B2B Outbound

The year 2022 was a memorable one for Punch!, with many exciting events and happenings taking place throughout the company. From a complete rebrand and an amazing summer social to engagements, weddings and not one or two, but THREE newborn babies!

This past year has been nothing short of significant, so without further ado, let’s dive into the top 10 highlights of 2022!

1. £1,255 Raised For London Shine Night Walk

The Punch! team joined together and hit the streets of London for the London Shine Night 10km Walk to raise money for Cancer Research UK! Decked out in our gear and glow sticks, we started at Southwark Park at the late hour of 11pm. We strolled alongside the Thames, over Tower Bridge, and past St. Paul’s Cathedral with lots of energy and smiling faces. The team crossed the finish line at Old Billingsgate at 1:45am after a strong 2 hours 45 minutes.

Together, we raised £1,255 for this fantastic cause!

2. The Big Rebrand!

In 2022, Punch! decided to have a mini makeover. The new rebranding reflects the energy and excitement we bring to our work. We updated our logo and branding materials, and launched a new website to showcase our services and portfolio.

The response to the rebrand has been overwhelmingly positive, and we're excited to continue growing and evolving as Punch!.

3. The Punch! World Cup Game

With the World Cup coming to Qatar in November, we wanted to get in on the fun at Punch! So, instead of the classic sweepstake, a handful of the team came up with the Punch! World Cup Game.

The whole company was invited to play, and here's how it worked: every time a team member received praise from a manager, positive feedback from a client, or booked an opportunity, they were able to swap or steal a football team. With daily lock-ins announced randomly, it was up to players to stay on the ball and accumulate points for their team whenever they won a game or scored a goal. Points were tallied throughout November and December, and the winner of the Punch! World Cup received 2 tickets to the Avenell Club at the Arsenal Stadium.

Congratulations to Michael Goodwin (Business Development Representative) for taking home the gold with a whopping 47 points!

4. The Brand Spanking New D,E&I Committee!

Punch! formed a new Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee, and we're excited to get started! Positions within the committee were highly sought after, and after careful consideration, we appointed our first chairman, Kimberly Bennett. Monthly meetings are held to discuss issues and ideas relating to D,E&I and come up with initiatives to implement within the company. Some of our first steps included:

• Authoring a survey to gather feedback from our team about how we can improve our diversity and inclusion efforts
• Pioneering policies that promote and enable diverse recruitment
• Recognising the importance of mental health in the workplace
• Educating ourselves about what diversity, equity, and inclusion truly mean

We're eager to make a positive impact within our company and beyond!

5. The Company Summer Social

Our company summer social event at the Birch Community hotel was a hit! The first day was filled with our company's quarterly kick-off event, which included important company news and team-building activities. One of the highlights was the scavenger hunt, which helped the team bond and have a great laugh together. That evening, we moved to the tipi tent for a party complete with a DJ, dancefloor, and delicious food and drinks. The second day was a bit more relaxed as we lounged by the pool.

6. Our Art Installations Take The Internet By Storm

We recently put out some amazing art installations on social media to showcase the talents of our creatives. We gave them free rein on the style for each piece, and they chose a subject for the month - whether it was a topical issue or a national holiday to celebrate. Then, they used whatever style of art they wanted to create their pieces. The result was a diverse and fascinating collection of art that truly showed off the creativity and skill of our team.

Overall, our art installations were a huge success and we are extremely proud of the amazing talent!

7. The Great Punch! Bake Off!

We had a blast at our fun-filled day at The Big London Bake, where our Sales team put their baking skills to the test! We were paired up and given the task of baking and decorating an ombre cake (that's right, both the sponge and the icing!) We chose our colourings and decorations and got to work with just two hours on the clock. Once time was up, each cake was judged on its adherence to the brief, and the winners were announced - drum roll please… Eogain O'Sullivan (Sales Development Manager) and Chris Muldoon (Managing Director).

8. Planting Trees For A Better Future

Our company is proud to announce our participation in the "One Tree Planted" initiative. This project focuses on both farmland conversion and forest restoration to improve biodiversity habitats across North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia & Europe. As part of every service we provide, we will be planting a number of trees in the areas that need them the most. Currently, we are planting trees to help create a habitat for the Monarch butterflies in Mexico.

We're excited to be able to make a positive impact on the environment through this initiative and look forward to seeing the positive results of our efforts.

9. Celebrating The Joys Of 2022: Babies, Engagements, Weddings And Fur-babies!

We've had so much exciting employee news to share as a company in 2022! To start, we've welcomed three new babies into the world thanks to these fabulous new parents: Deanne, Diego, and Charlie. We're thrilled for their families and can't wait to see them grow. In addition, Holly got engaged and Laura got married, and we couldn't be happier for them both. We've also seen some new fur-babies joining the team - Kim, Hannah & Chris all welcomed furry friends into their homes.

