How Scaling ABM The Wrong Way Will Lead to an Under-Performing ABM Program

While there are many reasons for why 66% of ABM programs fail or under-perform, one of the biggest reasons is the desire to scale that leadership, sales and marketing teams have. They put a great emphasis on scaling. In fact, in the registration form for our webinar on why 2/3 of ABM programs fail or underperform, we asked GTM teams what their biggest challenge is - and the one kept popping up was related to scaling ABM. I saw it so much that I started to cringe because in most cases, scaling for sales and marketing means reaching more potential buyers. If we do not scale ABM right, we’ll ruin it just like we ruined cold calling, emailing, social selling etc. Toward the end of the video below, Todd Caponi rants on how our desire to scale hurt sales and marketing initiatives and limited revenue growth.?

You see, our desire to scale is hurting the interactions that sales and marketing teams are having with future and existing customers.

Brandon Redlinger, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Ring DNA recently discussed this on LinkedIn. He mentioned:

I completely agree that the channel is not broken. However, I wouldn't say that the relationship is broken though . You have to have a relationship in the first place for it to be broken. We can't build a relationship because sales and marketing teams are so focused on scale instead of focusing on the interactions they need to have with the human buyers in the accounts they want to win, protect and expand. We can't build a relationship because sales and marketing is not focused on the experiences we need to deliver to specific human buyers. It's time we focus on the humans behind the personas we're targeting.

Here's another LinkedIn discussion that is relevant to this conversation:

I agree with Sangram. So, if words have the power of life and death (especially when it comes to a deal) and if every touchpoint we create either builds or kills your brand then instead of thinking about creating "campaigns" and "touches", we should be thinking about "creating moments" with our future customers by having the right interactions and delivering the right experiences. The more we focus on scaling ABM, the further away we get from having the right interactions and delivering the right experiences. The more we try to scale ABM, the more ABM becomes account-based advertising, account-based lead gen and marketing as usual but a bit more targeted with technologies like 6sense, Terminus and Demandbase.?

GTM teams are looking at ABM wrong and it's why they fail to scale.

ABM is a business strategy not a thing to do. It’s how we’re going to fix business challenges that are tied to the fundamentals of revenue. It doesn’t matter how much you scale ABM if you’re not getting stage progression. In the last couple of weeks, I talked to VPs of Growth, VPs of Marketing and Sales leadership at companies that are seeing 5% conversions from stage 0 to close. I’m talking to companies that are seeing stage o to 1 conversion percentages in the teens. Yet, they’re trying to scale ABM to drive a stronger pipeline. We need to change sales motions, conversations and the interactions that sales and marketing teams are having first. If we do not have sales velocity and revenue opportunities keep getting stuck or they become dark, what good was all that time and focus on getting the accounts to start their journey?

I’ve talked to CMOs that are getting conversations with Walmart, Mastercard and others but it’s 14 months and they are still too far away from getting a deal signed. Scaling ABM to get more accounts into the pipeline will not drive revenue growth when we cannot accelerate accounts to revenue.

I’ve talked to CMOs that are challenged to go upmarket. The GTM team for a channel sales tech firm was able to win deals with accounts that would be worth less than $70K. But larger companies would consistently decide to invest in the safe bet which was Salesforce. Scaling ABM to get more accounts into the pipeline would not fix the issues they have in going upmarket to drive even stronger revenue growth.

I’ve talked to companies that recently gained growth funding – and they want to scale ABM to drive the pipeline. But, many of their existing clients are in the red. If we’re not going to retain and expand key accounts, what good is building a pipeline of accounts that will just churn. They will always be chasing after the money vs. driving sustainable growth.

What we need to do before we focus on scaling ABM....

We need to first apply ABM to fix the revenue leaks within the sales, marketing and customer success organizations. This goes beyond building a pipeline and using ABM to reach as many prospects as possible within our ICP. It requires marketing to make a real impact on the complete buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle. We need to look at:

1) Stage progression - Why are we losing key accounts at different stages.

