Why isn’t Marketing in the KAM/ SAM journey ?

Customer-Led and Team-Enabled Marketing

In the evolving landscape of Key Account Management (KAM), Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has emerged as a cornerstone for driving customer-centric innovation. “Customer-Led and Team-Enabled ABM” represents a paradigm shift where Marketing is seamlessly integrated with KAM teams to deliver tailored solutions, enhance engagement, and drive value for strategic accounts. This requires more than the collaboration of marketing and sales but real integration and alignment with the outside-in mindset and ways of working, starting with the customer in mind.

However, integrating ABM into KAM journeys is not without its challenges. Think about your own company: how is your marketing integrated with your strategic account planning and work?

This article explores these roadblocks and insights for overcoming them, drawing from the work at Cosawi and years of practitioner experience and focusing on two areas:

• Roadblocks to customer-led and team-enabled account work
• Why key account managers hesitate to integrate ABM into their teams.

Key roadblocks to integrating ABM into KAM

1. Mindset and organizational alignment

Marketing often lacks representation at the KAM table. Shifting the mindset to include Marketing as a partner from the outset of the KAM journey is critical. Emphasizing customer-led planning and team collaboration accelerates success in a world of customer-led and team-enabled KAM.

This shift requires broadening Marketing’s role beyond the customer buying journey to include insight generation and case studies and to create value creation for mutual growth and ROI.

With evolving skillsets required for KAMs and the complexity of customer needs, Marketing must step up as a co-orchestrator of the account strategy, leveraging insights, foresight, and data to support solution creation.

Integration challenges include aligning diverse internal processes and breaking silos between Marketing, Sales, and Account Management teams. To be successful and differentiate, we need a mindset shift, where marketing becomes the catalyst for the KAM journey. Strong leadership and cross-functional alignment are essential to fostering an integrated, customer-centric culture.

 

Considerations for success

• Foster a customer-led culture:

ABM must go beyond campaigns to become an integral part of the customer engagement process. Focusing on value-based solutions drives deeper customer relationships.

• Invest in skills and training:

Organizations often under-invest in tools, talent, and training for effective ABM. Investing in marketing talent with skills tailored to key accounts is crucial for customer-centric business transformation. Upskilling marketing and KAM teams to collaborate effectively and aligning their way of working is essential.

Training in data-driven decision-making, customer insight generation, and solution co-creation bridges skill gaps and enhances team integration and performance. Upskilling Marketing on the outside-in mindset and customer decision-making is critical to enabling personalized engagement plans, from strategy to optimized channel utilisation aligned on how the customer buys.

• Allocate resources appropriately:

It is puzzling how companies at the start of their KAM journey often forget about Marketing and bring them as an afterthought, or not at all, which creates tension between the KAM mindset and the Marketing one.

It is critical to have Marketing at the table as the KAM journey is ignited. A pilot with Marketing co-orchestrating and owning the engagement plan for each opportunity in a personalised manner for a few of the most important accounts should be able to show value and impact acceleration in strategic planning and execution. Start slow and bring Marketing along as the culture evolves.

• Ensure executive engagement:

Active support from senior leadership is necessary for strategic alignment, resource prioritization, and accountability. Executives must invest time to understand the customer and the strategy. They need to display enough humility to be coached by the KAM and account team, who are the owners of the customer strategy and plan for impactful engagement. Executive sponsorship or engagement is often the missing link and critical success factor

 

2. Role clarity and collaborative execution

ABM’s success hinges on clear role definitions and seamless integration of Marketing and KAM professionals. Yet many organizations struggle to achieve it.

For instance, one company’s success stemmed from creating account-specific marketing roles, focusing on how customers bought rather than how products were sold. This fostered collaboration between Marketing and KAM teams, ensuring alignment on tailored value propositions and customer engagement strategies. A marketing connector role called Segment marketing also played a pivotal role in bridging product campaigns with account-level marketing strategies. The initiative demonstrated the impact of collaboration on customer-centricity and growth.

 

Key Actions

• Define account roles clearly:

Dedicated account marketing roles ensure focus and alignment. Start a pilot, bringing a marketing leader with the right mindset into the strategic account. That person will help to measure impact and prove value to the internal organisation, which will shift the Marketing mindset from an inside-out product push to an outside-in customer pull. Educate the whole organisation on the Why and What of ABM to ignite the journey and align people on this new way of working, prior to skilling up your marketing group.

• Quantify and personalize Value Propositions:

Marketing’s role in creating business cases, clarifying the value to communicate and enhancing account strategies strengthens its integration into KAM.

• Focus on customer engagement plan:

ABM should drive the opti-channel (omnichannel plan optimized and personalised) execution plan of the engagement plan created to provide value-based solutions that deepen relationships, accelerate differentiation, and support customer growth. Driven by the customer journey and decision-making process, the plan enables the team to have points of communication anchored to what matters the most to the customer that will build on each other’s.

