s e s s e c o r M p B III 7 A t e r a h 1. Select accounts P T The whole point of ABM is to focus Aligning Sales and Marketing on target accounts your sales and marketing efforts on a and Entitlements is to ABM what defining a Resourcing for success relatively small number of high-value marketing qualified lead is to demand gen — ABM is not just about picking the account list. accounts that have the greatest the core of all your alignment efforts. It’s also about aligning on the proportion of revenue potential. The goal of account selection resources that will focus on each tier. If you’re The goal of the account selection process is to putting 100% of your marketing effort into the That’s why account selection is a critical step optimize your sales and marketing resources — top 100 accounts, make sure you’ve built a in any ABM program. time, headcount and budget — by focusing them model that shows how those 100 accounts will on the accounts most likely to drive big revenue. help the whole company meet its growth goals. Get this right and you’ll get the maximum return If those 100 target accounts get 50% of on the next six steps in the ABM process. Get it Taking shortcuts during the account selection resources, then they should deliver 50% of wrong and you’ll either miss major opportunities, process incurs penalties throughout your ABM goals, and so on. waste resources on the wrong accounts, or both. program, chiefly: Missing out on deals you could have won “ It’s incredibly important to pick your If you leave prime candidates off of your account list, accounts wisely. You’re only going to you’re needlessly ceding big deals to the competition. “T argeting the right accounts is the have the bandwidth to effectively work Wasting effort on a poor fit single most important ABM strategy.” a certain number of accounts. And if Put the wrong accounts on your list and you’ll spend TOPO time, money and effort on low-potential opportunities you pick the wrong ones, you’re going while under-resourcing your best shots. to be wasting your team’s time on That’s why it’s so important to invest up-front leads that won’t amount to anything.” in a serious effort to align Sales and Marketing Sam Laber, around selecting the right accounts. Founder of Spoonful and previously of Datanyze 38