Using account-based marketing to create and market new solutions

B2B companies committed to selling high value solutions often struggle where the rubber meets the road: the individual customer or prospect. Their websites highlight "solutions" and marketers pump out collateral that talks about their customers' business problem, but they have a much tougher time persuading specific customers that they are truly focused on delivering tailored solutions for their unique situations and challenges. The unfortunate reality is that generic "solutions" often need a fair degree of customization if they are going to deliver substantial business value to different customers even in the same industries.

Retraining the sales force to be more consultative and problem-oriented is obviously one way to bring solutions thinking down to the individual customer level. An even more effective approach is account-based marketing, which brings together marketing and sales in a focused effort to transform relationships with key accounts.

A few months ago, my partner Rob Leavitt suggested that a solutions orientation is one of the keys to success with account-based marketing. Viewed from the other side, I'd like to suggest that ABM provides a powerful way to address four of the most difficult elements of solutions marketing.

Four Keys to Solutions Marketing Success…and How ABM Can Help

1. Gain a deep understanding of your customers' business issues and needs
   
   Research at the industry level can only go so far in understanding what makes individual customers tick. With ABM, you can go deep into individual accounts by interviewing the sales account team and other customer-facing staff, talking with industry analysts and experts that know the account, and digging into customer-related data and coverage. A great way to put it all together is with a Situation Analysis Workbook for each account that integrates all relevant data and insight from primary and secondary sources.
   
   A large networking company, for example, spent several months and significant resources analyzing multiple business and financial scenarios for a top telecommunications service provider, one of their most important accounts. Combined with extensive client and internal interviews, the research provided a powerful new foundation for developing tailored solutions to help their client succeed in a fast-changing industry environment.
   
   
2. Use resources from across the organization to develop new offerings that address critical customer needs
   
   Collaborating across business units is one of the toughest challenges with solutions marketing. By focusing on specific opportunities with specific accounts, that collaboration gains a concrete focus with the prospect of substantial near-term benefit for all involved. ABM workshops are an excellent tool to bring together relevant representatives from different business units, technical specialists, marketing, and sales to review your deep dive research and explore new ways to bring together cross-company assets to address critical customer challenges.
   
   Marketers at a large technology company, for example, identified more than 40 internal staff from different parts of the business that might be helpful in developing new solutions for a large health care customer. Their combined thinking and expertise generated several powerful new approaches that led to new solutions sales to the customer. 
   
   
3. Create tailored messaging focused on your ability to solve customer business problems
   
   Marketing campaigns that address business issues are a good step beyond the typical feature-function messaging that still predominates in B2B; campaigns that zero in on the specific issues of individual customers and prospects are much stronger still. With deep dive research and a good idea of relevant solutions for individual customers in hand, you're able to create highly targeted value propositions and messaging that speak directly to those customers' situations, needs, and operating environment.
   
   A document management company, for example, wanted to change its perception with key decision makers at a large financial services client. With ABM, they created new messaging that positioned them as a full document management solutions provider in precisely the areas of most interest to the client…and thereupon generated several large new opportunities for solutions sales.
   
   
4. Help the sales force sell higher in the organization
   
   Companies moving to solutions often need to reach the C-suite, and sales forces are often ill-equipped to sell at the level. Training and sales support for "executive selling" in general can help; it's even easier and more effective to focus on preparation and support for issue-based conversations with specific executives at specific companies.
   
   A large systems integration firm, for example, was able to create new selling templates, relationship maps, and talk tracks to use at a number of individual accounts where they needed sellers to cut back on time with engineers and procurement and interact more with business leaders and executives. The shift in sales support resulted in greater confidence on the sales side, an uptick in executive conversations, and improved overall relationships and opportunities.

ABM is far from the only key to solutions marketing success. As marketers long involved in the solutions world know well, there are a host of other issues around organization, culture, and metrics. As a host of B2B industry leaders including IBM, Accenture, Xerox, Cognizant, SAP, Capgemini, and others also know, however, there is a great deal of evidence that ABM can greatly accelerate your ability to win with solutions in your most important accounts.

Do you agree? Have you used ABM to create and market new solutions? We'd love to know.