8 reasons a ‘Formula One’ mindset drives winning ABM

Christian Weiss | Director of ABM, EMEA | Autodesk

8 reasons a ‘Formula One’ mindset drives winning ABM

The road to championship-level ABM is long, winding and packed with fierce competition.

Each turn presents a challenge. A stakeholder pivot to steer through. A breakdown in technology. A business pitstop that threatens to slow progress.

You might have the best strategy and pit crew in the world. But, you need an aligned team focus to get your ABM race car — your customer — over the line and win.

Before we race away from the grid, however… applying a ‘Formula One’ mindset to your ABM programs is exactly how Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk approaches Account-based Marketing.

Let’s jump into the driving seat, with Christian’s tips to win the race.

Speaking with Christian in our Let’s talk ABM podcast, we discussed:

Why the customer is the car in Formula One ABM
Common misconceptions about ABM
How ABM can drive customer expansion
Christian’s greatest ABM learning

1. You need an aligned co-driver to steer correctly

A race car powered by one person isn’t going to get far. In both Formula One and ABM, you need a whole crew’s aligned support!

ABM requires the expertise, brains and skills of every department to truly flourish. It’s a team event, from the starting line to the checkered flag.

And throughout the race, Sales will be your much-needed co-driver.

Selecting the right accounts for your program is one of the most important, and often most challenging steps in an Account-based journey. Get it right, and your program will be on the road to success. Get it wrong, and your entire strategy could make a wrong turn.

This is where your Sales team comes in. Bring them into conversations, get their input on the best-fit accounts for your program, and align on account selection.

As much as you may want to, you can’t do ABM for everyone — or it’s no longer ABM. So, work with your Salespeople to prioritize, tier and shortlist your target accounts based on their fit with your ICP.

You cannot just run every account with a One-to-many, one-size-fits-all strategy, but there are still too many accounts to run a One-to-one with each account. So, we have to find a good balance in prioritizing and aligning with Sales strictly on that.

– Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

2. The right fuel will take you further

Use the wrong fuel in your race car, and you’ll struggle to get off the starting grid.

The same is true of ABM program messaging — use the wrong language to the wrong accounts, and your campaigns won’t have the relevancy they need to travel.

Account-based Marketing is all about hyper-personalization, hyper-relevance and hyper-awareness of your account’s pain points.

If you’re not aiming to be as relevant as possible to your account audience — your high-performance fuel! — then you’re wasting valuable time, money and effort.

Hyper-relevancy in action means speaking the language of your accounts — in two ways. You need to:

1.

Resonate with the literal language and terminology that your accounts use, depending on the region you’re targeting.

2.

Show that you understand them. That means using language that addresses account pain points, puts them at the center of the messaging, and uses industry-relevant terminology.

1.

Resonate with the literal language and terminology that your accounts use, depending on the region you’re targeting.

2.

Show that you understand them. That means using language that addresses account pain points, puts them at the center of the messaging, and uses industry-relevant terminology.

Having specific members of your team who are dedicated to account research, who gather critical data and insights, and who can help translate messaging will help you to stand out on the top of the podium.

When you’re targeting accounts on a global scale, the relevance of the language and messaging you use is a strong factor in program success. Make sure you have the right fuel to go that extra mile!

You have to speak their language in two ways. One is their real language, and the other one is you have to show them that you understand them. And if you approach your customers in a language they are not used to, then they might not appreciate how you share content with them.

– Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

3. Your ‘pit crew’ must be in sync with the car — your customer

This is where the Formula One analogy really comes in.

With ABM, think of your team as the pit crew, working as one to achieve a single goal. In this case, that’s to land and expand on your target accounts.

When everyone’s in unison, things run smoothly, seamlessly and efficiently. But if communication goes awry, or someone isn’t bought into the process, it could be the difference between that driver winning, or losing, the race.

In ABM, the story is the same, but your customer is the car, and your team are the pit crew.

If everyone is not hyper-focused on the vehicle and ready to meet the needs of the driver, you have no hope of getting over the finish line.

You need to consider how to help the customer win the race. And in this case, that means providing them with the information and tools needed to succeed — the information and tools which, ideally, your company offers.

My challenging question was often: Is the pit crew meeting meant to put the Sales rep in the driver's seat, or do we have the pit crew meeting to put the customer in the center?

– Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

4. You won’t be first in every race. But being trusted to fail will win out

No Formula One team places first every time! But, those who are trusted to try, learn from their mistakes and optimize their performance, do win out.

Trust is just as key in ABM. Trust in your teams, trust in your data, trust in your strategy. You need to know that you’re all working together to achieve the same goals.

Success goes beyond simply trusting that your team members know what they’re doing, though. According to Christian, you need to “build vulnerability-based trust”.

That means building a level of trust within your organization that allows team members to feel comfortable owning up to their mistakes, speaking up when they have something to say, and not being afraid to ask for help or guidance

Account-based Marketing is a long journey, with many challenges along the way. But when team members lean on one another, trust each other implicitly, and are able to bounce ideas off each other, the team will stay the course.

We said, okay, how can we make sure we are really on shared goals? And this requires, of course, full transparency and [a] high trust level.

Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

5. You have to focus on the right markers to stay on track

Focus is everything in Formula One — getting sidetracked, even for a moment, is not an option.

In ABM, staying on track means a constant focus on your decision-makers. Particularly for enterprise, it’s key to ‘find Wally’ — to single out those decision-makers within your target accounts, as well as those who influence their buying decisions.

What are their priorities?
Who has the final say?
Who do you need to engage with, in order to push discussions further into the account?

Identifying, then building trust-based relationships with your account’s buying committee is where your focus needs to be.

Third-party and intent data can help you to navigate; these enable you to gather insights around key decision-makers. And to make strategic choices around how best to approach them.

When we look into these large enterprises and talk about buying committees, these buying committees, they are changing by topic. So it's like, "Where's Wally?". And this is exactly what we have to do when we go into these large enterprises.

– Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

6. Don’t overdo it! Avoid over-scaling

How to scale ABM, and take results to the next level, has been a major B2B talking point for a while.

But, in both ABM and Formula One — it’s just as important to know when to use the brakes, as it is to decide to accelerate!

One of the strengths of ABM is its ability to hone in on the individual challenges of your target accounts with hyper-personalized, hyper-relevant messaging. Naturally, however, the more you scale, the less personal and relevant that approach becomes.

Don’t fall into the trap of over-scaling and, consequently, under-delivering.

Instead, focus on carefully selecting your accounts and scaling wisely. You cannot do ABM for everyone at once!

This risk is enormous. And I think we can scale ABM if we do it wisely and if we select the accounts wisely. But, you cannot scale ABM to a level where you say I'm doing ABM for every account.

– Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

7. Patience is key — it’s not a one-lap race

One of the biggest misconceptions about ABM is that you can get results overnight. It’s precisely this misconception that drives a wedge between Marketing and Sales.

The truth is — as with any strategy that is worth the effort — Account-based Marketing takes time. There’s more than one-lap to negotiate! It’s not about quick wins and rapid results… it’s about the long game. And if that’s not a course that you’re willing to drive, then ABM isn’t for you.

The key to overcoming timing expectation is communication.

Overpromising to your Sales team what you can achieve with ABM, and within what time frame, is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.

Of course, you need their buy-in and their input to succeed – but you won’t get that by providing inaccurate or misleading information.

Instead, focus on celebrating small wins when you can, and ensure that your Sales team understands that big, Grand Prix results take time.

This misconception of ‘there's immediately a positive result’ is a killer for the relationship between Marketing and Sales, and also for the ABM we are doing. Because then you do a lot of transactional Marketing, but not in terms of building a relationship and optimizing our reputation with the customer.

Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk

8. Lean on the data — get to know your dashboard

A driver’s dashboard shows how they’re performing. An ABM’s data does the same. It supports you, guides you and, with close observation, will help you succeed.

From third-party data providers to intent data platforms, and first-party data stored in your CRM — any insight into your target accounts and key decision-makers will help to shape your messaging and strategy from start to finish.

ABM is founded on empathy into your customer’s behaviors and pain points.

So, use that data throughout your program to prove that you truly understand your accounts — and can help them to take home the trophy!

My greatest learning was: You cannot do ABM without good data, and you have to be able to measure success and you have to define it in the beginning.

– Christian Weiss, Director of ABM, EMEA at Autodesk