Account-Based Sales
Identify Target Accounts
The first step of the process is to identify the accounts, or organisations, that you want to target. The volume of sales needed to meet your company’s revenue goals
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To do this, do a deep-dive with your team and identify common patterns among the clients that bring you the most revenue. Now, this is pretty similar to coming up with a Buyer’s Persona, but keep in mind that you’re looking to target an entire organization, not a specific lead or person.
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Some factors that you might want to take into consideration include: industry, company size, number of years established, geographic location, annual revenue, and profit margin.
Align Sales and Marketing
Much has been said about (and suffered because of) misalignment between sales and marketing. In some organizations, the gap is so wide that the two departments end up blaming each other for missed targets and poor business outcomes.
In Account-Based Sales, you don’t want prospects to get mixed signals. The key is to bring all customer-facing teams so close together that there would be no room left for operational, strategic, and messaging gaps to emerge.
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There are three reasons you want to align your revenue-generating teams. A tight sales-marketing alignment will help you:
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Improve workflow
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Increase revenue
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Provide better customer experiences
Focus on High-Value Accounts
ABS doesn’t work for every type of customer or B2B seller. It best suits sellers with a high proportion of corporate buyers in their portfolio and best suits customers who have multiple decision makers. If both conditions apply, then ABS is for you.
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Because you’ll likely have a mix of client types, focus ABS efforts on high-value customers. Study each target account and gain a deep understanding of the company's pain points and aspirations. Identify key stakeholders and classify them into buyer personas. You can then formulate distinct engagement playbooks and automated sequences for each persona.
Sales Funnel
​The funnel that contains opportunities that a salesperson has identified. Is aimed at constantly finding and attracting new customers, then the relationship funnel works the other way. Having a structured and thorough process for generating leads is essential. others are more severe and can hinder your ability to generate sales.
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An effective ABM funnel starts with the accounts that your company has decided to target. These accounts may be agreed upon in a collaboration between marketing and sales divisions, or by a team that combines these functions under one umbrella. The funnel should include activity by all revenue teams, rather than just the one(s) dedicated to selling your product or service.
Follow Up Consistently
It takes several touches and follow-ups for even the best sales organizations to close a single deal. Good thing you can now use sales engagement platforms to automate follow-up sequences.
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Our own sellers practice what they preach. The sales development team at Outreach, for example, follows the agoge sequence, a predefined series of touchpoints that includes calls, emails, social messaging, SMS texts, and other communication channels.
The sequence relies heavily on follow-up tactics once a personalized message has been sent to a prospect.
Customer Acquisition Cost
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Analysing lead generation campaigns
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Monitoring effectiveness of sales
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Identifying new marketing goals
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Growth through quality leads & exclusive leads
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Work as in-house team partnering with a purpose
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Providing product development feedback
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Speed to market
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Experience
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Cross product capability
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Low overhead
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New vertical markets
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Fast response
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Sales force longevity
