The thing about Account Based Marketing (ABM) is that it's a new way of doing business, but people approach it using old tools and techniques.
First off, ABM isn't about "sales tech" or "Martech". ABM is about a company getting wider and deeper with their customer(s).
It stands to reason that if I know 250 people in an account as a salesperson, I'm more likely to get more meetings and close more business than if I just know "Fred" in IT.
In fact, at my last company we did some research on 7 salespeople who constantly got over 200% of their number. We found they all knew over 200 people per account. Gartner say that it takes 10 people now to make a B2B decision. So in an account of 10,000 people how many do you think you should be connected to? 1,000 maybe?
All of these "A Player" salespeople also didn't "outsource" their ability to make their number to marketing. There was none of this "that's marketings job". Marketing, but its very nature cannot create content that is focused on an account. Content will be generic, if you are lucky it will be focused on a vertical market. But not on an account.
Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) used to be a client of mine, they are a classic life sciences company selling over the counter (OTC) drugs. That said, they are also a classic prescribed drug developer. They are also a classic consumer packed goods (CPG) manufacturer. How would marketing understand all of this and create content bespoke for their needs. That said, sales could and did.
As a sales person you (as always) have to take responsibility for all of your demand generation, that includes creating content.
ABM isn't ABM its ABS - Account Based Selling.
That is the challenge that all Marketers share worldwide.
Everyone except for the San Francisco crowd, who have rebranded it all-company alignment, immediately mentioned sales and marketing alignment when asked about ABM challenges. These challenges range from making sure we’re measuring with the same numbers (more on that later) to agreeing on an account list to making sure we’re executing on a good high-touch strategy. The most frustrated marketers among us can’t even get sales to TALK to them, which shoots an ABM strategy in the foot before it can even take a step.