It's been an exciting year for our team, and we can't wait to see what the future holds!

10. In The Spotlight

In 2022, Emma had the opportunity to speak alongside two other HiBob community speakers at the Heartcore HR event in London. The topic of the talk was all about company values and how to create, communicate, and cultivate them. Emma's engaging and humorous presentation captivated the audience of 70 HiBob HR community members. After the talk, attendees had the chance to network and enjoy cocktails and canapés. We are extremely proud of Emma's contribution to the event and the impact she had on the audience.

In conclusion, 2022 has been an exciting and eventful year for our company. We've welcomed new babies, celebrated engagements and weddings, and welcomed new furry friends. We rebranded and launched a new website to showcase our services and portfolio. We also formed a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee and put out some incredible art installations to showcase the talents of our creative team.

We're proud of all that we've accomplished this year and can't wait to see what the future holds!

+44 (0) 204 571 3333 | hello@punchb2b.com

Almost every project needs to be approved and in business, resources are finite, and opportunities come at a cost. Everything needs to be supported by research, facts and figures and we facilitate decision-making by presenting a business case.

Business cases are critical pieces of project documentation that outline a problem and provide options to solve it. The aim of a business case is to convince decision-makers that a particular course of action will result in the best outcome for an organisation.

If you’ve never written a business case, this blog is here to help! With a few resources and a little planning, you can write a business case that will inevitably help you manage a successful project. This 5-step framework is an effective way of developing your business cases for the board, executive team, business owners and external stakeholders and investors.

5 steps to developing a solid business case:

1. The Executive Summary

The executive summary is the first section of the business case and the last written. It is a short summary of the entire business case. It succinctly conveys all the important information about the project at hand and communicates it to the reader.

2. Build Your Case In Doses

Most business cases mean significant investment for your company. In the same way, writing a business case is a significant investment of your time. Get your work checked as you go. You don’t want to waste large amounts of time only for it to be rejected straight away. Checking in with an executive stakeholder as you build out the different sections is a great way to confirm whether this initiative is something you should pursue.

3. Project Definition

This is the largest part of the business case and it answers most of the why, what, and how questions about your project. The definition outlines all of the critical details of your project as well as details on the business problem that the project is intended to solve. Another purpose of this section is to give a clear introduction to the business case and project. It should contain a brief overview of the reasons why the project has come about: the problem, opportunity, or change of circumstances.

4. The Finance Section

The finance section of an effective business case is primarily for those who approve the funding of projects. The purpose of a finance section is to:

• Identify the financial implications of the project
• Compare project costs against the forecast benefits
• Ensure the project is affordable
• Assess value for money
• Predict cash flow

5. Project Organisation

The final section of the business case is of most interest to the project manager, project team, and managers responsible for delivering work to the project. Essentially, this section describes how the project will be set up. Most companies utilise their own project management process framework, with most looking like this:

• Roles and responsibilities
• Project partner outline and overview
• Partner credentials
• Partner guarantee
• Timelines

Writing a business case can seem like a daunting task. These steps should provide you with a good starting point on creating a successful one. Remember, a business case should be concise and to the point, keeping the intended audience in mind when preparing each section.

Learning how to craft a great business case is the key to being effective and efficient when preparing them in the future!

Scarcity, whether implied or real, is a powerful concept in sales, particularly in the B2B world. When used effectively, it can drive prospect interest and increase the perceived value of your product or service.

In general, implied scarcity involves creating the perception that something is rare, limited, or in high demand. This can be achieved through the words you use, the offers you present, or even the way you present yourself as a busy and in-demand business. Let's explore some of the ways that sales professionals can utilise implied scarcity in their sales efforts:

1. Urgency is a common tactic used to create implied scarcity. This can involve offering a limited time deal or promotion, or highlighting that a product or service is in high demand and may sell out quickly. By creating a sense of urgency, you can increase the likelihood that prospects will act quickly to take advantage of your offer. In the great film, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Leonardo Dicaprio’s character utilises this tactic when attempting to convince people to invest in penny stocks by creating a sense of urgency which got customers to act quickly in taking advantage of what he had to offer.
   
2. Time scarcity is another way to create implied scarcity, particularly when you are trying to schedule meetings with prospects. By making yourself appear busy and in demand, you can create the perception that your time is valuable and that you are selective about the meetings you take. This can make your meetings more attractive to prospects and increase the perceived value of your product or service. An example of this could be to limit the number of slots available in your Calendly link to give the illusion of time scarcity.
   
