Imagine a sales funnel where every lead is highly qualified, every prospect is a good fit, and you can close on bigger deals. While this may sound like fantasy, it is the reality when sales professionals learn about target account selling and apply it to their marketing efforts. Target account selling, also known as account-based selling, is a structured and well-researched marketing strategy that nurtures customer-centric relationships. For this sale approach, every prospect is handpicked after extensive research and collection of lead information. Read on to learn more about target account selling, including how and why it works.
What is target account selling?
Target account selling is a business-to-business sales strategy that identifies potential accounts based on specific factors such as industry, business size, geographical location, pain points, budget, decision-making and business objectives. As such, the sales team focuses on lead quality instead of quantity. Compared to other sales techniques, target account selling (TAS) focuses on more promising leads; the sales team doesn’t waste time chasing several leads that may or may not close. Instead, they pick the right prospects, research them extensively, and then deliver personalized messages that address their pain points. That also translates to better time and resource allocation.
Target account selling increases the chances of turning qualified prospects into paying customers, but this method requires thorough research and collecting lead information. As such, the sales cycle becomes complex. But because of the increased revenues, this methodology is worth its complexities.
How does target account selling work?
As mentioned above, target account selling involves getting into the weeds of a prospect’s needs, which requires collaboration between the marketing, sales, and customer success teams. Below are the three steps the three teams collaborate on.
- Build an ideal customer profile
The sales and marketing teams work hand in hand to create a theoretical representation of an ideal customer. They pinpoint the characteristics of a good customer to narrow the company to accounts that are a perfect fit. When building an ideal customer profile, you want to consider their industry, how much they pay, and the value your service offers. Once the sales team has created an ideal customer profile, they target customers that perfectly match or fit it. As such, valuable time is well-spent contacting dead leads or potential customers who are good fits.
It is best to start with potential customers who are good for the company; this is a recipe for success. Once the sales and marketing team has developed the ideal customer profile, the company starts building a list of target accounts.
- More research
The sales team conducts thorough research on each qualified account and creates a detailed and specific buyer persona for every decision-maker. The buyer persona is more precise than the ideal customer profile and includes information like the person’s background, demographics, personality identifiers and communication methods. This information lets sales representatives know the person better to personalize their content and nurture the lead by addressing unique needs.
- Close deals
The final step is the buying process, during which all the teams involved must support each stakeholder. They need to be resourceful to potential customers, answer their questions, provide testimonials, and much more. Being consistent in your availability and offering assistance significantly contributes to closing a deal. After closing a deal, the account is handed to the team that offers help with the onboarding process and solution implementation (customer success team). The customer team provides valuable insights into customer experiences, so the sales and marketing teams need to communicate closely with them.
How effective is target account selling?
At first, this sales technique is usually complex, time-consuming, and takes more resources than usual to close a deal. Because sales representatives need a deeper understanding of each lead they approach, extensive access to customer data is necessary. Additionally, designing custom plans for each account takes much time. But despite these limitations, target account selling methodology yields rich results and has several benefits, including stronger relationships, accelerated sales cycle and market penetration.
A successful target account marketing strategy takes much time, effort, and a collaborative spirit in the sales, marketing, and customer success teams. It is a competitive sales technique that produces excellent results once the sales representatives learn the strategy and apply it to their outreach efforts. Target account selling also fosters solid relationships, which contribute to the growth of a business. While the implementation is challenging, it gets easier and more efficient once the processes are in place.