What’s The Risk Management?

Not having the right people in place with the skills you need to compete, innovate or grow can seriously hamper an organisation’s future.

“Look at how many companies want to grow in emerging markets,” says Conference Board’s Mary Young. “Their biggest concern is not finding the right people.”

Industries with an ageing workforce – such as oil and gas where it is predicted that 50% of the workforce will be retiring by 2015 – have even more to worry about.

Why should HR care?

As Young says: “These are things HR does all day. It’s your bread and butter.” HR probably already looks at workforce planning in terms of risk management, but now you need to translate that to the rest of the organisation.

What to do now?

Collect data and analysis that builds a compelling case for adding this to the enterprise risk map. Concentrate on getting it on the business’s agenda if it’s not there already.

1. Workplace Culture

From our experience, there are two major types of workplace culture.  First, we have the team culture that unites everyone in the organization to achieve the desired goals of the organization’s leadership.  This culture is typically embodied in how business is conducted, what kind of comradery is shared by everyone, how unified efforts are, and how well communication flows from one side of the org chart to the other (and everywhere in between).  Building this type of culture is a different process for every organization.  Sometimes a very charismatic leadership can set the tone, and everyone buys in.  In very ‘flat’ organizations it can be a common rallying cry or shared purpose/cause that ties everyone together.  Whatever the source, you need to cultivate and hire folks that will fit in with that culture and either maintain it or improve it. 

The second culture is one of safety and risk management.  Simon Sinek is famous for writing the book ‘Start with Why’ to explain that customers or business partners care more about Why you do something before they even think about How you do it.  Well I’m here to tell you that the How is a very close second!  How you operate needs to include a huge dose of an organization-wide safety and risk management culture.  Why?  Because how you operate needs to include a consideration of risk vs. reward and opportunity cost.  Check out the video below for a deeper dive into cultivating an Organization-wide Culture of Safety & Risk Management.

 So how can both Team and Safety & Risk Management culture break down and harm your organization?

Staffing Solutions

• Employee Unrest

Caused by either the perception of unfair treatment or concern over the direction of the organization. Impact: higher employee turnover, decreased morale, decreased productivity, and a drag on overall growth.

• Lack of Leadership

Most organizational failures relate back to a breakdown in leadership. This is never more apparent than cultural failures.  Leadership needs to buy in and practice what they preach in both of these areas.  ‘Do as I say and not as I do’ is a recipe for disaster here.

• Uncontrollable Circumstances

These can run the gamut from catastrophic weather to economic crisis. In these situations, a strong culture can save the organization.  However, it is exceedingly rare that a lackluster culture is improved by an external crisis.  Typically, even average organizational cultures fail during chaotic circumstances.

2. Network & Data Security Risks

Hackers can gain access to your network and data several different ways.  One of the most frequently exploited channels is your employees’ behavior.  From opening suspicious emails to voluntary sending log-in credentials or financial information, your staff is on the front line of combatting intrusion or possibly opening the door, so a hacker can waltz right on in.  The key here is training and awareness because the causes mostly relate back to improperly followed procedures. 

Potential costs:

• Lost data
• Network and business interruption
• Lost revenue during down time
• Costs to fix the damage or replace the data
• Forensic audits
• Regulatory fines & penalties

3. Theft & Embezzlement

Theft is a very common and often difficult risk of loss to protect against. It seems like every year there is a story about a disgruntled or financially strapped employee that has pocketed a large sum of employer money.  The causes here vary but often it comes down to an employee who has fallen on hard times, has a behavioral issue (ie – gambling habit), or is disgruntled and wants to settle the score.  The ultimate losses here are any assets that are unrecoverable, the loss of an employee (sometimes they’re even really good at their job), and any public relations exposure associated with the event/s. 

B2B Marketing Automation Services

4. Training & Competency

This risk really crosses every aspect of your organization’s daily operations.  Training & Competency failures typically result from a poor or missing program that doesn’t set your employees up for success.  Causes here are usually apathy or unawareness of training deficiencies.  The results are across the board from liability lawsuits brought by customers or outside third-parties, a hacking event, an employment liability claim, repeated workers comp injuries, and even all the awful effects of an employee death.  Most Risk Management Services programs focus heavily on training.

Conclusion

Human Resource risks are present at every step of the hiring, retention, and daily operations processes.  Take a proactive approach and make sure that human resources planning is always top of mind.  If it isn’t, the consequences will sneak up on you and these issues have a habit of snowballing.  So be safe, get out ahead of them.

What Is Account-based Marketing?

