Feature: Top 10 ABM Challenges

And how to overcome them

Top 10 ABM Challenges [and how to overcome them]

Part One

DECLAN

Today we're going to talk about the Top Ten ABM challenges and how to overcome them.

And I'm delighted to be joined by my colleague Fes Askari, who's our Director of Sales at the Agency.

So a little bit of background for everyone - Fes and myself have been running something which we call the ABM Lunch and Learn Workshop for about a year and a half now.

We’ve run approximately 120 -130 over the course of that period, to B2B technology brands who are looking either to explore ABM in the first instance, or secondly, to enhance their current ABM program.

We've got a wealth of information about what those programs are, what their challenges are, what they're looking to achieve, what they're looking to solve, etc.

So we thought it would be great to share those insights and give you some data and perhaps give you some ideas about how to overcome some of the challenges that you will face, and a little bit of a road map really to help you on your ABM journey.

What we've actually done is taken the data from all these ABM Lunch and Learns, and one question we asked every single guest was ‘what is your biggest ABM challenge?’

So let's look at the top ten ABM challenges in reverse order, starting with the number 10.

Challenge No. 10

Which accounts should we target?

FES

It goes back to the crux of ABM being more of a business strategy, and really thinking about inviting all of the key stakeholders - from Marketing to Sales to Commercial to Product teams - to have a say in the account selection process.

There are a number of considerations, and some teams do some great work in terms of account selection.

But for example, you don't want to build an ABM strategy around the product that might be going out of scope in the next 18 months, right?

So you need to have the product view of the strategy there. You need to understand what those growth objectives look like.

And again, everybody in the business will have their view of account selection, but you also want to back this up with the data that you have available.

That could be internal first-party data, it could be external third-party data, intent data and things like that, to help validate this thinking.

What's your view on that, Dec?

Want to discuss your account selection strategy? Join us on an ABM Lunch & Learn workshop

DECLAN

I think just trying to bring that data set together from what you've got internally in the organization through your CRM, identifying what businesses you're seeing on your website.

We use something called Leadfeeder which is great to track those anonymous visitors and try to de-anonymize them.

And then third-party data, intent data platforms that are out there.

I think an important thing to bear in mind with this data, and particularly the intent data, is to be a little bit careful - you need to have more than one source of intent.

I mean, one of the guests on the Let's talk ABM podcast that we run, Danny Nail, who's over at Salesforce said ‘always look for three sources of data for intent. Otherwise one source of data for intent is just interest.’

I think that's a key thing.

Challenge No. 9

How do we pivot to ABM?

FES

Part of this just goes back to doing good marketing, research, persona development, and understanding how your customers buy today. Some industries have been more impacted than others.

Some industries are currently going through a bit of a flux period in terms of on-line activities and events.

And so you just need to be really aware of your customer buying behavior over the last few years and coming out of this pandemic period. The way buyers buy has changed, the way sellers sell has changed and the way marketers market needs to change and adapt as well.

There are different channels and considerations that we should think about, teams are becoming more digital, buyers are becoming more digitally savvy in terms of the resources that they can tap into.

But there are differences in industries that are slightly more traditional or field-based versus more SaaS type companies.

So you just need to do your research and do your homework and update that insight on a more regular basis. I would say, you know, monthly or quarterly.

You need to be in those customer conversations and hear the voice of the customer.

What's your view?

DECLAN

Well, I think I just would echo what you said, really.

I think always be looking at your account selection, always be looking at your ICP, have a regular cadence of looking to refresh it.

We learned from two years ago with the beginning of the pandemic that certain industries literally turned the tap off overnight.

Those industries actually are coming back very strongly now in terms of tourism and in terms of restaurants, hotels, etc.

So always be aware of what's going on and just keep a refresh option, always. A three to six-month review is very healthy.

Challenge No. 8

How do we change
the perception of
ABM?

DECLAN

I think the key thing is to say with ABM, perhaps the ‘M’ is a little bit unfortunate for some people depending on the perception that Marketing may or may not have in your organization, but I think if you talk about it as an Account strategy, that makes a lot more sense.

Our advice to our clients always is to use the language of your business whenever you're talking about any Marketing strategy - so don't use the acronyms and the terminology that you use within your own Marketing group.

Focus everything around the business outcomes that you're looking to achieve,

try to align with the business outcomes that the organization is trying to achieve.

And if you can talk in that language around accounts, around account pipeline, deal velocity, acceleration, Sales cycle, then you'll be on to a much better course in terms of how you get a better perception of what you're trying to achieve as an organization.

FES

Yeah, absolutely.

