How Teams Are Failing to Protect and Expand Accounts with ABM

ABM Done Right - A Personal ABM Podcast

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82% of B2B customers are indifferent, disengaged or are actively looking to replace a vendor. Yet companies are still focused on applying ABM to just source the funnel.

For example, Kristina Jaramillo (Host of the ABM Done Right Podcast and President of Personal ABM) was having conversations with a SaaS firm that recently got growth funding. They put a heavy focus on the pipeline and getting more opportunities. But...when looking at existing clients, there's a lot of red. There's a lot of account revenue at risk. And, there are very few opportunities to expand accounts. By failing to look at what's happening in the business and where misalignments are occurring, marketing is not able to change the motions of sales and customer success teams. They are putting long-term revenue growth at risk. They are buying churn.

Here are Some of the Misalignment Issues Kristina Discusses in This Podcast That Are Limiting Longer-Term Growth.

1. There is no alignment around the supposedly unique value that sales and marketing is promising. For example, you will hear how a partner firm of ours created positioning and messaging for a joint venture between an accounting firm and an MSP. It was around aligning IT with the CEO, CFO and COOs growth ambitions. However, this positioning and messaging was not being carried beyond sales. The assessments that sales and marketing were pushing did not speak to the C-suite. It spoke to the IT managers and directors that did not have further purchasing power and it reported on where security risks may exist and what legacy systems should be replaced or removed. They did not go on-site and see where technology gaps existed and how it impacted operations, employees, finance and customers and how it would impact leadership’s ability to achieve growth. Failing to align all communications and processes with the promised unique value leads to a breakdown in trust and the eventual loss of a customer

2. There is no alignment with the customer’s KPI growth needs. Sales and marketing tend to react to the customer's predefined needs and predefined customer requirements that are communicated to them. Account management and customer success teams then create a solution based on the customer’s checklist rather than all teams aligning on the customer’s KPI growth objectives.

3. There is no alignment with the client’s employees. Account management and customer success teams need to take a more personal account-based approach to drive adoption. If we want to prove to employees, managers and directors, their unseen gaps, impacts and how adopting the new technology or approach will benefit them personally, then we cannot rely on templates and campaigns. Failing to align with employees leads to little adoption, sticking with the status quo and non-renewal.

4. There's little alignment, integration, and orchestration between sales marketing and customer success teams. Even though it’s easier to sell and get a quicker sales cycle with existing customers, sales and marketing teams focus their time and resources on new logo acquisition. Because account management and customer success teams do not get the support they need, their conversations are often focused on activities completed and general benefits received. They are challenged to gain top-to-bottom engagement around gaps filled and the impacts at the company, division, rank, employee and customer levels. This is why vendors quickly become single-threaded with buyers after the deal is signed. This is why one of our clients, RGL Logistics, almost lost their P&G account to Ryder until we changed the team’s interactions and the experiences they delivered to the P&G b