I was reading a couple of articles this morning about Account Based Marketing and was taken with the article below by Mark Amtower which looks at how Account Based Marketing can be used to sell to government agencies. 

It has five very sensible steps for business to enter and then grow an account at a government agency:

1: Pick the target agency(cies)

2: Map the influencers.

3: Do the research.

4: Develop a content calendar and content delivery strategy.

5: Expand the beachhead.

Mark talks to each of these in the article but it was his thoughts on content creation and specifically what you are trying to achieve through content that caught my eye.

His first point is that the content created should be the result of conversations with the prospect. This is where a need is identified, often by the Sales / Business Development relationship holder. 

He then moves on to how the content must big-up the Subject Matter Experts (preferably by having them be the author) because "they need to be positioned as the key players the agency needs to move forward."

This is a really good way of positioning an Expert: a person that a client "needs" to be able to progress in their plans. Most people don't bring in outside expertise until they need to but once a need is identified which is preventing progress, to not bring in an advisor makes little sense. If content is created with the purpose of positioning experts relative to known needs, it'll have a good chance of promoting their brand and enable the Sales person to advance the account.

This is also, a powerful example of Experts, Sales and Marketing working together in the Expert-to-Expert virtuous circle.