3. Rarity is another powerful way to create implied scarcity. By suggesting that a product or service is a one-time offer or that there is limited availability, you can increase the perceived value and drive prospect interest. This can be especially effective when combined with urgency or time scarcity, as it creates a sense of exclusivity and makes prospects feel like they are getting a special opportunity. For example, a sales leader with a large following on LinkedIn and a track record of successful sales may offer coaching sessions to a select group of followers, but only open 10 spots to create a sense of rarity and exclusivity. This limited availability, combined with the credibility and success of the coach, increases the perceived value of the opportunity and drives interest from potential clients.

In conclusion, implied scarcity is a powerful tool in the sales toolkit. By creating the perception that something is rare, limited, or in high demand, you can drive prospect interest and increase the perceived value of your product or service. Whether through urgency, time scarcity, or rarity, there are many ways to utilise implied scarcity in your sales efforts.

By leveraging the power of implied scarcity, you can increase the perceived value of your product or service and drive sales success in the B2B world.

+44 (0) 204 571 3333 | hello@punchb2b.com

A rebrand is like a wardrobe change — switching brand colours from blue to green can say as much as a change from a biker jacket to a pink knitted sweater. All manner of circumstances can lead to a rebrand.

Here we examine five different rebrand scenarios and their results.

1. New offerings | Seven Clean Seas flush their old image

Seven Clean Seas (SCS) are on a mission: rid the oceans of plastic for good. But it’s not just the seas they’ve cleaned up. Their new B2B offering also necessitated a refresh of their entire visual identity.  

SCS are now offering businesses a plastic footprint offsetting service, so they needed their branding to chime with corporate ears as well as the everyday world.  

Leaving behind the marine blue of their old selves, SCS channelled urgency and utilitarianism with a fresh lick of high-vis yellow. Their new logo, a mutable grid of ocean currents, is used throughout the brand for an impressionable identity.

This progressive type of branding is successful because it avoids sustainable clichés, helping SCS build stronger corporate partnerships.

2. Brand consistency | Wavemaker rebuilds around ‘positive provocation’

How does the world’s second largest media agency, with over 7,000 employees and offices across the globe, keep their brand consistent? What began as a mini brand refresh for Wavemaker soon evolved into an exciting and comprehensive rebrand.  

By embracing simplicity, Wavemaker captured the confidence and constructivism of their new positioning: ‘positive provocation’. The bright orange of their old brand was maintained so that designs are always connected with their logo.

Within a monochromatic canvas of dominos, Wavemaker's orange circle disrupts the balance of designs, placing attention on the playful disruption of ‘positive provocation’.

The success of this rebrand lies in its simplicity, making it easy to implement across Wavemaker’s various offices and territories.

3: Mergers | Williams Murrary Hamm tie the knot with Identica

When two brand agencies work together for several years and collaborate successfully, when they like each other very much… they merge, just like Williams Murray Hamm and Identica.

WMH&I was formed, in a sandwich of their prenuptial names. A new, unobtrusive visual identity places the spotlight on their work and avoids any dissonance from old identities.

White, black, and a rich mauve create a distinctive frame for WMH&I’s work, ensuring this merger is marked by clean palette and clear direction.

A merger can often lead to a Frankensteined identity. But in this case WMH&I, while nominally a blend of agencies, speaks with one voice through a strong visual identity.

4. Strategic pivots | Foursquare goes back to square one

After a pivot to the B2B and Software as a Service industries, Foursquare (providers of location data for services), went back to square one with a comprehensive rebrand.

A typographic logo in Authentic Sans replaced the cartoonish qualities of the old Foursquare logo. They also created a mature colour scheme with a digital combo of blue and black, enhanced by a gradient of orange.

Foursquare’s minimalist designs speak for control and accuracy in their lines and layout, a useful visual complement to the service Foursquare provides.

As Foursquare realised, a strategic pivot should be used as a launching point from which brand identity can be taken in exciting new directions.

5: Personality changes | Tranch and the cutting edge

You're new on the scene, how do you dress to impress? Tranch entered the fintech B2B zone ready to do it differently, with their ‘buy now pay later’ services for businesses.

To make a splash, they branded with bright pastel colours and a theme of sharp edges. Tranch is taken from tranche — the French root of which is ‘to cut’ — a strong source for its visual personality which emerges in knives and sliced up shapes.

Rebrands that target a personality change need to look inwards like Tranch, before they project themselves outwards. Tranch’s characterful branding helps it stand out in the typically dense and dry world of finance.  

Thinking of a rebrand?

Whether you’re undergoing a strategic pivot, a personality change, or a merger, having a strong brand is an important point of distinction. It sets you apart from the competition and can improve your lead-gen activities. Whatever your motivation for a rebrand is, make sure you understand it thoroughly before diving into the creative.

