How to Focus Your Account Based Marketing Program in 2018

When the term account-based marketing first started being bandied about in the Sales and Marketing world it was easy to be skeptical. If you had a nickel for every time a new buzzword came and went in this industry you’d have a whole lot of Thomas Jeffersons rolling around in your comically oversized pockets. Oftentimes new ideas, concepts, and buzzwords aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. That’s because it’s easier to make a couple of bucks off of a trend than it is to develop a new concept and make it viable.If you’re reading this and have a pulse, then you are well aware that ABM is no passing phase and that it’s here to stay. That’s because account based marketing hasn’t been invented out of whole cloth. ABM is a new way of viewing how Sales and Marketing (and really the whole organization) aligns and performs. Account based marketing is all about taking all of the activities and efforts Sales and Marketing already performs, and giving them a laser focus. It’s fishing with a spear vs. fishing with a net.So, because account based marketing is really just about shifting resources and re-thinking certain aspects of your organization, there are general lessons about Sales and Marketing alignment that can be translated to positioning your ABM team for success in 2018. Lucky for you, dear reader, we here at Seismic recently polled industry experts, practitioners, and analysts about this very topic. While we asked the broad question of: “How are you positioning your sales and marketing teams for success in 2018?” we can view their answers in the light of account based marketing as well.