How Sal Vilardo and Maverick Solutions Are Humanizing ABM

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At Personal ABM, we believe that ABM is not really about accounts. Everyone focuses on tiering, segmentation and prioritization of accounts but ABM is really about improving the interactions that teams have with the human buyers in the accounts we want to win, protect and expand. It's about improving the account experience for these human buyers.

In this podcast, Sal Vilardo at Maverick Solutions talks with Personal ABM CEO (Eric Gruber) on how GTM teams can humanize ABM. You will learn:

1. How ABM programs are going sideways because they focus on the "brand" or the organization (the larger picture) and most GTM teams forget about the people within the account we need to engage. They're missing the human aspect on what the buyers think about, care about, want, need -- and how they interact. If you are not connecting with the people in the right way - you have a great chance of losing despite how aligned you are with the organization.

2. We need to put a stronger focus on "buyer enablement" as teams are losing the internal conversation and it's because teams do not have the right content, messaging, stories or the business case where each buyer sees how the gaps impact them personally, each of the contributors, and the collective business. We need to help buyers evaluate information, prioritize various sources,  quantify trade-offs while helping the buyers come to their own conclusion on why they need you to fix their challenges, fill their gaps, and achieve their strategic objectives. 

3. Teams are not thinking about that month or so where buyers "say" they'll move forward and they are going through legal processes or conversations with the CFO. Too many times, sales and marketing teams go dark during this time or follow up with continual check-ins vs. giving them the resources they need for conversations with the CFO and legal or giving them the resources to help them get things in order for onboarding. Again, it's about enabling the buyers. 

4. Why Sal hates intent and why he says it's a lagging indicator. With all the tools that are pulling intent from different places, everyone is using it. You run off the same information that everyone else has and in many cases, the intent is lagging behind action by the time it gets to us. Because the platforms are capturing intent, it doesn't mean that the process stopped between when it was captured and when it was delivered. Also, if they are showing intent, then they most likely have their short-list selected and they have predefined needs which automatically result in smaller deal sizes. Intent is also not predictive of an account landing and expanding with you. We need to understand the account story and the buyers within that account.

5.  Most GTM teams are not thinking about the cohesiveness of the account experience throughout the buyer's journey and customer lifecycle. We have to think about the cohesive experience that Disney provides that makes every touchpoint and interaction feel magical. Disney understands that the experience that one team delivers that will impact the experiences that the other teams deliver. It's the same thing when it comes to ABM. If sales and marketing teams do not create the right account and buyer experience then customer success teams will have a challenging time trying to retain and expand the accounts. 

6. Marketing needs to be able to provide thought processes and insights to allow other teams to further cast the buying vision with target accounts and their buyers. This is where account insights and understanding the account story is important. It's about giving content for specific sales conversations and internal conversations. It's about providing the account POV so teams