3. Align goals and metrics

Aligning marketing KPIs with KAM objectives is critical to breaking down silos. Marketing often focuses on awareness and lead generation, while KAM emphasizes deep, account-specific engagement. Establishing clear, customer-centric KPIs ensures both teams prioritize shared goals.

Organizations must move beyond traditional quantitative KPIs by incorporating qualitative metrics that matter to customers. For example, understanding customer-defined success metrics for specific opportunities can anchor shared metrics, promoting collaboration and reducing tension.

 

Leverage data and AI

Advanced analytics and AI can centralize fragmented data and provide actionable insights. Simplifying complex customer worlds by targeting what matters most creates higher engagement and strengthens partnerships.

Why key account managers hesitate to integrate ABM into their teams

Despite the clear value of Marketing’s role in strategic account teams, many key account managers resist integration due to cultural, structural, and emotional factors.

• Perceived threat to power and knowledge

Key account managers often view themselves as the ultimate owners of customer relationships. Marketing’s involvement is sometimes seen as diluting their influence or introducing competing perspectives. This resistance stems from fears that Marketing’s contributions could overshadow the key account manager’s role or disrupt established client dynamics.

• Nostalgia for traditional ways of working

Some key account managers have built careers on relationship-focused sales models. Shifting to a collaborative model integrating ABM can feel like abandoning proven methods. A reliance on personal rapport over structured, data-driven insights creates resistance to change.

• Lack of trust in Marketing’s understanding of accounts

Key account managers often perceive Marketing as focused on generic campaigns rather than the unique complexities of key accounts. This undermines confidence in Marketing’s ability to contribute effectively, especially when the role of ABM is poorly defined.

• Fear of cultural misalignment

Marketing and KAM teams often operate under different timeframes and metrics. Marketing’s campaign-driven approach can clash with KAM’s long-term relationship-building mindset. Educating organizations on the role of ABM and aligning on its goals can ease these tensions.

• Fear of change

Resistance to change, rooted in nostalgia for traditional practices, often hinders ABM integration. Organizations must highlight how marketing’s data-driven insights complement KAM strategies, enabling better alignment and mutual success.

Overcoming barriers and bridging the gap

 To overcome these challenges, organizations need to:

• Foster trust:

Build alignment between key account managers and Marketing through leadership-driven cultural shifts and training. Start small (pilot) and scale up.

• Clarify roles: 
• Define roles and responsibilities in the account team for optimized execution of each opportunity. This will accelerate team performance and build confidence in integrated efforts.
• Showcase success stories: 

Demonstrate how integrated account teams deliver impactful results.

By addressing these concerns, organizations can make the transition to customer-led and team-enabled strategic account management and ABM more seamless and impactful. KAM is not an individual sport — it is a team effort. Until organizations adopt a cross-functional, outside-in approach, they risk falling short of the mindset shift required for true KAM enablement.

In the work we do, we find fascinating to see that Marketing as a function is often missing at the strategic account table. In our more traditional groups, marketing, and sales work in locked steps but it seems that the shift to strategic account management is often missing marketing when time comes to establish its roadmap. In today’s economy that is disrupted and fast paced, marketing is key in this journey to co orchestrate the customer led, team enabled account Planning strategy and value proposition creation to differentiate ourselves in the eye of our most important customers, generate revenue and mutual objective achievement.

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing strategies, one approach has emerged as a powerful way to target and engage high-value accounts effectively – Account-Based Marketing (ABM). ABM has gained prominence for its ability to provide personalized, laser-focused marketing to key accounts. In this article, we delve into the success story of Thales, a complex global organization serving various business segments, as they harnessed the potential of ABM to enhance customer intimacy and relevance during challenging times. Although not a new shift in the marketing role, many organizations still struggle to integrate it and more importantly to leverage it early on..

When Marketing is integrated at the start of the journey, you can see an acceleration of impact as marketing can bring so much when their ways of working traditionally inside out can be turned to an outside in mindset, starting with the customer pain points and most important preoccupations. Account- Based Marketing or Account Marketing, it is not a battle of title but a need to create an integrated team that work together in providing value beyond the product, relevant to the account and customer in an agile and impactful manner.

Marketing is the R&D to sales and Account Marketers can help the strategic account manager develop insights that are impactful and actionable. They do this by digesting all the insight available and by connecting them with what is important to the customer.

They can also bring the product and campaigns in a relevant manner to the account strategy and business fit and are the owners of what we call the closet. They know our organization and are instrumental in creating the value proposition by knowing the organization value enablers and capabilities. It is time to break the silos of roles boundaries and bring Marketing with Sales again together with the objectives of providing the most value to our customer for mutual growth and revenue generation. (see below: Marketing role in the SAM journey)

When Thales started their journey, they also established a SAM Center of Excellence as critical success factor in which ABM is a foundational part. The presence of a Center of Excellence (CoE) or program office, strategically positioned at the executive level, often reporting to the CEO or C Level. This CoE plays a pivotal role in driving the transformation, setting the roadmap, defining the methodology, and establishing the vision for the strategic account management journey and roadmap. In the best practice we see, having marketing integrated in this CoE is important. For Thales, the importance of executive-level support was clear, and it served as the cornerstone for their ABM journey.

