An outdated view of Marketing’s capabilities often reduces them to work top of the funnel, which mostly revolves around collecting leads. Then it is up to Sales.
Marketing is often not allowed to support during the sales process, when Sales are actively pursuing the account. This is ironic because that is when Sales need Marketing’s support the most.
It comes down to a lack of understanding of when Marketing shall be leveraged. It is key to understand when and how to use Marketing’s (super)powers, and how to best measure them. Let us tell you more about the challenges ABM solves for marketing.
Leads to deals
Very few leads turn into deals, in fact, Forrester research concluded that less than 1% of leads in B2B ever become customers. In many B2B organisations, where the selling process is more complex, it can be hard to attribute a lead from a large organisation to a sale 6 months from now.
Working together with sales both before but also during the selling process enables marketing to be a part of the selling journey and get the attribution for sales when it happens, as part of the revenue team rather than measured as the siloed “top of the funnel” team.
Many marketing teams want to work closely with Sales, and support prioritised accounts and deals. As a team. Yet most marketing teams are not allowed to support beyond a lead handover. “That is marketing territory, this is sales territory”.
Instead, when working as one team, marketing can support sales after “the lead” and help with positioning and strengthening key messages during the sales process, where it matters the most.
Many marketing teams want to work closely with Sales, and support prioritised accounts and deals. As a team. Yet most marketing teams are not allowed to support beyond a lead handover. “That is marketing territory, this is sales territory”.
Instead, of working as one team, marketing can support sales after “the lead” and help with positioning and strengthening key messages during the sales process, where it matters the most.
Gartner concluded in research that there are more than 30 people involved in a buying journey in an average B2B deal. Salespeople will always be unable to identify and reach all stakeholders within that buying committee, and that’s fine. They cannot be expected to engage with all of those. But with this fact comes the realisation that building consensus around your offering and brand will be really difficult.
With today’s marketing tools, marketing can support sales with position both the sales rep and the organisation correctly in that specific deal and helping reach all those stakeholders that sales never will know of.
Gartner concluded in research that there are more than 30 people involved in a buying journey in an average B2B deal. Salespeople will always be unable to identify and reach all stakeholders within that buying committee, and that’s fine. They cannot be expected to engage with all of those. But with this fact comes the realisation that building consensus around your offering and brand will be really difficult.
With today’s marketing tools, marketing can support sales with position both the sales rep and the organisation correctly in that specific deal and helping reach all those stakeholders that sales never will know of.
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Don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to know more about Account Based Marketing.
