Post-execution: Measuring, Optimizing, and Maintaining Your Concrete ABM pipeline

May 5, 2023 |

Introduction

At this point, you would already be underway in your Account-Based Marketing (ABM) program, and I expect all the stakeholders involved want to understand if it is a success. To ensure you have the right KPIs in mind and are accurately reporting the success of your program, we have put together our insights into the best approach for measuring ABM.
If you would like further information on the ABM concept, and planning, building and executing an effective campaign, please take a look at our other guides in this series:

  • Introduction to Account-Based Marketing & Concept
  • How to Build and Execute a Strategic ABM Approach

THE IMPORTANCE OF MEASURING AND OPTIMIZING YOUR ABM STRATEGY

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is an agile strategy that requires consistent effort. Hence, measuring campaign effectiveness, optimizing activities, and maintaining sales enablement is just as important as the execution. This ensures that the budget allocated to an ABM mission is going to the right places and generating revenue / sales pipeline. At the end of the day, how can you judge the success of a strategy without measuring its impact on your main performance indicators, such as revenue, engagement, etc.?

In the previous ABM guide in this series “Introduction to Account-Based Marketing & Concept“, we discussed that the ABM approach can be regarded as the opposite of the lead-centric strategy. Indeed, this difference is evident in all aspects, including performance measurement & reporting. ABM requires sales and marketing teams to go beyond their reporting habits and focus on assessing overall account engagement instead of individual lead engagement.

While many organizations measure their ABM success with pipeline contribution and closed deals (which are indeed valuable performance indicators), it’s also important to assess the impact of your ABM mission on an account’s buying experience.

 

THE KPIs YOU CANNOT FORGET

To give you a more tangible idea of what and how you should measure, we have compiled the most frequently used KPIs that help B2B marketers judge the success of their ABM missions.

What KPIs should you start measuring first?

It is important to keep in mind that metrics related directly to revenue need some time to mature. It means that your ABM teams will need to establish and agree on several early indicators of success first. Then, as your ABM mission progresses, you will need to reserve KPIs for each stage of the program. Continuous review of the key metrics will help your teams make sure they work towards the same goals, making it easier to continue to invest in your ABM efforts.

 

How We Report on Your KPIs at S2M

We provide our clients with quantifiable insights, analytics, market intelligence / knowledge, and feedback to demonstrate the performance during the post-execution. Such reports and alignments not only allow our clients to see and track the progress of our work but also enables real-time optimization of initiatives, bringing more agility and dynamics to our collaboration. Depending on your own KPIs we can adapt our reports accordingly, to ensure you are always keeping on track of your objectives.


WEEKLY REPORTS

We produce weekly reports highlighting the key performance of the week. Moreover, the weekly reports consist of information on upcoming meetings / upcoming qualification / traction on interests / relevant market feedback / plans for the upcoming week, etc. Reports with such insights will allow you to have full transparency on the ongoing program.


INTERMEDIARY REPORT

The intermediary report will be presented to you mid-program, providing analytics on the campaign progression and activity. The intermediary report will provide a high-level executive summary highlighting the performance of the S2M team. Such report not only provides a comprehensive overview of the results but also emphasizes the qualitative value of the program and performance by the S2M team.
Nonetheless, with the information and analytics mid-program, our clients usually find it a good time to evaluate whether to continue the program post-pilot. With the results and insights provided in the intermediary report, 100% of our clients decided to continue / extend the program post-pilot.


MONTHLY REPORT

Monthly Report will be prepared for you to provide campaign / program performances, market intelligence, and advanced analysis.
Such report not only provides a comprehensive overview of the results but also emphasizes the qualitative value of the program and performance by the S2M team.


ALIGNMENT CALL

We will perform regular alignment calls with your team to align on the strategy (to reproduce what’s great and modify what needs improvement), receive meeting feedback, and provide key market insights/intelligence to make sure that there’s no gap in understanding from both parties.
After each call, we follow-up with a summary of the discussion, the sales feedback provided by the sales team, agreed next-steps for past meetings / upcoming meeting / current leads / etc., and any additional topics addressed during the call. This sets the stone as short-term guidance for both our clients and S2M’s internal team.


MEETING FORM

For each meeting organized, we will prepare a comprehensive meeting form consisting of information on:

  • the qualification performed based on the qualification criteria / questions validated
  • scoring of the opportunity
  • overview information on the target
  • latest market intelligence on the target and the profile
  • participants
  • validated agenda
  • etc.

With such a consolidated overview, it allows your sales team to fully dedicate their time to meeting preparation to maximize their performance during the meeting.

Conclusion & Recommendations

ABM is irreplaceable in today’s B2B world, because more targeted, data-driven, and better-designed engagement always works. In this guide, we reveal an ABM concept and its purpose, as well as share some instructions on the implementation, execution, and measurement of results. We hope this guide helps you easily unwind the complexity of ABM and gives you a better idea of the most successful strategies and best practices for a winning implementation or enhancement.

While more and more organizations have started to realize the value of ABM, it is quite natural that each organization’s journey is unique. At S2M, we strive to support organizations in their quest for a winning Account-Based mission to crack the toughest accounts and find the biggest deals. Our end-to-end premium services require minimum effort and time from our clients’ side and cover everything from helping you design your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and monitor the related market data, to mapping out segments within target markets and building truly unbeatable campaigns. Our methodology has proven to enhance sales & marketing alignment in order to be more efficient in your sales activities.

When you kick-off a pilot project with S2M, we establish an end-to-end sales process in close alignment with your sales and marketing teams to boost your sales pipeline. It is done at the beginning of the assignment and is followed-up regularly throughout its course to be in total adequacy with your expectations. 

To learn more about how S2M can facilitate your Account-Based Marketing, talk to us.

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Whether you’re considering a Lead Generation trial program or ready to run ABM at scale, discover how we can help you get to results faster.