The perennial problem of misalignment between sales and marketing teams is causing more business harm than most business leaders probably realise. Various sources have put the cost of this misalignment as high as ‘$1 trillion dollars a year¹’. Yes, $1 TRILLION dollars. That’s across multiple industries and multiple companies but still a huge number nonetheless. So how do you get your sales and marketing teams to trust each other and actually work together for the good of the business overall?

With ‘a whopping 90% of sales and marketing professionals reporting misalignment in terms of strategy, process, culture, and content, and nearly all of them believing this harms the business and its customers²’, let’s look at some reasons why these two very important functions aren’t seeing eye to eye:

Sales TeamsMarketing TeamsGo to market plan
If the sales team has its own GTM plan which differs from the marketing team, this can lead to a differing ICP (ideal customer profile) and a different TAM (total addressable market) and tension in the long run.Go to market plan
If the marketing team has a different GTM plan from sales the leads they provide will be exactly what they are supposed to generate but will not be the ones that the sales team are expecting or think they need.Barriers
Sales teams usually have pretty aggressive targets, especially in tough economic times. The last thing they want are barriers put up that would slow them down or hinder them from making a sale. If they have to follow arbitrary marketing rules or only use approved messages and formatted or designed templates, they can feel bogged down in marketing bureaucracyBrand champions
Marketing teams are usually the brand champions and they try to defend the integrity of the brand because multiple studies show that ‘brand maintenance and growth leads to overall business growth³’. They can feel that sales teams don’t take the brand as seriously as they do and may feel that the sales teams are harming the brand by not using the correctly designed or formatted templates.Leads
A lot of the time, sales teams feel that the leads being passed to them from marketing aren’t relevant, haven’t been vetted or aren’t warm enough for them to convert. This leads to a feeling that marketing doesn’t care and only cares about hitting their lead targets.Leads
On the other hand, marketing teams at times can feel like sales teams aren’t prioritising the leads that are passed to them. They feel as if the hard work they have put into generating those leads has been wasted and harbours a feeling of discontent between the teams.Content
Sales teams feel that the content that is being produced has been created without their input so isn’t relevant to the types of personas they are going after that will lead to the highest chance of success.Content
Marketing teams feel that the content that they have produced isn’t used by sales teams and all the hard work and effort they have put into creating them has been wasted.

Keeping these reasons in mind, here are a few ways to get sales and marketing teams aligned, because at the end of the day both functions are working towards the same goal; to win new business.

• Split the functions by brand and lead gen: A radical idea is to define the work of each function where marketing only works on long term brand building and awareness and doesn’t generate any leads. Sales on the other hand is tasked with generating leads (using BDR and SDR teams) and converting them (using dedicated sales people). This way the sales team’s job becomes easier as the brand becomes more well known and conversion becomes more straightforward. Marketing teams are relieved of the lead gen pressure and can concentrate on brand building which will bring about long term growth.
• Combine the two functions: A bit more of a palatable idea floating around a few companies is to combine the sales and marketing functions in a business. This is becoming a more accepted concept among several industries especially in SaaS where they are combined under the banner of Growth, with one person in the organisation leading both teams, often a Chief Growth Officer. Some businesses are even coining the moniker: 'Smarkerting' for the new function². This ensures that both functions are much more aligned, sharing meetings and even KPIs and goals.
• Collaboration: An easier idea for most businesses to implement is to promote a full sense of collaboration between sales and marketing by doing some of these things: encourage regular comms between the two teams; preferably have weekly meetings, produce clearly defined combined goals for both teams and have sprint deadlines to work towards.
• Outsource: If a business needs a more hands off solution, hiring an external sales dev agency can be ideal. The agency will be responsible for generating qualified leads and the sales team at the business can focus on converting those leads into business and the marketing team can work on awareness and brand building.

If an organisation, regardless of size, can implement one or more of these ideas, there are a lot of benefits to be gained. Some of these include:

- Increased speed of strategic changes being implemented²
- More creative problem solving²
- Employee retention²
- Improved awareness and brand recognition
- Overall business growth

Even though sales and marketing team misalignment is an age-old issue that plagues most businesses, if it can be conquered, the benefits can be far reaching and can lead to sales and marketing teams actually liking one another as opposed to being at each other’s throats.

Sources:

1 https://www.superoffice.com/blog/sales-marketing-alignment/

2 https://hbr.org/2021/12/are-your-marketing-and-sales-teams-on-the-same-page

3 The brand: the most valuable business tool ever invented: https://thetomroach.com/2020/11/12/the-most-valuable-business-tool-ever-invented/

In case you missed it, B2B Marketing recently hosted their Global ABM Conference, and while there were a lot of interesting conversations surrounding all things B2B, one thing became pretty clear - everyone is talking about ABX. Account-based experience is a term that has been floating around in recent years, and I wanted to share thoughts on what it is, especially in reflection of the Global ABM Conference, and how I perceive it in relation to ABM and your marketing strategy.

