All Revenue is Not Equal: Shifting Mindset with Account-Based Sales
With the rise of cross-functional buying committees in B2B selling situations, sales and marketing professionals are reevaluating some of their “tried-and-true” methods and shifting away from just individuals to more of an account-based sales approach.
One of the hallmarks of account-base sales is hyper-personalization. With a focus on treating every account as a market of one, this model requires understanding who the key stakeholders are within an account and then targeting your outreach based on what’s most important and relevant to them.
For a recent episode of the Mental Selling podcast, Matt Heinz, President & Founder of Heinz Marketing and host of Sales Pipeline Radio, shared his insights with me about account-based sales and marketing, how it has evolved and how to strategically select targets. He also talked how to interpret intent signals, the role of marketing qualified-leads, why customer retention is more important than ever and other tips for dealing with today’s buying committees. Here are just a few highlights from our conversation.
Account Based Sales: How To Strategically Select Sales Targets
In Heinz’s view, B2B has always been about account-based marketing and sales. As he puts it, “One of our largest jobs as sellers is to help build internal consensus towards a commitment change,” and that’s always been the case.
However, the stakes, the playing field and the scale are all bigger than ever today. Especially in the larger, complex deals, buying committees often span multiple functions and diverse departments, with more people invested in the decision. It no longer falls to one person to make the call. An account-based strategy hinges on identifying who these people are and what matters most to them. When you’re dealing with so many different roles and individual priorities, it can be much more difficult to narrow things down and determine how to target your efforts most efficiently and effectively.
Select The Right Sales Targets With Psychographic Details
So, where do you begin in your account selection process? Heinz suggests focusing on the attributes, characteristics and ‘intent signals’ of a target that show you they’re ready to buy. Once you’ve nailed down what those psychographic details are, you have a benchmark that will help you more accurately select your accounts—both current and future. As Heinz points out, some accounts might not hit the mark just yet, but there might be signs that they’re on the path to becoming the kind of account that will be attractive to your organization.
“Constantly looking at and evaluating the market for who matches your fit—this is where you have the most success and the most precision in selling overall,” he said.
During the podcast, Matt shared an example of an education technology seller targeting school districts. Without looking at the psychographic details of an account, that seller might waste time targeting a lot of districts that are far more decentralized in their decision-making and therefore have an incredibly low chance of buying compared to the ones that are more centralized and a better match for their value proposition.
Creating Value Within An Account
Within any account, salespeople typically have a lead contact or “champion” that they build a relationship with. But even if there’s no formal buying committee, they’ll also need to determine who else is involved with the decision, what role they play, what their priorities are and when and how to start building relationships with these other stakeholders.
The biggest mistake salespeople make here is failing to get permission from the primary contact to reach out to other key players. Instead, be transparent with that person, and communicate from a point of value by emphasizing that those additional conversations will add more insights and benefit their decision-making process as well.
Account Based Sales Customer Retention Strategy
Once you land that big customer, the account-based work is only beginning. At this point, the organization needs to shift its focus to customer retention, which is a key part of the revenue and customer lifetime value (CLV) equation. In financial services, for example, a 5% increase in customer retention has been shown to produce a whopping 25% increase in profit.
The experiences the end-users have with your products and services can be hugely influential on whether or not the customer chooses to stay with you for the long term.
But it’s important to recognize that the interests and priorities of the users can be very different from those of the buying committee.
Adopting a customer-value mindset means making sure every customer touch point across the organization—from sales to customer service to marketing to finance—is aligned and focused on understanding the users’ needs and delivering value that matters to them.
As Heinz says, “If you are not managing and communicating that value across the account, you’re exposing yourself to a lot of churn risk.”
Creating and delivering meaningful value is also a surefire way to build greater customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth across the organization. After all, just because you’ve acquired the account, it doesn’t mean that your business within it will automatically expand. Gaining a foothold and building momentum within that organization requires continually nurturing and growing the relationship.
For plenty more insights and tips from my discussion with Matt Heinz, be sure to listen to the full episode of Mental Selling, Rethinking Account-Based Selling and Marketing: Mindset, Strategy and Focus.
Related Blog Posts
