Account Based Marketing (ABM) or Account Based Selling is a great way to focus on existing clients, something all companies should be doing during the global pandemic.

Getting new logos is hard and the buying process has changed.  I keep hearing the phrase "there is no playbook" for these times and the people are right.

There is No Playbook 

One of our clients had an eighteen month sales cycle, they had the business case, the senior relationships. Come to the end of the quarter for the deal to be signed and it was past to the CEO and they vetoed it.

The feedback was "there is no playbook for this".

The Buying Process has Changed

Let's take this article, points one-by-one.

1. Create content specifically for your target customers

Content is great, it's what our buyers are looking for and consuming, so based on our research we have created a "Maslow's hierarchy" of content.

All content is not created the same.  For example, nobody is interested in advertising as it says "buy my product, because it's great" which is what everybody says.  The same, if I take corporate content and share this through my network, nobody is interested.

Your network is interested in you!  Not your company and not somebody else.  Creating content is great, but it has to be the right content.

2. Provide a personalized experience on your website

Really? Do busy executives really have time to come to your website and take part in an "experience"?  We all know that websites are all part of the general "broadcast" message of a business. "buy my suff because it's great' they all say this, you know it, I know it and your customers know it.

In this research, 10,000 websites were analysed and guess what? They were al the same. 

3. Send tailored outreach that inspires your target to learn more about your brand

I've never seen a spam email, sorry email outreach that inspires.  They are an interruption and they only annoy people.

The Buying Process HAS Changed

People are fed up with the constant outreach and interruptions.  Advertising, email, cold calling all of it.  This is not inspirational, it is not an experience, it's tired, it's dated and it is turning your clients off.

Your Clients Are on Social Media

In this research by Simon Kemp there are now more people on social than, not on social. So where as in the past if you were not on social, you were in the majority, now you are in the minority.This expands also into business that in the past the majority of clients were not on social media, now the fact is that the majority of clients ARE on social media.

Marketing and Sales is About?

Sales and Marketing is about creating conversations, adverts, email and cold calls don't create conversations.  But being on social allows you to create conversations.

So You Ways to Personalize Your Next ABM Campaign to Close More Deals?

1. Have a personal brand on social, this is your shop window to the world.  This is not a CV or a list of products and services, this is about you, your belief systems.  Your Linkedin profile is now part of your sales kit bag and should be working hard for you.  My summary title, for examples, enables me to close deals.  Your profile should be creating curiosity and creating you conversations which you can close.

We teach this in our social selling methodology.

My Li profile is here if you want to take a look.

2. You need a network in your ABM accounts.  You need to reach out to people in a non spammy way, something we teach in our social selling methodology program.  This is not about having contacts, but building relationships.  People buy from people they know and trust and this is about "know me, like me, trust me".

The more people you have relationships with in your accounts the more deals you will close.

3. Content. You need to be sharing content.  Better still, you need to be creating content and sharing it.  What people want is insight, educate them, tell me something I don't know.

We teach people how to do this as part of our social selling programme.

Social Selling Results

Eric Doyle, he's a partner of ours. He's posted about the fact that he has started riding his bike again.  At the time of writing Eric has 36 likes and 53 comments. That means with the average person having 500 connections on Linkedin that has reached 44,500 people.  

Think how long it would take you to build an email list of 44,500 people.  We could assume that those 44,500 have 500 connections, so that connect could be seen by 22 million people.  Who cares? 

You want leads and meeting after all!

Last time I spoke to him, he has got 6 new business meetings from this, it took him 20 minutes to create.

(I wonder if you can create 6 new business minutes in 20 minutes from advertising, cold calling or email marketing? ... I doubt it, but let me know if you can).

What About an ROI (Return on Investment)?

Assuming you have an average sales team then we would expect you to be able to get one additional meeting per week.

If you are able to turn four meetings into one proposal and three proposal into one new sale that means you should get one additional sale per quarter.

Let's assume your average sale is $100,000, that is an additional $400,000 per sales person or $4 million per year, every year, for ever.

Of course you might be above average and have a better closing rate, then the amount you make from data driven social selling will be higher. Not bad for a small investment.If you want more information about how we turned social selling from being an art into a science contact me here.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/