5 B2B Business Leaders Offer Insights on Leveraging ABM to Survive a Downturn

While economic downturns can be challenging and unpredictable, business leaders need to be proactive in positioning their business to navigate through the downturn’s choppy waters. If you and your organization don’t have an action plan, now is the time to develop one.

How? The Sunny Side Up Podcast is all about helping B2B organizations generate revenue with account-based sales and marketing approaches. The podcast speaks regularly with B2B leaders and asked some of them to share insights about how  their companies are adapting to the looming economic crisis by leveraging account-based approaches to demand generation. Most of those insights revolve around identifying and targeting engagement on the target accounts most likely to purchase their organization’s offerings. Below are five of those B2B leadership insights. Feel free to use what works for you:

1. Use data and insights to drive account engagement. David Mead, Director of Sales Intelligence at Deluxe Corporation, Director of Sales Intelligence at Deluxe Corporation

“Everyone is looking to do more with less during an economic downturn. Sales intelligence is one of those areas where you can make a big impact for a relatively low cost, you don’t have to hire more sales teams, you don’t have to sell more stuff, you just have to be more efficient with your data and how you leverage it to engage your target accounts.” Leveraging data to identify and engage in-market accounts for your offerings can turbo-charge your sales and marketing ROI.

2. Focus on creating value for customers. Avishek Chakrobarty, Associate Director, Demand Generation and ABM (International Markets), yellow.ai

“What businesses can do is be proactive and focus on creating value for their customers even during difficult times. Look for ways to turn a downturn into an opportunity. Businesses should remember that they’re part of a larger ecosystem and need to work together with their partners to survive.” Maintaining your revenues, Chakrobarty notes, requires that you understand the needs of your target accounts and engage with them in data-enabled ways that drive ROI. A good idea for any downturn, for example, is to target your existing accounts for revenue expansion efforts, rather than expensively chasing after net new customers/accounts.

3. Tap into “hidden” demand generation within your databases. Natalie Jackson, Director of Demand Generation at CBIZ

“You already have quite a bit of demand generated in your existing database, and shouldn’t let that go to waste. Think of your CRM more like a living, breathing ecosystem because there’s just so much you can do inside of that database [to generate demand], that doesn’t cost you a dime.” You should be using your data to identify target accounts and tailor engagement efforts with them, which is what ABM is all about.

Jackson also notes that email is critical for the buyer’s journey and establishing account trust. Whether engaging target accounts with email or other channels, driving ROI takes an account context and a data-informed playbook for optimizing account outreach.

4. Target “a core set of ICP accounts.” Kim Kaminski, CMO for NS1, a leader in smart network control solutions

“We are focused on a core set of ICP (ideal customer profile) accounts, which we score and measure across the funnel. And we target those core accounts [in alignment] across our marketing, sales and development. So again, we’re focused and aligned [around core accounts]. And in terms of marketing prioritization of these core accounts, we use an agile planning framework that’s essentially a mix of always-on [demand generation] and prioritized precision programs. We meet weekly as a cross-functional team across product marketing, sales, development and sales, to review our progress on everything that’s in play with these core ICP accounts.

5. Maintain strategic focus and don’t surrender to “short-term thinking.” Kris Barton, President of Digital Marketing Solutions, Gannet

“Whenever tough times come, it’s really important to stay rooted in your strategy, knowing your strategy, not your tactics. You need to be repeating the strategy to you and your team all the time and tweaking it as you need to, and understanding that you’re investing in your strategy through the tough times because it’s easy to get short-sighted and suddenly end up in a place you don’t want to be because you took a bunch of short term views.”

For even more insights into how to leverage ABM to target and engage the accounts most likely to buy from you, read Jon Miller’s Unspam Your Brand.