I have had the privilege of running sales organisations for large global corporations, managing all #sales channels across multiple countries. We were disciplined in optimising our sales channels to different client segments. However, we were not as good at optimising our #marketing activities toward those customer segments. For example, our marketing team did an ok job using inbound marketing towards the long tail and SME however, when applying similar tactics on megadeals we failed.
We then began testing ABM (Account Based Marketing) tactics on our megadeal’s area. Even here, we came short due to 3 mistakes:
1) We didn’t have consistent messaging created by the relevant departments such as sales, marketing, product, and customer success
2) I ran my account review meetings without marketing…only with my sales team.
3) My sales team didn’t know how to integrate with marketing, instead, they need to work as hybrids. Get integrated into the marketing.
⛔️ Our marketing colleagues ran so-called ABM ”campaigns” toward our key accounts without a common messaging and without an in-depth understanding of our key accounts. My sales team ran the orchestration without involving and educating marketing (in depth) on the accounts. Huge missed opportunity.
What I have learned and do differently now:
✅ To maximise your mega-deal orchestration the whole customer-facing functions (including customer success, product, etc) need to be singing from the same hymn book with the same messaging. Sales and marking need to be working tightly throughout the whole sales process in both landing and expanding deals. Rather than running ”campaigns” (a finite activity) sales and marketing are orchestrating deals together (an infinite activity) to win and grow #megadeals.
//Bora Brännström