To ensure the success of ABM, having engaged executives and strong executive sponsorship is paramount. These sponsors not only provide buy-in but also actively participate in the ABM strategy. Thales recognized that this engagement from the top was essential for aligning the organization with the ABM vision.

At Thales, this transformation began with the creation of a distinct role – account marketing. These dedicated professionals work closely with account managers, focusing on customizing marketing strategies and activities for specific accounts.

Thales recognized that the success of their ABM strategy relied heavily on the introduction of account marketing as a specialized function. Account marketing professionals are tasked with tailoring marketing strategies to individual accounts, ensuring that the customer feels genuinely valued and understood.

Account marketing professionals focus on several key aspects:
Insights and Targeting: The first part of their activity involves gaining deep insights into the customer, their industry, and specific challenges. They gather information on trends, competition, and customer priorities. This insight enables Thales to align their offerings with the unique needs of each account.

Value Proposition Customization: Account marketing professionals work on tailoring the value proposition to each account. This goes beyond the global value proposition and extends to the specific solutions and services offered to each customer. The goal is to demonstrate how Thales’s solutions not only meet but exceed the customer’s expectations.

Omnichannel Engagement: Account marketing professionals take the lead in developing the engagement plan for each account. This plan encompasses both digital and physical channels, creating a cohesive and personalized experience for the customer. The omnichannel approach ensures that the customer receives a consistent message across all touchpoints.

The collaboration between account marketing and account managers is a defining feature of Thales’s ABM approach. Account managers are responsible for the account plan, which includes engagement strategies. Account marketing professionals suggest proposals and co-orchestrate the execution of the engagement plan, aligning marketing efforts with the broader account strategy.

A key challenge in ABM is breaking down silos between marketing and account management. Going beyond the perceived sole ownership of the account by the strategic account manager is important. Strategic account management is a team sport and requires a village. The co orchestration of the strategic account plan by this tight collaboration of Marketing and the SAM accelerates and enhances the value offering to the accounts. Breaking this tension and sharing the how to from account teams that are doing this well is a great way to start this way of working.

Instead of being prescriptive, Thales let the account team define their collaboration and elevated the success that they were having in this great partnership of Marketing and SAM.

How to connect Account Marketing to the rest of the Marketing group?

The Role of Segment Marketing:

In addition to account marketing, Thales created a role called Segment Marketing. This function serves as a bridge between products, campaign marketing and the account marketing at the account team table, focusing on specific market segments, such as airports, and presenting Thales’s value proposition tailored to the entire segment. Segment Marketing considers the diverse range of business lines within Thales to generate tailored messages for the market.

Segment marketing professionals play a crucial role in understanding the specific needs and challenges of each market segment. They collaborate closely with product marketing and account marketing to ensure that Thales’s offerings are aligned with the unique requirements of the segment.

Thales’s Success in ABM:

Thales identified over 100 « focus customers », emphasizing the need for segmentation to target high-value accounts and reduce the number of their strategic account where they have one account marketing role per account. They also implemented an executive sponsor for each strategic account, ensuring close alignment and support.
For the key accounts, they still have an account marketing role at the table, but covering multiple accounts (4 -5 ) part of a same market segment.
The creation of account marketing roles was a game-changer. These professionals worked closely with account managers, customizing value propositions and engagement strategies, ensuring that each customer felt individually catered to.

The key to success in Thales’s ABM journey was collaboration. Account managers and account marketing professionals worked as a team to create and execute the account plans, optimizing the engagement strategy. The close interaction between the two functions led to quick wins and demonstrated the value of ABM.

Value-Based Innovation and Marketing:

Thales adopted a value-based approach to innovation and marketing. They focused on the value they delivered to customers beyond their products, emphasizing innovation, value proposition, pricing, and negotiation. Thales quantified and personalized these value propositions, showing customers the tangible benefits of their solutions. With this rigor, Thales has been able to scale some of their best practices, creating business cases to be used by their account team with customers.

Thales’s experience in quantifying value showed that marketing’s involvement was critical. This collaboration between marketing and account managers was key to successful value quantification and communication.

Conclusion:

Thales’s journey into Account-Based Marketing serves as a testament to the power of a well-executed ABM strategy. By establishing a Center of Excellence, securing executive sponsorship, and integrating account marketing into their approach, they successfully connected with high-value accounts, customized their offerings, and quantified the value they provided. Thales’s experience exemplifies the effectiveness of ABM when implemented as a holistic approach, emphasizing teamwork, innovation, and customer-centricity. This story is a valuable lesson for organizations seeking to transform their marketing strategies and build stronger relationships with their most important clients. The synergy between account marketing and segment marketing exemplifies the holistic approach required for successful ABM. This approach can be a game-changer for organizations looking to enhance customer engagement and drive business growth. It is time to ensure Marketing is at the ignition of our strategic account management journey and at the table from the ignition to foster that customer led and team enabled account planed for mutual growth and revenue generation.