How An ABM Strategy Bridges The Gap Between Sales And Marketing

When it comes to ABM, there's a lot of talk about the value of an ABM campaign. But how much do you know about what goes on behind the scenes?

A successful collaboration between sales and marketing is the key to success in any marketing strategy. However, in many organizations, this is easier said than done. After all, sales and marketing can be two very different groups with two other goals.

In this post, we'll discuss how an ABM strategy bridges the gap between sales and marketing by providing a shared goal and process for achieving it.

Relationship Between Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing are like two sides of the same coin. They both need each other to succeed. There will be no sales if there is no demand for a product or service. On the other hand, if there is no one to sell your product or service to, there will be no marketing. Let's discuss their relationship in detail.

Sales Help Marketing With Target Account Selection + Define Prospects

One of the most critical aspects of marketing is creating leads. Sales and marketing work together to define who those leads are and where they come from.

Sales have the power to narrow down the target market that you're going after. This helps marketers focus on prospects who will best fit their products or services. For example, if you're a financial advisor, you may have a list of target clients experiencing money problems and could benefit from your help.

Marketing teams can also help sales by providing information about what types of marketing tactics are working (or not working) for them. This gives marketers insight into what people respond best to their campaigns.

Sales Works on Closing, Retaining, and Upselling Accounts

Sales are responsible for closing deals. They ensure that the customer wants to buy your product or service. Then sales will work with marketing to develop a strategy for selling your product or service. Sales help create a need for your product or service in the mind of the customer. They also determine how much to sell yearly and who should be targeted with promotions and advertising campaigns.

Marketing helps create awareness of your product or service in the customer's mind. Marketing can also help create a need for your product or service in the customer's mind by educating them about why they should consider buying from you rather than someone else.

Inbound and Outbound Teams Work Together To Target Accounts

The sales team uses the marketing team's customer data, profiles, and insights to find potential customers and contact them. The marketing team can also provide feedback and suggestions on how best to approach a prospect, which is invaluable for a salesperson who may not have the same level of experience as their manager.

This relationship should be a two-way street. However, the marketing team needs to access information about specific prospects at any time so they can create content that will resonate with them.

Salespeople need access to marketing data to create relevant messaging for each prospect. This can include remarketing campaigns on social media platforms, e-mail campaigns, or direct mail pieces sent out to known prospects. It's essential for salespeople to be familiar with this data, so they know what types of messages are most likely to get through to their audience at any given time.

Marketing Creates Sales Enablement Material for Use

Marketing creates sales enablement material for use. It ensures that sales have the latest information about the company, its products and services, and its competitors. Sales use this information to educate potential customers about the benefits of using your product or service and how it meets their needs. Marketing also ensures that salespeople know what questions to ask to identify customer needs, which is essential to creating a solution that solves a problem or satisfies a need.

Salespeople should use marketing materials as part of their presentation to potential customers. This helps them present information in an organized manner that makes sense to customers unfamiliar with the language of your industry or product line. Salespeople also need these materials to find answers to common questions from prospective buyers quickly.

Collaborate on Targets and KPIs

Sales and marketing need to work closely together to set suitable targets, performance indicators, and metrics. Sales typically have metrics, such as several sales made or revenue generated. Marketing will have metrics such as traffic driven to a website or conversion rates.

Sales and marketing must have a shared understanding of what each considers a successful campaign or customer acquisition program. This is important because there needs to be consistency between sales and marketing teams when working towards a common goal. If they're not aligned, they may end up duplicating efforts, wasting time and money.

ABM: Bridging the Sales-Marketing Gap

Businesses are increasingly finding that bridging the gap between sales and marketing is vital to their success. Sales teams and marketers have clear areas of responsibility but often fail to collaborate effectively. This can result in poor customer experiences, missed opportunities, and wasted resources.

The solution? Companies need better align their sales and marketing teams to work together more effectively. Here are tips for bridging the sales-marketing gap:

Understanding the Importance of Riding the Gap

The first step in bridging this gap is for marketers to understand why it exists. Marketers might tend to be more focused on brand building and awareness, while salespeople are more concerned with driving revenue for their company. These different priorities can lead to a lack of communication and shared goals between departments.

Marketers need to understand that sales reps have different business objectives. They aren't focused on brand awareness or lead generation but on closing deals and growing revenue. This is why marketers need to focus on using their resources wisely so that they can drive sales along with leads.

Share Goals, Performance Targets, and Metrics

ABM is a team sport. Both sales and marketing are critical to the process, but they approach it from different perspectives. The best way to bridge the gap between sales and marketing is to share goals, performance targets, and metrics. This enables both teams to understand each other's role in the process, which helps keep everyone on track with their responsibilities.

Enable With Technology

If you want to bridge the gap between sales and marketing, you need the right tools to do so. You don't have time to manually gather data from multiple sources or figure out who's doing well and why — so use software that does it for you.

Conclusion

An ABM strategy helps the organization by providing a consistent approach to customer engagement. It ensures that organizations are creating programs that match customer needs and delivering them in a more timely and efficient manner, which in turn increases revenue. 

Plus, it helps by enabling sales and marketing teams to work together as partners on the same account instead of acting as adversaries; every campaign is executed with profitability as a goal. An ABM strategy helps organizations become more responsive to their customer's needs and goals.

Takeaway: Developing a successful ABM strategy includes collaboration across your organization.