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Setting up Account-Based Selling in 3 Steps

Account based selling is a methodology that focuses an organization’s sales efforts on a select number of accounts that are most likely to buy your products and solutions. Organizations can set up an account-based selling strategy in three steps;  one – identifying the companies that would be ideal targets, two – identifying the people that work at those accounts, and three – giving those accounts reasons to evaluate your solution.

The first step is to identifying ideal prospects is to look in the current customer base by firmagraphic details. Most companies will look for customer accounts by similar size, location, industry, revenue, and tech stack. Stated otherwise, if your best customers are in a specific industry, have a certain number of employees, and deploy a competitive or complimentary technology – then companies that also fit that profile will be your best prospects.

The trick to identifying these accounts is by “cleaning” them inside of Salesforce.com.  A cleaning will update or complete key fields such as Industry, Revenue, Employee Size, Tech Stack, and Location. After cleaning Salesforce.com, run a report of your current customers including these new fields. With these results, look for the fields that have the largest representation to begin your target account selection process for prospects.

The second step is identifying the people that are making decisions at your targeted accounts.  While it might seem intuitive, a great exercise is to reverse engineer your sales process to uncover all the stakeholders.

These titles and the people that own them should exist inside of Salesforce.com.  After all, companies don’t buy anything, people do. If it has been a while since you have “cleaned” your contact records then it would also be a good idea to identify the old records of people that don’t work at your target accounts any longer.  B2B data expires at a 2-3% clip per month per Hubspot after all.

The third step is to have something to say to your targeted accounts.  A good idea is to tell them why they are targeted accounts in the first place and sharing some use cases by similar industries, sizes, or locations.  If a piece of their tech stack competes with the technology your company sells, then a quick blurb on the benefits of your differentiation will help.

Referencing recent events about the targeted account also helps.  These events can be new personnel, new products, awards, corporate expansion, or funding.  Companies will promote these events on the news wire or the social media pages like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  The idea behind referencing events is taking the concept and sharing how you have helped other companies in similar positions.  As example, if there is a merger, explaining how you have helped other companies with mergers of duplicate systems and processes.  Simply referencing the event and congratulating the stakeholder is not enough.

In closing, these three steps can give you the directional path for setting up Account Based selling in your organization.  RampedUp can help as well as we have automated much of this inside of Salesforce.com.

September 11, 2017 / No Comments /  

The 4 C’s of Account-Based Selling

Prospecting into Targeted Accounts can be challenging.  After all, these are the best and most-likely-to-close accounts sellers have in their territory.   Many Account-Based Sellers labor over the perfect message to penetrate these accounts only to have an email (that took 3 hours to write) go unread by the recipient.  The problem with writing the perfect pitch is that today’s buyers are just too busy and your competition is saying the exact same thing you are saying.  But Account-Based selling requires tailored messaging based on the unique aspects of the account that cannot be mass-created. Sellers today see themselves in a no-win situation stuck between these two options.

The answers is a perfect blend of traditional multi-touch business development tactics and tailored content that focuses on the account / recipient.  There really is no reason to spend more than 3 minutes creating tailored content if you have the 4 C’s of Account-Based Selling at your fingertips.

Company – Account detail such as industry, size, revenue, and description of course give some context to the pursuit but understanding why the company is in the news and what technologies they use empowers specific messaging.  If the company uses a competitive technology, you can start with a replacement verbiage.  If the company is in the news for expansion or growth, you can tie your solutions with their stated initiatives.

Contacts –  By reverse engineering your own sales process and taking inventory of the titles involved in the training calls, kick-off, signature, approval, and demonstration you can ascertain your buying committee.  These titles should of course have people associated with them that work for your targeted account.  Start at the top (C-Level) and work your way down (V-Level) looking for sponsorship and referencing the entire buying committee in the process.

Customers – Your customers and their success stories are the secret weapon to your campaigns. A recent SAP study found that 90% of buyers want to hear relevant success stories to help them make a decision.  When prospecting to targeted accounts reference relevant customers by industry, size, and location.  Also,  referencing similar titles and their experiences along with products and competitors to quickly raise your credibility.

Competition – By understanding your targeted accounts’ largest competitors you truly understand them.  All companies are similar in that they are looking for something they can claim as unique. By tailoring your pitch to help drive differentiation and referencing the competition by name, you will be seen as someone who is more of a consultant than a seller. Competitors are also great sources of leads once the targeted account becomes a customer!

The 4 C’s of Account-Based selling is the back bone of the RampedUp product. We are sellers and created the RampedUp Battlecard to fit on the account record inside of Salesforce.com. The 4 C’s are pre-populated on every lead, account, and opportunity to help sellers keep their research down to a minimum and optimizing selling activities.

