AMA: Albertsons Companies Director, B2B Marketing, Sierra Summers on Account Based Marketing Strategy

Marketing cannot close business without sales. Sales is the most important partner to marketing, ABM or not. While you can gain the support of the leadership teams, sales ops, etc, if you don't have your sales team onboard with your plans, you will not succeed. Bring your sales team into the process early and keep them informed ia regular status updates (bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly). Highlight your wins and your losses.

This is a great question! I can't tell you the number of times I've created content because someone in the C-suite thought it would be a good idea, or because a sales reply simply couldn't close a deal with a highly customized 1-pager. The truth is - content should be created with a purpose. Here are the questions I like to ask when conducting a content audit: * Does this content answer questions our customers are asking? Does it help our customers & prospects accomplish their goals? * How does the reader feel after consuming this piece of content? Does that feeling align with what our goal was when we created the piece? * What is the purpose of this piece of content? Is it still serving that purpose? * How often is this piece of content used, by who, and in what capacity? * When was the last time this content was refreshed? Is this something we want to be a staple in our library? * In what other forms does this content exist (blog, podcast, short video, webinar, etc)? If the answer is none, should it be created in smaller, more digestible snippets? 

I don't think ABM at its core is all that different from landing net new vs cross/upsell/expansion. If you boil it down, you are taking a set of channels and tactics and deploying campaigns to get your prospects or customers to take a desired action or behavior. I will argue that you have more room for error when going into new prospects or markets where you might not have as much data or evidence to support your messaging, positioning and campaign strategy. When marketing to current customers, you better know what you're talking about. There is nothing worse that being an existing customer of a brand and receiving messaging and campaigns as if you had never worked with that brand in your life. With cross/upsell/expansion, you not only have to know your customer, but you better make sure you let your customer know you know them. For example, if you're already in at Amazon and looking to upsell, you better be able to discuss pain points that came up at prior QBRs, understand their org chart, tech stack, and review how you can help them achieve their goals,

Work with your sales team! You can use a lot of different tech and methods to identify target accounts, but if your sales team isn't bought in, you won't be successful. I suggest using tools or conducting a TAM analysis to narrow down the list of potential accounts a tad small. Have the sales team participate in the account selection process. One of the most common mistakes I see people make is allowing their sales teams to pick companies like Verizon, ATT, Amazon etc. These companies are broken out into several lines of business and divisions. Sales should understand the account and where they'll break in. If you are going to use digital channels, ensure you have a list large enough to meet audience size requirements on your preferred media partners.