The Magic ABX Potion - A Spooktacular Webinar

‘Tis the season for magic potions, especially if they come to enhance the Account-Based Experience (ABX) game. There are a lot of spooky things in the air this October, but none scarier than the prospect of going into 2022 without a solid plan for tackling your account-based Marketing needs. But fear not, because our Director of Enterprise Marketing & ABM, Tenessa Lochner, and Senior Director of Marketing Operations, Tom Keefe, are here to share their tried and true spells with all of us. 

On their recent webinar, The Magic ABX Potion, Tenessa and Tom came together to give viewers an end-to-end enablement session, where even ABX amateurs could walk away with a firm foundation on the magic of this go-to-market strategy, and the confidence to orchestrate relevant and trusted Marketing and Sales actions throughout the B2B customer lifecycle. 

Touching on the trusted part – I think with ABM and ABX there’s been an evolution in the past two years in that we really want to make sure we’re meeting the buyers where they are. We want to use all the data and insights we have at our fingertips to create those really amazing experiences that allow our customers and prospects to trust us and to want to do business with us. 

Tenessa Lochner

Good witch or wicked witch? 

Although it might not be easy to tell the good witches apart from the wicked this spooky season, what we can do with more ease is objectively decide whether we’re dealing with a good data foundation. For all intents and purposes, good data must meet four criteria:  

• Be actionable: enabling action that drives critical business outcomes. 
• Be accurate: if you think making decisions without any data can create problems, try doing it with bad data. 
• Be complete: providing a comprehensive overview for the short and long term. 
• Be timely: accessing insights when you need them, and keeping the pace with the ever-changing marketplace. 

Once you know your data meets all of these requirements, the next step is to standardize the data input process so that you’re measuring bad apples against bad apples, and your outcomes don’t play any tricks on you. From the start, you should ensure you have consistent: 

• Naming conventions
• Types of fields
• Target account classifications
• Ideal customer profile(s) 
• Account/people assignments

And most importantly: teamwork makes the dream work, so include and encourage the integration and alignment of your Marketing and Sales teams! 

All for one, one for all

Everyone’s worst nightmare situation during a customer lifecycle is fumbling a prospect transition from the Marketing to the Sales stage. The good news is that the solution to this is not complicated – it doesn’t even require a full moon or traveling through time to find ingredients from a bygone era. The key to a successful buyers’ journey experience is: integration. Get everyone relevant to the lifecycle in the room, starting with Sales and Marketing. 

For years, companies have had their teams working in silos and with limited visibility into other areas of the business, which in turn limited their ability to prepare, act, or react accordingly. When organizing your 2022 playbook, the first order of business for you should be to build your ABX leadership team, and keep these leaders in the know at all times. The areas that should be tapped for visibility into deploying your go-to-market strategy are: 

• Sales
• Marketing
• Operations
• Customer Success 

This will require a change in dynamics for many organizations, but it’s imperative to do so as early as possible. It’s time to let go of the baton pass/hand-off relay flow that we’ve been stuck in for decades, and move onto the orchestration: where your leadership team is in the field and anyone can step in when they have a shot at making a good play. In other words, as Tom brilliantly explained, “if you’re going to go trick-or-treating with your friends, you want to plan around what houses you’re going to cover so that (1) you’re not all going to the same house and (2) you have a shot at the best candy. It requires planning.” 

Account selection: finding “The Chosen Ones” 

After ensuring that you have all the actionable, accurate, complete, and timely data that is also standardized and correctly catalogued in your system, there are some elements worth considering on a deeper level to ensure that these accounts are worth the pursuit and that there’s an outlook for a successful relationship in the long-term. These include: 

• Shifting marketplace perceptions
• Revenue goals
• Business objectives
• Strategic initiatives
• Business model
• Budget optimization 

(Although we hope this blog has provided a good summary thus far, this part of the webinar starting around the 35:05 minute mark is absolutely imperative to watch and hear Tenessa and Tom’s expertise on!) 

The witching hour

It’s every Marketer’s dream to create the perfect interaction with a prospect, and for that prospect to be open to being sold to. That magic moment where the right account is shown the right content at the right time is the goal to strive towards when it comes to account engagement. If your prospective customer is aware of your existence or already engaging with your content, your approach should be tailored to that stage of their journey (and you should ensure that this effort is consistent across all channels where you are initiating an engagement opportunity with them). 

The magic wand 

In our day-to-day, we’re not always within reach of a tool that can make our lives easier, but in the ABX world, there is no better example of a magic wand than technology. With just a swish and flick of the wrist (and a few clicks here and there), the right platform will yield key insights to help you make informed decisions on your approach to ensure higher probability of success, every time. 

You can’t buy your way into an ABX strategy, but technology will absolutely connect all the dots for you to put your playbook into action. 

It’s the last quarter of 2021, and there’s no better time to look ahead and prepare all the elements at hand to empower your Marketing and Sales teams to take solid steps, ABX style. This webinar truly puts everything into perspective and also links out to resources that can help you move forward with confidence, knowing that your customers will be bewitched by you.