Colin (00:03.081)

Hi and welcome to today's episode of The Growth System, the podcast that looks at the world of B2B growth through a systems thinking lens. I'm Colin Shakespeare.

Chris (00:13.934)

and I'm Chris Bayless.

Colin (00:16.435)

And today we're going to be talking about a topic which I deliberately titled quite provocatively. Some might say just to get Chris's back up, let's wait and see. And that's, why doesn't ABM work? Now, let me qualify that a bit. He's bristling, he's bristling. You can see it if you're watching on YouTube. Let me qualify that bit. ABM.

Chris (00:32.782)

listening already.

Colin (00:41.515)

is getting a bit of a bad rap in some quarters. I think this is a trend that I've really noticed this year, that we've really noticed this year. There's some signs even that ABM spend, which had been on the up sort of year on year, is starting to decline. And we see that organizations are struggling to prove value or at least prove a strong ROI. And we get these, we see these questions on social media and in articles. Why doesn't ABM work or ABM is not all it's cracked up to be.

We at the growth system and in our day jobs, the wider rev space business, we're really big advocates of ABM, but all too often we see it implemented badly and we see a lot of misconceptions over even what ABM actually is. And these are quite fundamental issues that I think it's best to get out on the table now. And hopefully that'll be helpful to anyone who's considering

whether ABM is actually right for the business. So in this episode, we're actually going to explore the case against ABM. And as normal, we'll offer some solutions rooted in a systems thinking view of the world, which we know delivers the results that ABM has always promised. So first off, just in case anyone out there is wondering, let's briefly define what ABM actually is.

Chris (02:09.56)

Sure. Well, ABM, account-based marketing, is ultimately just that. It is an account-based view of how you acquire new business. And I'm deliberately not using the word leads there. In a sort traditional demand gen kind of view of the world, it typically is quite contact-centric. Who downloaded my thing? Who joined my webinar? Who filled in the form?

Whereas in account-based view of the world, we are looking at engaging specific accounts. And that is the other key difference, I think, to sort of the conventional demand-gen view of the world, which is we are starting with a list of accounts that we want to engage. We know who we're going to sell to before they know. And that sort of differs in one primary way from a sort of programmatic view of the world where we would define

the firmographics, know, what size, what geography, what industry that we want to sell to, to kind of match our, our ICP, our target customer, is that we actually go that one step further and define a list of accounts. Now, once you've kind of defined that list of accounts, ABM comes in three primary flavors. Strategic ABM, otherwise known as one-to-one, which is fairly descriptive in the sense that it is one, usually seller.

targeting one large strategic account. This is to be used in scenarios where the size of the prize is very, very substantial, know, seven, eight figures probably and above. And also it is typically, although not exclusively deployed, where you already have a relationship with that account. It is the sort of archetypal old fashioned key account marketing. The second flavor of ABM.

is often described as ABM Lite or want a few, which is probably I would say one of the sort of favoured routes certainly of getting into to an account based motion for most businesses and and that is around having that account list and creating campaigns that go to little subsets of that list. Now those subsets could be based on

Chris (04:33.76)

a problem statement, you know, something that they are trying to fix. They could be based on an industry, quite commonly based on an industry, I think it has to be said. Or some other thing that sort of groups them together so that the messaging and the sort of campaign plan that you're going to put out is going to appeal pretty universally to everyone that's in that segment. It is slightly less resource intensive because one sort of seller marketing pairing can go ahead and

and manage the opportunities across lots of accounts rather than just one. But it is still one of few. So, you know, we're probably not going to be expecting to see that many accounts on that list. However, many on that list does tend to be quite variable. you know, 10 is a good number to start with. Probably no more than 30 as it still depends on research and personalization. And then the final one is programmatic APM one to many. And that is

typically almost exclusively a sort of technology led play because it requires a sort of a data view to ensure that specific accounts are being targeted typically with ads. So you might be using a RollWorks or a demand base or a Sixth Sense to kind of deploy that programmatic one to many campaign. It's about

segmenting and viewing the funnel slightly differently. So we go from having an awareness out there in what people at Sixth Sense call the dark funnel. And that's typically where we are looking at intent data. I think intent data is something that sort of characterizes one to many motions normally, not exclusively, but we're out there saying, well, who out there is showing demand for our product? Who out there is kind of interacting with our online properties and let's start building them into a

into a targeted view, into a list. So we still have that list. We still have those named accounts. is not programmatic digital marketing per se, but it does use a lot of the same sort of techniques. We're just pulling that into lists using things like domain de-anonymization of intent accounts. So three flavors, kind of one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many, and really all about

Chris (06:57.208)

having at the centre at a specific list of on-named accounts.

Colin (07:02.877)

Okay, I mean, it sounds great. So let's make the case for the prosecution then as promised. So what's wrong with ABM? Why do we hear these naysayers and the seeds of doubt creeping in around ABM?

Chris (07:18.196)

a really really interesting one and you know it as as you said as a big advocate of abm it it's perhaps easy to dismiss the naysayers as being just that but i think that there is a a market trend that we're seeing out there in the market that indicates a shift in sentiment towards abm and i think that's one of the reasons that we that we wanted to do the episode today you know there's been some recent reports of people like forester and mckinsey

that are highlighting, I guess, a change of perspective is probably the right way of thinking about it. And I saw one analyst report that suggested that ABM is in what sort of Gartner's hype cycle calls the trough of disillusionment. And I think that that might be right.

