TLDR:
The Director of Growth at Engagio sits down with Steli Etfi, the CEO and Founder of Close. To be a great enterprise AE (account executive), a marketer’s got to be good at building relationships at the individual level—committees are made of people. They also need to be able to adapt their pitch to different departments. To succeed in this role, marketers need to play the long-game—view everything through the understanding that strategies and tactics take awhile
There are two things that makes a great enterprise account executive: potential AEs must be able to very good at building relationships. Because that buying committee? They’re not one person. They are a collection of individuals each with their own motives and interests, so a divide and conquer approach is still relevant here.
Then, the AE must be skilled in adjusting their voice to fit—this means that they must be able to adapt their pitch according to the needs of each department. This is what it means to sell to organizations.
In summary: two things are needed to be a good enterprise AEs:
1. Ability to cultivate relationships, especially cross-departmental relationships
2. Ability to adapt pitches according to the department they’re pitching to
In addition, AEs must be able to understand the process by which decisions get made in large enterprise companies. More specifically, the relationships that exist between and amongst departments.
It’s why large enterprise sales take so long to carry out to the full-term. It’s also why it’s more expensive. ABM exists for that very reason: to make these deals much simpler. ABM is, after all, the premier B2B sales strategy. ABM has the ability to manage the complex relationships of the buying committee that AEs are tasked to help with.
So AEs must be pretty good at developing relationships, as mentioned earlier. They have to understand the nuances and complexities that govern group dynamics. And at times, that means having the additional ability to change course on a dime.
Because in enterprise sales, with the outside influences competing with inside ones, as well as the money involved, potential AEs must take a long-term view of everything involved in large enterprise sales: tactics, strategy—whatever. This is why ABM and large enterprise sales fit together so well—both require a long-term approach to be successful.
Original article from Engagio on 27 June 2019.
