Q&A with Sangram Vajre: All About Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Fundamentals

We’ve gotten to know Sangram Vajre, the co-founder & chief evangelist of Terminus, pretty well over the last couple years – and we’ve also seen the power of account-based marketing (ABM) in B2B organizations that Sangram and his team love to share with other marketers. So when we heard he would be leading a new LinkedIn course on Account-Based Marketing Fundamentals, we were excited. Here’s a quick Q&A we had with Sangram about the course and what to expect.

Can you tell us what we will – and won’t – learn in your new ABM course?

Absolutely! These lessons are all about ABM fundamentals; basically a crash course in the components that can either make or break your ABM strategy. You’ll learn more about what it takes to execute the TEAM (target, engage, activate and measure) framework that fuels the most successful ABM programs, and get a glimpse into some compelling case studies that show it in action. I’ll also pull back the curtain and give you the tools to craft the right messaging and perform the best analyses of your results so you can continually improve.

What you won’t learn about are leads (we care about accounts instead). And you won’t hear about prospects (we call them future customers). So be prepared to flip your funnel – and your mindset – upside down.

 Is this geared toward marketers of a certain skill level?

Technically, it was created with intermediate marketers in mind, but it really can apply to every B2B marketer who is interested in becoming more effective. The most junior marketers can learn a lot from the principles I’ll be covering, and even the most advanced marketers can glean a deeper level of understanding into an ABM strategy. It’s another, really effective tool that’s valuable for any marketer to have in their arsenal, especially those in the B2B world.

Why did you decide to create and share a course like this?

I wrote the very first book on Account-Based Marketing in 2016, published by Wiley. It was written when ABM was just becoming a hot topic, but the industry has now taken ABM mainstream (case in point: there are over 700 customers at Terminus and 10,000 people who are part of the #FlipMyFunnel community).

So this new course is a synthesis of everything I have learned over the past few years, in bite-sized nuggets (videos that are each four minutes or less), for anyone to consume and get started on their ABM journey. The entire course can be completed within an hour, and the person attending it will be considered ABM certified by LinkedIn, which is also pretty cool. And it’s free for anyone who has a LinkedIn premium account, which is a bonus, too.

 Will anything in the course surprise us?

Yes! Here are a few things that most people find surprising…

1. 1. ABM is beyond demand generation. Forward-thinking companies are running pipeline velocity and customer marketing campaigns to win bigger deals, faster.
   2. The traditional metrics that marketers have focused on during their entire careers will be challenged at their core, and you’ll see new metrics exposed that are based on business outcomes.
   3. Finally, ABM is a strategy for your entire lifecycle of your customers. In short, ABM is B2B.

When done well, ABM is really transformative. I’m excited for more people to be able to learn about and embrace it through this course, so they get to experience that transformation firsthand!

To learn more, or register for the course, I invite you to head over to LinkedIn.