02 practical steps to go from 0 to ABM

“ABM is crucial for companies in the sense that if they put in consistent effort, it will be easy for them to have an evergreen funnel and sales opportunities.” Thomas Goubau, CEO at Q7Leader 

Hey , today we will share with you the first 02 steps you should take to go from 0 to an ABM strategy that works like a charm.

Before we dive in, here is a job offer that you or someone around you might be interested in.

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Now let's get to the meat of the matter. 

Step 1: Team Alignment 

Without an aligned and cohesive team, achieving a common goal becomes difficult. So, you first need to set your goals and have your teams aligned on them. Speaking of goals, it can be: 

• generating a net new revenue ;
• generating new accounts ;
• generating new opportunities ;
• expanding some deals ;
• accelerating your pipeline or activating frozen leads in the pipeline ;
• entering a new market ;
• etc.

After fixing your goals, you now need to figure out the metrics you are going to track. In other words, what will you define as success in the course of your ABM campaign? What are the leading metrics? 

It's important to include leading metrics because ABM is no magic bullet. For example, if you have a sales cycle of 9 months, ABM is definitely not going to reduce it. 

That said, if you haven't selected your account well, if you don't have intent data, and if your accounts are not in the market, it's going to be a bit hard for you to generate immediate opportunities. 

Leading metrics can be :

• the number of accounts that are engaging ;
• the number of conversations you are generating ;
• How deeply you are penetrating different accounts: what are you learning about them, are they landing, is there traction with the way that you are talking about your product or service ; 
• etc. 

One of the biggest mistakes most companies make is how they define their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). More often than not, people tend to go (too) broad when defining their ICP. For instance, having thousands of accounts for your first campaigns is way too broad. 

Instead, you can fix some qualification criteria and nail your ideal customer profile down to 30 or 40 qualified accounts. The best way to do this is to base your approach on your existing customers.

Figure out who your best customers are. Then dive really deep in understanding the most profitable verticals that you have. You can spend time studying and analyzing things like :

• the fastest deals you won ;
• the biggest deals you won ;
• the biggest fastest deals you won ; 
• the biggest fastest deals you lost and why you lost them ;
• etc. 

Furthermore, do not focus too much on firmographic data while you think too little of the buying process. Understand how your current customers discovered you and more importantly, how they buy from you. 

Truth is, when sales, marketing, and execs are aligned and engaged, you will benefit from increased productivity, better communication, higher engagement, and faster decision-making. 

Step 2: Account Segmentation

It’s a no-brainer that not all accounts are created equal. Yet, some people still treat them all the same way. They use the same tactics and some even use the same calculation cost of acquisition and the exact same budget. 

In consequence, their campaigns yield not too good results. 

To help you avoid this, here is what you need to understand: the bigger the account, the more you can invest in it, and the more personalization and work it will require to generate the desired opportunity. 

Typically in ABM, we have 03 tiers: 

• tier 1: +50k ARR
• tier 2: 10 - 50k ARR
• tier 3: 5 - 10k ARR

But practically, what's important is to decide which tier you want to focus on in your initial ABM campaign. 

Our recommendation is the upper-mid market, which is usually tier 2 because tier 1 is a bit more complex and takes a lot of time especially if you're a small or an unknown company. 

Best Shares From Trenches Community

• The most important part of your campaign is not the creative, copy or audience by Ricardo Ghekiere
• ABM ≠ outreach to target accounts. Demand generation ≠ lead gen. 𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙚 𝘼𝘽𝙈 & 𝙙𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙜𝙚𝙣 𝙖𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡-𝙛𝙪𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙡 by Vladimir Blagojevic
• 11 steps I’d take as CMO if I joined a B2B company selling high ACV (5-6 figures) products in the first 90 days by Andrei Zinkevich

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See you in Trenches 😉

Adechina D. Odjo,

Content Editor @Trenches