. By embracing a holistic approach to customer engagement, these professionals unwittingly adopted an account-based workflow: 

1. Determine your most valuable corporate clients.
2. identify all the decision-makers in one client you need to engage.
3. Drive teams to hyper-engage each account as a market of one.  

With advances in data science and artificial intelligence, ABM transitions into its next, more powerful iteration. Enabled by these technologies, account-based marketing acquires the reach, muscle, and targeting capabilities needed to bring science, system, and scale to selling success. 

Account-based marketing is a targeted, hyper-personalized strategy that treats each high-value customer as a market of one, allocating cross-sectional resources to engage key decision-makers in each valued account. This approach delivers the most impact in the B2B environment where organizational decisions are made by multiple stakeholders. 

By taking these stakeholders on the same buying journey, ABM helps build consensus early in the game and accelerates the sales process. Because ABM promotes long-term relationships with stakeholders, it becomes easier to optimize customer lifetime value and drive repeat business, upsells, and referrals. Moreover, because ABM requires tight cross-team collaboration, the alignment between sales, marketing, customer success, and other departments becomes less forced and more natural.  

Is ABM for You?

The case for account-based marketing is compelling -- but it is not for everyone. Many people have yet to digest what ABM is and how best to get it implemented. Some probably think they need new and expensive technologies to make the shift. But you only need to embrace a new mindset to get things rolling.  

Executed in the right conditions, ABM can be transformative. It works best when: 

1.   Organizational accounts led by multiple decision-makers comprise the bulk of your client portfolio.

2.   Your sales process is complicated and takes more time to complete.

3.   Nurturing post-sale relationships can still generate significant repeat business.

Does your company fit the criteria?