August 27, 2017 / No Comments /  

12 Trigger Events that spark Buying Decisions

RampedUp can empower sellers with critical intelligence that sparks buying decisions. Trigger Events are corporate initiatives (either positive or negative) that generally proceed new purchases.  Unlike following a company and waiting for the trigger to occur – RampedUp finds triggers then provides company detail in context to make a sales call.

Craig Elias – Founder of Shift Selling coins the term as such, “You’ve been told for years that there is no silver bullet in sales. But there is. It is called timing – getting in front of the right person at EXACTLY the right time. When you have the right timing, the sale almost closes itself – you have fewer challenges getting to the prospect, understanding their dissatisfaction, presenting a solution, or selling at a much higher price.”

Here are the trigger events we are following and how you can use them to advance a sale process.

  1. Partnerships and Joint Ventures – New partnerships require new personnel, process, and software to manage the pursuit.
  2. Mergers and Acquisitions – When companies are acquired, it’s a lot like Noah’s ark – there are two of everything. All is put under review to see what is staying and what is going.
  3. Corporate Expansion – New markets require new go-to-market strategies including new personnel, facilities, and administration.
  4. Products and Services – New products need fresh advertising, branding, and marketing. They also need new channels and sellers.
  5. Personnel – New executives come with new agendas and most likely are a 180% different from the predecessor. As an example, a new sales executive will make $1,000,000 in her first 90 days in the office.
  6. Legal Issues – Companies that make it into the news for legal reasons want to tell customers and shareholders they have a plan of resolution.
  7. Research or Analysis – Companies release independent research to share thought leadership within a certain industry or subject. These are great partner opportunities.
  8. Investment and Financing – New money means new funding for initiatives. Venture Capitalists don’t invest their money to watch it sit in the bank.
  9. Real Estate – Changing or adding locations is the consummate sign of growth. New employees and new office space means new investments.
  10. Awards – Companies want to show leadership that transcends profit and loss. These are often pet projects for key executives.
  11. Events – Events are the perfect opportunity to see your prospects in person or help drive attendance to a user conference.
  12. Earnings, Performance, Dividends – Public companies are beholden to stockholders and poor earnings often means changes are on the horizon.

Savvy Sellers combine Trigger Event Selling with Account-Based Selling by looking for these potential selling activities within their targeted accounts.  I wrote this blog on how to use trigger events for Account-based prospecting to help get your foot in the door.

 

July 26, 2017 / No Comments /  

Call Prep in Under 3 Minutes – An Account-Based Selling Guide

A recent study regarding sales efficiency found that sellers spend 27% of their time on completely non-sales related activities. Examples of those activities include looking up information about the contact or account, finding relevant uses cases to reference, or even looking for competitive technology.   But let’s put into context what 27% of a seller’s time actually means; that is one week of the month or one quarter of the year. Imagine giving a seller an additional quarter to make their number or week to make their month.  That would have impact.

Sellers can recover their proficiency by breaking down call prep into three parts – each one minute a piece with the right tools.  The key is having the information all in one place and to not over analyze the process.

Minute One – The Account.  Companies make purchases because they are either dissatisfied with what they currently have or they have a pain they have yet to remedy.  Its the seller’s responsibility to understand which one to make the right sales play.  First, ascertain if the prospect is using a competitive solution to see if they have already addressed the issue your company can solve.  It they have not, look for triggering events to link your solution to solve stated pains or goals.  Use the News!

Minute Two – The Buyers.  CEB has stated that the average B2B purchase has 5.4 decision makers and most sellers are talking to the lowest one on the org chart.  Successful sellers uncover the entire buying committee by name and position.  Then they have these individuals ready for the reference as individuals to contact for unanswered questions or invites for the next steps of the sales process.  By letting the contact know – you know the other players in the process and are going to bring them into the evaluation gives you power later in the sales process.

Minute Three – Use Cases. Buyers want to understand how their peers have used your solution to solve similar problems.  Having specific use cases available by industry, size, location, competitor, title, and product before the call will show the prospect you are knowledgeable and prepared.  It will also show you are a trusted resource and perhaps a notch better than your competition for that reason alone.

Most sellers don’t have much of this information available to them, much less so to be able to prepare in three minutes.  However, this data is readily available, whether inside or outside of Salesforce.com. Gathering this information and placing it inside of the Account / Lead / Opportunity record is core functionality for RampedUp – but it can also be uncovered in other ways.  But then we are back to where we started – 27% of a sellers time is spent looking for this stuff already.

July 16, 2017 / No Comments /  

How to combine Account Based Selling with Trigger Events

Jill Konrath coined the term Use the News – when she unveiled her breakthrough methodology of Trigger Event Selling.  The concept is very simple; companies share their achievements / goals in the form of press releases and we as sales people should align our products and services to help reinforce those achievements / goals.  If a company takes the time, energy, and effort to create a press release then that company obviously thinks the topic is very important.  The opposite is also the case.  If a company is receiving bad press then that company wants to be able to tell the media, stock holders, and customers that that company is doing everything within its power to rectify the situation. And more importantly, has the process in place to ensure it won’t happen again.