ABM is valuable. I don't think anyone's saying that it is not, but I think that what they are saying is that maybe the, you know, the gains haven't come as quick as some people would have liked, that the process of getting the campaigns going has not been as easy as they would like. And also, I think, and I think this is quite an important point, that it is always fashionable when something has a lot of hype.

to resist the hype. And I think that's something that I see on social, I think a lot. I see in conversations with certain marketers and kind of revenue operations professionals that they're almost kind of getting on the anti-hype bandwagon of ABM without, think, really having considered the problem too deeply. And there is a little

Colin (09:05.157)

of eye rolling contrarians.

Chris (09:09.43)

Yeah, I think there's certainly a bit of that going on. And I think as soon as you get a bit of that going on, then it gathers a little bit of momentum. You know, the reason that Forrester and McKinsey are bothering to go and release reports on this is because there obviously is this sort of groundswell of noise that's coming in the sort of, is this everything it's cracked up to be camp? you know, that's something that we really want to address, I think, in this episode, because

there is such a risk of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater by kind of getting too much on that bandwagon. But it has to be said for a lot of companies, ABM isn't working. And I think the sad fact of the matter probably is that it's not ABM, you, might be the sort of subtext of this episode. But let's unpack that a little bit and everyone can perhaps see what they think in the comments.

So what's wrong with ABM was the question. I think that in no particular order, scalability has been a problem. We see a lot of pilots out there that aren't really making it to production, that aren't really getting that kind of widespread adoption. And in pilot mode, you know, the ROI is never going to be there.

The point of a pilot is to see whether it's going to work, to see whether you've got those kind of green shoots. And so many businesses aren't managing to get that pilot off the ground into production, either because the shoots aren't green enough, there's not enough of them, or simply because actually the pilot has proven that it's actually really quite hard to prove value. And the reason for that is sort of various. So let's maybe kind of pick up some other things.

That's sort of difficult to prove value, I think comes from the ABM typically suffers a lot of measurement issues. I think in a lot of organizations, know, evidencing success in ABM means that you've got to move away from that kind of traditional up and to the right MQL lead centric view of the world. And that's actually really quite hard for some organizations, you know, when marketing teams and I'll get to the in ABM bit in a minute. But you know, when marketing teams

Chris (11:32.418)

have always said, look at all these great MQLs, look how many thousands of them have come in this month. And then moving to ABM and having to say next month, okay, well, we might have done a thousand last month, but this month we have done 10. And that's quite a difficult pill to swallow, I think, across the org. So actually I observe that we see a lot of poor measurement, because not that the measurement is actually

necessarily that difficulty. The difficulty is actually bridging, you know, crossing the chasm from the look how great all these things are from the sort of quantity to quality view of the world and that's a problem that...

Colin (12:17.205)

So it's fair to say, Chris, that a mindset shift is sometimes underestimated how much of a mindset shift an organization needs to make across the board in order to even think about doing this.

Chris (12:27.884)

I think that is.

Chris (12:32.706)

That's the key. It's across the board. You know, it is a mindset shift because ABM is not marketing. You know, the in ABM is a misnomer. And I think for too long, ABM has been misdiagnosed as a marketing initiative and it really, really isn't. It is an organisational strategy and it needs to be viewed as such. And so often ABM as an initiative comes from the marketing side of the fence.

And that is just a recipe for trouble. Because as we will go on, I think, and talk about, I suspect in this episode in some considerable length, because it's an organizational strategy, it requires great alignment. And if you start, if you invent something on one side of the fence, and then you just kick off on what to do it and launch a pilot, it is going to fail. I tell you that straight away. No two ways about it. That pilot will fail.

if it is a marketing initiative that launched out of marketing and done to people in sales and not got the buy-in from the board. And it happens a lot. And those kind of measurement issues just really are exacerbating the ability for it to gain traction and gain momentum. And I think another thing really with ABM is, it's not maybe not really a problem with ABM, but it's a problem with organizations trying to adopt ABM is just lack of patience.

We live in a world where attention spans are at an all-time low, and that tends to be leveled at social media users, but I think it's a human problem, and it's pervasive in business too, where there is a sort of notion that the quick win is what we need to be going for. And I think this comes from another hobby horse of mine we've talked about a bit in recent weeks, which is this sort of monthly targets view of the world.

that everything is orientated around, we done the number this month? Now, I kind of get that. I get that as someone that's on the leadership team of an organization, it's important to be on track. It's important to be doing the number in inverted commas because the number pays everyone's wages and reports back to shareholders that things are as they should be. But that short-termism is a killer for ABM.

Chris (14:57.89)

It's a killer for lots of things in sales and marketing, but ABM is a particularly early casualty, I think, of the quick win brigade, because it isn't a quick win, resolutely not. If you've not committed a year to ABM just to getting going and proving value, then it's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You won't prove value. And that's an issue. know, combine that with the measurement issues.

you combine that with the fact that it's pretty resource intensive. in this quick win world of monthly targets, we're then spending quite a lot of time and therefore by default money on doing this thing and that we can't really measure yet or if we are measuring the measures look very disappointing because last month there was a thousand of a thing and now there's 10 of a thing. that's, I don't know, we've probably done this bit backwards, you that's driving the scalability issues because

It's taken a long time and it seems to be costing a lot of money and we can't really measure what's happening. So we're not really going to get that launch into the production environment. And it is as exactly as you said, it's a mindset thing. It's because we haven't dealt with the mindset shift. We haven't properly prepped the org. We haven't driven the initiative from the right place. And all of that might actually sound like, well, hey, the naysayers are right. Maybe it's not very good. But if you stay the course.

then what you are building is a sustainable pipeline. You are building a mechanism for the organization spending its resource on something which you can actually forecast growth against because you're actually owning your own pipeline. You're not abdicating the success of that pipeline to hiring someone with a black book that's come into the org, that's expended that in six months. Then you chuck them away like a used crisp packet and get some more sellers in with more black books, which is...

