ABM Voices:
ABM vs DBM

Neil Berry | Head of Global Account & Deal Based Marketing Centre of Excellence | Atos

ABM vs DBM

Partners in crime or mortal enemies?

A word of warning early on, this is probably going to be one of those articles that touch on the classic topic of "what is and isn’t ABM" but for me, this is one of the most important topics in B2B Enterprise Marketing.

Because if you can get it right and engrained in your organization, it could be the completion of your 'Three Rs'! The question this time around is simply, can Account-based Marketing (ABM) & Deal-based Marketing (DBM) truly work together in harmony?

We need to, as always, start at the beginning and take the usual consensus of what ABM is and what DBM is…For me, ABM is a strategic approach of targeting an account as a market in its own right.

With DBM there is a minor tweak on this view, as DBM is where we utilize a strategic approach of targeting a deal as a market in its own right.

After all, every deal has its own product/service, audience, customer, message, and channels. How you utilize all of this to target a deal could be the difference between winning and losing.

So can DBM & ABM be best friends or should we treat them separately? Below is my personal point of view.

Let’s make it black and white and take the two schools of thought…yes or no:

YES

They can because if you’re doing good ABM you will already be aware of these deals and influencing them as part of your planned ABM journey (no matter what part of the pyramid of ABM you’re looking at).

NO

You need to be heavily specific on a deal to enable the Sales team to provide an insight-led, exciting and relevant pitch to win a customer over, as well as influence the customer outside of the deal itself. There’s enough to contend with when it comes to just a deal on its own, let alone all the other stuff that full ABM brings with it.

The truth is they're both right!

Qualification is key

The challenge in making this work well comes in the shape of qualification. If you don’t consider deal qualification properly you could quickly find yourself trying to be the miracle worker across your entire organization's marketing function.

When it comes to qualification on DBM, you should think more like a salesperson and be more focused on the wins (that’s what any business wants at the end of the day), you need to regard which deal is Marketing support most likely to help to succeed?

This obviously takes qualification to a whole new level. And we’re all only just getting to grips with account qualification at the best of times, but it is absolutely critical.

For me, there are two trains here…you have the train where you’re supporting deals on your top ABM accounts, and then you have the other train where you’re supporting deals outside of those accounts.

When it comes to your top-tier ABM accounts, you absolutely should be providing deal support…this should be just one of the many ways in which you can help that account succeed in the most elusive of the 'Three Rs' … revenue!

However, don’t get pulled into every single deal otherwise you’ll just find yourself involved in day-to-day churn on the account rather than strategic growth.

Focus on the big deals in which Marketing can make the most difference.

Now, qualifying the deals outside of your ‘Top Accounts’ is something else completely different. Any enterprise organization could have thousands of deals going on at any one point in time, so how do you choose the right ones?

As always with ABM it depends on your organization's focus, for example, look at things like deal value, strategic importance, and growth opportunity.

With the right approach and the right team/support functions in place, it's actually possible to take both of these trains at the same time.

However, this is where this whole blog just adds fuel to the fire of the topic of whether ABM is just becoming the normal way of doing marketing.

DBM is absolutely another key facet to be considered by anyone taking on ABM in the whole delightful smorgasbord of ABM ways of working that we have at our fingertips.

It’s about identifying whether DBM is really the right thing for your organization.

In my opinion, DBM should absolutely be part of every ABM leaders toolkit because the best thing about DBM is that you get to show results quickly (depending on the length of your deal-cycle) and can really get creative on how to excite the customer in what is one of the most deadline-driven environments a marketer can put themselves into.