Brian Carroll – B2B Lead Blog, July 26, 2016

Savvy Sellers combine Trigger Event Selling with Account-Based Selling by looking for these potential selling activities within their targeted accounts.  This isn’t a new idea, Google News Alerts can be set up for every targeted account inside of a seller’s territory and has been available for over a decade.  The best part about Google News is that it’s free as well.

The problem with Google News alerts however is that it sits outside of Salesforce.com, and as my old sales manager told me, “If it’s not in Salesforce.com – it doesn’t count.”  Trigger Events need to be inside the Salesforce.com account record available for the entire account team to see.  A BDR needs to reference an account using the same trigger on which a sale person is building a business case that will be strategized with a sales manager.  Only then can we link Triggering Events to Account-Based Selling successfully.

Let’s use a real-world example, Dropbox Is Moving From the Internet to a Private Network

BDR: The BDR notices that the target account is moving away from a hosted AWS solution to an in-house infrastructure.  This will open many opportunities for internal hosting.

Sales Person: The sales person shares relevant stories about how similar customer moved off of AWS due to recent outages and hacking scares.

Sales Manager: The Sales Manager identifies a former satisfied customer that moved to Dropbox in a position to help influence the opportunity.

June 25, 2017 / No Comments /  

Use These 3 Tricks to Write the Perfect Demand Generation Campaign

Account Based Selling empowers reps to invest the time and energy needed to create meaningful content for their targeted accounts. Successful sellers use this newfound empowerment to tailor messaging that results in action. Unfortunately, too many sellers used canned / boilerplate content focused on the achievements of their own company that they never see any results.  Try these three tricks to write the perfect demand generation campaign.

  1. Acknowledge the Buying Committee. Nothing shows that you have done your homework more than switching the generic line, “If you aren’t the most suitable person then please connect me with someone who is’ to “I would like to schedule 15 minutes to discuss Account Based Selling. I am also scheduling time with Jane Dixon to get her input as well”.  Try this approach and then copy the other members of the buying committee as well.
  2. Align with Triggering Events. Using the News to align your company’s deliverables to the stated goals of your buyer is a sure-fire way to get noticed. Companies make the news because they want to – i.e. a press release promoting a new product, market, or partnership – or they don’t – such as a law suit or poor earnings. Either way, by positioning your solution to help promote a stated initiative or mitigate unwelcome news, you will quickly get noticed.
  3. Reference Customer Success Stories. Buyers are busy people that have been given the responsibility to make financial decisions because it’s their name on the line.  Make it easy for them to take a meeting with you by giving them relevant use cases by industry, company size, and location. 92% of Buyers stated in a recent SAP survey that they want this type of information to help them make a decision.

Using any of these tricks will improve the performance of your demand generation campaigns but using all THREE will show the best results. Here is an example of what that would look like.

Hi John,

As the VP of Sales at Tellio, I am looking to get 15 minutes of your time to discuss improving seller results through Account Based Selling tools.  If this doesn’t fall under you directly, perhaps you could forward me to Jane Dixon in Sales Operations. 

I recently saw where Tellio has a new product line helping HR professionals, complimenting your already strong presence with Finance.  RampedUp has helped similar companies in the Human Resources space such as Ceridian and Workday by improving seller productivity by 27%. How? We provided company, customer, and contact details all inside of the account record in Salesforce.com.  Now sellers don’t have to search for time-consuming sales data outside of their CRM. 

Again, if you are free for 15 minutes next Tuesday afternoon then I can share in greater detail.  

June 18, 2017 / No Comments /  

Going to the Outbound Conference? Look for these 3 things

The first Outbound Conference is being hosted in Atlanta GA the week of April 10 at the Intercontinental Hotel by some impressive thought leaders as @SalesGravy and @thesaleshunter. Anthony Iannarino (@iannarino) explains, “The morning will consist of four keynote speeches, all centered around the themes of Prospecting, Pipeline, and Productivity. The afternoon sessions will include five workshops, including one by special guest, Laura Madison (@lauradrives).” If you are going – keep in mind how Account-based selling can improve your rate of return

  1. Prospecting – I wrote this blog about How to do Account-Based Prospecting. Set up a 5X5 prospecting cadence that uses triggering events and relevant use cases over a short period of time to get your prospects’ attention. Of course, we use the phone and email over a 5 day pattern to ensure we are getting our prospects attention.
  2. Pipeline – Q2 is upon us and if you didn’t make your Q1 number you need to close this quarter out strong. I wrote this blog post on how to Close out Q2 Strong focusing on getting past the ROI argument, prioritizing your pipeline, and uncovering a source of urgency to close deals.
  3. Productivity – Sales people spend 22% of their time on non-sales related tasks such as trying to find data that should already be in salesforce.com. By putting contact, customer, and company data all in one place you can give your reps that time back. Stop spending hours preparing for a sales call and use the three minute rule – with the right tools – to be a more impactful seller.