You know, you laugh, but I suspect I know you look on it.

Colin (16:55.785)

Rollerdecks revolving door.

Indeed. Yeah, so I think the best, if I could just comment on some of this, sort of the most aware organizations that have been a part of where we've talked about ABM, where, you know, we could see that the organization or certainly the value proposition and the customer list we were working to, we could see how maybe this was something worth considering and the most aware organizations that have been a part of have looked at this at the strategic level and said, do you know what?

Chris (17:00.92)

But.

Colin (17:29.791)

we are actually not ready to do this. We can see why we should be sort of executing this ABM strategy, but here are all the reasons why we're actually not aligned and ready to do this. But then the problem is it all gets pushed into the too hard pile because of all the reasons that you just said. when, at what point can an organization live in quarter to quarter or month to month or even half to half? At what time can they suddenly

sort of ring fence off some resources and make a commitment to a year before you prove any value in something, which is just, it's a huge mindset shift. And as I say, the most aware, self-aware organizations have been a part of that's as far as it got was just a recognition that we can't do this right now and we don't know when we can do it.

Chris (18:18.523)

Yeah, I think that's a big thing. And that mindset shift, I think for me can be summarised or perhaps reframed more accurately in that ABM is actually a long term strategic initiative.

It is like building a new factory. When you invest in a new factory, you don't expect it to be built tomorrow. You don't expect it to be chucking product out by the end of the month. You know that it takes a while to build that factory and it's going to be expensive. But when it's online, you know, you're...

you're getting that product out the door, it's coming out in a way that is measurable, it is increasing your overall capacity. And it's the same with ABM, you know, it's a factory that needs to be built. And once it is built, it's absolutely as productive as you hoped it would be, but you need to cross the chasm and get there. I think that, you know, beyond these perhaps more sort of structural issues, well,

there are some kind of execution issues as well.

Colin (19:27.839)

Yeah, there's definitely some issues on more of a sort tactical execution level that are well worth diving into and some interesting hot takes on why this happens.

Chris (19:40.204)

Yeah, I think I'm sort of saying that there are execution issues. think actually, you know, with our sort of system engineering hat on, they probably do all ladder back to structural issues. the thing, so let's sort of talk about that structural issue first. It's a system sort of system issue in reality. And that is that

ABM gained traction really, really fast. There are a load of studies out there, as there always are, we always sort of poke fun at the stats, but actually in this case, the stats are all actually very well aligned. If you go and ask a CMO in a B2B org, are you running ABM? 94.2 % in this one study will say yes.

I'd say that is absolutely right. I would say that nine and half out of 10 times you ask a CMO and a B2B org are they running APM, they're going to say yes in some way. And yet in this same study, and I think that again, this is where the numbers diverge more, but fundamentally heuristically they're again absolutely right. Only 30 % have a fully integrated sales and marketing team. You cannot have one without the other.

And I think that is that delta between alignment of sales and marketing and the headlong rush into execution that is leading to the cooling. I think that is the nuts and bolts of the problem. As an organizational strategy, which means that sales and marketing are aligned as our product, as our number of other bits of the orbit, but fundamentally let's talk sales and marketing here, that

Sales and marketing aren't aligned in the vast majority of organisations. Now, quite what this study is describing is fully integrated, but really alignment is the lifeblood of ABM. If you haven't.

Chris (21:45.108)

started the initiative together, if you aren't running the initiative together, if you aren't fully integrated, you aren't acting as one team, then your ability to execute is going to be woefully diminished. And once you have that sort of diminished execution capability, what you also get with that lack of alignment is a lack of buy-in and a lack of sort of goal structural alignment.

And that ultimately means people are being incentivized to do different things. And that creates a lot of friction. And the one thing that I see in terms of execution issues that is all sort of pervasive, I would say, when you start an ABM initiative is that it is just simply perceived as being too hard and taking too long by sales.

That is not an indictment of sellers. That is an indictment of the goals that they are set in the context of then being told they need to do an ABM campaign because typically the monthly targets haven't gone away. You know, the other submetrics on conversion rates and whatever else have not gone away. They've just got to do this new thing. And this new thing is time consuming because it requires research. It requires personalisation. It requires time to stop and think and consider. And they're not given that time. And

I think that causes an issue. The flip side of that actually is I think that sometimes there perhaps is an overemphasis on personalisation. You know, not every account is unique. It is not a special individual snowflake to which, you know, there is no comparison. The reason that they're on your list is because they've all typified by having roughly the same problems in roughly the same place in organisations of roughly the same size. So there's a lot of portability in messaging.

Colin (23:34.651)

On this personalisation piece, I've also seen the very sort of cold face of the execution layer, I suppose you could say. I've seen sort of individual 22 year old SDRs being tasked with sort of ad hoc personalisation. Just do your best, of think outside the box, think of ways to attract this person's attention.

through personalization and what we get a hold of. I see you're connected to such and such on LinkedIn. Anyway, have you seen this thing that we sell or I see that you play golf? I once watched the Ryder Cup on TV and so on and maybe a misunderstanding of what and a failure to guess trickle down the sort of concept of what personalized what we're actually talking about with personalization here. It's not.

Chris (24:28.567)

Yeah.

Colin (24:28.939)

you know, how are your kids and then ream off the name of the kids, something creepy like that. You know, we're talking about people who have fundamentally the same problems and, you know, a set that is sort of what unifies them is there, or what makes them a set is that they have this, probably have the same endemic problems, right.

