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account based marketing: it's so much more than just a marketing initiative...

Tom Perry
by Tom Perry - July 27, 2018

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A statistic is always a great way to start a blog…capture interest. So, how about this one: 63% of people who have taken our ABM quiz stated that their sales and marketing teams are not aligned. Eeep. That is a lot of misalignment.

Sherpa talk quite often about the importance of sales and marketing being aligned and having a shared onus on lead nurture (in fact I wrote an entire blog on it a couple of weeks ago – check it out here (it’s also a little bit about Love Island-yay)), but there is a reason for it. Just ask Marketo and Reachforce who found that businesses are 67% better at closing deals when sales and marketing work together.

Whilst account based marketing is generally a marketing-led initiative, there needs to be stakeholders in marketing AND sales to make the programme a success.  Account Based Marketing nurtures (in a lovely, personalised and targeted way) accounts very individually through the sales cycle – sales need to pick up at just the right moment and help steer the nature of the nurture.  “The nature of the nurture”? Oooo…I like that (makes mental note as a future blog title).

Marketo recently reported that “ABM helps reduce the 50% of sales time wasted on unproductive prospecting, which historically has caused sales to ignore 50% of marketing leads”. So effective ABM needs sales and marketing alignment, but sales and marketing processes in general can become more efficient throughout an ABM programme. Win-win! *cheesy wink emoticon*

In fact, ABM works with - and even improves upon - the efficiency of many existing marketing practices. ABM especially complements the recent shift in B2B marketing towards approaches more often seen in B2C campaigns.  Elements such as hyper personalisation and refined targeting based on people rather than verticals; a customer-centric approach is still quite 'out there' for B2B.  

Tell you what, rather than just read about it, why not take our ABM quiz?  It’s only 5 questions (that’s my kind of quiz!) and we will send you a personalised ABM report.

Come on, everyone, I'm developing a thing now about marketing and sales alignment and I really want that 63% stat to be higher.  But it's not all me, me, me...you get a personalised report based on your answers.

take the ABM quiz

To talk to us about your ABM requirements, please get in touch as we’d be happy to help.

 

 

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