Events definitely remain at the top of the list for ABM’ers, regardless of our digital focus,
you can not deny that face to face time with customers is key to any long term business
relationship.
However, event management of any size can be very time consuming, stressful
at times and it can distract you from your other priorities if it is not managed well. Therefore it is important that you map out the events you want to plan throughout your fiscal year, ensure they align to your engagement plans, and are managed through the right
technology.
With any ABM program, there are many ways to engage your top accounts in events to
support the relationship but these can become siloed to the wider organisations ambitions
versus those that would benefit your ABM accounts. Here are a few ways to weave specific.
Events into your account plans to support them on a more personal level.
Adoption
With every key win of account comes a huge move in adoption of the technology they have
taken on. How can you get them excited about change and what’s the best mechanic?
Hosting Innovation days are the way forward. This gives you the opportunity to solely host
an event for one specific key account and ensure they feel they come away not only
understanding the key benefit of your solution but also being an adopter of it to champion
further adoption within the company. These are easy to coordinate and can take on
different guises from the Executive led ‘launch’ events to the ‘down and in depth’ technical
innovation days but both are mandatory to account growth and adoption.
Relationship
One of the wider ‘catchment’ events is by partnering with one of your partners who can
‘host’ your event whilst bringing the wow factor. Many companies have relationships with
the likes of Sport or automotive brands so why not take advantage of their premises and
unique experience to host an account wide ABM experience. This can be vertical based or
just across your accounts but the key to the success is to have an experience led agenda that gets all attendees networking and getting to know each other whilst introducing a ‘business relevant’ guess speaker who can talk to all companies with relevant advice. This doesn’t need to be at an executive level but it does need to be someone industry recognised to not only draw the audience but hold the attention of everyone in the room and encourage further discussion and networking to take place.
Hospitality
The well-known part will be executive engagement in hospitality. These will be the top
executives from your Tier 1 accounts who your relationship is paramount with. They
endorse and support the business and the experience they have with your business as a
brand is of most importance. Therefore aligned to their likes/dislikes personally as well as
professionally is key to your business advantage. There are obvious experiences to book
which could be anything from Wimbledon, Rugby hospitality, venue hospitality like the O2
or Chelsea Flower show but then there should also be the invites for senior executives
dinners, 1-2-1’s and roundtables to professionally share business pain points, goals and
aspirations.
Industry Related
Lastly, a way to show expertise in a specific vertical can also be a great way to bring
numerous clients together who are all experiencing the same business challenges but could
benefit from an industry led knowledge sharing event. Depending on your clients and the
sensitivity around sharing information with what could be seen as ‘competitive knowledge’
can be tricky to organise but also hugely beneficial in showing dominance and expertise in
their market. It’s important with these types of industry summits that external
speakers/third party organisations are invited so that it doesn’t become solely about you as
an organisation. It should be an event that shows your alignment as an organisation, your
knowledge and expertise endorsed by these speakers and that you are the lead in this
industry to get them through their challenges to make them more successful.
If you’d like to find out more please contact the NextCall team. We’re looking forward to supporting you on your ABM journey.