Introduction

Sales is often the hardest part of getting a startup off the ground and so it’s no surprise that there’s a raft of advice on how to get things going. But in 2024, there’s very little of that advice that still holds true.

The existing sales playbook is out the window. According to Gartner, a significant majority (75%) of buyers now prefer to avoid direct interactions with sales representatives during the purchasing process.

The days of blasting contact lists are - for the most part - over. And other methods are beginning to become saturated too. You only need to look at the amount of outbound AI tools to see where this problem is coming from.

So what’s the alternative?

What is Account Based Marketing (ABM)?

Before you can decide if ABM works for your startup, it’s perhaps a good time to review what it actually is. Simply put, ABM is a sales and marketing strategy that concentrates resources exclusively on a number of key, must-win accounts.

ABM is typically employed by enterprise organisations who sell a handful of very high value deals each year. But that doesn’t mean it’s out of reach for smaller teams, nor should it be.

Obviously, this is the perfect time to plug Whomso as a way to begin building ABM principles into your outbound. But there are plenty of other ideas to adopt that constitute some form of one-to-one marketing - this blog by CXL has a great overview.

We’ll cover how to execute ABM in a later post - for now, we’re just focusing on whether or not it’s right for you.

Why ABM for a startup?

So is ABM really a sustainable sales model for a startup? The short answer is, it depends.

If you’re selling super low cost software to a variable customer type then this probably isn’t the route for you. But for a vast majority of startups, there are plenty of principles that can be applied.

RIP Sales Playbook, 2021-2024 🪦

There’s a Paul Graham essay that I really like to keep top of mind when thinking about startup sales - it’s titled “Do things that don’t scale”.

Employing mass outbound at a startup is contrary to this advice. Ignoring the fact that it now only takes 3 emails per 1,000 sent to be marked as spam to be slapped with a domain wide ban, mass emailing doesn’t help you sign new customers because it’s designed for scalability. Hear me out.

The barriers to entry are lower than ever. All I need is an email account and some sort of sequencing tool on a free plan and I’m off. And so are the thousand other startups selling the same thing as you.

Copying that playbook worked once but it’s no longer viable. It’s time to try another approach that doesn’t scale.

You’re calling from…where?

It's a line most sellers have heard once or twice. The thing with startups is that most people don’t know who you are. Brand awareness only really comes with huge bags of cash or tenure in the market. Neither of which do small companies have.

Brand is a super important part of sales because it’s intrinsically linked to reputation. So spraying and praying that your outbound works when you have no brand is going to be much less successful than working to explain your product through a more tailored, one-to-one approach.

ICP Magic 🪄

How many times have you read an article that says something along the lines of “[insert super successful startup] won because they niched down in the early days and went after the customer type that they served best”?

I’m going to bet it’s more than once. And that’s another inadvertent benefit of applying ABM. It forces you to be selective. By evaluating the accounts you’re going to target, you’re constantly looking your ideal customer profile (ICP) in the face and reminding yourself what they look like. And this works wonders for spotting other potential customers in future.

Sales 🤝 Marketing

By far the biggest challenge for applying ABM to enterprise organisations is aligning sales and marketing. But startups very rarely have this issue since they’re often the same function, being led by a single individual. Or, on the odd occasion actually being a single individual.

Startups have a much better chance at being able to execute ABM well than even the most equipped sales and marketing teams at a big ol’ bluechip company. There's no infighting and no indecision about who owns which lead. Just an easy ride.

In Review

Hopefully I've made a convincing argument on the merits of ABM. By being more focused and personalising your approach to each customer you want to win, you’ll hopefully see not only greater win rates but a cohort of far better suited customers.

The sales industry is in a weird place at the moment so there’s absolutely no harm in using tried and true tactics! Although probably best not to go door to door if you’re selling software…