ABM Under the Hood – Episode 3 Marketing & Sales Alignment

Jack Rawlings | Head of ABM & Fes Askari | Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts strategicabm

ABM Under
the Hood

Episode 3: Marketing and Sales Alignment

Our new podcast, ABM under the Hood, takes a closer look into the inner workings of the ABM engine. Hosts, Jack and Josh, get their hands dirty as they take a deep dive into the moving parts of a successful Account-based Marketing program.

In Episode 3, strategicabm Head of ABM Jack Rawlings talks to Fes Askari, the Agency’s Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts and Sales and Marketing alignment.

ABM isn’t ABM without Sales. Period.

It’s one of the major things that separates ABM from any other Marketing strategy.

Let’s be honest; you can launch a Marketing campaign, you can run an advertising campaign, you can run an awareness campaign, etc. and Sales do not need to be involved. You can measure the success, you can measure the impact, you can measure the click-throughs, sign-ups, bookings, even direct sales, etc.

But, with an Account-based strategy, you can’t. Why? Because if you distill ABM down to its purest essence, it’s all about your customers – current and future.

It’s all about the relationships you create and nurture.

It’s all about the deep threading with buying committees, influencers, etc.

It’s about helping the customer to make sense of the choices. Make sense of the solutions available to solve their problems today (and tomorrow).

And this requires a deep collaboration with your Sales colleagues – a deep Sales and Marketing alignment.

In this episode of ABM under the Hood, Jack Rawlings sat down with Fes Askari, strategicabm’s Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts, to talk Sales and Marketing alignment.

Topics covered by Fes and Jack’s fascinating discussion include:

Why achieving Sales and Marketing
alignment is key
The process for setting joint objectives
The red flags that might turn off the Sales team
Common pitfalls for both teams to be aware of

What Sales would benefit from seeing
from Marketing
The metrics to use to align Sales and Marketing
Where the industry goes next, in terms of alignment

What are the key issues around alignment?

There are two perspectives, and you have to consider alignment from both.

Firstly, the internal view, which is about getting that alignment on the foundations of your go-to-market strategy. This essentially boils down to shared business objectives / commercial goals, understanding your product market fit, defining your ICP and target account lists… and doing so collaboratively.

Secondly, there's an external perspective, which is about alignment on the customer experience. So, how do they engage with you from a Marketing and Brand perspective? And how does that flow through to Sales and Customer Success?

What it boils down to is creating a great experience that will drive both growth and retention.

"[Achieving alignment] can be challenging… but that's really something to consider at the early stages; it’s just talking the same language, using the same kind of objectives, KPIs. And setting up the programs that you're running for success from that internal alignment perspective."

Fes Askari, Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts at strategicabm

What's the process when setting joint objectives?

There are different levels to this.

You have to look at internal strengths and limitations, your ABM maturity, your brand in the market, existing value/credibility, and other areas, such as your technology stack.

But, from a revenue perspective, it’s looking at the end goal and working backwards. Reverse-engineering is easier when you have historical data – conversion, velocity – to look back on. Which is why you need to track and document everything.

The more data you have and the better quality it is, the better-informed your decisions about where to spend your time and resources will be. You’re setting objectives, so think about what converts, what works and doesn't work, from a Marketing perspective – and from a Sales perspective, too.

With an ABM lens on it, you also need to think about the program type that you're running – One-to-many, One-to-few, One-to-one – and what you are trying to deliver.

Building your brand in a specific market? Your reputation and credibility with a new set of accounts? Is it existing customer land-and-expand?

The program needs to be defined by your business commercial objective. And that needs to be driven by not just Sales and Marketing, but other stakeholders in the organization, too.

It's about… laying the foundations at the beginning of the program, making sure that you're working collaboratively at the start – so that you don't have to then sort of retrospectively go back and look for that buy-in from a Sales team.

– Jack Rawlings, Head of ABM at strategicabm

What red flags are there that may turn off the Sales team?

To keep Sales onside, you have to be really clear about their priorities, their objectives, and align with them on that.

This is a key starting point.

Also, data and insight is really valuable for Sales teams, who generally love to understand the customer – what makes them tick, how they perceive value, what's happening in their world. Marketers should be thinking about research, and account-level insights to bring to the table.

It’s a partnership approach – the concept of a joined-up Revenue team, because time is money in their world! It’s important to make sure most of their time is spent having meaningful conversations and, ultimately, selling! So, you want to limit distractions.

Red flags? When there are joint sessions, you need to be really clear about the agenda for the meeting, what you'd like them to contribute. Maybe provide a questionnaire up front, to get the right level of information back from them. Because Sales is essentially quite reactive.

“Marketing tends to have great campaign-engagement data, but… should also be able to bring insight to the internal stakeholders about the market… and often that can lead into Sales having better-quality insights when they're talking to the customer as well.”

Fes Askari, Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts at strategicabm

What common pitfalls should the teams be aware of?

