It’s no longer news that account-based marketing leads to higher returns and accelerated market share. More than 80 percent of marketers say ABM ROI beats other marketing initiatives. But ABM requires great account and contact data, customized buyer content, and meticulous tracking and reporting to thrive. That’s where sales enablement comes in.
Sales enablement is critical to ABM success. It drives faster conversions using the power of the right content at the right time via the right channels. It helps companies centralize their sales collateral in a single hub. This includes sales coaching, product marketing, and third-party resources. It also delivers excellent analytics that facilitates live feedback from sales and customers so marketing can learn what works.
Sales enablement undoubtedly adds value to account-based marketing, and the benefits can be summarized as the following four main points. Read on to learn more!
1. Sales Enablement Requires Customized Buyer Content
ABM strategy enables practitioners to treat accounts as “markets of one” and personalize every step in the buyer journey. This personalization is made possible with customized buyer content. Unlike traditional marketing, which delivers generic content, ABM offers content that moves buyers through the sales cycle and stop deals from getting stuck. This content is tailored to exactly meet the needs and preferences of buyers.
Sales enablement helps marketers develop the right content at the right time via the right channels by providing insight into the activities of key decision-makers within target accounts.
Individualized and appropriate messaging is the best way to get the attention of prospects in today’s world where 90 percent of online buyers use digital (specifically, search, mobile, and video) to research business purchases.
A sales enablement platform makes customization possible by suggesting the right content for specific sales situations and scenarios. And because this content is easily accessible, sales reps are far more likely to utilize it. A sales enablement tool also empowers sellers to implement this kind of customized ABM strategy at scale by making it easier to pitch and implement tailored sales plays.
2. Sales Enablement Aligns Your Customer-Facing Teams
Collaboration between sales and marketing teams is vital to achieving results in today’s highly dynamic business space. Sales enablement improves alignment by providing a built-in feedback loop that reveals what works and what doesn’t. Marketers can provide sales professionals with the latest content, industry news, research, and messaging, and sellers can utilize marketing resources to deliver appropriate and well-timed content to accounts. Customer success teams stand to benefit too by leveraging content to upsell existing customers. This alignment enables much more powerful execution and attainment of common goals.
To achieve this sort of alignment, it makes sense to have a central hub to store all of your content and knowledge. This enables your customer-facing teams to find the content they need to pursue deals at the right time without wasting time searching for information all around the web. Also, having a unified knowledge library enables your teams to deliver appropriate and consistent messaging mapped to the buyer journey. Sales enablement is vital to achieving this centralization of data.
ABM and Sales Enablement – The InsideView Story
InsideView is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that drives rapid growth among B2B enterprises. To gain significant market share, this technology provider uses an ABM solution and Highspot for sales enablement to target specific accounts. With these two solutions, InsideView’s sales and marketing teams can view Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, and Accounts as well as demographics to know what content is applicable when it matches certain criteria. This “dual technology” arrangement works well for InsideView.
3. Sales Enablement Offers Tracking and Data Insights
The power of data is abundantly clear in today’s market. 53 percent of high-performing companies actively use data, according to McKinsey. Tracking and measurement is critically important for account-based marketing. This enables organizations to evaluate successful efforts and identify areas of improvement.
Sales enablement offers tracking and data insights to improve and refine buyer content, with a particular emphasis on developing content tailored to the customer journey. It enables sales to “wow” the buyer and close deals faster.
Best-in-class companies are 30 percent more likely than their low-performing counterparts to capture feedback on marketing content. These actionable insights can be used to deliver content and personalization that works at every stage of the decision journey.
4. Sales Enablement Builds Strong Customer Relationships
ABM, as a strategy, aims to develop in-depth account relationships. To achieve this core goal, ABM provides value that’s specific to each target account. This approach empowers sales to develop trust and understand the needs and challenges of target accounts. They can then offer valuable content and insights aimed at finding a solution.
Effective sales enablement adds value to this process by developing content and messaging based on specific sales situations. This positions your reps as trustworthy advisors and enables them to provide key decision-makers with the right information to make a purchase they feel confident about. This helps your sales and marketing teams develop trust and personalize engagement for stronger relationships.
Conclusion
Even though account-based marketing and sales enablement have been proven to deliver results individually, they function better together. Punch up your bottom-line by delivering strong and resonant campaigns with sales engagement and ABM today!
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