What is a Customer Acquisition Manager (CAM)?
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering… “What’s the difference between a CAM and a BDM?” We get it. There’s confusion and overlap between various sales titles used at different organizations. What’s more, titles are often changing and adapting to industry trends.
The fast-growing, competitive nature of the SaaS industry has created an environment where new titles are needed to accommodate for completely new positions. What’s more, (slightly) different titles – à la Sales Development Rep vs. Business Development Rep – are created to sound more relevant, modern, and in line with company values and culture.
If you’re new to all this sales jargon, look no further! We’ve got you covered. Keep reading to find out exactly what a customer acquisition manager does, average salary for CAMs, career outlook, and available CAM jobs.
In sales, the acronym CAM generally stands for Customer Acquisition Manager, or Channel Account Manager. Customer Acquisition Managers are generally part of inbound sales teams, and they are responsible for encouraging prospects down the sales funnel, closer to purchase.
Customer Acquisition Manager Job Description
If you’re thinking to yourself, “What does a customer acquisition manager do?” Keep reading! Customer Acquisition Managers (CAM) are key players in inbound sales, meaning they speak to prospects who are already qualified and know something about their organization. Often this initial qualification happens through marketing efforts, meaning CAMs speak with marketing qualified leads (MQL).
Each organization has a different set of criteria a lead must meet to be considered “qualified” or “marketing qualified” – for example, if someone downloads a PDF or signs up for a free trial, they may be considered a marketing qualified lead.
Unlike outbound sales representatives who may be prospecting and reaching out to completely cold leads, customer acquisition managers deal with warmer leads who have already found the company in some way – in that regard, they have come through an inbound channel. CAMs share information about the product or service they are selling, and aim to create trusted, meaningful relationships with prospective customers.
Market response reps have a challenging job – their chances of converting a lead to the next stage of the funnel decrease significantly the first 5 minutes after initial contact. If a CAM is doing their job effectively, hot leads who are excited about the product will be transferred to Account Executives to seal the deal.
A portion of a CAM’s responsibilities include managing other team members who play a role in inbound sales, such as Customer Acquisition Specialists.
Customer Acquisition Manager Salary
The average base salary for Customer Acquisition Managers in the United States is $70,839 per year, with an average additional $29,126 in commission tied to sales and performance goals (source: Glassdoor).
CAM Career Outlook
With the abundance of automation, software, and online marketing tools available on the market today, it may be worth wondering if sales positions will still be growing in a few years.
If you’re looking to grow your career in the sales industry, don’t worry – as the market outlook for sales managers is positive! An estimated 7% growth for sales manager positions is expected between 2020 and 2030 (source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Customer Acquisition Manager Jobs
Looking for available CAM jobs? Here are a few resources to help your search:
- Customer Acquisition Manager Jobs on LinkedIn
- Customer Acquisition Manager Jobs on Indeed
- Customer Acquisition Manager Jobs on Glassdoor
Which sales role is right for me?
The right sales role for you depends on your experience and expertise, but sales can be a good industry to get your start if you are entering the job market for the first time!
Some key characteristics of great sales and customer support professionals include:
- Excellent interpersonal skills
- Great communicators
- Passion for what they are selling
- Willingness to roll up their sleeves and get the job done
- No fear calling and following-up with potential clients
- Positive attitude
- Creative and passionate about helping others
- Ability to multi-task across different platforms and forms of communication
- Ability to work well under pressure and with a team
Does this sound like you? Kixie is hiring, and we’d love to hear from you! We are looking for jovial, hard-working colleagues to share our journey as we change the landscape of business telephony.