Chris (24:50.786)

Yeah. And I think you've actually just hit on a really, really important point on execution there, which is actually knowledge and expertise. I think a study I saw suggests that something like 50%, you know, 49 % or whatever of organizations don't have the capability or the expertise to deliver ABM. Really, really surprised they ever got to a number that was that low. You know, I think ABM is a, I would liken it to coding a website. You know, you're not just going to...

get your junior marketer or your 22 year old SDR and say you know go make me a website. Of course you're not, you need to know code, you need to know all these sort of things, you need to have expertise. Well abm is no different, you know don't need to know any code, you need to know what you're doing for it to work and so often even if there is one person in the org that knows what they're doing that information isn't sort of disseminated through all of the people involved in the delivery of abm.

So that really simple point, what is personalisation? Well, OK, the message has been personalised, lovely. I saw a post where he had a golf club in his hand and I mentioned golf. Great. Is it? Well, in that case, probably not. But did anyone tell him? Probably not. And I think that's a really, really important point is how we actually skill the team up to go deliver things well, that we have a common view actually of what ABM is. You know, such a common...

problem is that people go, yeah, yeah, yeah, because we have 94.2 % of businesses that say they're doing ABM, 94.2 % of us say, yeah, I know where ABM is. Great, do you? No, I don't think you do. Clearly not acting like you do. You're not doing things like you do. And if it quacks like a duck, then you know, it probably doesn't know what ABM is either. So I think that's, that's a big issue is that sort of skills gap. And the fact that it's a skills gap that's almost unidentified, because there is this sort of assumption

and B2B marketing, of I know what that is. And being able to give a sort of an assessment of what ABM is like I did at the start is not really the same as knowing how to deliver ABM. So that's a big issue. I think another issue that I see is maybe stemming from that same point is there is kind of an overemphasis on high value accounts. I see in most organizations, we have this sort of

Chris (27:15.15)

focus on the strategic end of the ABM scale that I described. And it's a funny one because there is a, know, people talk about, you know, going whale hunting and everyone sort of describes that, you know, has this sort of, going whale hunting isn't a good thing. Well, actually it is more or less what most people that try ABM try and do.

We're going to go for this great big juicy prospect. And because they're starting ABM, they're reviewing it through the paradigm of only focusing on new logos. So they then go and try and land a seven, eight figure account that's never spoken to them before using ABM when they don't really know what ABM is. And funny enough, it doesn't work. then ABM hasn't had any results. So there's a lot going on under the surface that really ladders back to that.

lack of understanding and lack of alignment between the teams.

Colin (28:12.587)

Isn't there a wider issue here that you've kind of touched on around how the account list for ABM is actually selected in the first place? Like I've often seen account lists targeted on a hunch or perhaps a piece of information which is kind of kept secret in some secret little silo of the sales team and someone in marketing or

I think at best maybe a flawed data model where it's maybe not something you would, if you looked at this on paper, like here's my data model and therefore this is how we check the accounts, maybe not something that you would bet the farm on.

Chris (28:59.008)

Yeah, yeah, I think that account list creation in a, you know, in a growth strategy that is wholly dependent on the quality of that account list clearly is very, very important. And it's very, very easy to skip over it. It goes back to this sort of assumed knowledge problem. we know our ICP is okay.

Maybe you do, great. If you're a sort of specialist software vendor that fixes a particular problem, yeah, I'm sure you absolutely do. If you are a professional services business that does projects that are 10 grand and projects that are 100 grand or projects that are a million quid, who is your ideal customer? Who has actually got the highest propensity to convert from this kind of activity? So that is a big issue that

is hard to get over, like making people go back to first principles, say, okay, well, actually, you know, what is the ICP? What is the messaging framework that kind of relates to that ICP that links them to the product? You know, who are the accounts? How do we define who those accounts are? You know, something, you you talk about an account list based on a hunch being a negative, you know, to be honest, in some ways, I actually mind that because there's typically something behind it that someone's actually spent some time thinking about. The worst kind of account

are they, just you know we want sold to a you know industrial plastics firm so go get me a list of every industrial plastic from Northern Europe and we'll target them right now, we'll start tomorrow and you know that that's the recipe for failure is is not really thinking through the why because just because they're in a particular industry is unlikely to be enough to make them

have a propensity to buy from you unless what you sell is an industry specific solution and you are the best at selling it. that, absolutely putting the reps in around, you know, building and optimizing and taking an agile view on what that account is comes from and

Chris (31:07.87)

having the data points in place to enable you to generate that account list. think that's another big thing that I see being a problem. You you get the buy-in, people get the process and they say, okay, well actually what we want people is, you know, actually heard this one before and it's a fabulous point that this particular marketer made. What we want is people with a, you know, businesses with a growth mindset that want to do things differently, that want to, you know, view the world differently to their competitors. Well, absolutely great. I'm sure that is

perfectly true, but really quite difficult to find that on, you know, cognizant as a property.

Colin (31:46.079)

Yeah, there's not a sales navigator filter you can do for that.

Chris (31:51.274)

No, now that's not to say that you can't then construct that problem and think, well, does that, is that typified by businesses of a certain age or with a certain profile of employee or employees or management team that have come from certain organizations? Maybe you can get there, but

But you need to really put the hard yards into understanding and mapping the profile to the available data sources to then create that list. And you can't almost put too much time into that phase because you are building so much on top of it that it needs to be right or as right as it can be on day one. It needs to have a mechanism for refinement sort of baked into it.

