If you’re a B2B Technology business and you’re looking to hire an account based marketer into your team, then we’ve lined up nine experts to help you.
Since account based marketing was first coined by the Information Technology Services Marketing Association in 2003, we’ve seen an exponential growth in its adoption.
Fast forward, and today we see more companies looking to hire ABM experts into their teams to help them grow.
And yet despite that growth, pure ABM professionals are a rare breed. So much so, and depending on the profile of your business, that you may need to look outside the specialists and hire someone with transferable skills.
But, how do you assess whether or not a marketer has the right knowledge and skills you need?
Well, fear not, because we’ve assembled some of the best account based marketers out there to help us answer;
What’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
Declan Mulkeen is CMO at Strategic IC – a B2B Technology and Account Based Marketing AgencyWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘What account tiering or triaging criteria would you use to decide which type of ABM programme to deploy? e.g. one-to-many, one-to-few or one-to-one.’
I ask this question to test whether the candidate understands why account selection and relevant ABM programme alignment is so critical to success.
Alisha Lyndon is Founder and CEO of MomentumABM – a dedicated ABM marketing agencyWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘What’s the connection between account based marketing and revenue growth?’
I ask this question to test how commercial a candidate is – do they understand how account based marketing will drive revenue growth or are they just into creepy personalisation.
Elise Anastacia Miller is Senior Manager, Account based Marketing EMEA at ServiceNowWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘What does it mean to be truly “customer-centric” in the context of ABM?’
Ryan Almond is Global Account Based Marketing Leader at Baker HughesWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘Why should you choose ABM over other forms of B2B marketing?’
Although incredibly simple in nature, I feel this is such a critical question to ask any prospective ABM candidate. In order to understand whether a candidate will know how to implement an effective ABM strategy, I believe they must unequivocally understand why they are doing it. To seasoned ABM’ers the answer might sound obvious, however I have received a plethora of different responses to this question over the years.
When utilised as a pertinent pre-qualifying question, the answer can often give a prompt insight into a person’s skillset across the entirety of the ABM process. Rather than reeling off soundbites which can be gleaned from any ABM handbook such as ‘improved ROI’, ‘deeper measurement’ or ‘personalised 1-2-1 marketing’, there’s an articulation of the philosophy which precedes and enables all of the aforementioned benefits (and more). For me, the ultimate response will advocate how and why ABM is actually just a hyper-efficient, hyper-effective form of B2B marketing ie: – It is simply the modern best practice.
If an organisation has a supreme understanding of its target market and then proceeds to efficiently prioritise every dollar spent so that the most lucrative accounts are given the greatest amount of intricate attention and then the medium-to-least lucrative are catered for proportionate to their need, it should come as no surprise that this would outperform a marketing budget where all accounts are targeted equally as if it’s a zero-sum-game. It is by virtue of this fact that improved ROI, greater VoC, longer-term account growth and many more ABM benefits are attained. Of course you’ll want to drill further into each individual stage of the ABM process with your prospective candidate but this question can give you an early, holistic snapshot of their knowledge and enable you to accurately assess where to probe deeper later on in the interview.’
Sara Verri is Account Based Marketing Director, EMEA at DataikuWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘If you were to advise me on how to start tackling ABM within my organisation, what would be the top 3 priorities you would suggest I focus on?’
I like to see how candidates narrow it down and if they have the long term vision on where they want to go.
It requires an understanding of the organisation, the ability to identify priorities within a given context and pinpoint next steps.
Dyann Bartus Calder, MBA is Vertical and Account Based Marketing Senior Advisor at NTT DATAWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘What is your experience in the full continuum of ABM, from strategic account selection, to building and/or supporting the technology stack?’
I often find there are many who understand the strategy portion but not the important areas of technology and reporting.
Veronica Rodriguez is Global Accounts – Account Based Marketing Manager at Red HatWhat’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘How would you orchestrate the discovery period of an international based customer? Draw me a timeline, actions and parties involved.’
The reason I asked this is because most of the top customers of the companies implementing an ABM approach have multi hubs where business is conducted.
This means different parties among our organisation and their organisation, who are based across the world, are involved.
From my experience, it’s mandatory to understand the business drivers, local objectives and goals within the different countries where your customer is based
Because even if the goals are similar across countries, you often find the maturity of the business units differ.
So imagining if you have a global company to target with 5 buying centers, 10 different projects in each, and stakeholders across sales, local marketing, local PR, training, services, channel etc… I’m always interested to see how candidates would start this project, which key champions they’d leverage internally and externally, and most importantly how they would get everyone on-board and work side by side with you.
Gemma Telford is Founder of She/her a marketing agency involved in Account Based Marketing.What’s your ONE killer interview question to assess someone’s account based marketing skills?
‘How important is it for you to build sales into your ABM plan and how would you go about it?’
Well, if you’re hiring or about to start on that journey, then our account based marketing recruitment experts have given you some great interview questions to ask.
We’d always recommend a good mix of interview questions to make sure you assess a marketer accurately and never forget to to sell the job and broader opportunity to them.
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Account-based marketing is an incredibly personalised and targeted approach to your marketing. Every customer is different, so it makes sense that the approach taken to reach them needs to be tailored and specific.
