Account-Based Marketing requires care and feeding

Yet, even companies with mature programs will confront a new breed of challenges that will put strategy, people and processes to the ultimate test. To address these, marketing and growth leaders need to employ some key axioms of account-based growth that lay the groundwork for creating sustained business success.

One key premise is that organizationally, account-based growth re-defines and re-calibrates the relationship that marketing enjoys with the whole of the rest of the business – not just sales, but also customer service, finance, executive leadership, etc. When done right, account-based growth is successful because it brings together the mindset, skills, and resources of all those teams, as well as relevant business leaders, to focus on helping the customer achieve its business goals. It’s an “outside-in” approach to growth.

But sales and marketing alignment is still one of the most hyped topics in B2B marketing. On the one hand, yes, it can be challenging; however, with account-based growth, one thing is clear – growing the business is everyone’s responsibility.

That does not mean people are running around aimlessly, bumping into each other, all trying to do the same things. It’s more about orchestrating the role of what the marketing team does, versus the sales team, versus the delivery team. Definitions of roles and clarity of responsibilities are essential.

Leaders also need to be clear about where the boundaries are and where the interlock is – and ensure all parties involved understand. It’s a cultural challenge to engineer this approach, but you cannot create an account-based growth organization with a lone wolf attitude. Coordination and collaboration are key.

This blog post is an excerpt from Axioms of Account-Based Growth. The full document with all the details is available on Growth Hub.