In simple terms, it is a highly focused marketing strategy in which an individual prospect or a customer is treated like its very own market. The marketing team creates content and campaigns dedicated to the people associated with that account, rather than for the industry as a whole. In its entirety, it fundamentally is personalised marketing for specific existing and even potential customers. In short, account-based marketing can help you with the following: 

• Strategic and focused marketing initiatives
• Maximising the ROI from marketing campaigns and activities
• More sales opportunities with further revenue growth

Why Should You Use ABM?

Most B2B businesses already have some or the other elements of account-based marketing in their overall marketing plan.  And sometimes, it is used as an adjunct to a larger digital strategy. However, based on where the customers are in their buying journey, it can act as an imperative counterpart of your big strategy as it is specifically designed to resonate with a particular set of people you are trying to target. So, why should a business care about account-based marketing amidst many marketing strategies? Let’s understand some key factors that will help you decide if it’s for you:

1. Personalised Approach

Since marketing strategies are crafted assuming a generalised approach, there seems to be a lack of connection with the consumers as the preferences and opinions of some represent all the others. So, to establish a connection, ABM is conducive to all of your messaging and content to an intimate cohort of people. At an enterprise level, where the sales and marketing teams are constantly developing content, account-based marketing gives them the opportunity to develop highly personalised communication made for their specific targeted list. 

2. Prompt Sales Cycles

One of the key parts of marketing – lead generation, can also be one of the most challenging tasks. You might be successful in garnering a good amount of traffic on your website but ultimately getting them to purchase or sign up for your product or service can be arduous. ABM helps you filter your leads to direct your focus towards prospects who can potentially convert as customers and also lets you know about the ones that simply wouldn’t become your customers, thus prompting and shortening the sales cycle.

ABM Strategy

3. Scrutiny Of Campaign Performance

Every penny you spend with your marketing efforts needs accountability and it is necessary to have returns on your investment. Also, it is very important for you to keep a track on the number of resources being used and the ultimate campaign performance in the market. ABM helps bring in the stability in times of your highs and lows, keeping a check on your campaign performance to help you know what worked well and what didn’t. 

How To Decide When To Implement ABM In Your Business

According to Gartner, “75% of B2B technology service providers with more than $10 million dollars in revenue will be adopting account-based marketing as their primary market model in 2019—a 50% increase from 2017.”

There are various signs that can act as a clarion call for your business to implement Account-Based Marketing. Some of them are as follows:

• Your sales cycle is really long and is getting increasingly complicated because of the outlays and commitment required from the buyer and often involves multiple stakeholders.
• The amount of investment you’re putting in your marketing campaigns aren’t generating desired returns or are not performing well. 
• You are having a hard time generating leads and retaining your customers.

According to Small Business Trends, “The average American business loses 15% of its customers each year. As customer retention is one of the key aspects for business growth, ABM can play an important role in the same.”

How To Increase Business Growth With Account Based Marketing

Steps For Implementing ABM Correctly

1. Identifying Key Accounts
2. Create Engaging Content
3. Choose The Right Channel
4. Execute The Campaign
5. Analyse, Measure And Optimise

Let us discuss them:

For any strategy to be successful, more so in the case of account-based marketing, it is imperative that the sales and marketing teams work together. And that’s also the first step towards implementing an ABM strategy – getting the two teams to share common goals, objectives, communication strategy, and metrics. Now, let’s understand the steps that need to be taken appropriately for a successful ABM campaign. 

1. Identifying Key Accounts

Knowing who you are targeting form the basis of the first step of the implementation process. For identifying the right accounts, have a broader overview of each and every company that you are planning to target. So, first, analyse your existing customer base to identify the potential profitable and long run partnerships. Be thorough with their previous campaigns, marketing efforts, pain-points, high-points, and then tailor relevant solutions for them. Keep an eye out for the new and potential accounts as well and see if they fit the criteria. 

2. Create Engaging Content

After you have identified the right account list, form a competent ABM team and start creating engaging content for them. This is also where account-based marketing and inbound marketing work in tandem in order to create enticing content to reach your targeted list. Here are some tips: 

• Analyse the targeted accounts’ behaviour, their likes and dislikes 
• Develop a well-articulated communication strategy that you can use in the campaign
• Have some strong insights ready with the backing of some data points 
• Weave your story around the value you are going to deliver

3. Choose The Right Channel

Even if you have the best ABM team employed to create really interesting and engaging content, it will not be of use if you don’t have the right channels to promote the same. So, study the buyer’s persona and have an idea about which channels the personas within each account are most likely to be using, and how they consume the content you’re custom-creating for each one of them.

4. Execute The Campaign

But before that, be cautious that your messaging is integrated and you do not send out different messages to the same account through different channels. According to Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must Know report, “82% of visitors to B2B sites aren’t even actual prospects.’’ This is why it is important to choose the right targets and channels to make sure that your messaging is not conflicting. 