If you are at the Outbound Conference, look me up or send me a note through the website to connect – https://rampedup.io/contact/   Thanks 

April 10, 2017 / No Comments /  

The Complete List of Marketo Customers

The Complete List of Marketo Customers contains 7804 Companies is available at no charge. Just complete the form and receive a link to download the CSV. Data includes: HQ Name, URL, Address, Phone, Industry, Employee Size, and contacts. Using an install list like this is a great way to define your Account-Based Selling Strategy.   If you like this list – we follow 3100 additional technologies.  Here is the list of categories! 







March 26, 2017 / No Comments /  

Use Installed Technology to define your Account-Based Selling Strategy

Account-Based Sales and Marketing is THE best practice for modern, revenue-driven organizations. It (ABS) is the product of Sales and Marketing alignment in that both teams are hyper-focused on a select number of targeted accounts. But how does a company select their accounts? Understanding the technologies a company uses can define your Account-Based Selling Strategy in these three ways:

A replacement strategy identifies a competitor’s weaknesses while emphasizing your strengths.  The idea is to prioritize your selling efforts based on the accounts that are utilizing your direct competition.  The pro’s: these companies already see the value in your type of solution and have it budgeted.  The con’s: unseating an incumbent is difficult for political and contractual reasons. The person who selected your competition has a vested interest in its success and may be in a log-term contract as well.

A complementary strategy showcases how your software or service works well with the investment in technology already made. My company is a perfect example. RampedUp works inside of Salesforce.com therefore Salesforce.com users would be a great start for us. Now this can be limiting if your software doesn’t “play well with others” but some companies use installed technologies to model would-be buying behaviors. As an example, If a company would purchase a product with the same level of sophistication and price point as my solution, then they may be a good fit for me.

An evangelistic strategy educates the buyer on the importance of purchasing a new type of software not currently in their stack.  This deductive modelling exercise takes firmographic traits such as revenue, industry, employee size, and location THEN focuses on companies NOT using competitive or complimentary technologies.  This is a great way to break-in new ground for a product, BDR team, or channel partner.

All three strategies are predicted on the fact you know what the buyer is using before pursuit.  If you don’t have this information on the account page inside of Salesforce.com then you may misalign from the very beginning.  RampedUp can help find these technologies.

March 24, 2017 / No Comments /  

How to do Account Based Prospecting

Account-Based Prospecting or Sales Development is all the rage right now because it aligns demand generation activities with seller priorities. The process is different than a mass communication effort but it shouldn’t paralyze execution by trying to write the perfect pitch. There is no such thing. Account-Based Prospecting is finding the right person at the right time with the right message.

1.      Choose a Strategy – Understanding the technologies a company uses allows a seller to craft the appropriate pursuit strategy. A replacement strategy identifies a competitor’s weaknesses while emphasizing your strengths. An evangelistic strategy educates the buyer on the importance of purchasing a new type of software not currently in their stack. A complementary strategy showcases how your software or service works well with the investment in technology already made.

2.      Start High – Prospecting obeys the laws of gravity, it is a lot easier to get sponsored from on high and be referred down than it is to have someone lower on the org chart try to champion your idea upwards.  When prospecting a target account, start with the C-suite, then move to the V-suite, then on to the functional areas of the organization.

3.      Tailor your message –  Your message can be tailored by external or internal references and if you can use both you are better off than most. An external source is a trigger event (Here is a list from Brian Carroll) that a company shares with the public usually through a Press Release. Use your solution to help with whatever your targeted account is promoting for better response. An internal source is a use case based on a current customer.  90% of B2B buyers want a relevant use case to help them make a decision.

Put into Action –  Getting a response from your prospecting requires the proper expectation. Your prospects are busy and are being solicited by hundreds of people just like you with a product that does the same thing yours does.  With that in mind, I recommend you focus your efforts on short controlled bursts for optimal results. I call it a 5×5 plan.  A multi-media, multi-touch, multi-message blitz over the course of one business week.

  1. Email 1 – Intro email referencing External Source and how you can help
  2. Call 1 – Follow up phone call referencing External Source and how you can help
  3. Email 2 – Email referencing relevant Use Case based on Industry, Size, or Location
  4. Call 2 – Follow up phone call referencing relevant Use Case based on Industry, Size, or Location
  5. Email 3 – Dear John email, stating that the Internal and External references were not a priority or either it wasn’t good timing.

RampedUp is an Account-Based Selling solution inside of Saleforce.com that helps sellers execute upon these three points. If you want to learn more – contact us here!

March 19, 2017 / No Comments /  1