In simple terms, ABX is creating an end-to-end experience for an account, on a one-to-one basis, that is synced across all platforms and marketing assets, aimed to target key stakeholders with the right messaging at the perfect time. “It requires accountability and ownership across the entire revenue funnel, from marketing to sales to retention.” Terminus 

ABX is considered a development from ABM, with a shift that moves away from only creating content or a campaign via an ABM programme, and instead believes in launching an integrated strategy that combines everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, under one roof. It’s no longer just a sales and marketing campaign, instead, it looks at the client experience with your brand, across all touchpoints.

What Does It Mean to Be ‘experience’ Focused?

An account will contain varying key stakeholders, who each will have a different relationship with your brand - they might have never heard of you, or you might already be working with them. The experience comes into play when you alternate your messaging slightly towards different stakeholders, reflective of their relationship with you, and where they sit in your funnel. Typically, you will create differentiated awareness messaging for cold, but qualified, contacts, with a focus on education, and free informative pieces that may tackle issues they are currently undergoing. As the lead moves further down the funnel, the messaging shifts to become very specific and targeted, based on the insights and data you have gathered, containing keyword phrases you know will be relatable to this hot contact.

But why is this important? Focusing your attention on the experience that a client has with your brand is fundamental because it is how your brand is perceived. It’s now harder to gain information and data on potential clients. People refuse to sign up for content anymore because, quite frankly, it’s become annoying. LinkedIn states “only 25% of B2B buyers say that they’re willing to share details to access interesting content. We’re preventing people engaging with our content even when they find the content engaging.” Giving your information out to a company that is going to pester you over email isn’t what anybody wants- it’s not a great experience.

For this reason, you can’t rely on inbound marketing alone. But mindlessly calling and emailing a contact that has no relationship with you will only serve to annoy them. This is where ABX is formed.  You target a different message to different stakeholders, using relevant terms they will understand and relate to, providing information that is helpful to them. So, when the time comes around and you give them a call or drop them an email, it does not seem out of the blue and random, but instead helpful and targeted to their needs.

How is ABX Different to ABM?

I found there were a few clear differences between ABM and ABX when discussed at The Global ABM Conference. The biggest distinction was defining ABX as a business-led strategy, integrating multiple teams, that focuses on driving business outcomes by creating an experience around the target account. On the other hand, ABM was discussed as being just marketing and sales focused, targeting accounts based on their best fit, and is mostly campaign led.

ABX will only implement targeted messaging to a stakeholder from a highly strategic account with lots of opportunities, once they have shown a certain amount of interest. ABM, however, uses targeted messaging to best fit accounts, whether or not they have shown interest. Using the figure below as guidance, The consensus at the Global ABM Conference largely viewed ABX sitting at the top of the pyramid and ABM at the bottom.

This means where ABM focuses efforts on business priority accounts that are best fit for their product, ABX is led by the account priorities and tailors messaging towards their needs. ABM is built on quantitative data,  but ABX incorporates qualitative and quantitative data. Including quantitative data into an ABX strategy means gaining data and insights that will allow you to personalise the experience to another level, one example of this is by tailoring the targeted messaging to each stakeholder, referencing insights and issues that are directly about them.

ABX was preached as having more than just sales and marketing alignment but includes a whole team of experts across the board to bring the experience to life. It requires a leadership team of sales, marketing, operations and customer success, and each individual team plays their specific role in the account-based experience.

Customer success provides the characteristics of key accounts and why they are successful within your business. Marketing and strategy will then define your buyer personas and work in conjunction with sales to create a target account list. Operations need to keep the team up to date with data and alerts when the target audience visits your website, and lead regular insight sessions to review your heat maps and study what job titles are responding well.

What’s the Verdict?

There is no denying the importance that the customer experience plays within ABM, but my honest thought is ABX is just another term for running a fully integrated ABM programme.

ABM can be campaign focused, and often starts off that way for companies that are new to Account-Based Marketing. However, when properly executed, ABM is not a quick win, it is something that is fully integrated into your company and requires full team alignment. Therefore, companies that are considered ‘mature’ in ABM, as Terminus defines it, are those that have fully aligned teams.

My belief is that ABM executed at its highest level on a specific one to one basis is ABX. But, understandably, ABX or Mature ABM is not feasible or easy to implement straight away, it takes time, learning, experience and expertise. For this reason, I believe it is easier to view ABM as a path that you progress along, eventually achieving maturity.

That said, the advice given across the board at The Global ABM Conference on implementing a successful ABX programme is solid. To build a unified program means creating an aligned leadership team across marketing, sales AND operations and customer success. Having input from all four teams will give you the strongest insights possible for targeting your ideal clients. Spend time with this leadership team looking at what previous clients were successful, and who would be ideal to spend time investing your ABX / mature ABM programme on, as well as looking at who isn’t worth this level of personalisation because there isn’t a strong enough opportunity there.

