The relationship between B2B businesses and their customers isn’t all that different from a relationship between two people. It cannot be one-sided; it has to be a partnership, where both parties understand each other, are attentive to each other’s needs, and are attuned to how the other works. It takes time to get to know someone and build a relationship with them, to give them not only what they want but also give it to them in the way they want it. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a sales philosophy for doing just that. And what makes ABM so powerful? Its focus on personalization.

What is ABM?

For a more thorough exploration of what ABM can do for your B2B business, see this article on executing an ABM selling strategy or sign up to receive our free ABM ebook here. Those links also offer more in-depth definitions of some of the concepts in this article, including “ideal customer profile” and “customer journey.” Briefly, ABM is a hyper-personalized marketing practice that aligns marketing and sales in the pursuit of selling to target accounts. It is best for businesses in markets where annual contract value is high and the total number of opportunities is low. One aspect of ABM that makes it so successful is its focus on personalization. With sales and marketing working together to identify a small number of high-value leads, you get a deep understanding of your target accounts and how best to reach them.

How ABM Excels in Personalization

ABM is built around three core concepts: the ideal customer profile, the customer journey, and aligning sales and marketing teams. All three of these concepts are focused on the customer: identifying what they need and the best way to deliver it.

The first thing to do is identify your ideal customer and create an ideal customer profile. Identifying an ideal customer helps you decide if a particular account is a good fit for your business. If they’re not, you won’t waste time chasing them. If they are, you’ll know exactly what they need and exactly what kinds of personalized marketing campaigns and sales strategies will turn a lead into a customer.

Next, map out that customer’s journey from discovery to purchase. That is, from the moment they discover a need to the moment they close with your business. They are going to have questions and encounter pain points all throughout that journey. ABM excels at identifying those pain points and addressing them, adding another layer of personalization to the marketing and sales process.

In a traditional sales approach, marketing qualifies leads and then hands them off to sales to convert them. Marketing and sales are siloed, which means that the two teams can approach these leads in two different and possibly contradictory ways. Marketing is developing their own messaging to generate and qualify leads, and sales might take a completely different approach to converting them, resulting in customer confusion and frustration.

The ABM approach brings together sales and marketing, as well as customer service and operations, to identify an ideal customer and develop the best approach to sales and marketing for each stage of their journey. Every team member is on the same page, and at every touchpoint, whether it’s a personalized marketing email or a phone call from a sales representative, the customer is receiving consistent, personalized messaging tailored to their specific needs.

Start Enabling Sales Today with an ABM Strategy

Personalization, customer journeys, and building relationships seem like concepts for retail marketers, but they’re even more important to B2B sales and marketing. Where there is tight competition and few leads overall, personalized outreach, not generic, irrelevant content, is how to get attention and convert leads.

ABM brings every team in alignment around identifying the best leads for your business and the best ways to communicate with them, making it easy to send out personalized messages in a consistent brand voice, reaching leads with the education and information they need at the right point in their journey. If you’re interested in executing an ABM strategy, check out our brief ebook on the subject and contact the sales enablement experts at Werx.Marketing.