Going to market effectively – and efficiently – in the B2B space requires sales and marketing alignment.
It’s a challenge that grows increasingly complex year-over-year. Marketers and sellers are simply getting fewer opportunities to engage with buyers. Consider the following:
- Buyers tend to be anonymous – only 10 percent of website visitors identify themselves
- Buyers tend to act in groups – on average, 9.6 people are involved with a B2B purchase
- Buyers tend to be evasive – on average, 70 percent of the sales cycle is completed before there is an interaction with a salesperson
With the challenges laid out so clearly in front of them, it’s never been more important for revenue teams to tightly align themselves when developing and executing go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
That was the subject explored in depth during the OpsStars webinar, “Building Airtight Sales & Marketing Alignment for Extraordinary ABM,” featuring Pat Oldenburg, Vice President of Demand Marketing and Operations at ServiceMax, Kory Geyer, Vice President of Revenue Operations at 6sense, and Jay Vira, Senior Solutions Consultant at LeanData.
Buyers are in control of their buying journeys
News flash: Buyers are in control of their buying journeys. Moreover, that’s exactly how it should be. Within that reality, the best Sales and Marketing professionals can aspire to is to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
That challenge, of course, gets compounded as your GTM efforts begin to scale. Marketers have a variety of tactics to choose and execute upon. Sellers have the responsibilities of determining who should be doing what and when. Then, the underlying technology stack supports GTM efforts to evolve to stay current.
Throughout though, the core function of your GTM team is determining where buyers are in their journeys and how best to engage and assist them along in their journeys. That effort starts with data, providing the insights on where buyers are in their buying journeys. Companies like 6sense define journeys as groups of buyers or as accounts, and allow you to guide buyers through journeys, where they in turn start to learn, consider and evaluate your solution before eventually making decisions.
Align Around Data Points
Data helps your GTM answer needed questions, including:
- To what accounts are buyers attached?
- Are the buyers directly engaged or showing intent?
- Are the buyers/accounts in-market and good for our company?
- Who owns the named account? If it’s a customer account, who owns it?
- Who owns the geographic territory or industry vertical?
With your lead and account data, it’s then necessary to start executing against it, and that’s where alignment and orchestration is needed to determine the best Marketing and Sales touchpoints in which to engage with buyers.
In the webinar on-demand recording, learn how Oldenburg and his Service Max team built their account-based marketing motion on the foundation of strong alignment among revenue teams. Additionally, learn how ServiceMax leveraged 6sense and LeanData to supercharge the ABM motion across the entire funnel.
At the conclusion of the webinar, you’ll have learned how to:
- Align your revenue teams around account-centric data with scalable processes and tools
- Target your accounts that are in-market at every stage of their buying journeys
- Empower Sales with visibility into lead data on every account
- Ensure inbound leads are actioned by Sales in a timely, relevant manner
For additional information on how to optimize your ABM motions, read LeanData’s eBook 7 Steps to Building a Winning Account-Based Marketing Strategy.
