Lesson 2

Planning Your Pilot

 The Journey Of This Course
Part 1 | SETUP Part 2 | HOW TO Part 3 | APPLY

Lesson 1 Lesson 3 Lesson 5

ABM Foundations Who: Accounts & Optimizing &
Contacts Scaling

Lesson 2 Lesson 4 Lesson 6

Planning Your What: Research, ABM Tools &
Pilot Journeys, Channels Careers
Class #2 - Lesson Objectives
1. Gain clarity and alignment on your ABM objectives

2. Secure executive and sales alignment

3. Plan your pilot

The Master Plan
What Are Your ABM Objectives?
Let’s not rush to assume this is about “greenfield” new logo acquisition. Maybe it
is, but that’s far from the only opportunity here. Some potential objectives:

● Greenfield new logo acquisition

● Improving close rate of existing pipeline opportunities

● Increasing velocity of existing pipeline opportunities

● Increasing deal size of existing pipeline opportunities

● Expanding business with current customers

● Improving retention of current customers

● Stimulating referrals and word of mouth from current customers

Executive Alignment
A vital (and often complicated) aspect of building strong ABM foundations is
ensuring alignment with the executive team. Some important questions:

● What is your current market position?

● How quickly are you growing today?

● Are you on a trajectory to meet your mid and long term growth targets?

● Does your company have a clear understanding of current CAC, LTV,

CAC payback period, and other core growth metrics?

● Is there a willingness to invest in additional people and programs if you

can demonstrate profitable growth through ABM?

● Do you have one or more champions or sponsors on the executive team?

Executive Alignment
As one of my mentors (a very successful CMO) puts it:

“We’re not in the business of making software.

We’re in the business of making money.”

If you can’t directly and credibly tie your ABM strategies, tactics, and metrics to
this reality, you’re not going to gain his buy-in.

Do you fully understand how your company makes money today?

Do you fully appreciate the expected return on an additional dollar spent (in
programs, headcount or anywhere) and over what timeline?
Executive Alignment

One of the most important things I learned as I moved up toward leadership

roles was to get much better at rooting my planning in the financial realities
and objectives of the company, and gaining executive alignment accordingly.

When your work is seen as an essential part of one or more executives

achieving their goals, money, headcount, barrier smashing and everything else
you need will follow.

Without this, you’re likely headed for trouble.

Sales Alignment
The other essential area where you need alignment is between sales and
marketing. If ABM is seen as “another marketing program”, failure awaits.

● How healthy is the current relationship between sales and marketing?

● Do you have lunch together? Go for after-work drinks together?

● How often and how deeply do you plan together?

● Do you share success metrics or are they completely separate?

● Does marketing “throw leads over the fence”?

● Are there one or more potential ABM champions / co-owners in sales?

Sales Alignment

“Sign off” from sales isn’t enough. Sales needs to co-own this.

No self-respecting salesperson or sales leader will ever fully invest in something

that they don’t believe in.

If they see their role as “helping out” with a new marketing initiative, they aren’t
co-owners.

Who are the likely champions and co-owners in sales? Start there.

Don’t get on your soapbox and preach ABM. Co-create success with a few
sales peers and make this a truly co-owned strategic initiative.
How well aligned is your company
today? Do marketing and sales really
know and understand each other, or
are they two separate silos?
Sales Alignment

Solid alignment and

long-term success

As you scale, these sales

insiders will be vital to
driving broader change

True collaboration + pilot

success will make them the
greatest ABM evangelists

Bring a few key salespeople

and/or sales leaders into the
ABM leadership team
 Your Pilot
You can’t take your foot off the gas on your current demand generation
programs and go “all-in” on ABM. You need to run a pilot first.

● A pilot maximizes learning while minimizing risk

● A pilot builds trust across all stakeholders

● Your initial pilot will be inefficient. That’s okay. That’s how you learn.

● Do things that don’t scale, or that will be hard to scale

● Don’t “spread your bets” too wide. Focus. Go deep.

● Have clear objectives and measures.

● Manage expectations, and communicate continuously

How Big Should Your Pilot Be?

