The ABM Playbook is the multi-tool in your ABM tool chest.
The ABM Playbook describes your program in key detail, with schedules and milestones identified. It explains how ABM is different from other lead-generation activities and expresses that ABM does not replace those activities. Rather, it is a focused approach to gain traction with your organization’s most coveted accounts, and requires collaboration between marketing and sales, with the endorsement of senior management.
The ABM Playbook is your kickoff communication.
Your Playbook explains the nature of the collaboration, the need for sales feedback to be sure the marketing efforts are effective—and wherever possible to tweak the program to become more responsive as analytics and anecdotal evidence come in. The Playbook emphasizes the fact that your ABM program targets your largest potential prospects and does not typically see a payback in revenue the first year. So KPIs for the program are different from the metrics for other demand-generation efforts going on in your organization—and center around developing a deeper understanding of the composition of the buying committee within each prospect and securing engagement with every level of purchasing agents, influence agents, users, and other decision makers. Spelling out your criteria for success at the outset of the program will allow you to report on the progress you make as you move forward.
Your ABM Playbook sets expectations.
Your ABM Playbook keeps all ABM players on the same page with respect to each person’s role in the success of the program. Your Playbook should be very clear about what each participant is expected to do, when he/she is expected to do it, and why that step is critical to the success and future of your ABM plans.
By Ian Heslop – Account Director, The Verdi Group, Inc.
