How B2B Fusion's Jon Russo Is Wrong About Retrofitting ABM
Episode description
In a LinkedIn post and video, Jon Russo from B2B Fusion mentioned that he listened to a best practice firm and an account-based platform vendor talk about how you need to burn down your lead infrastructure, start from scratch and rebuild your reporting as well as your ABM engine. He thought that they have it wrong and that you can retrofit ABM just like homeowners have a choice to burn down a run-down house to the ground and start from scratch or to retrofit around the existing framework and structure, retrofitting their windows, doors, and siding. Like many others, he believes that you can retrofit your lead process, lead technology, and most importantly, your lead reporting in and around what already exists for your new ABM reporting and approach. He thinks you don't necessarily have to "burn things to the ground" to adopt an account-based marketing strategy.
But as Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM) discusses in the podcast below, if you retrofit ABM then you’re not changing sales, marketing, and customer success motions, interactions, and experiences. This means you’re just marketing and selling to accounts. You’re simply doing targeted demand gen, targeted lead gen and targeted advertising. She shares how many CMOs and many ABM firms (including B2B Fusion) are confusing ABM with targeted demand gen as the focus is on sourcing the pipeline vs. getting more tier 1 accounts to revenue faster, with greater deal sizes.