ABM is B2B.: Why B2B Marketing and Sales is Broken and How to Fix it Paperback – September 3, 2019

Thoughtful, tangible & useful workflows for the enterprising Director of Marketing and CMO. Knowledge is easily digestible and geared towards the experienced marketer

ABM is B2B. is one of the single best B2B marketing and sales books I have ever read! And, over the years I have read too many marketing and sales books to count over the course of my B2B marketing and sales career.I love that the authors donated all the proceeds of this book to the great nonprofit New Story, an organization that helps build a new life for thousands of people in North and Central America.What is ABM strategy? I love the Terminus definition.“Account-Based Marketing Definition (2019): An end-to-end go-to-market strategy designed to focus a majority of marketing, sales, and success effort on the pre- and post-sales accounts with the highest likelihood of closing, through data-driven targeting and personalization programs at scale.”I have recently been introduced to one of the authors Sangram Vajre. I have immersed myself in his webinars, podcasts, and articles. So, I could really hear his voice while I read through the book.Both authors, Sangram Vajre and Eric Spett are the co-founders of Terminus, which is a company which specializes in helping other companies, “The premise was simple: since only 1% of inbound leads became customers, we set out to build a solution to help marketers find their next best customer and give them everything they needed to create a conversation with them.” Which, I got from the book and then again right off their website.I loved their passion for teaching others the ABM strategy, but they also use the ABM strategy themselves. They not only drink their own Kool-Aid but live and breathe it. This makes this book so beneficial; these strategies and tactics have been successfully used by companies for many years. This book is not like a lot of books that talk a lot of theory, or the thinking that is outdated and not current today.The book suggests that the traditional marketing approach has been broken for years. For decades the best approach was simply to spray and pray. Marketing hasn’t been held accountable like their counterparts in B2B sales. This book resonated so much with me because it validated much of what I have been preaching for years- marketing, sales, and customer service need to be closely connected as one team.In the book, Sangram and Eric say marketing should have a “Surround-sound approach that reaches the right people as early as possible.” Not a huge net, but a pear approach to marketing. Take a laser focus on a select set of accounts that fit the exact most profitable customers that your company can help the most. From there, select the exact people in the company that would be the buyers and influencers to focus your efforts on personalizing your marketing efforts.Flipping the funnel, Sangram Vajre talks about being a cornerstone of an ABM strategy. A simple, yet brilliant metaphor in understanding an ABM, or Account Based Marketing strategy. Rather than go after everybody, select a smaller group of specific accounts that meet your exact specifications for the perfect customer and then with laser focus put together campaigns to reach out to those companies and their stakeholders in a personal way. That's the key- connecting in a personal way, not the wide net approach of much of traditional marketing that gives generic messages to everybody hoping someone will pay attention.The authors admit that many in sales have had it right for years, and even their names reflect that, Account Executive, Account Representative, etc. Most sales teams have focused on the account based level for years.I love how the authors talk about vanity metrics of marketing and many of the company’s leaders buying in. What are vanity metrics? Anything that can’t be shown to add to the bottom-line, i.e. number of visitors to a website, likes, leads, etc. Yes, a high number of leads from marketing could actually be slowing down bringing in new business. Why again? Something most salespeople have known for years, many of the leads haven’t been qualified and the sales team has to wade through numerous unqualified leads to find one that is a qualified buyer.I love the way the authors say that an ABM strategy might not be for everyone, which it isn’t, but it has shown by many examples in the book, large and small, to have a tremendous impact on bringing in more revenue than traditional marketing strategies.In summary, this is a B2B marketing and sales book that I would highly recommend to any CxOs and management if you’re looking to learn up to date strategies that work in today’s ultra-competitive digital world we live in today.

Since this was not my first book on the ABM topic I have read, I was expecting a little bit more detailed ABM tactics description. Even though it provides great guidelines for implementing the ABM approach into your organization it still misses at least one level of detail for real execution. Which makes sense as it is a book for every B2B marketing or sales manager and not an operational plan for a specific company. But that is where the ABM execution devil is - in the details. Moreover, I was a little bit disappointed that almost one-third of the whole content is just referencing other resources (still very valuable).

If you're in the B2B space, this is a must-read book! ABM is key to unlocking business growth.

The books is just a marketing tactic to sell you the program Terminal, they referred to an PDF file with charts but the links doesn’t even exist, it’s just good to have a small inside of ABM but you can get the same info from a YouTube video, I’m a marketing B2B and B2C professor of master degree

What makes ABM is B2B different from what you may have heard three years ago at choose-your-tech conference, is that the fabric of this narrative is woven with real stories, real examples, and real results. The field now has several years of widely varied experience to pull from, and can now say for itself, here is what ABM is and why it matters. This easily positions ABM is B2B as the visionary’s narrative on “why ABM,” while also demonstrating that Account Based Marketing as it exists today is markedly different from what you may have been doing in the past.ABM is B2B takes Sangram’s personable and relatable communication style, blends it with real-life in-the-trenches stories, and shifts as much focus as possible onto the leading practitioners in the field today. This book delivers the narrative required to build a common understanding across the business, and it provides the framework that your team needs to establish that coveted common understanding of ABM. However, despite the excellent coverage that ABM is B2B brings to the subject, it struck me that a practitioner truly new to the concepts of ABM could still greatly benefit from a bridge between the lead generation of old, and today’s ABM narrative. Enter Sangram’s 2016 book, ABM for Dummies.After reading both books back to back I walk away from the experience thinking about ABM for Dummies as the practitioner’s field guide. It provides actionable insight into building and executing as you transform your lead generation into ABM. So much so that, ten years in to my own B2B demand generation journey, I walked away from the book with a nineteen-point action plan.It is with this background that I can unequivocally say: If you are a visionary, read ABM is B2B, if you are a practitioner, read ABM for Dummies. But, if you want to understand the vision and you are looking for a bridge from the lead generation of old to the ABM of the future, then read both. The TEAM framework presented in ABM is B2B is easily applied to the practical tips of ABM for Dummies. Don’t miss out.