Interested in running your own ABX strategy, or thinking about introducing an ABM campaign to your marketing? Drop us an email at adam.clarke@punchabm.com

The key to aligning your team 

A CRM is the bread and butter of any B2B business. It’s a household staple and sure, 91% of businesses already have one. But, the real question is, are they using it efficiently?

At its core, your CRM is a database designed to hold information that can be used to track your business activity. It gives visibility to the journey a brand has taken from being just one of many marketing-qualified leads right through to becoming one of your best clients. Your CRM can even offer access to every single touch point the account has had with your business to reach this status. It allows for easy reporting on both marketing activity and sales outreach, and, when used properly, can become the single source of truth to monitoring your business success.

But, knowing your successes and failures is worth nothing if you don’t act on this information.

To continue to grow as a business, sales and marketing teams need to feed off each other to help improve their own work. Aka, a term we love at Punch!, your CRM = the key to sales and marketing alignment.

Using a CRM properly dramatically simplifies processes. The more teams work together on one tool, the less upskilling is required. So, it's worth investing the time to align sales and marketing and learn the benefits of how to utilise your CRM.

How can Marketing play its part?

Marketing teams should be linking the CRM to all of their content production, i.e. blog posts, gated form fills, social content, newsletters, etc. Information on contacts who are interacting with said content will automatically update in the CRM, and it gives the sales team the quickest chance to follow up on a lead.

SDRs can then get great detail on who is opening newsletters, interacting with the content shared and how much time they are spending on a page. Using this information, they can follow up with a more personalised approach, by recommending other content that the prospect might take interest in, or offering to have a chat about X problem they might be facing.

Linking this ensures that marketing efforts aren’t being wasted. Likewise, all the information that sales gain in terms of where their leads are coming from is also helpful so that marketing can prioritise activity that works.

Marketing can also use the data from this content to influence what areas of marketing are performing better than others. Your CRM will give you insight into what content has the most CTR, time spent on the page, and overall performance.

Following this, a good recommendation would be to try and build your martech stack around your CRM.

HubSpot, our partner CRM platform, connects with 1,000s of different technologies that constantly feed into contact data. “By connecting your different tools to HubSpot, your marketing and sales team have a holistic view of how contacts are engaging with you, making it easier to gain an understanding of both team's performance and enable you to make data driven decisions”. - Pepe Reig, Senior Channel Consultant @ Hubspot

The buyer's journey hops from multiple different touch-points, so knowing as many interactions your prospects have across your tech platforms will help your sales team navigate how warm a lead they are.

Another way marketing can utilise its CRM is by automating repetitive tasks. Task reminders can prove useful when a field is changed on an account, and action is required off the back of it. For example, once an account has been moved to ‘deal won’, a notification can automatically be sent to an account handler, reminding them to send an onboarding pack.

What should sales teams be doing?

 Sales team leaders should train their sales development team on how to use a CRM properly. This extends further than looking at call lists.

Build a structure that is easy to follow, and also gives access to marketing data such as website visitors. Educate the team as to where they should be looking for these data lists, to increase results. SDR teams need to be told what to look for and where to find it, this is where proper CRM training for your SDRs is crucial.

The ability for sales teams to tag data sources is a great way of allowing for higher personalisation.

Tagging where a piece of data has come from means you can segment the data and target different data lists with its own messaging. It also means SDRs can base outreach methods where it's most likely to be received. Tagging accounts that open LinkedIn messages more frequently than emails gives the best chance to reach out and get a response, again tailoring your efforts to suit the prospect.

Take advantage of what information your CRM will gather for you. Hubspot gives generic business insights such as head office size, or turnover. This can allow you to refine your data and focus your outreach on accounts that fit within your TAM.

Finally, as mentioned previously, at its core your CRM is a database, and so it is there to hold information. The more notes left by the sales development team, the easier it becomes for SDRs to follow up with accounts, and more information = stronger interactions, leading to a better chance of closing a pipeline account.

These notes can be used to keep track of any information on the prospect, such as what they are like on calls, when is their birthday, and what is the best way to reach out to them. All of this visibility helps build a relationship that can then be used when booking a meeting, trying to close the account, and right through to customer service teams who are onboarding the client and trying to learn about them. A solid piece of advice is: take as many notes as possible.

All in all, knowledge is power, and the more teams working across the same system, the more data, knowledge, and alignment you will achieve. This will achieve better results, happier customers and happier employees! If you would like to learn more about why your sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned, click here.

