ABM Success Metrics – Do you Measure These?

The rate at which Marketers are adopting Account Based Marketing is really surprising. Many of us might have a question in mind “will this thing just stick”?

It’s already 2019 and ABM has become even more popular than ever before, as marketers realize value in targeting accounts and not just leads. It’s no more about increasing the reach of marketing campaigns but reaching the people who matter the most.

Marketers who have transitioned to Account Based framework, it’s time for you to revise the KPIs of your success.

#1 Account Penetration and Engagement

Account based marketing is all about reaching maximum number of stakeholders in your key accounts. To define account engagement score- ask yourself –

• How many target accounts you have?
• How many people in those target account interact with your brand?
• Do you understand motivation of each and every stakeholder in your key account?

Account coverage is the key metric to build a sustainable account based framework.

Marketers who succeed in ABM lie in top-right quadrant. Here you have reached maximum number of stakeholders in your key account and you’re targeting entire set of accounts you’ve identified.

To achieve this you need to know who exactly in your key account is engaging with what kind of content at what stage of the sales cycle. This can help you refine your targeting strategy by eliminating waste spent on engagement driving no results.

#2 Sales Velocity

Sales Velocity determines how fast the revenue flows in. It is always interesting to compare the sales velocity of ABM compared to traditional lead based framework.

4 variables to calculate sales velocity:

Number (#) of Accounts an average sales rep works in a specific period of time. For e.g – ~20 Accounts per sales rep per month. This depends on multiple factors like complexity of the product, target segments, pricing etc.

Avg. Deal Size ($) is the average selling price for the deals you closed in a given period of time.

Conversion Rate (%) is the percentage the accounts that convert into paying customers in given period of time. 3-4% is the typical MQL to Conversion rate that too depends on factors like product, pricing and sales process.

Conversion Time (T) is the average time taken for conversion measured in months.

To calculate Sales Velocity multiply number of leads (#) with Average deal size ($) and Conversion Rate (%) and then divide it by Conversion Time (T).

Rate of change in Sales Velocity is more important than the Sales Velocity itself. For e.g. – Sales velocity is $100 /sales rep/ month doesn’t reveal much. But a $20 increase in sales velocity after you start following ABM framework concludes that your sales workflow is more productive now.

And as a marketer you know that you’re going to contribute a larger share of revenue this year.

#3 Closure Rate

Closure rate is another important metric to measure ABM success. Closure rate determines the growth of a company. Marketers spend most of their budget on pre-opportunity stages. To double the growth, an organization can either work on increasing # of opportunities in pipeline or the closure rate.

But when we talk about ABM it is always about quality and not quantity. The idea is to target less accounts in more focused manner so that it increases the win/closure rate.

Marketer’s role here is to improve closure rates by mapping your buyer’s journey and tweaking the sales workflow accordingly when the buyer is at the bottom of the funnel.

Here’s the equation to calculate closure rates:

#4 Revenue Generated

Revenue is the metric in which organization’s management and C-Suite is most interested, regardless you follow traditional lead based marketing or ABM.

After all, everything you do as a marketer, end goal is to generate revenue. If your marketing activities are not generating money, why are you doing them? All Marketing decisions are made keeping revenue in mind.

To calculate revenue generated by your Account Based Marketing efforts marketer’s need a full funnel attribution in place. Each and every engagement in the buyer’s journey should be attributed to the right ABM effort. For B2B companies no individual walks through the complete buyer’s journey, it is a set of people (users/influencers/decision makers) from the organization.

A user may have the first touch and a coworker may schedule a demo, a manager may attend the demo and then another person may come and sign the deal.

Even though first touch wasn’t done by the actual buyer but every touch matters and should be attributed to right ABM effort and credited with revenue.