Richa Pande on the Foundational Aspects of ABM Success

Summary

In this episode of Real ABM our guest is Richa Pande, the Head of Global ABM Programs at HP. Richa covers the foundational aspects of success with ABM. One aspect of success is the functions of the marketing team: ensuring rich customer insight to enable you to identify and build your personas, as well as your customer journey. Richa also covers identifying accounts: the importance of planning rather than letting sales fend for themselves, outlining firmographics, cutting the account list to ensure maximum efficiency.

Tactically, the gems of knowledge lie within the customer journey. Creating dialogue within the customer journey enables droves of feedback and adds a personal touch. Richa has found that creating peer-to-peer environments for customers brings about a more diverse set of customers, creates room to hear and solve problems, and allows time to build relationships. Also, making experts in the field available adds another layer of service for customers. Measuring success with ABM reflects on components such as the quality of engagement, strategic alignment, incrementality to personas, and softer metrics.

“In order to really have an ABM program that can make a difference, you need very rich customer insights. That’s going to help you build and identify your personas…and build your customer journey.”

– Richa Pande

Key Insights

In order to be successful in identifying accounts, you have to do the hard work of planning in order to reap the benefits of the execution. You can save sales time and energy if you do the hard work of ensuring the accounts are ones that need to be there. Filtering through and making sure the accounts on your list are honed in for your strategy and focus really is make or break.
One of the tough parts of growing your ABM strategy is to always keep the best interests of the customer in mind. As you grow and as your strategy gets bigger, it can be hard to still maintain that focus on the importance of adding personal touches and building relationships, but those are the things that close sales and make customers happy.
Marketing should always have the goal of remaining in strategic alignment with sales. Optimization can only happen when you have the same goals and think of sales as an extension of the team. Taking the time to do everything possible to enable sales to succeed is the key to success, and that success is a team effort.

Major Takeaways

Nick Bennett

Co-host

The section on optimization is a great reminder, even for people who have been in ABM for a while, of how to evaluate your current process and ensure your current strategy is aligned and maximizing your potential. Even more mature ABM strategies need to revisit these questions and reflect to make sure there aren’t any pieces out of place. Richa hit the nail on the head with the comment about falling in love with the drill, if you don’t love the drill, you won’t perform on the court.

Pete Lorenco

Co-host

Richa gave great outlines for components of a successful ABM strategy in many different categories. The section where he sets up functions of a marketing team and details all the different questions to think through and pay attention to is incredible. So much of what was said is foundational, and it is such an incredible resource for anyone starting to think through marketing with ABM.

Check out these other episodes

Mark Huber Breaks Down Campaign Success and Fine-Tuning Your Marketing

Watch Video

Mark Huber

Director of Growth

Metadata.io

James Gilbert on Rethinking and Improving the Standard ABM Strategy

Watch Video

James Gilbert

Head of Marketing

CRMNEXT

Brandon Redlinger on Creating Alignment and Incentivizing Success

Watch Video

Brandon Redlinger

Senior Director of Product Marketing

ringDNA

Real ABM is a video podcast series for B2B marketing professionals who are looking to use ABM strategies to drive revenue. In each episode, we cover specific ABM plays and remove the b.s., fluff, and vendor subliminal messages. By tuning into the ABM Series, you’ll learn how to develop a custom ABM strategy, implement specific ABM tactics and standout as a marketer by generating revenue for your company.

More Information

Watch & Listen