The adoption of Account-Based Marketing has grown exponentially over recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. ABM brings with it many benefits, with perhaps the key benefit being the alignment between marketing and sales. The nature of ABM brings both teams together with one function in particular often forgotten about in relation to the success of your ABM programme, the Sales Development Representative.  

To understand the role that SDR teams play in an Account-Based Marketing world is to know that they directly assist in  the acceleration and maximisation of results. SDRs are seen to play a pivotal role in ABM, allowing companies to generate strong, qualified leads. The numbers are awe-inspiring with a reported 91% of marketers using ABM having recorded increased deal size by over 50%! (Televerde, 2022) So, you decide to join the party. You might’ve thought of the perfect ABM campaign, with a killer call to action and eye-catching graphics. And it might be paying off too - leads are coming in hot in the pipeline! But when it comes to outreach, many marketers enter uncharted waters and don’t deliver on the follow up phase.   

The key to executing an effective ABM programme includes follow up and this lies within the SDR role. They are the glue holding your sales and marketing departments together, ensuring harmony and alignment across the board!

With a mix of in-house knowledge and secondary research, we have picked 3 reasons why you should be utilising SDR follow up to maximise those leads:

1. Marketing attribution
2. SDRs generate leads! 
3. Unlock More Marketing Budget

Marketing Attribution

Reporting on how sales have been directly impacted by marketing is something that sales development is instrumental in. If marketers deploy sales development as part of their strategy, they can then directly attribute it to the success of the programme. So despite your campaign strategy potentially being totally correct, if you can’t demonstrate to the C-Suite that you’re having a direct impact on the bottom line, then it hasn’t worked. Sales Development solves this.

SDRs Generate Leads!

Sure, those digital ads are getting the form fills but what about those other leads that need following up on? The ultimate goal of any ABM campaign is to generate leads and increase pipeline value. The longer you wait to make contact with a lead, the less likely you are to convert said lead - and with time being of the essence, it’s no wonder SDR follow up is so vital to the success of any campaign.

I caught up with our Operations Director, Holly Spooner who says “SDRs are on the front lines gathering real-time insights into your target market. That feedback and insight can inform marketing messaging and increase your pipeline value”.

Unlock More Marketing Budget

As a marketer, you're judged on the volume and quality of pipeline you're generating.  Whilst it's important to leverage paid media to generate MQLs, turning those MQLs into SQLs will have a direct impact on the perceived value of your ABM, and therefore, unlock further budget to scale your programme. Following up with a lead within 5 minutes after initial contact makes it 9x more likely to convert them (insidesales.com, 2019), so without SDRs, the likelihood of making contact with a lead (in time, nonetheless) more so than just collecting form fills, decreases exponentially.

Account-Based Marketing is one of the most effective strategies for B2B sales. That’s why 87% of marketers using ABM strategies say it outperforms every other type of marketing investment. When it’s done right you can see results like: 99% higher account engagement, 36% higher customer retention rates, and an 80% improved win rate (Pamela Bump, Hubspot, 2021). But without SDR follow up, the number of lead conversions can decrease by 9x.

SDRs play an important role in an ABM approach and, if implemented successfully, can accelerate results and pipeline generation when aligned to the overall sales and marketing strategy. Don’t forget to follow up!

ABM is an area of B2B marketing that focuses on quality over quantity. However, have you conducted an ABM programme and feel like the quality of your opportunities are not strong enough? Likelihood is, you need to reassess your campaign, who you are targeting, and how you are going about it. Here are 5 ways in which you can increase the quality of your ABM opportunities.

Refine Your ICP

An ICP or Ideal Customer Profile defines the perfect customer for your product or service solution.  

Ensuring your ICP has been conducted accurately and thoroughly is an essential part of generating the right opportunities in your ABM campaign. By understanding your ideal customers, you can identify the exact customer profile that would benefit from your product or service, and therefore will generate the best ROI and value for your business.

If your opportunities so far aren’t the right fit, then maybe you need to tighten or broaden your ideal customer profile.

If your parameters are too vague, then your ICP is not distinct enough, meaning the characteristics of the leads you are generating could differ massively from prospect to prospect. As a result, you will be wasting resources and time on unqualified prospects that add no value to your ABM campaign.

If your ICP is too specific or narrow you will be culling a large percentage of the total market. The problem with this is that you may find yourself struggling to generate any leads at all. This is even more problematic when you consider that at any one time, only 5% of your target audience is ‘in market’ for your product or service.^[1] 

This is why it is important to go back to basics and reevaluate the current parameters you have set in your ICP to ensure you can generate the right and highest quality opportunities for your ABM campaign.

Relook at Your Account List

Did you know that 38.5% of B2B marketers don’t calculate their Total Addressable Market (TAM) to identify opportunities and therefore struggle to accurately identify and segment their audience? As a result, 54% of them struggle to generate reach or scale from their Target Account Lists (TAL)^[2].

