Turning your C-suite into industry thought leaders
Think of it like the strategy an American football team uses to advance the ball down the field towards the end zone.
Plays can range from relatively straightforward ones to more complex ones and there are hundreds if not thousands of Plays in every team’s Playbook.
Each one documented, tried, and tested. Each one reviewed, fine-tuned, and re-Played.
Each American football Play is as important as the ultimate touchdown. The Plays are the building blocks of a team’s strategy and execution on the field.
With each Play designed to advance the ball down the field, maintain possession, and put the team in a position to score.
The Executive Engagement ABM Play is a strategy to leverage your organization's C-suite to enhance your organization’s credibility, position you as thought leaders, and build those important relationships.
This Play focuses on utilizing high-touch, personalized engagement tactics to build and deepen relationships with key Executives within your strategic named target accounts.
The ultimate goal of this Play is to position your organization as a trusted advisor through the One-on-one relationships you build and nurture.
The primary objective of the Executive Engagement ABM Play is twofold:
To establish thought leadership and senior authority within a specific sector or industry
To build and nurture long-term relationships with key Executives at target accounts.
By positioning your organization's Executives as industry leaders, you not only enhance its reputation, but also create a foundation of trust and reliability.
This trust is crucial to influence the strategic decisions of your target accounts.
This Play is particularly effective for high-value accounts that have a significant capacity to spend.
These accounts might be undergoing substantial changes, such as executive leadership transitions, or digital transformations.
By focusing on these strategic accounts, you will your reputation and develop genuine relationships so that you’re ‘top-of-mind’ when vendor/solution decisions are to be made.
Additionally, accounts that benefit from building executive relationships – leading to deeper understanding, and influence over their strategic priorities – are ideal candidates for this Play.
▲ Example stakeholder map
To measure the success of the Executive Engagement ABM Play, several key performance indicators (KPIs) should be tracked.
It’s important to gauge the qualitative as well as the quantitative, in order to get a more holistic reading of the Play’s effectiveness:
Engagement rates: Monitor the number of touchpoints with positive responses from target Executives. This includes email response rates, event attendance, and social media interaction.
Relationship quality: Conduct qualitative assessments to gauge the depth and openness of relationships with target Executives. This can include feedback from your Executives about their interactions, and also the nature of these conversations.
Deal velocity: Compare the speed of deal closures in accounts with executive engagement, versus those without. Faster deal closure indicates more effective engagement.
Revenue impact: Track the direct correlation between Executive engagement and pipeline or revenue growth. It goes without saying that increased revenue from engaged accounts is a strong indicator of success.
strategicabm's ABM Reporting 360 dashboard ⏵
Before diving into specific tactics and channels, it’s essential to grasp the strategic foundation of the Executive Engagement ABM Play.
At its core, this approach is about pinpointing and engaging with Executive-level stakeholders within your target accounts, particularly where natural alignment or synergy exists. These are areas where your Executives bring direct experience, unique insights, or a fresh perspective on the challenges and strategic goals these stakeholders face.
The true strength of this Play lies in positioning your Executives not as salespeople, but as thought leaders and advisors—individuals who have “been there and done that” and can genuinely contribute to the strategic conversations at your target accounts.
The true strength of this Play lies in positioning your Executives not as salespeople, but as thought leaders and advisors"
This approach not only builds credibility but also fosters meaningful and authentic relationships that extend beyond immediate business transactions.
This is why it’s critical to carefully identify the right stakeholders for this Play and to adopt a peer-to-peer approach. In these executive conversations, the effort can quickly fall apart if stakeholders sense it’s merely a sales tactic rather than a genuine attempt to add value.
Subtlety is key; it’s what enables your Executives to establish themselves as trusted partners invested in the long-term success of the target account.
The execution of the Executive Engagement ABM Play involves a combination of targeted research, personalized content, and strategic engagement tactics.
Conduct thorough research to understand the target account's overall strategy, key challenges, and the specific needs of its leadership team. This research should focus on identifying the pain points and strategic priorities of the target Executives - things that keep them up at night, as well as what success looks like for them.
