In our Ones to Watch 2023 report, we asked our nominees for their expert insights into a number of areas, such as what revenue marketers should be focusing on, and how they operate within their own roles. One crucial question we asked included what skills they felt were essential for every revenue marketer.

You can download the full report for all the insights and expert advice, or you can read the answers to this essential question right here.

What skill sets do you see as essential for revenue marketing?

Austin Beveridge, Head of Marketing at Arc

Revenue marketers need to walk the line between sales and marketing. They must be deeply analytical and have an appreciation for collecting, understanding, and leveraging data to make better-informed decisions. They must be willing to ask questions to deepen their understanding and challenge decisions that don’t make sense or align with the data. They should be ruthlessly committed, because unlike driving Marketing Qualified Leads, driving revenue requires a commitment to follow through to the end.

It's your job (along with sales) to do everything in your power to make sure that leads sign on the dotted line at the end of their buying journey. Lastly, revenue marketers should be hyper-efficient and focused.

“There are always a million and one fires to put out—whether that be preparing for an upcoming launch, responding to an inbound media request, or jumping in on a relevant Twitter thread. While these may all seem important, they don’t need to all be addressed at once. Instead, block off multiple 15-minute slots throughout the day to address the items individually. Not only will they all get done, but the ultimate output of each will also be done in a much more thorough and thoughtful way.

Mai Fenton, Chief Marketing Officer at Superscript

Fundamental skills for marketing are being curious and leveraging customer insights and analytics, and this is true of revenue marketing, too.

At Superscript, we build our revenue generation plans based on key insight and data science to identify, for example, which leads are likely to deliver more revenue (ARPU/tenure); which channel tactics convert higher value/LTV customers; which leads to nurture for future conversion; and more. Understanding attribution and how the various channels interplay is hugely important to optimize paths to purchase too, with an eye on unit economics.

I also think that while in B2B, brands tend to either rely on top-of-the-funnel activity (sponsorship, exhibitions, content, etc) or on lower funnel intent, it’s essential to have a skillset in both brand marketing and performance marketing, as the two are equally important to sustainable revenue growth.

Charlotte Ford, Head of Brand Marketing and Engagement, heycar

Ultimately, it comes down to commercial acumen and the ability to check your own ego at the door. What I mean by that is as a marketer driving revenue and business growth, you’ll need to be completely confident in your knowledge of how your business makes revenue. You’d be surprised how many marketers aren’t! You’ll also need to be able to cast a critical eye over your own marketing decisions and ensure you’re judging them fairly. If your strategy doesn’t deliver (and you’ve accurately measured it), you’ll need to accept that and go again.

Adam Gleicher, VP of Marketing at Bits of Stock

Empathy is an essential skill for revenue marketing. Ultimately, an effective marketer must recognize the buyer’s pain points, envision how a prospect would pitch your product to their boss, understand what motivates them to take the time and effort to research, and internally promote and purchase your product. In order to empathize, a marketer must be eager to learn; be humble enough to challenge their own assumptions; and be resilient when inevitably campaigns fail or deals fall through.

In today’s landscape, a marketer needs to be comfortable measuring the outcomes of their campaigns and being unsentimental about the efforts that are moving the needle. This means having the ability to identify when a channel, campaign, or message is or isn’t working and focus your time and resources on the strategies and tactics that are driving outcomes – even if it means shutting down a campaign that excited you.

Jasmine de Guzman, Director of International Marketing at CivicPlus

I think two skills are key for revenue marketing. Execution and reflection. You’ve got to execute to produce results. Be curious. Take risks. Listen to sales, and execute based on their challenges. Some will pay off and some won’t. Continuous reflection is also critical so that you can evaluate what is and what isn’t working. And if you’ve got a gut feeling that something will work, but that it just needs a little bit of time. Then stick with it. Don’t be discouraged. When chasing revenue, you’re often conditioned to have a short-term mindset of chasing the number. But sometimes long-term plays can be much more beneficial.”

Kristina Jaramillo, Founder of Personal ABM

As revenue marketing is not about sourcing the pipeline but rather about impacting stage progression, deal sizes, win rates, P&L, ARR, GRR, and NRR, revenue marketers need to have business and finance acumen. They need to have a strong understanding of what ABM is and how it should be used to drive revenue growth with future and existing customers that make up the 20% of accounts that can deliver 80% of today’s and tomorrow’s revenue growth.

Vinay Khanna, Head of Marketing, Savant

To be a successful revenue marketer, an individual should have a bias towards stats. They need to adopt a data and numbers oriented approach along with good communication and leadership skills towards achieving professional goals.

A revenue marketer must be prepared to gather and evaluate data to ascertain how their sales and marketing strategies are affecting revenue. They must be prepared to use the analyzed information to determine the tactics the teams will employ. They must also understand what the data marketing and sales teams mean through objective data analysis.

Revenue marketers are result-oriented and possess the capability to drive profitable revenue for organizations in both short and long term. They should be a good negotiator and must collaborate seamlessly with other commercial teams; as traditionally sales and marketing teams do not always agree with each other, despite working towards the same goal.

And the most important thing, a successful revenue marketer should be proactive rather than reactive and with their leadership qualities, they need to guide teams towards achieving their goals.

Mona Lolas, B2B Solution Partner APAC at Forrester

Aligning marketing and sales is crucial in any organization. Revenue marketing leaders need to develop multiple approaches based on a deep understanding of the language of business. This will include aligning marketing measurements to the business goals. A top skill that is essential is to be able to effectively communicate marketing's impact to key internal audiences and provide guidance by tailoring communication of marketing’s value to audience needs, priorities, biases, and preferences.

Continually keeping on top of emerging marketing technologies, trends and best practices is another priority. Marketers need to understand how AI and machine learning are helping the demand engine and tap into buying group behavior. Knowing how to be leveraging Web3 is crucial to building a future-ready marketing engine. With that, both digital marketing and customer relationship/marketing is a top skill that will be needed to fuel this growth.

To build a high-performing revenue marketing engine new skills need to be added and these include data analysts who can interpret a set of data into insights that can be turned into strategy. They need to be able to tell sales a story about the data and show how marketing is affecting revenue.

Eugenio Panetta, Chief Revenue Officer at AddReax Group

Highly motivated and ambitious, quick learner, able to work under pressure and efficiently manage a team. Capable to identify patterns and decode business models. Knowledge of revenue marketing tracking systems and platforms.

Gastón Tourn, Chief Marketing Officer at Curio

While data analysis is certainly a critical skill for revenue marketers, I believe that creativity is just as, if not more, important. In today's crowded and competitive marketplace, the ability to capture attention and deliver a compelling message is crucial, and creativity is key to achieving this. We need more poets working in revenue marketing.

Ilias Tsatalmpasidis, Head of Growth at Superscript

I think above everything in any type of marketing is understanding your customer. That's where it all starts, from that you can identify where and how to reach them, their pain points and which of them your product or service is solving. So it's all about this customer understanding and the product marrying the two up. Of course, being analytical to measure the impact and being good at storytelling to excite and get the buy-in from the stakeholders is equally important.