As ABM thrives on marketing and sales efforts being aligned, having a restricted or weak TAL will impact the ability of your sales team to effectively pursue the accounts that will add the most value to your business.

You need to ensure that your TAL is well defined, this means taking time to identify the right accounts. By doing so, you can qualify your prospects more effectively, ensuring you are targeting the right leads with the right content, and the right time, for the best results.

And if that wasn’t enough to convince you to relook at your TAL, according to ITSMA^[3], target account deals are 2.3 times bigger than deals resulting from always-on channels. It’s time you re-looked at your TAL to ensure you are picking the right accounts for your ABM campaigns, to ensure all your time and resources are going towards generating high quality opportunities.

Nurture for Longer

B2B customers are rarely ready to buy when you first engage with them. What's more, the average B2B sales cycle length is 7 months. As such, B2B and ABM marketers need to understand that every lead is not instantly ready for a sales call and until they do, the quality of their opportunities will not improve.

An effective lead nurturing strategy involves building a relationship and sharing relevant and engaging content with warm leads who aren’t yet ready to make a purchase decision. By nurturing your leads you are enhancing your relationship with your prospects over time, building loyalty and trust that increases their propensity to buy from you when they are ready.

Here are 3 key reasons why you need lead nurturing:

• Shortens the sales cycle - The average sales cycle has increased by 22%, however, nurtured leads experience a 23% shorter sales cycle^[4].
• Decreases cost per lead - Lead nurturing generates 50% more sales leads at a 33% lower cost per lead^[5].
• Helps to increase lead conversion - Targeting users with content relevant to their position along the buying process yields 72% higher conversion rates^[6].

Capitalising On ‘In-Market’ Accounts

As discussed previously, only 5% of your target audience are ‘in-market’ for your products or service at any one time.

By understanding when your target accounts and contacts are engaged and showing the right intent, you will be able to place your focus on converting these leads, preventing you from allocating the wrong resource and time to the 95% who aren’t ready for that sales call yet!

Engaged leads are the most likely to convert, therefore, you need to ensure you are employing the right tactics to capitalise and increase your number of quality opportunities. This starts by giving your sales team all the information they need to know in order to identify and convert these opportunities. This is because B2B buyer's expectations have never been so high^[7] :

• 96% of buyers are likely to consider a brand if the sales team has a clear understanding of their business needs.
• 93% are likely to consider a brand if sales provides personalised communication.
• 77% of decision makers won’t engage with salespeople who don’t have insights or knowledge of their company.

Therefore, it is important to ensure that your sales team are aligned with your previous marketing communications and activity. As a result, they will have all the information they need to cultivate relationships and ultimately increase the effectiveness of their outreach and ability to generate more quality ABM opportunities.

Change Who You’re Speaking to

The steps we have discussed so far will go a long way to helping you understand where your quality opportunities are, how to serve them, and when to capitalise on them. However, what if you simply aren’t speaking to the right people?

When it comes to decision makers, marketers tend to default to the C-suite. Many moons ago, the C-suite were accessible, but in a time where the organisational structure of mid market and enterprise businesses is growing ever more complex, it’s time to consider looking at who has a strong influence on the decision making unit.

Now, I’m not saying it’s not important to target the C-Suite, but have you considered the VP, director, senior manager, and manager in the same department? These are the people who are actively involved in vetting and researching vendors to consider, and their status means the decision making unit holds their opinion in high regard. These are the ‘influencers’ and ‘champions’ that you need to leverage in order to persuade the C-suite that your product or service is the best solution for them. Especially since the C-suite ‘decision maker’ may just be the person ultimately signing the cheque.

Search filters on data platforms will help you to identify the various roles and information about the influencers you need to be talking to. As a result, you can begin to build relationships with all the people that matter and have sway in the account, maximising your outreach and the number of quality opportunities that you are generating through your ABM campaign.

To conclude, and to repeat where we started from, ABM is an area of B2B marketing that focuses on quality over quantity. The topics we have discussed above should help you step back, reassess your existing campaign, and make some improvements in order to start generating some quality ABM opportunities.

[1] https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/how-b2b-brands-grow

[2] https://www.inboxinsight.com/advanced-abm-lookalikes-uncover-the-priorities-within-your-icp/

[3] https://www.itsma.com/research/raising-the-game-with-abm-2018-abm-benchmark-study/

[4] https://www.ironpaper.com/webintel/articles/workflow-automation-benefits

[5] https://www.invespcro.com/blog/lead-nurturing/

[6] https://www.aimfirst.com/accelerator-blog/20-lead-nurturing-statistics-charts-for-2020

[7] https://www.demandbase.com/wp-content/uploads/Demandbase-eBook-ABM-for-Sales-Playbook.pdf