The danger lies in not having conversations early enough. So for example, seasonality and the financial year can be an issue for Sales – whether you’re closing end-of-quarter, or end-of-year. These are high-pressure times for Sales teams; by understanding this context and their objectives, the urgency and their pressures, you can better avoid the pitfalls.

It's also wise to accept that you may need to negotiate for some things when it comes to ABM, e.g. time with the Sales team. And also which accounts to include in a program. They may have their view, while yours is based on your account selection criteria.

For various reasons – the ICP, VP (AKA core messaging) and things like that – not every account in the Sales team's list may go into the program.

Negotiating all this, and finding common ground early on, is what’s crucial to alignment.

“Get… into a conversation with the Sales team as early as possible about the 'why': Why ABM is the right fit. What are the key objectives? What do we think is potentially the value to the customer? [And] the right ABM program type? And really helping them to understand that context from an ABM program perspective.”

Fes Askari, Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts at strategicabm

Type your content here…

What would Sales benefit from seeing from Marketing?

Marketers need to learn the language of Sales, their metrics and KPIs – things they care about, terms like deal velocity, pipeline coverage, ACV (average customer value) and share of wallet.

Marketing teams have their own internal language, depending on the world they operate in – Professional Services, SaaS etc. – but, essentially, they’re not so far removed.

Also, Marketers need to know who it is they’re talking to – Sales leadership, individual contributors, or sellers themselves. And within that you have different types, from solution consultants to technical Sales, SDRs, AEs etc. Understanding roles and the value they can bring to an ABM program – that’s how a Marketer can create the joined-up view they need.

Marketing and Sales actually talk about similar metrics, across different types of industries and verticals. So, an understanding of how to align on language helps in creating shared objectives and KPIs.

So, what do Sales want to see?

Marketers who know what ‘deal velocity’ means, basically! (It’s definitely one of the metrics which ABM aspires to improve on, by the way.)

"It's super important to make that distinction between different seniorities and levels within not just the Sales team, but also Marketing and other stakeholders… there are different considerations [and] priorities… someone in the VP C-suite isn't going to be too concerned about the day-to-day minutiae of impressions and clicks and CTRs.”

-Jack Rawling, Head of ABM at strategicabm

What metrics can you use to align Sales and Marketing?

The general framework of ABM’s three Rs – Reputation, Relationships and Revenue – is a good lens through which to view metrics and reporting for both teams.

But within that, realistically, Account-based Marketing starts with awareness – so, Reputation building – whereas Sales will be much more interested from the Relationships point onwards.

The Reputation stuff is certainly of some interest to Sales – they want to be aware of it, thinking about how potentially, through the education work Marketing is doing, it will develop into a future conversation or meeting. But, really, the juicy bit for them is when things get to that point of building those relationships and tracking at that level.

When you get into the Revenue stage, that’s where it's more about the aforementioned metrics such as ACV, and deal sizes, time-to-deal, time-to-opportunity. Then, it’s more about pace and speed, and how ABM can shorten sales cycles.

“One key consideration is what we call benchmarking [where you] essentially take a snapshot of engagement… and understand the starting point. Because I think that's often a step that's skipped… everyone looks at reporting, but they don't take that view at the beginning, to understand the strength of Reputation or Relationships that you have.”

Fes Askari, Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts at strategicabm

Where is the industry headed to ensure alignment?

The shape of the future comes down to the things we've discussed – better communication, and better objective setting – and the term ABM itself might be evolving, too…

From a Marketing strategy perspective, there may be activities that Sales aren't as involved in now. They may get involved in key elements of insights and execution, and certain areas of the program, but they probably aren’t involved in running LinkedIn campaigns, direct mail, the Marketing-type activities that form an ABM program.

But, needs change. There's probably more Sales involvement at a strategic level with a One-to-one program, versus more execution for One-to-many.

Again, it goes back to using the language of your business, better, to get alignment internally. Essentially, you're talking to an internal customer, and you need to understand their persona – just like you do when you're developing your ABM – or is that ABX? – program.

“Some teams call it Key Account Marketing or Account Development. Some teams call it Account-based Marketing; modern teams call it Account-based Experience. I don't think that matters as much as making sure you have real clarity on your objectives… set the vision for the program… You can call it pretty much anything you want!”

Fes Askari, Director of Sales & Strategic Accounts at strategicabm

What else is under the hood?!

Don't miss this episode of ABM Under the Hood – when you'll be able to hear in full this conversation between Jack, more on the Marketing side, and Fes representing Sales, talking all about alignment – coming soon!

Aiming to provide expertise across all areas of Account-based Marketing, this podcast is dedicated to offering insight from professionals within our own Agency, and further afield. So, make sure you come back for future episodes and check out who else is talking, as well as what they’re talking about. There’s so much more under the hood!

And in the meantime, you can catch up on the first two episodes of the podcast, here.