Are you looking to expand your B2B sales account? You’re in the right place! This guide contains many tips and strategies to help you close more sales and maintain lasting relationships with clients. Continue reading to find out more.

This guide will show you how to implement account-based sales. It covers everything from building your client base to which metrics to target. Although account-based selling has been around for a while, it is becoming more popular. In this article, we will explain exactly what account-based sales is and how it can be used to generate more B2B business.

Account-based selling refers to account-based sales. It is all about creating relationships with your target customers and then using those relationships to sell more effectively.

Account-Based selling helps you to identify the right leads within your account. They are most likely decision-makers and can purchase your product or services.

These account targets were not randomly selected, but they are based on market research that was done ahead of time.

This account-based selling process is broken down into five steps:

You will first need to find your target accounts through market research. Consider factors such as the company’s size and industry. After you have created a list with target accounts, you will need to create profiles for each one.

This will include information about the account’s key contacts and their decision-making processes.

Once you have identified your target accounts, it is time to begin building relationships.

This can be done by connecting with them via social media, subscribing to their blog, and attending their events.

Once you have established relationships with your target accounts it is time to sell. It is important to tailor your pitch for each account.

Finally, use metrics such as account engagement and closed sales to track your progress and measure success.

Account-based selling is a great way to close more business-to-business deals. You can identify the right accounts and build relationships with them to sell your product/service successfully by following the five steps in this guide.

Account-Based Sales Framework

This is not a complete guide. Here are the basics steps to make account-based selling successful.

1. Internal alignment – Make sure all members of your team are on board with account-based selling and understand the goals

Internal alignment is the first step in any account-based sales initiative. Every member of your team, from sales to marketing to customer service, must agree to the program’s goals.

Account-based sales won’t succeed without everyone working together.

Your team should be able to understand how account-based selling works and what their roles are in the success of the program.

This means that you have a clear understanding of your target accounts, the buying process for each account, as well as what pitch will win them over.

Account-based selling doesn’t mean you have to sell or market. It’s a holistic approach and requires input from all parties. Account-based selling will not succeed if the sales and marketing departments aren’t on the right page.

These tips can help you to coordinate your sales- and marketing efforts:

These tips will help you coordinate your marketing and sales efforts.

Your sales and marketing teams may pursue different goals, which can lead to conflicting initiatives. Because they share the same goal, both departments are motivated to work together.

Shared reporting: Each team should have access to different dashboards, metrics, or worse, no analytics. This will create a significant divide between the departments.

Use shared dashboards or reports to keep everyone on the same page.

Although marketing and sales automation tools are essential in today’s corporate world, technology cannot be relied upon to help you manage your team.

Open communication and personal interaction are key to aligning sales and marketing efforts.

Strategic feedback-receiving and sending processes should be developed. Listening to one another is crucial and you can implement techniques to improve, either in person or via email correspondence.

2. Make an ideal customer profile – Who are you trying to sell to?

The next step is to create an Ideal Customer Profile. This is your ideal customer profile, which includes information such as company size, industry, and geographical location. This information will help you target the right accounts, and to create targeted pitches for each.

Account-based selling can be a slow process. It is unrealistic to expect immediate results or revenue.

The effectiveness of account-based sales depends on the quality and quantity you target. Therefore, it is important to choose the right firms. Your Ideal Customer Profile.

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a fictional profile that identifies your most valuable customers.

A well-defined ICP will help you identify key accounts and create messaging that persuades and converts them into buyers.

To create your ICP, look for common threads in a mix of qualitative and quantitative data about your top customers–specifically, the companies where they work.

Are they from a particular type of company?

Are they all working in the same field? Do they have any other technologies that can be used in conjunction with your product?

Your ICP can be as detailed or simple as you like, but the more accurate it is the better.

3. Create buyer personas that are specific to your target market

Once you have identified the types of accounts you want to target, it is time to learn how to communicate with key accounts. Buyer personas are a great way to communicate with key people in these accounts. They often work in conjunction with your ICP.

Buyer personas can be used to identify your ideal buyers. They are based on historical customer data and quantitative research.

Marketers use buyer personas to find and engage the most qualified prospects. However, they are also a key component of account-based selling. Take this as an example: On average, B2B transactions involve 6.8 parties (source).

