How ABM Helps Sales and Marketing Work Together

Editor's Note: A version of this post originally appeared on the LinkedIn Marketing Blog.

Marketing and sales should work together. It sounds so simple and obvious, in theory. In practice, however, many sales and marketing teams work independently, leaving them unaware of otherwise obvious opportunities.

There’s a better way, and that way is account-based marketing (ABM). It’s a strategy that doesn’t just call for alignment between sales and marketing teams, but generates it. 

To make the case, here are some convincing stats from our guide on unlocking sales and marketing performance):

• 57% of highly aligned companies use ABM
• 28% of low aligned companies use ABM

Here we dive into more detail about why this is, and why ABM is a solid strategy for many of today’s B2B organizations.

Personalization is a Shared Goal

Sales and marketing teams are both incentivized to personalize. On the marketing side, knowing your audience inside and out, and how to reach them, is pretty much a pre-requisite for success. For sellers, it’s critical that your leads feel you understand them and their situation. Anything less is destined to be ignored.

ABM necessitates personalization. Instead of a scatter-shot approach where you try to reach any or all prospects, ABM is focused by nature. By using ABM, both sales and marketing can come up with a strategy that is aligned to a specific prospect. The benefits here are clear:

• Marketing can create a personalized approach, driven by content marketing.
• Sales pitches are equally personalized, meaning prospects are getting a more relevant sales pitch.
• Sales and marketing are aligned in their goals, meaning the marketing and sales initiatives can share common themes and be crafted in conjunction with each other.

Creating One Cohesive Strategy

When sales and marketing teams come up with their own strategies without working together, a bad buying experience is typically the result. Buyers may feel like they are getting conflicting messages, or hearing the same thing twice, which leaves them unsure of an organization's ability to get them the results they seek.

ABM helps teams overcome silo situations.

With ABM, marketing teams focus on single accounts rather than using a broad strategy, similar to a personalized sales approach.

ABM helps teams align and combine their strategy around:

• Segmenting
• Targeting
• Developing customer insights
• Testing
• Aligning across channels
• Acting in response to results

ABM Helps Drive ROI

There is one thing all sales and marketing teams can rally around, siloed or not: results. Ultimately, results are about revenue, and ABM drives ROI. In fact, 84% of businesses that use ABM report that it drives higher ROI than other forms of marketing.

How?

As we mentioned, ABM is about having shared goals and a personalized approach. That alignment alone helps drive ROI, but more importantly, it encourages sales and marketing teams to come together over customer centricity. This is where you see the true ROI.

For more on how sales and marketing can thrive together, download our report Content Marketing: Unlocking Sales and Marketing Performance.