Colin (32:40.457)

Yeah, suppose this is a slight aside, but the situation you were describing, whereas if you had an industry specific solution, then maybe you could say, well, give me all the companies in this industry within this specific territory. At which point, probably, I guess a point that we might have missed, maybe we could spell it at which point maybe ABM actually isn't the right strategy, if it really was a solution that was appropriate for

all the plastic manufacturing companies in Northern Europe then ABM possibly isn't the right strategy there and maybe you need to look at something else.

Chris (33:19.15)

not the only strategy I had to be employing in that scenario. I think we have an almost intrinsic net new logo bias to the way that anyone in sales and marketing thinks about any problem because ABM really leverages

most hesitating to say most certainly significant amounts of its value from hitting existing accounts, know, as an expansion revenue motion. And that's where and I think we probably should have said this or I should have said this earlier. Account based marketing is but a method of recreating the way that most businesses already sell. It's a method for creating relationships and improving relationships and expanding relationships.

within target accounts. that's why that works so well for expansion, because you've got that foothold. And then you can really start to get a much bigger grip on that account.

Colin (34:24.939)

Yeah, I guess we could think about it more as a sort of methodology for focusing the combined resources of your organization. A sort of concentration of force, if I could get my sort of military nerd hat on as I have to do. And look at a sort of concentration of force and all the resources of the organization onto these, I guess, specific leverage points to take us back to this systems thinking view. Well, we're kind of over halfway here, Chris. Let me...

This has got me thinking about some of the conversations that we tend to have with, let's say, euphemistically sometimes skeptical revenue leaders. And sometimes I ask quite smart questions when they hear us talking about this sort of stuff. Like, I think there's a recognition or a growing recognition, not always, that ABM is going to require a certain level of organisational maturity and readiness and

a mind shift, a mindset shift, sorry. And I think I'd be asking the question if I was in their shoes, do we actually have the necessary sort of infrastructure and technology and mindset and organizational design in place to make it work? And I guess another key question that these are all related, I'm going to hit you with them at once. And you can tell me what you get from that.

Another common one is, I guess, a fear that by focusing on a select group of accounts, what's the opportunity cost of that in terms of broader market opportunities? Like, how do you mitigate this risk? Shouldn't you be hedging your bets? Like, what happens if this strategy that we're going to put a year into this very limited set of accounts? Well, what are we missing out on by doing that? And lastly, don't worry, this is actually the last one.

going back to the sort of organizational readiness piece.

Colin (36:26.133)

think once you really get into the meat of what ABM actually is and what taking ABM seriously requires, you start to realize that there's multiple touch points and there's of qualitative metrics, let's say, that are a bit harder to work with than say, you're basically like, how many MQLs did we produce and what was the conversion rate? It's a bit more complicated than that. So attributing success to specific actions becomes really

potentially complicated and I think another key question we ask is how do you actually track and credit the right efforts? So I guess to summarise, how do we diagnose whether our organisation is ready for ABM?

If we are ready, how on earth are we going to track and credit the right efforts? This is a significant shift from how we do things now. And if we do all this, what are we actually missing out on?

Chris (37:23.34)

Okay so organisational readiness, ABM readiness, is an absolutely crucial question and it's one that

if we are going and starting an ABM motion with one of our customers, this is ground zero. know, do not start until you are ready, because all you're going to do is burn that timeline that you've hopefully got buy-in for from your senior management team, getting ready when you're supposed to be getting on. So I think that that what characterizes organizational readiness for me is having

three primary things, which is you call it mindset. think, you know, let's call it a well aligned sales and marketing team that have a common understanding of what needs to be done. Well aligned goals and objectives. People do what they're measured on. So let's not have any goal conflict. And this is something that we've talked about a lot on this podcast before in various guises, but

make sure everyone is pointing in the same direction and are measured on getting to that destination because if you're measuring them on other stuff they're going to do the other stuff. So that's really key. Making sure that the tech stack is there in terms of it's a sales and marketing motion so the very very minimum we need all of the marketing touch points

that are giving us account engagement data to be feeding into CRM so that we have a complete 360 view of that engagement framework around the accounts that we're trying to target. And then the final one, which is kind of related to the second point about measurement, but actually this is more about metrics, that we've actually built the right framework, the right scorecard, know, dashboard, call it what you will.

Chris (39:15.904)

on day one that allows us to measure success and report success, you know, to the people that sign off budgets and track things within the org, whoever they may be. Because if we get that right, we have the integrated tech stack that has the reporting baked into it. Everyone's aligned behind the reporting. Everyone's been pointed in the right direction with the right targets and then they've been equipped not just with.

a sort of shared view of the problem, but also a shared view of how we go and solve it in terms of being enabled and having skills in place, then they're ready. You know, those are the sort of areas that you really need to focus on. There are some others, but I think that's really the primary ones. The attribution question is a really interesting one because

If you have the tech stack integrated, then the attribution model, which you hopefully would have put in place. attribution models are not something that we've really got time to talk about in any great detail, but fundamentally, if we're crediting steps, make sure that at least we've got that clear and we've got it able to be understood and how much of what touch point has been touching the account.

That's really important because that enables us to optimize activity in the long run to get a better result. What is a more difficult question to answer is crediting the right efforts. Now, I think you can read that potentially is crediting the right people. How are we compensating people on an ABM motion when it is a nice, holistic, you know, hand in hand approach across the org to winning the account?

And that is quite a difficult question to answer because if you were going full, I don't know, was probably about to say something inappropriate, but if you were going sort of full open arms in sort of going at this together, then you'd say that actually you'd probably remove the concept of sales compensation for ABM and you would put some sort of shared compensation across the team because that would facilitate and enable a better shared.

