III.
Two product launches run as one ABM motion. A field tool for last-mile engagement, and a strategy and orchestration tool for the people running the campaign from the top. Twenty accounts, twelve at the centre. The field tool was the way in. The strategy tool was the deal.
- Problem
- We were spreading marketing across a market where a handful of accounts held most of the meaningful revenue. And we had two products aimed at two very different buyers, which is usually how you end up marketing both badly. The sales library had grown by accumulation: assets nobody used, decks that had outlived their argument, battlecards that had been written once and never opened again.
- What I discovered
- Two levels of research, and both were necessary. Account level: what each account was trying to do, who inside it cared, and what they needed to hear. Industry level: the competitive and partner landscape, product line by product line, across Salesforce, IQVIA, Veeva and the rest. That second layer told me where we genuinely competed and where we could sit alongside an incumbent instead of fighting it. That distinction became the message.
The sequencing came out of the same research. The field tool solved a problem someone could feel this quarter, so it opened the door. The strategy tool was what a senior business buyer needed to see their campaign performance end to end, and that was the enterprise conversation. Leading with the strategy tool would have meant asking for the enterprise decision before we had earned it. - How I thought
- Lead with the narrative the account already has, then map the product to it. Land with the field tool, expand into the strategy tool. If an asset did not serve one of the twenty accounts, it had no reason to exist, so it went.
- What I changed
- Built account-specific narratives and mapped each to the product we wanted to lead with. Deleted the sales library and rebuilt it in Showpad from scratch. New battlecards. Full competitive enablement, including where to partner rather than displace. The same programme drove the pharma event strategy, so the field and the stage were running one argument instead of two.
- Business outcome
- Nine pilots on the field tool and one enterprise deal on the strategy suite, inside a single sales cycle, in a market where that cycle usually runs six to twelve months.
