The success of Account Based Marketing depends on how you set up your team. Similar to football, where every position has to be filled optimally and only by working together can the set goals be achieved. We have made some considerations, which members you absolutely need in your ABM team in our estimation.
The Team is Not Just Made up of Marketers
In a successful football team, everything depends on all the necessary skills coming together to form a functioning whole. Everyone has a task that they have to fulfil to the best of their ability with their skill set. A purely homogeneous team does not work when it comes to driving a campaign for account-based marketing with all its requirements.
Some positions must always be filled on an ABM team. These include the following competencies:
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Executive Sponsor: this competency is typically brought in by someone from marketing, but this is not necessarily the case. The player in this position provides strategic assistance, supports the rest of the team, and in this way drives the ABM strategy.
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Marketer: Employees in this position are involved in the creation and implementation of the strategy in Account Based Marketing, enabling the various functions to work together through their work and reporting on the current progress of the implementation of the ABM strategy.
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Account Executive Leader: this competency is important to better align the strategy with actual customer needs. The Account Executive Leader communicates best practices to the other players and is responsible for creating ABM SLAs.
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Services Leader: Takes care of existing customers and identifies potential for up-selling and cross-selling.
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Support Leader: Responsible for monitoring accounts and handling customer retention.
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Revenue Operations: An important position where work on the database takes place. This person is expected to spot trends in the data and is responsible for making sure we are selecting the right accounts as part of the ABM campaign.
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Sales Development Leader: Is responsible for driving research regarding accounts and providing feedback to the team if adjustments to the strategy are needed.
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"Implementers": designers, programmers and content writers are similar to the strikers - they ensure that the campaign is ultimately implemented in practice.
Numerous competencies must therefore be brought together for optimal task fulfilment in the team
Many Skills Are in Demand
Most of the competencies essentially come from marketing and sales. So it is important for Account Based Marketing that these two departments are represented in the team and harmonize there. However, a good ABM trainer also manages to actively include the important competencies from customer service and product development.
Nothing Works without Cooperation and Training
We already hinted at it in the first section: Interaction is critical in an ABM team. When all the functions work together effectively, the implementation of the ABM campaign is successful and the marketing measures achieve the desired goal.Simply assigning employees a specific role and waiting for something to happen usually doesn't work. Rather, what is required is that team members practice their roles and learn to feel comfortable in their assigned position. It is best for team members to come together as early as possible and work together to ensure the success of the AMB campaign.
Time for Training
It is normal for many processes to not work smoothly in the beginning. Coordination problems may exist and each member must first learn how to interpret their role in a meaningful way. This requires time, which you should actually give to the team members.
One of the most fundamental mistakes in ABM is to expect results too quickly
This is especially true in B2B. The measures themselves need time to take effect, conversion increases don't happen overnight. Similar considerations apply to the interaction in your ABM team. A good team needs time to grow together.
The Most Important: Marketing & Sales Alignment
It is typical for ABM to serve as a kind of bridge builder between your company and the customer through content. Within the company, generic information for a broader audience tends to come from marketing, while sales, thanks to its proximity to the market, has the knowledge to prepare more specific information. It is important to use both sources of information and to optimally coordinate marketing and sales.
Revenue Teams as the Secret of Success
Especially when there are few resources in the company, it is important for the ABM campaign that marketing and sales work together optimally. You can't afford to make many bad passes, especially in this sensitive interaction. Otherwise you run the risk that
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the wrong accounts are addressed,
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some accounts are processed twice and not stringently
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or that the wrong messages are played out at the wrong time
When marketing and sales work together, we talk about revenue teams. In other words, the two areas are so closely intertwined that they practically act as one. The players can trust each other blindly on the pitch. This requires performance agreements that precisely define the responsibilities, tasks and competencies of these revenue teams. SLAs are therefore useful for optimizing team interaction.
Why Marketing Alone Is Not Enough
Many players from your ABM team come from marketing, which is obvious, but marketing alone is not enough. Marketing takes over an important task for sales, especially when the target account is not yet available in the database. These accounts can be reached with paid advertising, for example
The interdisciplinary approach is critical to account-based marketing.
A striker alone is not a team and he can't score goals if there is no one to set up the game for him further back. In order for your ABM campaign to be successful, it needs content from the various departments, which must be played out at the right time in order to optimally address the desired customer. The ABM team needs to be well staffed in various positions to be able to do this.
Conclusion: The Path to ABM Success Leads Through Your Team
Well-functioning teams are responsible for a successful ABM campaign. The first step is always to form such a team. Think about which positions in your team need to be filled, which competencies should not be missing and with which employees you can optimally fill these positions. A lot of practice is important to ensure smooth processes. If you take your time, you will be rewarded in ABM.
