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Figuratively speaking, raise your hand if you’ve heard one of these as your organization targets larger & more complex customers..
Going account-based? Shifting upmarket? “Hyper-personalization?” Multi-channel approaches?
Now [figuratively] cover your ears, the noise from today’s best buzzwords and phrases can hurt!
In all seriousness, there’s no shortage of reasons for the shift towards ABM/ABS. And to be clear, we’re not here to convince you that a mutually coordinated effort from all departments is non-negotiable for driving interest and change within complex companies to land large deals.
Make no mistake, an account-based approach is the right way to sell to high-value, key accounts. You know that, and we know that.
What we’re here to do is help to cut through the endless sea of high-level, rewritten, syndicated, fluffy content on this subject. Based on years of collective experience from our team selling a variety of services & products across many different verticals, we’ve prescribed an actionable framework for:
Volumes can be written on each subject, but we’ll deliver the highlights on each. In the process, we’ll tie together tooling and process to execute an account-based sales strategy (without over-engineering or falling prey to “analysis paralysis”)
Oh, and best of all? You don’t have to be a billion dollar company to gather the resources to make this happen. In fact, you can be a brand new startup and do this – we promise 🙂
There’s many more, but here’s a few we need to knock out.
Again, it’s a team sport here. Account Executives / Reps are tasked with leading the execution of the sales motion and marshaling internal resources. Who can we as reps lean on? Generally speaking, here’s who we’ll be bringing into the picture:
Account-based and enterprise sales is hard enough on its own, so don’t let a lack of tools or bad technology limit your efforts.
For best results, you’ll need:
As the foundation for this framework, we’re going to assume you & your company have clearly defined and understand the following (if they need to built or dusted off, rewind and come back)
Tempting as it can be, don’t start shooting from the hip. Invest the hours with your team to do the research on your target accounts.
With what we call an Engagement Report, you need to build out a list of your target accounts and aggregate information from:
It’s best to follow along. To do so, download your own template of the Engagement Report
Using the account-based template as a guide, research and track the results for the various columns:
To expand on TAM in particular, LinkedIn is your friend here. Navigate to a company page and apply a search to estimate the total addressable market within an account. This is a bit easier to generalize when you’re selling an offering with a price tag based on headcount. For instance, FoxBound can understand relative deal opportunity based on the # of reps in an organization.
Also, think through the key qualifying indicators of an account. Is there a friendly partner in the ecosystem? An incumbent ripe for replacement? A strategic initiative you’re poised to support?
Being the first to engage key prospects with relevant information based on recent triggers makes you relevant, helpful, and trustworthy.
If you’re not familiar with Sales Automation (also referred to as sales engagement) tools, it may make sense to take a step back and do some research before continuing. In short, Sales Automation tools allow sales reps to build campaigns consisting of templated & personalized emails, phone calls, and social steps.
The fundamental value of sales automation stems from the ability to eliminate mundane tasks like copying & pasting emails, manually managing follow ups, limitations with scale, and tracking email KPI’s (open, clicks, replies).
In the framework below, we’ll illustrate how an AE or AE/BDR combo can work together to leverage Sales Automation to execute an account-based motion.
And yes, FoxBound offers a sales automation + data platform that fully facilitates this workflow, but other tools can be used as well. This is by no-means a guide restricted to only our customers.
Core to the concept of Sales Automation is the ability to create Templates – which are essentially just emails that you write once and then reuse & customize in a variety of different ways. Messaging and writing emails is a bit outside of the scope of this guide, but you’ll want the basics:
Hit multiple layers of an organization with different messaging that can (sometimes) be delivered from corresponding layers of your own org. This, when done properly, can hep you be more multithreaded and make sure you don’t get stuck too low on the totem pole with a block who won’t elevate you up the chain.
As a rough draft, use the template to map out your account-based Campaign.
In your Sales Automation tool, put your outline into motion! If you don’t have one or it can’t fit this process, check out our free trial below to continue with the account-based sales guide.
Create and name individual campaigns (Pursuits in FoxBound terms) based on the segment & persona you’re targeting.
Use your Templates or existing messaging to draft each step. If you’re using the FoxBound trial and want some examples or guides, try these guides.
Once you’re all done, you’ll have tailored campaigns for each layer of an organization with room to personalize further with the help of the initial research you performed.
In this example, there’s 5 Pursuits at the bottom of the page that map to our personas:
Working with the supporting cast, here are a few ideas for purpose-driven meetings to drive your account-based program forward as a team.
Now that we have our messaging crafted for each persona, segmentation is the easy part. Within your prospecting tools, create Lists for each respective segment. We’ll use this to compartmentalize lists of prospects to make it easier to map them to our sales campaigns.
There are many data tools to choose from and chances are, your organization has more than one. In this example, we’re going to use FoxBound DataScout to pull the right Contacts into Lists within the FoxBound app.
For naming conventions, keep yourself organized by following a framework like “ABS: [target account(s)], [Industry], [Persona].” Make sure they have similar or parallel naming to the Pursuits/Campaigns you just created. It never hurts to be organized in account-based processes.
Now, let’s scout for some Contacts to add to each of our Lists.
Make sure you have different searches for each layer of an organization. This is a key nuance in staying organized in account-based sales.
As an example, here’s how we can split up Personas using the “Job Title” field in Sales Nav:
Make sure you have different searches for each layer of an organization. This is a key nuance in staying organized in account-based sales.
As an example, here’s how we can split up Personas using the “Job Title” field in Sales Nav:
Now for the fun part! Assuming all Campaigns / Pursuits are prepped and ready for execution, this is a good time to set up a kickoff session with a BDR / other teammate.
With Contacts ready to be engaged with tailored outreach, here’s where all your prep work and research comes into shape. With your Sales Automation tool of choice, start personalizing and executing your account-based sales campaigns.
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