Look First to Existing Customers When Selecting ABM Accounts

Account-based marketing is often described as an effective way to acquire new customers. And that description is accurate. But ABM is also a powerful tool for growing relationships with existing customers you can't afford to lose.

One reason for the growing popularity of account-based marketing is the widely-held belief that it can dramatically improve the productivity of customer acquisition activities and programs. Most of the content that's currently being produced about ABM emphasizes its use for winning new customers. What often gets lost in this hype is that many companies can realize big benefits by using ABM with (some of) their existing customers.

The importance of existing customers hasn't been lost on many seasoned ABM practitioners.

• Research completed this year by ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance shows that in companies practicing Strategic ABM, 84% of the accounts in the Strategic ABM program are existing customers.
• Recent research by TOPO for the ABM Leadership Alliance found that 58% of study participants from large companies (more than $500 million in sales) focus their ABM efforts on existing customers. This research also found that 60% of companies just getting started with ABM put greater emphasis on existing customers.

Why Use ABM With Existing Customers

There's a very practical reason for focusing ABM efforts on existing customers. Most B2B companies have a core group of customers that are critical to the company's well-being. In many companies, 5% of the customers produce 50% or more of the total revenue. In my work with dozens of B2B companies over the past 30 years, I've frequently seen revenue distributions that were even more skewed toward large customers, where 4 or 5 customers accounted for more than 40% of the total revenue.

Account-based marketing is also particularly appropriate for your high-value existing customers because you potentially have several advantages with existing customers that ABM can leverage. Many of these advantages relate to the quality of the "intelligence" that you have regarding existing customers. When you have been working with a customer for a reasonable amount of time, you will have (or should have) rich and detailed information regarding:

• The specific business needs and challenges the customer is facing
• The identities, preferences, interests, and concerns of the key stakeholders who influence the relationship between the customer and your company
• How the key stakeholders currently view their relationship with your company
• The customer's organizational structure and culture

When used properly, these insights provide the foundation for valuable, relevant, and compelling customer engagement programs. And because most of these insights develop over time as a result of multiple interactions, they effectively constitute "inside" information that "outside" competitors can't easily duplicate.

At a high level, ABM for existing customers and ABM for new customer acquisition are based on the same fundamental principles. But when ABM is used with existing high-value customers, it becomes an integral component of your company's strategic account management program. In a future post, I'll discuss the critical relationship between account-based marketing and strategic account management.

Image courtesy of Kate Ter Haar via Flickr CC.