Episode 107: Building powerful ABM teams: from sales buy-in to execution with Stapho Thienpont

Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Show

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Join me and Stapho Thienpont sharing our experience of building efficient ABM teams and getting support from sales.
​We cover:
​- How to present playbooks to sales
​- Exact ways marketing should support sales with examples
​- Role of sales in the account-based marketing and sales
SUMMARY
Here are 5 reasons sales push back collaboration with marketing, don't support marketing campaigns, and 7 steps to handling it.
1. Protective mindset.
Sales believe their core asset is their network. Hence, they are unwilling to share contacts or make intros assuming their relationship can be "stolen".
2. Marketing has no product and market expertise.
When sales talk to marketing and see they don't really know the target market, ICP, product value, and competition, they treat marketing as an "arts and crafts department."
3. Different KPIs.
When sales have sales quota pressure and outbound KPIs, any new program or initiative feels like a burden that distracts them from the primary goal.
This goes even more extreme in companies where sales don't hit revenue quota and see how marketing celebrates hitting MQLs.
4. Marketing campaigns are not tied to revenue and don't contain a clear list of tasks, responsibilities, and timelines.
No one in sales wants to do "demand gen", "ABM", "content distribution", or help with any
other marketing campaign if they don't clearly see how:
- The campaign will impact the pipeline and revenue.
- Their responsibilities and tasks
- Campaign timeline
5. Marketing doesn't understand the sales process and pipeline status.
If marketing doesn't initiate regular pipeline overviews and conversations with sales about the challenges they face in the trenches, sales believe that marketing doesn't care about it.
Hence, what's the point of collaborating with them?
Here is how to handle the issue and turn marketing and sales into a revenue function.
1. Make both functions revenue-responsible.
2. Get alignment about goals, challenges, ICP, buyer journey, value proposition, marketing, and sales processes.
3. Fix knowledge gaps.
4. Define a small pilot team (1 marketer and 1 SDR) that will work on a shared playbook on one market and vertical.
5. Reduce their revenue quota and make sure they have enough time to commit to the new programs.
6. Document and share results with the entire team.
7. Scale the function.
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The growth of a B2B company heavily depends on the collaboration between sales and marketing.
These two functions have different responsibilities, but the same goal – revenue.
Primary marketing responsibilities:
- Creating awareness
- Generating and capturing demand
- Supporting sales with engaged accounts and intent triggers
- Helping sales to accelerate the sales cycle and influence the decision-making process
Primary sales responsibilities:
- Connect and build relationships with target accounts
- Start conversations about a potential collaboration with engaged accounts
- Expand the business with existing customers by expanding, upselling or cross-selling
Stapho Thienpont оn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stapho/