Report
Building the Muscle of Sales Effectiveness
What do Marketing and Sales need from each other to deliver on the promise of ABM? Read on to find out.
Webinar: Maximizing Revenue: Unifying Marketing and Sales for Success.
We discussed key report findings and shared proven methods for increasing sales effectiveness with ABM.
Sales don’t happen without a level of trust between the buyer and the seller.
For decades, B2B companies have looked to account based marketing (ABM) as a means to build buyer trust while improving the efficiency and efficacy of the sales process.
A central tenet of ABM is that when Marketing and Sales work together toward shared revenue goals, they can create meaningful buyer experiences that result in long-lasting relationships that drive sustainable growth.
But what does that alignment really look like?
To find out, we surveyed more than 400 B2B sales and marketing decision makers. Our research provides new insight into how the most successful organizations view ABM, what they’re getting out of it, and where there’s still room to improve.
Explore the report to discover:
The foundation for Marketing & Sales alignment
How ABM drives sales effectiveness
4 common barriers and how to overcome them
See our Methodology
We surveyed just over 400 sales and marketing decision makers at B2B companies with $100 million to $5 billion in revenue. In analyzing the data, we judged “effectiveness” as annual revenue growth of 11%-40% (i.e., high growth).
The Foundation
Marketing and Sales are aligned on the fundamentals.
One of the prerequisites of an effective ABM approach is a common vision of what ABM is and why it’s important to the organization. Without alignment at this primary level, creating shared processes and KPIs is next to impossible.
With that in mind, we weren’t surprised to find that high growth marketers and sellers tend to agree on the definition and the top objective of ABM.
High growth marketers and sellers agree that:
ABM is a strategic approach where sales and marketing efforts are focused on targeting specific set accounts, rather than the broader market.
The primary objectives of ABM are to drive better sales and marketing alignment and drive efficiency with more measurable ROI and cost containment.
The Outcomes
ABM leads to better alignment, revenue efficiency, and enhanced customer satisfaction.
ABM takes time to get right—but taking that time can be challenging when there is pressure to deliver results. Our research confirms that being patient is worth it. Marketers and sellers across all levels at high growth companies are deriving value from their ABM programs in three key areas.
Alignment.
Alignment. High growth companies are setting alignment as a company goal and as they achieve the goal, they are seeing the tangible benefits
Sales
Drove better alignment with Marketing
Marketing
Drove better alignment with Sales
% of respondents in each function that ranked alignment with the other team among their top three benefits of ABM.
Revenue efficiency.
Revenue efficiency. Shared understanding of which accounts, segments and audiences are the most likely to turn into high-value customers leads to more efficient targeting, more qualified leads in the funnel and faster conversions.
Sure enough, marketers and sellers at high growth companies are seeing these results.
Sales
Maximized expansion (upsell/cross‑sell) business
Marketing
Improved funnel velocity and/or conversion rates
% of respondents in each department that ranked these benefits among their top three benefits of ABM.
Customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction. Continuing to take an ABM approach after buyers become customers leads to long-term loyalty and advocacy. Satisfied customers are more likely to continue doing business with the company, renew contracts and potentially increase their spending over time—leading back to even more revenue efficiency!
Sales
ABM improved account retention
Marketing
ABM enhanced customer experience
% of respondents in each department that ranked these benefits among their top three benefits of ABM.
The Gaps
Four areas where Marketing and Sales can work together to increase sales effectiveness.
ABM is a precision methodology. Small adjustments can have an outsized impact on program efficiency and ROI. We asked both groups what they need from each other to be more effective in their ABM efforts.
Here’s what they said.
01. Targeting and account planning.
Careful, collaborative segment targeting and account planning are critical for ABM effectiveness. If you don’t set out targeting the accounts and buyers with the highest propensity to buy, then you’ll be wasting resources on non-buyers.
Both Marketing and Sales identified account planning as a weak point in their ABM programs—with 55% of Marketers and 53% of Sales selecting “target accounts assigned to sellers don’t match Marketing’s targeting approach” among their top 5 barriers to ABM effectiveness. No wonder Sales respondents also identified collaboration on detailed account planning as one of their top needs from Marketing.
How to do it better.
