Delivering Account Based Marketing with Love

The parallels between romance and sales are well known, but with game-changing technologies available, isn’t it time we took that to the next level?

As a sales person, wooing a sales prospect is a 365-day a year romance, where getting to know your intended is only half the battle. Without a personalised, timely gesture, you could be shooting arrows in the dark.

However, just as a new breed of dating apps has impacted the world of romance, ABM technologies are now redefining sales strategies. In both cases, the core aims remain the same as ever, but the funnel has accelerated: the scope is wider, faster and more direct.

Account Based Marketing is not a new concept, but in recent years it has seen a surge in interest from organisations looking to accelerate and unify their marketing and sales efforts. According to Sirus Decisions, more than 70% of B2B companies are focused on driving ABM programmes this year, with 41% having activity already in place.

For those new to ABM, it is simply a sales process based on a clear set of high value prospects who, once identified, are routed to the sales owner and delivered personalised marketing content.

The challenge, for many marketers and sales people alike, is how do you know that the prospect is who they say they are, and how do we use additional insights to take a personalised response to a deeper level?

Clearly, ABM works. According to Altera Group, 97% of their surveyed organisations confirmed that ABM had a higher or much higher ROI than other marketing initiatives.

The benefits of ABM also go beyond marketing spend. At the 2016 ABM Council, the main motivation for using ABM strategies is to avoid “sales team burnout”, a reminder that any sales automation still requires a human element.

As a MarTech platform, we believe that ABM technology isn’t about reshaping your current strategies – it should be streamlining your process. Much like a dating app, the technology itself should integrate seamlessly with your existing customer acquisition efforts.

Moreover, a good ABM tool should re-enforce confidence in your current marketing automation, validating and enriching prospects to ensure and improve your sales efforts. When prospects come into the sales funnel, it ensures that:

ABM doesn’t just benefit sales managers to close more business, it also ensures that ROI can be tracked back to the marketing channel that drove the sale, enabling marketers to optimise their campaigns in real-time.

This Valentine’s Day we wanted to test our own theories by sending 50 sales prospects a Valentines gift. The gift itself directs the recipient to a Valentine’s page, where their data is immediately validated and routed to the best sales person to answer their needs.

We are excited to see which of our romances pays off, and if you would like to find out more about Convertr and ABM, then you can also join in the fun – discover who our love algorithm matches you with at www.accountbasedvalentine.com.