Account-Based Marketing: Customer-Led, Team-Enabled

The first step in next-gen, customer-centric sales

By Dominique Côté, CEO & Founder, Cosawi and Principal, The Summit Group, and Kate Burda, CEO & Founder, Kate Burda & Co.

Shedding light on the next generation of account-based marketing

We can all agree that customer centricity and customer focus are the cornerstone of effective strategic account management and key to being different and staying relevant. We understand that it is not how we sell, but rather, how customers buy. We know the value of understanding the customers, their organizations, their vision, and what they are trying to achieve to enable a co-created future.

Yet, if you were to look at account-based marketing (ABM) methodology that is widely used and accepted, you may see just the opposite. What you may find is an approach based upon products, campaigns, or offerings — an inside-out way of working, which conflicts with the outside-in mindset that is at the core of how we ask SAMs to engage and enable partnerships of a higher order.

It’s no surprise that SAMs often feel the need to be like superheroes and sometimes feel lonely in their leadership of strategic accounts. However, the next generation of effective account-based marketing is solely focused on the customer journey, from the point of inspiration to the point of sale and beyond, and how we as a team can connect with them throughout.

Gone are the days of marketing-led and sales-enabled initiatives. The next generation is customer-led and team-enabled, where marketing and SAM can co-orchestrate.

What is ABM?

Plain and simple: ABM is co-orchestration for commercial effectiveness.

Marketing is hypercritical in today’s commercial environment. Digital marketing and e-commerce have taken on a life of their own, creating opportunities to engage with customers in a much more meaningful way. Account-based marketing takes a deep dive into how we create communication points with our customers — from the moment of inspiration to purchase or decision-making and, hopefully, into a lifetime customer.

Key points for today’s customer-led, team-enabled ABM

When you connect with customers: Connecting with your customers early creates mindshare. If you have mindshare, you have market share and share of wallet.

How you engage with customers is important: Customer-centricity is mission critical to be effective. What you are sharing must be valuable to your customer given where they are on their journey. Many times, organizations show up with seemingly valuable insights. However, those insights can be poorly timed given the state of mind of the consumer. Insights are only valuable if they bring something of relevance.

Account-based marketing should be ‘the owner’ or driver of providing insights and trends relevant to the customer’s points of communication. By collecting and digesting insights, distilling them into actionable, valuable information, ABM contributes to helping the SAM take a deep dive into the knowledge of the customer.

ABM integration and role: Gone are the days of the pull-push price model, where marketing is first, followed by sales strategies, then lastly, pricing teams. To be truly customer-centric, the customer’s journey dictates who is the best to engage with customers and at what time. This decision is based on customer preferences. Best-in-class organizations have not just a collaborative environment, but moreover, an integrated approach designed around the customer.

Why now?

Today, more than ever, we have seen unprecedented effectiveness brought about by digital marketing and creativity. Technology advancements are rapid fire. What we know is that having a foundation of how we integrate, and a shared methodology focused on the customer keeps teams relevant and differentiated. Technology enablement expedites the impact of this well-laid foundation. Infrequently, if ever, do we see it the other way around. Net net…the best-in-class organizations have that foundational thinking, and technology accelerates the results.

Steps

Educate and define: What is account-based marketing and designing the strategy
In order to shift the mindset to this outside-in way of thinking, a transformative way to integrate account-based marketing starts with the customer-buying and decision-making journey and better understanding the what, why, and how account-based marketing can be the differentiating factor for transformation. Marketing and sales can co-orchestrate and accelerate revenue and growth, as well as accelerate building these trusted partnerships. It takes a village to raise a child they say, and it certainly takes a village to succeed in strategic account management. And this integration of SAM and ABM is the lever to do this, to bring the team to the table and succeed.
ABM technology
In our upcoming blog “Account-Based Marketing: Elevating commercial enablement with throughtware and the software,” we take a deep dive into some of the roadblocks organizations can experience with their approach to technology and ABM. Teams often struggle if they see ABM as, first, a technology issue, followed by an initiative or task orientation later. The key ingredient is the first step and foundation — understanding that technology enables the strategy and go-to-market approach. In the most successful cases of commercial excellence, the aligned strategy is set by the customer journey, a co-created go-to-market program that works together with technology to ensure transparency, enablement, data, and insights.
Integrate and align
Unfortunately account-based marketing uses the word marketing, which in years past, put the work squarely in marketing’s camp. Today, the word account illustrates the integrated nature of ABM initiatives. Many times, we have heard sales and marketing teams speak about a collaborative environment where they are communicating with each other and by appearance it looks as though they are making great strides. Yet, integrating sales and marketing is what we should be striving for along the customer journey.

Understand the customer journey.
Integrate sales and marketing effort throughout the journey, rather than marketing being solely at the top of the funnel.
Align messaging, insights, and activation to the customer and where they are on their path.

Want to explore more? Please follow us on LinkedIn and register for our upcoming ABM Academy course, where we will further explore the next-gen approach of account-based marketing and its intersection with technology in our class “Customer-Led Team-Enabled.”

When:
November 13-14, 2024 | Online

Instructors:
Dominique Côté, Founder/CEO, Cosawi and Kate Burda of Kate Burda & Co.

Course info:
This interactive class offers marketers and their teams a transformative learning experience, starting with the customer-buying and decision-making journey — idea for those who want to shift their mindset to the outside-in way of thinking about next-generation account-based marketing.

Recommended audience:
Marketing teams, SAM Program leaders, CX (customer experience teams), cross-functional team members including SAM/KAM/GAM