Before setting up any target account lists in your ABM tool, bring Marketing and Sales together to develop a shared understanding of your ideal customer profile (ICP) for the ABM program.
- Start with your revenue goals and identify the industries, company size and other firmographics of the customers that are most likely to help you achieve them.
- Don’t stop there! This is the time to ensure both teams see eye to eye on the buying groups at those accounts and which solutions you’ll focus on in the program.
- Identify accounts in your ABM tool that match your ICP, have intent and are far enough along in their journey.
- Revisit this list weekly and make adjustments as necessary.
02. Data accuracy.
Marketing combines understanding of account firmographics and account activity to effectively plan, analyze and optimize campaigns.
The most effective account based marketers are continually monitoring account engagement and developing highly targeted activations to accelerate the journey. Missing, inaccurate or outdated information can lead to duplicative, irrelevant, or overly frequent communications that waste resources and damage hard-won buyer relationships.
How to do it better.
There are many reasons why Marketing may not be getting timely, accurate account data. Take these steps to identify the barrier—and remove it.
- Set up a meeting between Marketing Ops and Sales Ops to make sure systems have the necessary fields and everyone understands the SLAs for providing updated data.
- Walk Sales through an upcoming campaign so they can see for themselves how data such as a lead’s region, funding and recent engagement with Sales informs segmentation.
- Make sure your systems are integrated so data moves seamlessly between them. Poor CRM and ABM platform integration can lead to subpar performance even when the data is accurate.
03. Messaging and content.
Being able to articulate how you solve your audience’s biggest challenges, in language they understand, is the best way to capture and hold a buyer’s attention. But both Marketing (46%) and Sales (51%) noted challenges scaling personalization and an increased dependence on content as a top drawback to ABM. Working together, Sales and Marketing have an opportunity to overcome that challenge.
WHY SALES NEEDS THIS
Sellers with access to targeted content that spans the buying journey and answers the questions buyers have can progress accounts along on their journey. Without these pieces, they must send something generic, overly broad, or nothing at all.
WHY MARKETING NEEDS THIS
Marketers don’t always have the insights into which members of the buying group can make and break the deal, what they care about and what information they need to move the opportunity forward. These Sales insights are invaluable for Marketing to create meaningful and authentic messages and content.
How to do it better.
Help Sales quickly and confidently send out compelling, on-brand communications and assets with:
- A structured content repository where Sales can quickly find and share marketing content based on buyer persona, pain point, journey stage, solution area, and more.
- Landing page templates with customizable elements such as the seller’s contact info, introductory message, relevant content assets, and the account’s logo.
- Pre-built email sequences that Sales can update with personal messages and hand-selected content—or use as-is.
04. Actionable insights.
Marketing and Sales each hold unique knowledge that can help the other team dramatically increase effectiveness—but regular touch points are necessary to ensure each team gets what they need.
To effectively prioritize outreach, Sales needs to know:
- Which accounts are most engaged?
- What content have they consumed?
- How quickly are they moving down the pipeline?
To effectively optimize campaigns, Marketing needs to know:
- Which content and offers move the needle for accounts?
- Where do you see engagement drop off?
- What information or content are buyers asking for that we don’t have?
How to do it better.
Both of these gaps illustrate a need for planned touchpoints and more structured communication between Marketing and Sales.
- Hold weekly Marketing Ops office hours to help Sales learn how to find, interpret and act on the account engagement data available in your ABM tool.
- Set up a standing meeting between Marketing and Sales to walk through what is and isn’t working in the field.
- Create a dedicated Marketing+Biz Dev Slack channel for just-in-time feedback and questions that come up between meetings.
The biggest thing you can do to improve sales effectiveness.
One of the top barriers to Marketing and Sales alignment has been lack of buy-in for a one-team approach. Our research shows this is no longer the case in the highest growth companies. It also shows that valuing alignment is not the same as operating in a fully aligned fashion.
Building the muscle of sales effectiveness requires regular cross-team collaboration, and both Marketing and Sales must bring the same urgency, transparency and creativity that they apply within their own functions to the shared table. Only then will they be able to operate as a single team with shared objectives, KPIs and joint responsibility for achieving revenue goals.
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