Do you know which predator has the most success rate from its hunts? Well, it's not the big cats. They are one of the more unsuccessful ones when it comes to their "hit rate".

A tiger's hit rate(the percentage of successful hunts of all its attacks) varies from 5-10% while a lion's hit rate is around 25%.

You are going to be surprised by this one. It is a dragonfly.

Dragonflies have a hit-rate north of 95% from their hunts. I will give it to you that they aren't scary for most and certainly don't feel like a predator to us, but ask the poor common flies that are one of its favorite snacks.

Researchers were astounded by this fact and looked into the dragonfly's anatomy to find the possible causes. They found something really interesting, principles which we can use in B2B sales. I am not kidding.

In a series of recent papers, researchers have pinpointed key features of the dragonfly’s brain, eyes, and wings that allow it to hunt with phenomenal precision.

One team has shown that they have an almost human-like ability for selective attention, being able to focus on a single insect from a swarm, just as a man at a party focuses on his date, ignoring the background buzz.

Now, I am not asking you to consider your prospects as "hunts" or you to act like dragonflies but we have a lesson here. With selective attention and maniacal focus, dragonflies have become the most efficient hunters in the animal kingdom despite their size.

Taking a leaf out of the dragonfly's success stories, I want to share how small sales teams can take on the big guns by implementing an ABM-led sales strategy. So let's jump right into it.

No, ABM isn't just for large companies

If someone tells you ABM is for large companies with large sales and marketing teams, just ignore it.

ABM isn't just about the number of people in your team or their size, ABM is all about using technology to connect and engage prospects and customers at scale and personalize each touchpoint with them.

And like the ABM principle states, ABM is all about identifying and understanding your target market.

In small companies with smaller teams, ABM designates shared responsibilities to other team members working in parallel on different sectors of an account. This makes sales effective by making every member from marketing to sales accountable for moving prospects through a journey towards a sale while providing them visibility into who they’re selling to and their buying behavior.

Hence ABM not only drives higher rep productivity but also provides invaluable insights into how your prospects behave throughout their customer lifecycle. That's why ABM has become the new normal within B2B organizations looking to expand their revenue generation.

Use AI software to work at 10x the productivity levels

I know you are saying that is just plain exaggeration, no tool multiplies productivity by 10 times. But you would be wrong.

AI-powered software can make life wonderful for sales reps. What a human can do in hours, AI does it in minutes.

A Seismic report points out that the number of companies implementing AI-related technologies has grown by 270% over the last four years. And 54% of executives say that implementing AI in their workplace has increased rep productivity.

Automation and AI-powered sales software are empowering small sales teams to implement ABM principles in their sales strategy

The best thing is that you don't have to be a big company with huge budgets to afford such technologies.

Nowadays, there exist several tools that can automate account segmentation for your accounts & contacts, trigger personalized email outreach campaigns at the right time, offer predictive analytics on your prospects' behavior using machine learning algorithms that lead to better engagement opportunities, and more.

What you need to do is find highly specialized software for each part of your sales process and tie them up to form a sales tech stack. By saving time, reps can implement strategies that would generally be off the table using traditional tools.

Take the beast down - Use AI for prospecting

If sales were a hunt, prospecting would be the beast. Reps spend anywhere between 30-40% of their time on prospecting and related activities.

However, reps can make prospecting efficient and effective by using ABM-driven sales strategies to focus on their targeted accounts and prospects. And AI prospecting software is the best way to automate sales prospecting without compromising results.  

AI lead generation software helps small companies that don't have huge sales teams use technology to connect with customers/prospects at scale and personalize each touchpoint.

Automation and AI-powered sales software can increase productivity 10x times, empowering small sales teams to implement ABM strategies.  

Learn from your sales campaigns

One advantage that small and nimble sales teams have over others is that they can stay agile and move fast. This makes course correction easier and simpler for such teams.

If you are a part of such a nimble sales team, then you should look into learning from your campaigns as much as possible.

Think of each email sent as a learning opportunity about your ICP and your buyer persona. Implement those learnings in your next prospecting and outreach cycle.

You will notice that by moving and learning fast you can outdo competitors with larger teams.

From an ABM sequence's perspective, having AI prospecting software can already help you. Since AI-based systems are dependent on learning from data, you can use this feature to your advantage.

For example, you can train Truebase from your email campaigns and ad campaigns. Truebase learns from the campaigns and suggests leads that have similar features to the ones that are converted in your email and ad campaigns. This in turn improves your ICP definition and increases conversion rates for future sales campaigns. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Make your best-fit target accounts aware of your products  

For ABM to work, you need to make sure that your target accounts are aware of your products and your company's existence.

I say this because most B2B buying groups research for products online and if you aren't in their top 6-7 products for consideration then you will have a hard time selling to them.

To counter such problems, you can run awareness campaigns for high-value accounts where the campaign goal would be to make the primary researchers aware of your product.

By planning out different types of awareness campaigns throughout the year and across the buyer journey, reps can increase their ABM conversion rates.

ABM will create awareness by triggering personalized outreach campaigns at precisely the right time when your prospects are most open to new ideas. This works great but only if the target accounts know why they are getting contacted so often.

You can make ABM a success by making sure that you have awareness campaigns in place before ABM kicks in. ABM will work much more efficiently if your target accounts are aware of what is going on and the touchpoints are frequent.

Ready to start with ABM-led selling?

Hopefully, you are more confident about using ABM principles in your sales campaign now. We can help you with one area, i.e. prospecting.

With Truebase AI you can prospect for high-value accounts, warm them up with awareness campaigns and learn from your sales and marketing campaigns at scale.

We built Truebase keeping in mind that one size doesn't fit all, thus regardless of your sales team's size, you can use AI-based prospecting to run ABM-led sales campaigns for better results.

So are you ready to hunt down high-value accounts? Or better yet, let Truebase hunt them down for you. Sign up for a 14 day free trial of Truebase and get started today.