Chris (41:26.414)

ownership and said approach towards solving the problem of getting that engagement and getting that account into an opportunity. The true answer that question, because that probably doesn't fly, particularly if you've got an organisation full of sellers that are used to being compensated and are paying their mortgage based on getting a certain amount of that compensation every month or quarter, just saying we're not going to do that anymore, Chaps, and actually we're going to share the pot with the guys in marketing, that's probably not going to be great for retention.

So the problem I think of solving that one is quite organisation specific and one that...

in a nutshell, I think depends on the composition of the sales org, know, SDRs and AEs. I think that SDRs are much more simple, you know, if they are going out and they're doing the call steps and they're booking the phone conversations for the AEs to pick up, I think that that compensation model doesn't need to change as long as it fundamentally made sense in the first place, i.e. you're comping on people turning up to meetings and then turn into pipeline rather than meetings being booked. A whole other episode, I reckon, that one.

And for AEs, there is an argument to say that you don't necessarily need to do anything different either. But if your ABM motion is working really, really nicely and you've got multiple stakeholders engaged at the point that the AE becomes engaged, there is definitely an argument that what you've got on your hands there is an order taker, not a seller. That's probably a debate for a different day.

And the final point that you made or the final question that you had was on like opportunity cost of focus. You know, if we're just

Colin (43:06.687)

Yeah, exactly. Like, shouldn't we get these questions, don't we? it's like, well, shouldn't we be sort of, if I'm really going to focus this much of my scarce resource on this narrow account list and we're going to put everything into this and we've got a different sort of attribution model and all the rest of it, what are we missing out on? Especially if there's a reasonable trickle of, for example, inbound coming in at the time. Then we have this question.

What are we going to miss out on by focusing the organization on there? And then after that, I have a question about one of your answers. I'll let you answer that one first.

Chris (43:46.05)

Well, let me try the opportunity cost one. So I think the opportunity cost question is a really salient one. And forgive me, but I think the reason that it is a question in most orgs is it stems back to a misunderstanding of what ABM should be. Because if you are so narrowly defining ABM as that it is only sending, you know, DMs and sales emails and calls steps.

to a certain small basket of accounts, then there is probably quite a significant opportunity cost there. Our view of the world, my view of the world in terms of ABM is that it is much broader than that as an approach. It is something which should be seeded through every part of the sort of mix of marketing channels that you use is this sort of account centric view of the world.

and

So you should be picking your shows, your exhibitions, your whatever events based on the propensity for the right accounts to be there, the accounts that are on your list. You should be using those as a mechanism to engage with those accounts. But of course, you're going to be engaging with lots of other accounts too, almost by default. In the same way as I'm a big fan of kind of air cover campaigns, making sure that your digital ads are being seen by the accounts that on your list. But of course, they're to be seen by others too.

have to be, obviously, if you're a six-end, that's not a prerequisite, but I don't think it is a bad thing if they are.

Chris (45:20.258)

and far cheaper than buying one of those platforms too if you're having a bit of wastage across the account list. And I think that, you know, that goes with social. You should be crafting your messaging so that it appeals to those accounts, but it so too will appeal to lots of other people that are conceiving that social. So I think that there is no opportunity cost in focus if you view that focus to be doing the things that appeal to your ICP and then focusing your direct

outreach on those accounts themselves. But that is, in doing that, you are going to have, I believe, fairly substantial footprint in accounts that maybe aren't in your list, that maybe are second, third tier target accounts that are maybe from a broader set of people than your sort of specified decision making unit within those accounts. And I think that gives you quite a broad

view of the world. I would also attempt that by saying that when we are building relationships, particularly with net new accounts, being able to pick up the phone and someone know who you are because you've said your company name is a significant force multiplier. And because of that, I'm a massive advocate of brand.

you know, whether that is the brand of your founder, whether that is the personal branding of your sellers or your senior team, whether that is just big brand activity if you've got the budget to do so. Doing things and getting out there and building the brand can only have a positive impact on the efficacy of your ABM campaign. So I would say that.

ABM done well is by having an account centric view of the world and a sort of account problem centric view of the world, but it is not myopically focusing on only doing outreach to those accounts, if that makes any sort of sense, I hope it does.

Colin (47:17.355)

Yeah, yeah, I guess that's we're taking it from that sort of black and white view of the world and having a more nuanced explanation of what ABM actually is and how that sort of runs through every aspect of this sort of sales and marketing organization. And so, as you said, there's not really it's kind of a false objection. Actually, that's not what you said, but essentially it's a false objection. There isn't an opportunity cost.

Chris (47:46.286)

than right now.

Colin (47:47.639)

I probably don't have time for my question, but I feel like eventually we will have to come round to an episode about this particular part of the sales and marketing organization. You were talking about your SDRs as simple statement and about how if SDRs are doing what they are supposed to be doing, we're essentially the professional conversation starters of the business, right? And if they're going through their motions and they're booking their meetings and people are turning up to those meetings, then they should be compensated.

I don't have an objection to that. But it got me thinking when I've been in organizations where, let's say they're running what maybe would be called a named accounts or key accounts kind of motion where you have a very senior sort of account director, account executive, somebody who's used to building relationships with the big strategic accounts. And generally speaking, if you're running an AE slash SDR BDR model, they're supported by one of these conversation starters, only a very senior BDR.

like a career BDR, if you like, would be the kind of person aligned, if available, to that account director, account executive. And what you will find is because they're working from a very narrow list and they're not going out there making calls, trying to book meetings to find necessarily a project. That's typically what SDRs will be compensated on. Or we think there's a chance that we will close the business here and we will win on this project.