Big enough to be material.

Small enough that nobody freaks out. Nobody gets fired.

How Big Should Your Pilot Be?
Some sample estimates. This will vary widely from company to company.

One win $50k $1M $10k

Pilot win 10 for $500k 3 for $3M 20 for $200k

Estimated 10% 15% 5%

win rate

Accounts 100 20 400

Needed

This is a great way to frame a discussion about what success looks like,
and how many accounts you’ll need to target to get there.
Measurement Risk #1
It’s very likely NOT the same MQLs or demos
or opportunities that you measure today
● Greenfield new logo acquisition
● Improving close rate of existing pipeline opportunities
● Increasing velocity of existing pipeline opportunities
● Increasing deal size of existing pipeline opportunities
● Expanding business with current customers
● Improving retention of current customers
● Stimulating referrals and word of mouth from current customers

Ensure your metrics very clearly map to your objectives

Ensure everyone understands how you measure success
Measurement Risk #2
Do asset & channel-specific metrics matter in ABM?

NO
Because what REALLY matters is moving your targeted accounts from A to B (from prospect to
client or for small client to large client for example).
This will be accomplished through a multi-threaded, multi-channel, multi-touch series of
engagements over time.
What matters is the WIN. What matters is the overall ECONOMICS of the win.

(and a little bit yes)

You’ll be testing the impact of different inputs in getting to the win. If, for instance, you prove that
targeted display ads do not impact win rates or deal sizes or time to close or other important
outcomes, then you’ll want to drop them from your toolkit.
Make sure everyone is very clear on how this is different from dropping them due to poor
click-through rate. They could have a zero CTR and still contribute to the win in measurable
ways.
Baking in Testing at Every Stage
When planning your pilot, ensure maximum learning

Your pilot will be less efficient and less effective than you’d like.
That’s okay (so long as you’re learning how to optimize).

● Different clusters of accounts

● Different value propositions
● Different creative and messages
● Different channels and cadences
● Different CTAs and incentives
● Different approaches to follow up
● What else should you test?
Does your team and your company
have continuous testing in their DNA?

If not, how can you begin to introduce

this vital mindset?
Organizing to Execute Your Pilot

● A small team of people who are keen to lead

● Perhaps 2-3 marketing people and 2-3 sales people
● Do you have an executive sponsor?
● Do you have sufficient budget?*
● Do you have “time and space” on top of your “real job”?
● Do you have clear goals and timelines?
● Do you have clarity on what you’re measuring (and why)?

*What constitutes “sufficient budget” is a tricky question. Think back to your pilot sizing exercise.
How many accounts are you going to engage? How many contacts in each account? If, for
instance, you’re targeting 200 accounts and 3 or 4 people per account, and you want to include
some physical mail and maybe some gifts and incentives, it starts to add up.

You don’t want to break the bank on your pilot, but don’t doom it to failure by making it digital only.
You’re unlikely to cut through the noise and make an impact with digital campaigns alone.
Communicating Your Success

You’ll be asked the wrong questions

until you take control of the conversation
Communicating Your Success
 Class #2 - Recapping Today’s Key Points

● Don’t overlook the crucial importance of examining and aligning around your ABM objectives.
Absolutely everything else you do is built on those foundations and lack of clarity here will create
a world of problems going forward.

● Ensure you have secured executive alignment.

● Ensure you have secured full buy-in and co-ownership with a subset of your sales team.

● Make sure you have laid the foundations for pilot success by determining the right size,
objectives, metrics, and tests to be run.
 ● Lay out your “pilot math”. Average anticipated deal size, number of wins to call a pilot a
meaningful but achievable success, number of accounts you’ll need to target.

Assignment #2 ● What are you going to measure, and why? Explain how this is different from your existing
measurement focus, and why it’s important that everyone understand this difference?
Your pilot
● Who, specifically, do you need to align with (executives, sales leaders, sales people, others)?
Is there a big gap here currently or are you already well down that road?

● What are your next steps to ensure ABM isn’t “just another marketing initiative” that can be
safely overlooked until they come up with the next shiny new thing?