Email inboxes and Mondays – name a “better” duo.
Last week, I received an email which on most Mondays I would have probably ignored due to its rather bland subject line – “[No subject]”. However, despite the obvious rush in its composition, the trailing preview text of the message caught my attention.
For those unaware, we are currently heading into the end game of our preparations for our upcoming sales prospecting workshop for ICT companies to be held in Singapore and the aforementioned message which was sent by one of my readers (I presume) presents a very interesting question in relation to the said event:
Will you be covering ABM’s role in IT and software selling?
The short answer, of course, is “YES” so I thought that it would be valuable to dip our toes into this topic for today’s post.
So how does account-based marketing drive lead generation for IT and software companies?
To gain a better understanding of ABM’s positive impact in tech selling, let’s first take a quick look at the most common sales and marketing challenges facing IT and software companies today:
- With the tech space becoming increasingly crowded, IT and software companies are finding it very difficult to grab prospects attention.
- Longer sales cycles mean IT and software companies must get new business faster and at a more frequent pace
- Let’s face it, marketing and sales rarely align. For IT and software, the added product technicalities do not really help in closing this gap.
- Most IT and software companies are in a competitive disadvantage and to cut deeper into that wound, they also tend to sell to very specific and targeted accounts.
While these may not sound too appealing to IT and software companies, the good news is that ABM provides the means to overcome these challenges, let’s find out how:
1. Calculated and effective alignment.
Marketing and sales teams can now easily work together because of their ability to keep track of the same accounts. The use of AMB-specific tactics and tools enable them to massively communicate products and services to the right people within their target accounts’ org chart.
2. Personalized messaging delivered across multiple channels
Account-based marketing lets teams create personalized marketing content and offer that is tailored to each contact’s position within a single target company/account.
Instead of just sending out generic promotional materials, personalized content has been proven to generate better responses from targets over the years. Phone touchpoints, display ads, and direct emails are common platforms that are being personalized.
Additionally, by engaging multiple contacts across different marketing channels, IT and software companies can improve their brand’s chances of getting picked up on a potential customer’s radar.
As a positive effect, this shortens the already long sales cycle of technology selling.
3. Accurate and reliable analytics.
Marketers now have the ability to keep track of their promotional initiatives in terms of how these translate to actual revenue. This is made possible through closed-loop reporting allowing marketers to see ahead of time how specific efforts can impact financial outcomes.
Track and measure your campaign’s performance with the Callbox Pipeline Account-based Marketing CRM
4. Much improved prospecting techniques.
ABM-driven sales prospecting relies on 3 things to be efficient and successful: data, messaging, and context.
Data is not limited to your mapped prospects and expanded contacts. The right data should also include competitive analysis information. Where and how your brand stands among the competition plays an important role in how you craft and deliver your prospecting messaging.
While optimized data paired with tailored messaging can take your prospecting activities to the next level, the lack of proper context in your outreach means that ABM is being underutilized.
Technology solutions solve specific problems and when it comes to account-based marketing for IT and software companies, it pays to take extra steps to ensure that your sales prospecting touchpoints are always in context.
Conclusion
Although we’re just scratching the surface, these 4 benefits clearly show that using an account-based marketing approach can significantly impact lead generation and sales prospecting for IT and software companies.
