PHASE 2:
Accounts

How to choose target accounts that have the highest growth potential

4 types of accounts you should be looking for

With our goal to scale our ABM program, we first need to prove that it works.

You need to carefully select your accounts while your resources are small so that you can definitively prove ROI to justify expansion. Here are four types of accounts that do just that:

High yields

The big fish. These are the companies that would give you a bigger deal than you'd normally aim for. Bagging one of these would offer substantial revenue in the long term.

Look-alikes

Companies that are similar to your "best buyers". You can also look to existing customers with lots of upsell potential. These are likely to have the highest lifetime value.

Product fits

Businesses with needs that clearly match your product's benefits. These deals should be easier to close as it should take less convincing of product relevancy.

Quick wins

These accounts typically have a short sale cycle because of their size or structure. They likely won't have the same revenue impact but they'll provide positive stories to tide stakeholders over for the bigger wins. Just verify they really are coming from ABM.

Beware of the quick win. You might be labeling things ABM when they're not. When you get a quick win, make sure it's part of your strategy.

Ross O'Neill, Senior Account-Based Marketing Manager, EMEA, Cloudera

How to find these accounts

Once you've defined what type of account will help you scale, you need to start drawing up a list of businesses that match that criteria. There are a few ways to do this:

Intent data

This is one of the best ways to find accounts that are looking for a solution right now. Every opened email and downloaded thought leadership piece is a sign pointing you towards their problem. Tools like Bombora help you set up triggers to instantly notify you of intent signals.

CRM

A well-maintained CRM is vital to this method. Dig up your data to find lapsed customers, early-stage pipeline deals, names that stand out in light of your account criteria, and later-stage pipeline deals you don't want to lose.

MAS (Marketing Automation System)

Check out leads who have engaged with your content in the past, especially if there are multiple leads from the same company. That's a good indicator of ABM potential. The same goes for IP visitors who frequent your site a lot but rarely or never convert.

Watercooler

Your coworkers (especially sales and marketing) are likely full of anecdotal evidence that points towards ideal target accounts. If a salesperson has a strong gut feeling about a specific account, it could be worth researching further.

Social media

Social listening tools can be used to look for keywords related to your product or the pain points it solves. You're unlikely to select an account purely on these results but they can help identify companies that are good product fits before researching further to see if they're worth your time.

Prioritizing for scale

As you dig through your CRM and talk with your sales team, you'll probably find that there are more accounts than you could possibly give your full attention to. This is where you need to start prioritizing.

When your ABM program is small, the margin for error is really tight. Go after the wrong accounts and your ROI is going to be poor, making it impossible to attract further investment. This is why you have to focus your efforts on the most viable accounts while still making some effort towards the others.

You can tier your target accounts so they get the right level of attention and resources. Tier one would get the most dedicated marketing and sales attention to get them to close while tier two would likely contain a larger list but will receive less investment.

To help tier your accounts, you'll need a scoring system that can be made up of firmographics, cumulative behaviors, and intent data. Then you can assign specific activities to each tier. Here's an example of this from Marketo:

Source

The account 360

After you've identified your target accounts and sorted them into tiers, you need to do an account 360, also known as account mapping. This is where you delve inside your accounts and look at the individuals (absolutely vital before you move onto content creation).

Who are the decision-makers?

Find out which people in your account have the weight to make purchasing decisions. According to Gartner, a company of 100 people will have seven decision-makers with different levels of influence.

How do they make decisions?

Once you have the decision-makers' names, you need to group them based on their roles in the buying process and how much impact they have on a decision. The simplest way to categorize is by influencer, buyer, and gatekeeper, but you can label however you see fit.

What are their aches and pains?

In order to serve up personalized targeting, you'll need to find out which challenges resonate the most with which personas. This lets you deliver specific solutions to their problems. Learnings from previous content engagement data come in really handy here if available to you.

Where can you reach them?

Identify where your decision-makers spend most of their time. Collect social media profiles, email addresses, and phone numbers so you're equipped to target them from multiple relevant angles.