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New sales team to work with. New ABM strategy to implement.
How the heck do you do it? Let me take you through the process.
Background
My current role is leading growth marketing, specifically focused on expanding our product into new industries.
A few months back I was tasked with working with a new group of commercial AEs, SDRs and enterprise AEs and SDRs. I needed to develop new relationships with these sellers, enable them on our priority industries, and execute on an ABM strategy that meets them where they’re at.
The Process
1:1 sales meetings: One VP of Sales, three directors, and two SDR managers. I set up meetings with all of them to talk Q3 and Q4 strategy and the best way our teams can work together. These meetings also helped us align on our strategy for the rest of the year.
Roadshows: Me and our product marketing manager went on a roadshow. We presented our industries strategy in four separate sales meetings to ensure the sellers understood our strategy, and had the chance to ask any questions or raise any concerns.
ABM strategy: For anyone in SaaS you know that Q3 and especially Q4 are hectic times: holiday schedule + closing deals. So trying to introduce new lists of accounts, in new industries was going to be challenging.
My goal was to keep things as simple as possible for everyone: create small lists of accounts, using a data-driven process with the goal to prioritize the accounts with the best chance of success.
Two lists for our commercial teams. One being a list of closed lost opportunities, and another list that identified accounts showing strong buying intent via 6sense, or employed former users of our product.
On the enterprise side, just one list of accounts for them. This list was similar to the commercial list leveraging buying intent data via 6sense, former user data and our internal account scoring methodology.
The goal here again was to keep the lists small, but provide sales with the best opportunities to find success.
Meet sales where they’re at: We currently use a sales engagement platform, Groove by Clari, where our sellers prospect out of. In order to make the prospecting process as easy as possible, I loaded the accounts into the platform for them to easily find. Next, working together with the SDR leaders, we curated industry-specific email templates and sequences for AEs and SDRs to use. Doing it this way fits right into their daily workflow ensuring they’ll work the accounts.
Enablement: To fully enable our AEs and SDRs on the ABM strategy, I used two sets of team calls. One being the weekly AE call, the other being our weekly SDR call. The purpose was to walk through who, what and why behind the accounts we prioritized. We talked through the specific accounts, the why behind them, assets and where to find them and our KPIs.
Conclusion: It’s a lengthy process to drive alignment and execute on an ABM strategy. But when it’s done right, the results will follow. Stayed tuned for an update on this in January towards the end of our quarter.
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Do you have an ABM success story?
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How can I help your ABM strategy?
Account selection consultation: need help figuring out which accounts to choose for your ABM strategy? How many to select?
Channel selection and setup consultation: Need help selecting which channels to use for your strategy? Or how to set them up for personalization and targeting?
Industry GTM strategy consultation: Trying to verticalize your product but don’t know where to start? Which industry to select?
Consultation sessions are 30 or 60 minutes long on Friday’s. Please fill out the form below and I will be in touch shortly!