ABM should change sales and marketing motions so we need to need to put our interactions under a microscope. We need to look at wow do we need to change the interactions our leadership, sales, marketing, customer success teams are having? Are we coming to every social/email/live conversation with a point of view about future customer's specific business as Doug Landis talked about in a recent Forbes article. Are we aligning ourselves with the company's growth vision and where the company would like to go as strategic initiatives for the business will trickle down to every department across the organization?

2. Win rates - Why are we losing deals to the status quo or to our competitors?

ABM should be influencing the conversations that sales teams are having with future customers as well as the internal buying conversations that sales teams are not privy to. When we complete win/loss analysis, we find that teams are losing the deals because they failed to connect the disconnect, as Jarod Greene talks about in this podcast. They are failing to influence the internal discussions.

3. Deal sizes - Why are we not able to go up-market?

In many cases, it's because sales and marketing teams are focusing on in-market accounts, especially now that we have Bombora, True Influence, 6sense and many emerging intent data platforms. While these accounts can provide faster sales cycle times, they can also provide lower deal sizes and less margin growth as they pre-defined needs. Most GTM teams do not have a strategy that would help them win with the 60% of the market that's stuck in status quo.

In other cases, sales and marketing teams are not taking a Challenger approach to reframe a future customer's thoughts about a competitor and show them competitor-specific gaps and the impacts it would have on the prospect's ability to achieve their business vision.

4. Sales cycle time -- Why is it taking 9, 12, 14+ months to get a deal?

In our podcast on how we need to reboot our GTM planning and execution, Mark Stouse (CEO of Proof Analytics) mentioned that the analytics show that ABM has the greatest impact at the middle and bottom of the journey. By putting strategies in place and working with sales, we can accelerate accounts to revenue, but most marketers still focus at the beginning of the journey.

5. Customer Lifetime Value - Why are we challenged to retain and expand key accounts?

Many b2b firms do not take a customer portfolio management approach where teams are focusing on accounts that have accelerated rates of returns and have opportunities for growth. They are not looking at the accounts that have slower rates of returns and seeing how can they apply ABM to change buying behavior to increase margins and expansion. They're not looking at how they've become single-threaded after the deal and why they're not able to expand throughout their client's organizations even though if the key decision maker leaves, there's a good chance that the account would become at-risk. They're not looking at how we need to change the interactions that customer success teams have with existing accounts -- and the conversations they are having.

To fix our revenue leaks, we need to take a more personal approach that focuses on the human buyers within tier 1 accounts.

Every move that sales, marketing and customer success teams take should be a calculated move and then put those interactions under a microscope. See what’s working and when you have a proof of concept and proof of success, you can then take your learnings and apply it to an ABM program for tier 2 and 3 accounts. That’s how you scale ABM. You fix the business problems with tier 1 accounts and apply learnings to tier 2 and 3 accounts.

It’s time we focus on the quality of the interactions we’re having and the experiences we’re delivering along the buying journey and customer lifecycle vs. the quantity. We discuss this in our webinar on why 2/3 of ABM programs fail and underperform. Click below to get our on-demand training, where we discuss scaling ABM and other reasons why 66% of ABM programs fail.

I hope this ABM Done Right newsletter changes your perspective. If you’d to see how you can use ABM to fix your business revenue challenges, connect with me on LinkedIn. Or, email me at [email protected].

You may also want to check out these additional resources to help you reshape your ABM program to drive stronger revenue growth:

• Webinar: Why 2/3 of ABM Programs Fail
• Podcast: How ABM Should Impact More Than Your Pipeline
• Podcast: ABM Should Not Be Synonymous with ABM Tech
• Podcast: Going Beyond Pipeline KPIs and Marketing Sourced Revenue
• Podcast: ABM Strategies That Led to $1 Trillion in Revenue