Phil Turton

Flip convention on its head. What is your current business problem? Rather than scoping the requirement, keep it simple. Document this problem and approach the tech vendors with a 'problem statement'. Here is the challenge we have - how can you help us? It's a great way to bring new, fresh ideas to the business. Too many companies spend time documenting the issue and slowing down the process to problem resolution.

The best marketers that I have worked with got things done. They saw a challenge and they found creative ways to make it happen. They didn’t see an obstacle, but an opportunity to try something new or to use an approach they had heard of but never tried before. Experimentation and determination in equal measure.

It takes time and effort to really understand the account in enough detail to talk to their pain points. However, without doing that work, the content will be generic and disregarded as soon as it is read. Put the hard yards in - for the biggest accounts it might take two to three days (I know as I've done hundreds of pieces of ABM account research) and it can feel exhausting. Getting the right message, and demonstrating intimate knowledge, to the right contact = invaluable ABM differentiation.

ABM works so much better when sales and marketing are working hand in glove. Too often ABM is seen as a marketing job (maybe it has to do with the M in the acronym?). Marketing can't do the job without the intelligence that sales have about the account - and sales can't contribute if they aren't fully aligned with what the marketing team is trying to achieve.

Think about your customer - if they have 7 RFP responses and each is 50 pages long - that’s 350 pages they need to read through. Are they going to remember yours? What’s going to make them remember yours? Reading multiple response is difficult and time consuming - and reading response that all say the same thing but with different words is mind-numbing. Stand out at all costs.

It is also key to not overthink the RFP process. Too many companies make the vendor selection process THE project. It is important to remember that choosing a vendor is important - but the project, and delivering the benefits, is the reason for running the process in the first place.