Well, of course, that's not what you're doing in key accounts or ABM, is it? Your relationship building. So the value of the meeting itself has to be kind of measured differently or whatever the engagement that you have. And what you typically find is that you have very senior, very experienced, probably the best BDR or SDR in the organization is actually on the same, I've seen this a few times, is on the same compensation model as someone whose job it is to

not being too reductive, spam out hundreds and hundreds of emails and calls every week and book a bunch of meetings, which their account executive, the salesperson they're aligned to kind of qualifies and then they get paid for. Whereas we actually, I've seen this lots of times, where the very senior person doing this motion and actually kind of unlocking more value arguably is ending up getting paid less. So there basically needs to be a recognition there I think that all.

Colin (50:11.317)

BDRs and SDRs are not equal and what they're doing is not the same thing. And perhaps the compensation model maybe does need to be looked at, I would counter when it comes to like, if you're really seriously considering an ABM motion. But I think that's maybe another episode.

Chris (50:19.33)

Yeah.

Chris (50:26.412)

I think that's fair. I think it probably is, but let me answer very, very briefly with two thoughts, which is an additional metric, which I think is really important if you are using an SDR motion as part of your ABM strategy and you shouldn't always be, which is the second point, is that having the right people on the call.

I think is never more important than it is when you're doing an ABM motion because if you've managed to a call with the, you know, T-boy, then that's...

is probably not as valuable as having someone that's on the sort of specified DMU list. decision making unit, the number people you actually want to speak to. So I think that's an important distinction. I think the other point as I alluded to is that if you are doing a big ticket strategic ABM motion where you are trying to land, you know, a Cisco or somebody, then SDR probably shouldn't be playing a role in that. You know, you are going one to one, you are probably using

using your CEO more likely than your SDR as a mechanism for reaching out and building that engagement because it is just a more appropriate way of doing things. If you're running a programmatic play and you've come up with 100 people that have fallen into your engage list and then you want to chuck them into a sequence, absolutely, deploy an SDR that's a perfectly appropriate and proportionate use to what you're doing further up the funnel. So not all ABM campaigns are constructed

the same and therefore not this right composition of sellers is going to be right for every campaign that you might be running or every way of deploying ABM. I'm slightly horrified to see that we are halfway through the episode yet. So I'm going to suggest we do a quick fire unpacking the solution to take us somewhere near to where we need to be time wise. What do you think?

Colin (52:24.723)

Yeah, I think that's necessary at this stage.

Chris (52:29.71)

Cool, well, I have prepared just such a thing, so I will spend less time explaining each one of the points that I've written down on my notes than perhaps I was going to before, but maybe we make this one more of a two-parter. So, the...

The solution, I think, to getting ABM right is actually almost a bit of a manifesto, I think. There are some things that you need to do to make it effective, to not feel like it is hype, count, you to counter some of the problems that we have described at length in the first part of the show.

And let me reel some of these off. So I think the first one is that actually checking that is a good fit for your business. That sounds quite a basic one, but in a, you know, in the hype cycle, in amongst all of the, this is the, you know, the cure of all evils within B2B, it's probably quite tempting to think that it applies to everyone and it doesn't.

And one of the biggest issues that I see, particularly in smaller organisations trying to adopt ABM, is that they haven't actually got the right people in the right places to do it properly. You know, on occasion we've been approached by quite

indeed very successful kind B2B organizations that have grown their business fundamentally through routes like referral and they're looking to kind of mechanize and that's exactly the right way to be thinking. But when you get into it, you know, that they have one guy who is the seller, who is also the, you know, CRO or whatever his job title says, you know, that they

Chris (54:37.608)

have a reasonably small deal value, which isn't necessarily an issue, but it does mean that you need to then run more of a scale play and they don't have the scale in the organization to do it perhaps. So checking it's a good fit, not just in the sort of standard, is ABM a good fit? Do I have a long sales cycle? Am I in B2B? Do I have a reasonable deal size? All those other good things, but do you actually have the right people in the right places with enough bandwidth or the ability to switch off whatever they were doing with the rest of their time and get them doing this?

instead? So is it actually a good fit? As a sort of adjunct to that, think choosing the right flavour of ABM, know, one to one, one to few, one to many, to suit your circumstances, all the right blend of those things, because often a blend is what is required. So don't do strategic ABM if you need to close 50 new

you know, net new accounts this year. That ain't going to get you there unless you've got serene ranks of people waiting to be given a job, which most organisations somewhat don't. So choosing the right sort of flavour for the circumstance, even if it is a good fit, is really, really important.

So the first sort of big ticket item on this list that I'm reeling off here is that you need to understand that ABM is not marketing. It's an organisational strategy. So getting that executive sponsorship, getting that buy-in from the top down and actually being prepared to restructure the organisation around it, whether that is from...

the reporting lines of teams, the composition of teams, adding and removing people potentially that aren't a fit to the strategy. That's really, really key because if you don't have the ability to make those structural changes, you probably haven't got the right level of sponsorship and therefore your ability to kind of get on and be successful is going to be diminished. And this is kind of comes on to the fourth point, which is about leading with alignment.

Chris (56:46.19)

and not campaign planning. So it's, you know, we're going to do ABM, we're going to run a pilot. It's really, really tempting to just dive into the account list. It's really, it to sort of dive into thinking about what we're going to say to them and the messaging and what channels we're going to use and all that good, exciting stuff that comes at the start of the campaign.