5. Analyse, Measure And Optimise

67% of Chief Marketing Officers have an issue in proving the return on their marketing efforts. Measure the results of your ABM campaigns in terms of the level of effectiveness with the help of sales and maketing joint efforts. Since it is highly targeted and different from other digital campaigns, it is important to pay attention to the metrics as well. Take notice of the purchase cycle, won deals, etc and optimise your efforts as and when needed. 

How To Run An ABM Campaign With HubSpot

As HubSpot puts it – ABM is targeted, calculated, and when executed properly, highly effective. The free HubSpot CRM makes it easy to manage your key accounts. Add a single contact, and HubSpot will automatically populate all the information it can find on that contact’s company and connections. HubSpot also lets you see the growth of your targeted accounts over time, see their revenue growth, engagement levels, etc. With the right amalgamation of personalised emails, CTAs, and messaging, you can track the success of your ABM campaigns in real time. 

Running your first account-based marketing campaign? Get in touch with experts and get results faster this quarter.

Let’s delve into ‘Account-Based Marketing’ (Oops! can already hear you groan). But seriously, it’s going to 2019 soon and the continued success of your ABM strategy will highly depend on revisiting your target account list and having the right mindset towards growth. More often than that, these two actually go hand-in-hand.

At Transfunnel, this is one of the things we want more companies to succeed at and that is why we think it is the right time to address any concerns regarding your ABM strategy or increase your growth.

As every marketer knows, ABM  is now a proven, intelligent, profitable, and a fine-tuned process with tools to help identify opportunities and track them through to a close. But have you looked at the trends lately? Well, if you haven’t, here’s a little something for you.

If you searched for “account-based marketing”, this is what you’ll get – it’s almost non-existent existence three years ago to highly-trending today. However, the buzz around it is still quite ambiguous as not everybody understands what it can really do for their business.

According to B2B leads, 87% of B2B marketers have agreed ABM delivers a higher ROI than other marketing activities.

So, what’s this exploding interest in ABM about, you wonder and how is it that you haven’t been able to reap any benefits yet! That’s because you are using ABM but just not to its full extent. And here’s what you can do about it:

Going Back To Where You Started From

If you are into ABM or are thinking of implementing it in your business, you already have an account list that you plan to target, yes? You need to check who got you the account list. Was it the sales or the marketing team? When was it generated? Has there been any updation since? The process of selecting the right accounts for you to target is something that just cannot be rushed. It is important that you focus on your highest yield accounts, so it not only helps you in getting bigger deals but also saves your team the time and energy they put into acquiring any accounts possible at all.

What Is ABM And Why Should We Use It for B2B

The Primary Channels You Might Be Ignoring

It is only natural for you to choose a couple of channels as you begin your ABM journey, however, it is worth investing in other primary channels that might even get you better results if you explored them. For example, at Transfunnel, we look at which channels are primarily being used and where we can offer personalised content, orchestrated strategies that derive great results. When you apply account-based marketing to new channels, your approach becomes wider and strategies become stronger, yielding you bigger and better leads.

Better Alignment Between Sales And Marketing

If your sales and marketing teams can’t see the rise of the sun together, then all the planning in the world can’t save you from a failed ABM strategy. The success of your campaign is not the responsibility of the marketing team alone; sales and even the operations team need to bring in their best, through all stages of the funnel.

According to RollWorks, Thanks to closer work between sales and marketing, 66% of companies have reported that the key benefit of ABM is an increase in pipeline opportunities. And that,

ABM helps reduce up to 50% of sales time wasted on unproductive prospecting, which historically has caused sales to ignore 50% of marketing leads.

Measure Success And Optimise Engagement

To understand whether your ABM campaign was a success or not, you need to measure the results. And to analyse the results, you need to define success not just at the end but through all stages of the ABM process. These will not only give you a clear picture on how successful it has been but will also provide insightful information to your sales team at each stage of the process. Ultimately, it is a good way to know what worked, what didn’t and what needs to be done the next time you are going ahead with another ABM campaign.

Steps For Implementing ABM Correctly

Final Thoughts On Account-Based Marketing

According to a joint Marketo and Reachforce study, companies that use ABM become 67% better at closing deals when they sync their sales and marketing teams.

You may have restricted time and resources but if you have limitless confidence in your strategies while implement ABM, you can bring home success depending upon how solid your strategy is, how aligned your sales and marketing teams are, and how you are measuring the impact or analysing the progress through each stage of the funnel.

Ready to begin your ABM journey? We have got your covered with not only our full-support but also with lending you a few minds on developing a strong strategy for your business to win you leads.

Get in touch with us! Let’s take your success forward.