How Wood Mackenzie engaged with accounts... and the sales team

Despite the external problems ABM can throw at you, your most difficult challenge might just be a little closer to home. Laura McFadyen, ABM manager at Wood Mackenzie discusses how the company achieved a successful ABM programme based on a tight-knit relationship with sales.

Sales. The area of the office you only venture into at your peril. But for Laura, this is the perilous corner of the office that’s actually a treasure trove of insights and feedback. Over four years, Wood Mac’s ABM programme has seen extensive success from their one-to-one and cluster approach to oil and gas clients. “I would say, looking at the B2B Marketing Maturity Model*, we display a lot of the elements of stage 4 (adept ABM), but for some parts I’d say we’re still stage 3 (early-stage ABM),” Laura says, affirming their progression.

Differentiating between one-to-one and cluster accounts

Wood Mac didn’t have enough resources to implement a one-to-one marketing strategy to every prospect, but the company knew about the benefits account-based marketing could bring. The focus was on retaining customers. So, with insight and strict criteria, sales and marketing began to work together to identify which accounts would be most receptive to one-to-one ABM.

The teams were impressed with the results, and decided to scale their activities through a cluster programme, targeting a small group of accounts that didn’t make the one-to-one criteria but shared similar goals and pain points.

Although Laura admits one-to-one is always the best form, she argues adopting the core principles of ABM at any scale is imperative. “I don’t think anything gives the same return as truly one-to-one ABM, but it’s not feasible to deal with every client like that so there needs to be a way of engaging with those clients where we keep the principles of ABM by clustering. We need to be doing this across the board, and also manage expectations that return isn’t going to be the same as strategic one-to-one.”