Alignment is what will drive success, not campaign planning. know, campaign planning is important, but all the campaign planning in the world will not get you out of an unaligned team where half the team either doesn't know what ABM is or doesn't know what they're supposed to be doing or is actually being incentivized to do something else entirely. So leading with alignment and getting that alignment right, you know, is the question you asked about organisational readiness. Make sure you're ready before you start. And, you know,

In addition to sort of stuff we were saying on there, that sort of measurement framework and buy-in from the exec team on the measurement is really key. You know, if you've bought them up on a diet of a thousand MQLs a month, prepare them for the change in the reporting or do it as a completely standalone activity so you can kind of have somewhat of a skunk works while you're proving value. I actually wouldn't really recommend that entirely because

then you probably don't have the sponsorship if you're hiding stuff. That's the key thing is just make sure that everyone knows what good looks like, because it's not going to look the same as what you said good looked like before, but it's still good. And I think that's really key that you need to kind of take the hearts and minds job of what you do as you kind of go through the process. And...

A big part of that is actually this sort of long-term strategic investment view of the world that I know is what we're doing here is making an investment in building a sustainable, predictable pipeline, and that is going to take time. So...

Chris (58:43.022)

They need a management, they the exec team, they the people paying the bill and deciding whether it's switched on or off as an idea need to be completely bought in to the fact that this isn't going to deliver results this quarter. Certainly not deliver results this month. And it's probably not going to deliver anything that you can get too excited about this half year. But, you know, give it that 12 months.

measure the right stuff, do it in the right way, that's when you're going to start seeing things. Getting the tech stack right is a big part of that. I think when we go into this tech stack argument, there's a lot going on there.

that really is a big enabler, that really unlocks success. And I think that comes from the talk we were having earlier about ICP definition, the ability to actually find it, getting the data right, getting the ability to kind of integrate the tech stack, attach meaningful alignment to the accounts object for each account.

you know, making sure that that engagement data is feeding in, making sure that, you know, the accounts are all enriched and the data is clean and that you can segment effectively. That if necessary, you bought the right tech and implemented it in the right way and everyone knows how to drive it. And, you know, I think that the question you were asking about opportunity cost, you know, I think at ABM,

does need to be part of a complete breakfast. You know, do need to, particularly a pilot phase, still be doing some other stuff. You know, you don't want to just stop doing one thing and start doing the next thing. I've seen people do that before and it has worked, but I think it's fair to say it was quite a scary time for them because...

Chris (01:00:35.756)

going from we're getting lots of leads in and maybe they're not that effective and they're not closing all the reasons that made them do ABM in the first place, but they were coming in. You know, there was a sense that things were happening. And then to just jump and say yesterday was yesterday and today is ABM. And actually those two things are unrelated to each other. I wouldn't recommend that. I've seen that happen in quite a big organization and they did make it work.

But yeah, tense, I think, is probably the sort of assessment of that one. And then I don't know, the final one probably, did I mention alignment before? Alignment is quite important. Building the system, getting the people together, getting them to understand that the AM and ABM is a lie, that this is about everyone holding hands and doing it together, and having collective responsibility and shared objectives. That is the starting point for success. And if you do that,

then you'll see that ABM is more than just hype.

Colin (01:01:37.493)

Yeah, I think if anyone's playing the Growth System drinking game, they probably had to quite a few times in this episode because we've mentioned alignment so many times as we always do. So Chris, I think we've run over the hour now. It's probably a good time. There's a really rich, it's a really rich topic with I think many rich subtopics within it that no doubt we'll return to again and again as we do in our day jobs. Probably best to sort of sum up here.

I'm going to try and for once keep it brief on my final thoughts. First of all, answering the question at the start of the episode, which I so provocatively posed to you, why doesn't ABM work? The point is that ABM does work. if you've had this experience, we'd love to hear from people actually who've had this experience. If you've had some of the experiences that we're talking about earlier in the show about with ABM failures.

then that's probably a fair indicator that you are having some of the alignment issues that we quite often talk about on the growth system. And it may be time to look at that on a sort of organizational level, not just in relation to ABM, but certainly if you're thinking about ABM again at any time in the future.

You know what, we're quite a bit over time. I'll pass over to you for some final thoughts.

Chris (01:03:07.438)

I think that I've done quite a lot of summing up in my rapid fire, you know, so, there's probably not a lot to add other than perhaps, make a shameless plug for the expertise point because the expertise doesn't exist out there. It is a strategy that works. In fact, if you're a high value, long sale cycle, B2B organization, it is the strategy.

Colin (01:03:13.156)

Hahaha

Chris (01:03:34.958)

that works best and all the data suggests that. So if you want to do it and you're struggling to make it work or you're thinking about this and thinking, I'm not sure we've got the expertise, we're part of that 49 % of organisations that perhaps don't, give us a call, we can help.

Colin (01:03:50.943)

Yes, indeed. That's a very good point, actually. If only someone had devised a systematic methodology and framework that would actually ensure that you were ready for ABM and executed it correctly. If you're wondering if that person exists, I will introduce you to Chris here. But happy to take any calls on that one. We don't usually do shameless plugs on the growth system. But I think in this one, think we're

Chris (01:04:17.077)

No, we don't do a lot of stringing, but we'll configure that in episodes in for doing more.

Colin (01:04:21.387)

extending our thread of hope, if you like, to those that are in the trough of ABM disillusionment. We are over time. I'm going to wrap it up there. Thanks very much for listening. Love to hear from anyone who has been affected by ABM disillusionment or indeed about anything.

Any feedback about the growth space, the growth system, sorry, is always better remember the name is always welcome. Also, don't forget to follow and rate the podcast. It really helps us to bring the content to a wider audience. All that remains to say is the growth system is brought to you by RevSpace. That's us. We're an applied growth consultancy that connects B2B organizations with the future of growth, offering consultancy, education and applied delivery services.

Thanks very much for listening. See you next time.

Chris (01:05:18.498)

Thanks for listening.