Your CRM is the front end of Marketing for the Sales Team

Your CRM is the front end of marketing to the sales team. 

What I mean is that they’ll be using your CRM to make decisions on leads. If the data isn't in the CRM or if the reps don’t know how to use the data, then that data might as well not exist. Your CRM technology and system become even more critical for your ABM strategy. 

Think through a few of these questions:

  • Does your sales team know when someone hits your pricing page?

  • Do they know when your customer hits an inflection point that will lead them to need to purchase your product?

  • Do they understand how a lead came in and how that means they should approach the conversation?

If they don’t have this information at their fingertips, they can’t do their job. On the other hand, as marketers, we don’t need our sales team constantly interrupting us with questions about leads. 

Making sure that all the data is integrated into the CRM saves us so much time in the long run. 

The CRM Challenge for Account-Based Marketing Strategy

The promise that I saw of ABM strategy in the CRM was that it would provide us with technological solutions to automate information capture. With this automation, sales teams could be more informed about the companies they were reaching out to. The system would also provide signals to reps to find leads to reach out to.

But most teams never quite get there. Today, I feel most companies are 50% there but ultimately landing short of the promise of ABM. 

Why?

Personalization, Intent, & the Buyer Journey

A lot of the money going into ABM became too focused on faux personalization. I’m talking about strategies like gifting, display targeting, and outbound email. 

But these strategies only scratch at the surface level of the buyer journey, intent, and inflection points.

Sure, some ABM strategies have been about selling to companies better. 

But how do you get there? 

You guessed it: All these strategies need to start in your CRM. 

Sellers need a rich understanding of the leads they pursue and the right people to go after. And I don’t mean just to send gifts to. They need to deeply understand the pain points, inflection points, and more that brought these leads in.

How to Leverage Your CRM for a Strong ABM Strategy

I’ve written a lot about intent, the buyer journey, and how to target your marketing campaigns. 

But the first step is to get in the sales team’s shoes. 

All marketers should take a spin in their company SFDC instance to see what the sales team sees. You need to see first-hand how leads show up, what information is provided, where you’ve left gaps, and more. 

Open it up and ask yourself: “What data am I providing the sales team?”

Do you:

  • Let them know what brought the user to the site?

  • Tell them what’s going on within that company?

  • Show how many other users from that company have signed up?

  • Provide context to corporate structure when possible?

  • Surface materials that may be helpful for them?

This is just the starting point, but it’s critical to the success of your ABM strategy – and, in turn, your overall growth.

I’d love to hear what else you’d put on this checklist! Comment below or follow me on LinkedIn for more insights into your marketing strategies.


You also can check our Podcast page, we tackle all of the challenges of B2B marketers looking to build systems that scale.

Bruna Dos Santos