Create impactful, personalized content that addresses the specific needs and challenges identified in the research phase. This content can include:
Stakeholder Manifestos: Customized documents outlining how your product offering can address the specific needs of the target Executives.
Executive Briefings: Regular updates and insights tailored to the interests of the target Executives.
Thought Leadership Content: Articles, whitepapers and case studies that establish your Executives as experts in their field.
Implement various engagement strategies to build and nurture relationships with target Executives:
LinkedIn: Use Sales Navigator to monitor target Executives and engage with their content. Comment on their LI posts, share relevant insights, and connect on a professional level.
Email: Develop a nurturing cadence, sharing relevant insights, articles and personalized messages periodically. Ensure the emails are value-driven and not overly frequent, as as to avoid coming across as pushy.
Events: Organize and invite target Executives to exclusive roundtables, VIP events, or industry dinners. These will provide an opportunity for direct engagement and relationship-building in a more informal setting.
The Executive Engagement ABM Play is part of a multi-channel approach.
This is a top-down approach that helps shape conversations at an enterprise, corporate level.
To successfully implement this Play, several resources are necessary:
Tools: Utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator for monitoring and engagement, CRM systems for tracking interactions, and content-creation platforms for developing personalized assets.
Budget: Allocate funds for events, content development, and potential travel for in-person meetings.
Team Members: Assemble a team that includes Marketing Executives, Sales teams and Content creators, plus dedicated Account managers to support the execution of the Play.
So, you’ve done all the hard work, designing the Play and executing it to perfection... now you want to know what good looks like.
The expected outcomes of the Executive Engagement ABM Play align closely with the overall goals of the ABM program.
Successful execution should lead to:
Increased Engagement Rates: A higher number of meaningful interactions and responses from target Executives.
Deeper Relationships: More profound, meaningful and open relationships with key Executives, characterized by trust and mutual respect.
Smoother Sales Cycles: Faster deal closures and a more efficient sales process, driven by the top-down influence of engaged Executives.
Revenue Growth: A direct increase in pipeline and revenue from accounts where executive engagement has been effectively implemented.
AVEVA, a leader in industrial and engineering software, identified the opportunity to elevate a key client relationship with global pharmaceutical firms, GSK, from a transactional one into a truly customer-centric partnership.
A highly personalized One-to-one ABM strategy was developed to truly develop AVEVA’s Reputation and Relationship with key GSK stakeholders.
A key element of this ABM straegy was Executive Engagement, led by the firm’s Chief People Officer Caoimhe Keogan.
Building relationships with the right Executives has changed perceptions – and upgraded AVEVA from a transactional, point solution-to-solution vendor, to a strategic partner. AVEVA’s solutions now provide the foundation for GSK’s ‘Factory of the Future’ vision.
AVEVA’s success can be measured against the ‘Three Rs’ of ABM:
2,000 people have visited the microsite, great REPUTATION boost
46 new RELATIONSHIPS with key GSK decision makers
£7m ($9m) is the potential REVENUE value of this active opportunity
Read the full story here of the transformative power of ABM Executive engagement.
As with American football, Play optimization is key.
Here are some tips for continuously improving the Executive Engagement Play:
Feedback Loop: Regularly collect feedback from both your C-suite and the target Executives, to understand what is working and what needs adjustment.
Content Iteration: Assess the engagement and feedback on shared content, and adjust through iteration to improve relevance and impact.
Relationship Health Check: Periodically review the quality of relationships with target Executives, and adjust engagement strategies as needed.
Scalability: While maintaining quality over quantity, consider how successful strategies can be scaled to other high-value accounts.
Touch Base: Ensure that your C-suite still maintains contact once you’ve won the target account - don’t let the Executive Engagement ABM Play feel disingenuous and ‘only in it for the sale’.
By effectively implementing the Executive Engagement ABM Play, your organization will build stronger, more influential relationships with key decision-makers.
This strategic approach not only enhances your reputation, but also drives significant business growth through targeted, high-value engagements.
It’s time to leverage your top Players, and strategically implement the Play that can win you the ‘touchdown’ – and open the door to the ‘ABM Super Bowl’.
