In the excellent WARC daily newsletter last week, the authors stated that ‘B2B marketers need to hone their people skills.’ They explained that B2B marketers ‘experiencing an unprecedented period of change driven by developments in AI are going to have to build human connections to succeed, both internally and externally.’
This conclusion from a new report from LinkedIn, Global Marketing Jobs Outlook, Fall 2024, suggests that collaboration is rapidly becoming a key skill. The good news is that it’s a skill that 92% of ABM-ers already excel in, according to our 2024 ABM Benchmarking Study.
The skills ABM-ers need
Collaboration is one of the core soft skills an ABM-er needs, the others being commercial acumen, personal influence and facilitation skills. These are, of course, in addition to the technical marketing competencies ABM-ers require, such as insight development, messaging development, campaign planning and activation, and marketing performance management.
In our benchmarking study, one survey respondent explained their approach to hiring for ABM and the importance of soft skills, saying ‘Seniority varies, but we look for autonomy, the ability to interface with sales teams, experience at the company and an insatiable curiosity.’
Another looks for more senior, experienced people who bring a connection to sales with them, explaining ‘Our ABM-ers are at the more senior end of the scale, and many have been doing field marketing so have a deep connection to the sales team.’
The ability to engage at a senior level is key, as another programme leader confirmed, saying an ABM-er ‘needs to be someone who understands CXO clients and how accounts work; who can zoom in and out, know what to do, and hold a senior conversation.’
The skills ABM-ers have today
Our benchmarking study revealed the levels of expertise in ABM teams today. Almost all ABM-ers are experts in collaboration and three quarters excel in campaign planning and activation. Almost two thirds are expert in commercial acumen.
Most teams have at least an intermediate level of competence in the ability to influence others, develop messaging, and build insight.
Competency levels in the ABM team
The areas for most development appear to be in marketing performance management and facilitation skills — both critical for maintaining your position as an ABM-er with wider account teams and business stakeholders.
How will this change with AI?
The ability to collaborate with AI tools will be a core skill for teams to build. In an interview for my new book on ABM, out in March 2025, my colleague @JaspreetBindra of @AI&Beyond has the following advice for ABM-ers. ‘ABM-ers should be in the frontline of experimenting with generative AI. There are multiple tools to help you draw insight, build copy, summarise meetings, brainstorm new ideas, create new content at scale, help visualise new content, create beautiful videos using just text as prompts, or help target content to specific individuals.’
He adds, ‘I think it’s so important for an ABM-er to be curious. If you’re not curious about the new tools and trends, you’ll never succeed in this new age of AI.’ His final piece of advice is that, ‘We all need to learn the art and science of writing great prompts using natural language as a tool, whether it be English, French or any other language, to make these generative AI programmes and tools give us the kind of output that we want.’
If you would like to build your skills for ABM, join us at one of our AI in ABM bootcamps or contact alison@inflexiongroup.com.