You may be able to identify the buyer personas of the decision-makers at your target organization.

It is very similar to creating an ICP by creating a buyer persona. Look at the top accounts that you have previously sold to.

Focus your attention on those contacts. If you aren’t sure where to start, the following questions can help guide your research.

What are the top concerns and pain points of your customers?

What types of materials do your most loyal customers love?

Which part of the decision-making process is each member of the purchasing committee responsible for?

Your account-based selling strategy should include buyer personas.

4. Create A Strategy For Account Targeting

We’ve spent a lot of time so far discussing the characteristics of your top customers.

To be successful at account-based sales, you must engage and find accounts that are a good match for your product.

In addition to choosing accounts that fit your ICP, account coverage and quality should be considered.

Account coverage refers to the number of target accounts that you choose, along with the number of stakeholders you contact from each account.

You’ll close some deals if you have high levels of interaction with a limited number of accounts.

Conversely, if you reach high numbers of target accounts, but don’t engage with them, it can be difficult to convert them to buyers.

You should therefore aim to have a lot of accounts and a high-level involvement in your accounts.

Account quality: If you aren’t pursuing the right accounts, it is useless to have a lot of accounts. Compare accounts with your Ideal Customer Profile to measure account quality.

This case should be treated in the same way as lead scoring. Every aspect of your ICP should be scored, from industry to revenue to people figures.

Each account will be assigned a score based on these traits. Deduct points for any that they don’t possess. This rating system will help you prioritize outreach and better manage your time.

5. Create a targeted outreach strategy

Account-based selling is about highly targeted, individualized sales outreach. This applies not only to the firm but also to each account’s key players.

This information includes each contact’s exact work responsibilities, preferred purchasing methods, and position within the larger business.

Although marketers control content creation in general, it is up to you as a sales representative you communicate your needs with the marketing department.

What marketing materials are needed to convert more customers?

Is there anything missing that relates to the specific industry’s requirements or pain points?

What language and tone do your customers prefer?

If account-based selling is to succeed, all of these problems must be communicated well.

Here’s an example: You are a sales representative for HR software that helps businesses to manage their onboarding and hiring processes. Recently, you won a large account in healthcare.

Instead of sending an email to the HR director with a generic outreach message, create and send these emails:

Director of HR: Send an email to the director outlining how technology allows high-level HR professionals in the healthcare industry to manage large divisions and other responsibilities. All from one consolidated dashboard.

Include a case study that is based on the industry’s largest competitors.

Add a case study that is based on one of their biggest competitors in the industry.

Managers of Human Resources: This email is forwarded to all HR managers within the organization. These people report to the higher-ranking personnel, so they are busy with administrative tasks.

You should be focusing on the reporting capabilities of your platform as well as automated workflows that automate tedious tasks. A video showing a product demo is included.

You send an email explaining to HR assistants how technology helps them spend more time on critical HR tasks. This is something you are familiar with and a pain point.

Include a calculator to show how much time your prospect spends doing menial jobs compared to how much time they save by using your product.

The following outcomes were obtained from this outreach sequence: Each member of the purchasing team has an overview of your brand, products, and services.

It only cares about the issues that each individual is most interested in. It makes it easier for people to talk about your platform at different levels.

This means that the person responsible for purchasing your software product is familiar with it and has an interest in the version that you offer. This is because they were able to clearly articulate what it does and how it meets their exact requirements.

6. Campaign Testing And Analysis

Account-based selling is possible because of the growth of data.

Data drives every component of account-based selling. Therefore, you must prioritize the information in your contact database and evaluate your account-based sales performance.

We have already discussed how to track account quality and coverage. But there are other metrics you should be paying attention to. These include account interaction, the number of opportunities you create, and overall progress.

Last Thoughts

Account-based selling is not an easy task, as you can see. This strategy requires teamwork and forethought across the company. Don’t worry. You will encounter some problems when you try a new approach.

Account-based selling is possible with strong alignment, comprehension, and data access. Once you see the results, you’ll be wondering why you didn’t do it sooner!

For more information on account-based sales tools, contact ZoomInfo You will need our comprehensive go-to-market platform to achieve your sales goals.