If the title of this article got your attention, you are most likely a CMO, CEO, or an ABM consultant. You are probably in a technology business and you have revenues over 100,000,000 dollars per year. How do I know this about you? We’ve never met. But you’re the people who read and share my blogs on a regular basis. You are more innovative than your peers. You are prime candidates for ABM adoption!
As importantly, many of my current clients are talking about ABM or Account Based Marketing. My clients currently have key and strategic account programs in place. Many of the CMOs I’m talking with are asking me questions. I’ve been talking with several ABM consultants and they shared that most of their best clients are larger organizations. That got me thinking; why should only the big clients I work with have all the fun (and profits!)?
I believe several trends are driving your ABM adoption in the next several months, based on both client inquiries and what I heard from CMOs at the past several conferences and annual meetings I attended.
The first trend driving ABM adoption is CMOs are increasing spending on technology to help them build more profitable, growing businesses. The CMOs I’ve talked with are getting more involved in digital transformation in their organizations. Their CEOs are looking for more than a small bump in sales and revenue.
The second trend driving ABM adoption is that CMOs want to know what’s working and what’s not in their marketing spend. Most believe that we are entering the age of marketing dominance. Organizations have struggled to adopt many new technologies because they underestimated how much resistance the new technologies would face from their current team members.
More simply put, adoption is being significantly slowed down by people who should be adopting it. Many senior level marketing leaders are moving towards retirement and are champions for the status quo. Rising millennials are beginning to pressure their CMO to use analytics, mobile connectivity, and the data value stream to impact their customer relationships.
The third trend driving ABM adoption is customers are demanding a more sophisticated supply chain from their partners. The more sophisticated the supply chain, the more ABM adoption begins to make sense to clients. The supply chain is transforming very quickly in many very conservative B2B industries, including manufacturing and distribution organizations. Digital transformation is beginning to happen at a faster pace than in the past. ABM adoption helps monetize these initial efforts for many midmarket organizations.
The final trend driving ABM adoption is the slow death of many of the more traditional ways of growing a business. Basically, this means the demise of traditional sales efforts to increase sales in a predictable manner that will support growth goals for the organization. I believe that ABM adoption can help align your sales and marketing efforts across the enterprise.
A client called it the Amazon effect on many traditional manufacturing and distribution organizations. Successful sales professionals are going to need many more calls to break through the noise in their ever more crowded global markets. The increasing power of purchasing teams are making it more difficult to predict success in the sales process.
One healthcare executive shared how one of their long-term hospital clients is considering outsourcing their purchasing function to Amazon so they can spend more time on their core business of taking care of patients. I believe adopting and implementing an ABM strategy may be one way to turn the tide in this healthcare partner’s favor.
When is the best time to begin planning your ABM adoption? The best answer for most organizations might be yesterday. But over the coming weeks and months, we will share with you why you should consider this and how can you get started.
Starting next week, we will return to publishing twice a week here to help you get the edge in your marketing and ABM adoption. My clients have committed to full year engagements to build out their ABM adoption efforts.
I will share what I learn along the way. In several of these pilots, we will be going outside my traditional client base of technology to share what we learn in manufacturing, distribution, and professional consulting firms. All have key or strategic account programs in place at different stages, so we can apply what we learn from their ABM adoption journey.
I believe that adopting an ABM strategy can make the difference between success and failure for your business. See you next week.
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