I was listening to the Let's talk ABM interview on my run yesterday. I was listening to the podcast and really interesting to hear Corrina Owens at Gong talking about removing the jargon, removing the acronyms and just talking the language of business, because ultimately you need to be able to speak to the other stakeholders in the business in a language that they understand, just like you speak to your buying personas in the language that they understand.

So, do your research on the stakeholders that you're engaging with internally and learn to adopt the language they speak just like you would in the ABM campaign, learn to adopt the language of your customers. It's the internal customer, essentially.

Challenge No. 7

How do we resource ABM?

FES

Firstly, ABM is all about prioritization. At the business strategy level and then all the way down to the execution level, it's all about prioritization.

You can't do everything for everyone.

Working with billion dollar companies, everybody has a bandwidth limitation at some level depending on how your business is structured and how mature you are in your organization. There are limitations everywhere, right?

So you need to understand what those limitations are. You need to look at your strategy and then you need to optimize.

Ask the question ‘how do we create the biggest impact towards our goal?’ and also the ‘Three Rs’ of ABM; Reputation, Relationships, and Revenue. Identify where the blockers are in those three areas. And then you need to figure out where you can make the most impact.

Some clients that we talk to are very customer growth-focused other clients are focused on new acquisition, and then you might have

middle-of-funnel opportunities, so just prioritize a little bit around where the opportunity is to make the biggest impact in terms of supporting your business objectives, supporting the Sales team.

And then obviously you can work with external partners like agencies, technology partners, and you need to understand how they add value to your objectives.

DECLAN

Yeah, I think that's a great answer. I think just to add to that, we tend to find with our clients that they come to us for one of two reasons.

Either they have a resource issue, as we've mentioned here in the survey, or they have a knowledge issue or a combination of both.

So that's where we as an agency may come in, we can help to move things quicker sometimes than companies could do themselves. But I think ultimately the way we work is to work in partnership.

And obviously, I think the most successful partnerships that we have with our clients is where we've actually ended up training many of that team internally, to become ABM advocates and ABM champions.

And then we can kind of move into a more of a consultancy role, or creative role, or similar more specialized areas ABM while they do the orchestration.

We always say that ABM is a journey.

That's the same for the teams that are actually looking to run ABM.

Also the last thing I would say is try not to bite off more than you can chew.

So starting small - start with a pilot for five, six, seven, eight accounts as a start is always a good way.

Challenge No. 6

How do we
drive more opportunities?

FES

For a lot of marketers, it requires a mindset shift with ABM and really understanding what these sales opportunities mean. There has been a lot of push and demand internally around lead generation and that concept of leads.

And actually, what the Sales teams value, is more meetings that convert into opportunities. Meetings really start with conversations. It's all about how to trigger more conversations with prospects who are maybe not sales-ready but in the buyer journey. And starting conversations can happen in so many different ways in different channels.

That is all part of a broader campaign strategy and mix, that kind of content generation,

showing thought leadership, and building education within your audience.

The opportunity development is the starting point - how do we start a conversation with this account or the teams in this account? And that can come through a number of different channels. You can come through podcast strategy, it can come through social selling activities.

Often what we see driving towards some sort of value exchange, like a workshop offer, can unlock missed opportunities in the pipeline because teams are very often focused on the bottom of funnel, high intent, conversion CTAs - like ‘book a demo’. There are opportunities earlier in the programs where you can get engagement with buying teams when you're helping to educate them around the proposition in the early stages of the opportunity cycle.

DECLAN

I just had two very quick points on that. Number one,
I think the workshop you mentioned - many companies that we talk to tend to kind of lead with ‘contact us’, ‘book a demo’ - these are much more bottom of the funnel, higher intent offers.

And very often when we speak to them and we kind of do an audit of their Sales process, we find that they haven't really got a quality conversation starter, which is less ‘threatening’ and much more ‘we’d like to talk to your experts’.

So kind of bringing that kind of peer-to-peer play in with the workshop offer higher in the funnel, you'll actually end up building a bigger pipeline.

Then the last thing I would say actually is working really hard on the numbers in terms of looking at your data, looking at your engagement.

So if you've got demand gen on one side and then looking at which accounts would warrant going from a demand gen play into your ABM play.

We run this ABM framework where we're constantly promoting and demoting accounts - looking at which accounts in the One-to-many program warrant going into the One-to-few program based on the level of engagement, which would then accelerate the deal stages as well.

Discover our ABM framework

FES

I think some of what we're talking about is really specific to Enterprise and where ABM sits with targeting Enterprise organizations.

This isn't so much of an issue when you have, you know, ‘freemium’ products, product-led growth strategy where lead generation absolutely makes sense, right?

So, you know, you need to understand the context of the strategy that you're running along into your products.