Account-Based GTM Strategy: The Elephant in the Room
Years ago, when introducing Account-Based Marketing to a Sales team that had never heard of #ABM before, the VP of Sales took me aside and asked me “If you have never seen an elephant, how would you know how to draw one?”
I have probably used this question as a reminder in just about everything I do and in the advice I give to other marketers that I mentor or have worked on my teams. We can’t force our stakeholders to do things if they don’t know what they look like!
Sometimes it is easy for us as marketers to go from 0-100 MPH to get a campaign launched quickly. We are always learning new methodologies, new technologies, and efficiencies to drive demand with often little time to communicate effectively, always expecting our stakeholders to just hold on tight! Just like our campaign audience, we need to meet our stakeholder audience WHERE THEY ARE and not where WE ARE…. Don’t drag them behind your car!
With ABM, Few Have Seen Live Elephants and They are Getting Trampled!
I am sharing this analogy with you because when we get into Account-Based GTM Strategy models it's a whole new ball game when it comes to being collaborative as one revenue team and what that looks like to be successful.
The hardest part is NO ONE really knows how to draw an elephant. Sales and Marketing alike.
I am an ABM Coach and Advisor, a title that found me out of profound need. It started with my passion for mentoring early marketing professionals for emotional and career support, but as I worked with several of them to land marketing leadership roles, many entered into scary, no-win situations to urgently implement ABM when they had never had the experience of all the challenges that come with such an extreme paradigm shift in strategy and collaboration. Just last week, I witnessed more and more of these marketing leaders thrust into new jobs where 6Sense or other jet-engine-like Big Box ABM tools have been procured prematurely by start-ups or growth-stage companies as the "magic potion" to fix their revenue problems, or they are forced to make ABM platform technology decisions immediately without creating a strategy or even knowing what a successful AB GTM Strategy looks like. Everyone is naively expecting that the Big Box ABM vendors will take care of them and will guide and teach them what to do….and THEY DON’T! They are all about getting the sale and meeting their revenue targets…the rest is on you or you can call their expensive services vendors who are making a mint off your vulnerability.
Do you have ABM Conceptual Knowledge or Real-life Experience?
The problem with ABM is that there is conceptual knowledge (you've seen a picture of an elephant) and the real experience (seen an actual live elephant and rode on one or 5 like me). Here is the difference:
Conceptual ABM
Buy an expensive ABM Platform immediately because intent data is magical for immediate demand capture and the fashionable Big Box ABM vendor will help you with your strategy and give you guidance with this new model to succeed
Creating collaborative cross-functional revenue teams seems easy enough. Teams work together and share the same goals to create meetings that drive revenue. It shouldn’t matter who gets credit. Give them joint goals and even compensate them jointly
Map buyer journey and create value-based communications and content assets etc that meet the prospect where they are to drive them into and through the funnel
Real-life ABM
ABM Platform is complicated, resource intensive, and expensive, and will fail without a strong GTM Strategy with defined ICP tiers and a collaborative revenue team that knows your buyer persona challenges
Sales and SDR teams are not used to focusing quality vs quantity prospecting with personalization and account research and SPAM anyway, blacklisting you from major enterprise accounts
Sales teams have difficulty seeing the value of prioritized accounts with a higher propensity to buy versus a person ready to talk to them wrapped with a bow
Sales would often prefer marketing just to do their thing on their own, do more tradeshows, and create MQLs, even recognizing that MQLs are very low conversion
I have only scratched the surface in these lists but you get the idea!
Recommendations:
Conceptual Account-Based GTM Strategy CAN be achieved and successful but with seasoned resources that have seen and ridden elephants in real life several times! Talk to people like myself who know what success looks like and get a coach and not an expensive services firm. I don't do services, I run workshops and provide emotional support and direction, to teach you how to fish with spears! Most importantly, you need to be able to feel empowered and learn best practices in Account-Based GTM strategies before and regardless of the ABM technology platform.
FREE ABM GTM Template Toolkit and Office Hours
I am taking a stand this week to be a source of support for as many struggling and fearful marketing leaders as I can. Vendors are not taking responsibility and it is putting you at risk. Please spread the word. DM me if you would like my templates and if I can be of assistance.
Final Thoughts: An Elephant Never Forgets
With the right assistance and support, the ABM GTM strategy experience that you gain, like an elephant's memory, will be one that is invaluable and will stay with you. My only ask in exchange for my free time….is that you pass it forward! Marketers helping marketers!