Two Ways to be FOR your Sales Team

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to observe the leadership of Jeff Henderson over the past few years. And as a marketer, I’m super fascinated by the FOR movement he has created. Jeff is the author of "Know What You're FOR: A Growth Strategy for Work, An Even Better Strategy for Life."

The main idea of this movement is based on two questions: 

1. What do we want to be known for? 
2. What are we known for? 

If I frame these questions in the context of account-based marketing (ABM), the customer is my sales team. Our job as account-based marketers is to serve our sales team members well so that they can serve our customers well. 

Most ABM professionals will tell you they want to be known for driving revenue in their organizations. That’s what we want to be known for.

In order to accomplish that, we need to serve sales well and we need to be their biggest champion. Their success is our success. Something I’ve told just about every sales rep I’ve ever had the honor of serving is “My job is to help you make more money.” 

Now for the hard part. If we’re being completely honest, B2B marketers have not always been known for being on the side of sales. We haven’t always been known for helping them sell more stuff. We are often known for generating leads when sales is selling to accounts. Sometimes they’ve been leads to the accounts sales is selling to, but a lot of times they aren’t. Even though I believe we’ve made great strides in changing this perception, it is still a deeply held belief among our sales counterparts. 

I’m not here to bash lead generating marketers. I was one not too long ago. But I think we can do better. And even as I write this, I know I can do better.

There is a clear gap between what we want to be known for and what we are known for. 

So how do we close that gap? 

Here are two ways to start:

1. Become a Fan

In the FOR book, Jeff Henderson writes:

“Winning organizations of tomorrow will be more concerned with becoming fans of their customers instead of convincing customers to become fans of the organization. 

If I took a little creative liberty and rewrote this in the context of ABM, it would say:

“Winning B2B marketers of tomorrow will be more concerned with becoming fans of sales instead of convincing sales to become fans of marketing.” 

Wow! What would that look like in your organization if that shift happened? 

I firmly believe that success in ABM starts with being a raving fan of your sales team. Are you cheering them on at their sales meetings when they close a deal? 

As Jeff mentions in the book:

“In order to create fans, you must become a fan.”

2. Be an Encourager

I remember back in the days of #FlipMyFunnel when I had to sell sponsorships to our conferences. Y’all… it is really hard to sell a dream to someone for tens of thousands of dollars. I was essentially selling a promise. Dear sponsor… if you give me lots of money, I promise that in a span of eight hours on a single day that I will execute this event flawlessly and help you grow your business by a magnitude of 10x. Phew! Talk about pressure. 

But this is what sales goes through Every. Single. Day. 

And that experience gave me so much appreciation for the realities my sales counterparts face in their roles. 

Truett Cathy, Founder of Chick-fil-A, said:

“The international sign to know if someone needs encouragement is if they are breathing. If they’re breathing, they need encouragement.”

Sales needs us to encourage them, fellow marketers. Their jobs are hard. Really hard. 

As Jeff mentioned in his book, the small moments matter. I remember in my days of sales when someone would come by to offer a brief word of encouragement and it was so life-giving. Shoutout to my former boss Peter Herbert, who was so good at this. He’d walk by my desk and drop a random “You’re awesome” and oh how it filled my soul. ?? It gave me gas in my tank to keep moving forward. 

This requires intentionality, but it goes a long way toward helping sales win. 

I’m not saying that strategies and tactics don’t matter in ABM. They absolutely do. But they’ll have far less impact if your sales team doesn’t believe you are FOR them. 

I’ll close with a great quote from Jeff’s book: 

“It’s all about purpose. 

And that purpose is no longer about us.

It’s all about them. 

It’s all FOR them. 

In turn, it’s how they become FOR us.”

So fellow B2B marketer… what’s one way you can start being FOR your sales team members today? Drop me a comment with your ideas. 

Or if you’re in sales… what’s one way we can be FOR you? Share your thoughts in the comments.