Account-Based Prospecting Explained

This prospecting flow / process changed it all for me. It’s exactly what took me from closing 50-100K deals to 150-500K deals. Tomorrow morning (and for the next 3 weeks), I’m doing it again. 90 minutes prospecting into a single target account. As sellers, we have lost the art of the deep dive and understanding of our potential clients business. We expect too much. We all want quick wins, easy meetings and automated flows. But, to sell huge enterprise deals, you simply need to do more. A lot more. Often times, manual and time consuming. Sure there are tools to help but sometimes it just takes going old school. Things I will do tomorrow while prospecting into ServiceNow. - History of the business - How do they make money, every angle - Earnings calls & 10K - Annual Report / Sustainability Report - Google search to see recent news - Google to find their sales & coaching programs - Key-word searches in “jobs” to find intent - Key-word searches to find items in their teams profiles that signal intent - Jump into Sales Navigator and use all “spotlights / best paths” - Identify 5 potential decision makers 5x3x1 - Follow/connect each one of them - Engage with their content, don’t fake this - Study their profiles - Check if they have worked at a current or previous customer accounts of yours (sales nav helps with this) - Build out full account planning doc And at that point, you might know enough and have a good sense of direction. From there, you can jump and send very hyper relevant emails / videos / audio DMs directly to those 3/5 that accepted your request to connect. My guess is that you will blow your number out of the water for the remainder of the year if you take this truly deep sales approach. And I guarantee your prospects will appreciate the message and attention to detail vs being annoyed by lazy 2022/present type outreach. P.S. - I will report back on if I get a meeting with SN ♻️ feel free to share this, I don’t gate content and would love for the world to get better at sales ♻️

Outbound is dead in cyber. Long live AE-owned prospecting. I will die on the hill of "outbound is dead". But it's been misunderstood when I've brought it up here. In cybersecurity, generic mass outreach is dying or it's a zombie waiting to be whacked. Targeted, value-driven prospecting led by Account Executives is thriving. SDR's have a hard time doing this not because they can't, but because the system is not setup for them to do it (i.e. comp plans, org structures, etc.) We know from research that personalized outreach based on deep account knowledge delivers 3x better engagement than templated SDR approaches. Yet we keep trying to build outbound motions with higher volume and worse conversion rates 🤮 Here's my framework for building a repeatable pipeline development program where AEs actually own the process: 👉 *The Value Hypothesis Approach* 1. Narrow the focus dramatically: Your target account list should be small enough that each account gets hours of dedicated research. 2. Make AEs accountable for contact mapping They need to identify key stakeholders and understand the organizational dynamics before any outreach begins. 3. Develop specific value hypotheses This is the game-changer. Each account gets 2 customized value proposition based on their specific situation. 4. Collaborate on hypothesis refinement The best teams involve SE/PreSales, Product Management, and Sales Leadership in critiquing and improving these hypotheses. 5. Execute with precision With this foundation, outreach becomes a targeted conversation rather than a generic pitch. 6. Close the feedback loop: Sales leaders need to document which value hypotheses resonated and which fell flat - this becomes your competitive advantage. The best-performing enterprise sales teams allocate at least 1/3 of AE time to this process. Yes, it's resource-intensive, but the results speak for themselves. 2 hours a day (minimum) every day, every AE, for 3 months. Then come back and tell me 'thank you' Unexpected benefit: When AEs spend 10+ hours weekly on strategic prospecting, your inbound and partner-led conversion rates automatically improve. Why? No AE will let warm leads slip after experiencing how much work cold prospecting takes. Pro-tip? Spend 'Training Thursdays' evaluating value hypothesis together. Double pro-tip, combine Value Hypotheiss with 'Show me You Know Me' on your messaging (follow Samantha McKenna - She crushes SMYKM content) Anyone here that calls value hypothesis something else? I used to call it my 'angle'. Need something more catchy and less scientific-sounding 😆

Here's a breakdown of what an Account-Based Sales model looks like. Designed to drive up win % while landing logos at a higher ACV $ upfront. The big idea: every deal gets a tailored set of account-specific docs, guiding a customer's buying process from problem → outcome. _____ → STAGES & FRAMEWORKS: - BDR/AE's collab on a research-backed POV + draft account plan ↓ - Which drives tailored outreach to engage buying teams execs early ↓ - Buying group collabs on a problem statement, mapped to the priority ↓ - SE's get a pre-demo brief, with a storyline scripted around this ↓ - AE's customer inputs above into a full biz case with target outcomes ↓ - Sales leaders get a written deal brief to spot gaps in < 60 seconds ↓ - Go-live plan shows a path from commercials to customer outcome ↓ - CS gets a handoff doc to guide transition post-sales ↓ - AM's get a written case for expansion to drive upsells Here, you're capturing each customer’s journey in a set of “living” docs that evolve and flow into each other: POV ↓ Account Plan ↓ Demo Brief ↓ Business Case ↓ Leader's Deal Brief ↓ Mutual Success Plan ↓ CS Handoff Doc 100% tailored for each account. Grab a set of editable frameworks for these here: https://lnkd.in/gG3XRbT2 ______ → PRINCIPLES: Written docs are the “container” your process lives in, because: (1) Content = context. Think of it like those Russian nesting dolls — each doc has context from the last doc nested inside the next one. e.g. POV drives a problem statement, that sits in the full biz case, which is context for a go-live plan, etc. (2) Content is evidence. It’s concrete, not abstract: - Less, "It was a good meeting, they're interested." - More, "Here are redlines adding data to our problem statement." It’s how we see where, exactly, a customer is in the buying journey. While making it visible to everyone. (3) Content is influence. It's in the room when you can't be. Scripting internal convo's happening about you, without you. ______ → EXECUTION: This isn't just for key accounts. It scales downmarket, too. It's why Fluint's AI is built around the first "living doc" that writes, learns, and redlines itself inside every deal  (see it here: fluint.io ) Letting you treat every account, like a key account.

Had a conversation recently with an executive interest in moving from a lead-centric revenue model to an account-based approach. They saw the value but weren’t sure how to make the transition work in practice. I walked them through what actually needs to change: 1. Aligned KPIs The biggest gap in most transitions? The revenue team is still measured on lead volume. - Pipeline and conversion at the account level need to be the focus. - Speed matters, but velocity—how efficiently high-fit accounts move through the funnel—is what actually drives revenue. - Different targets causes friction (more on whether this is intentional is another story...) Without this alignment, marketing, sales, and SDR teams will pull in different directions. 2. Lead-to-Account Matching This surprises a lot of teams. They assume because they’re targeting accounts, their systems are tracking them correctly. But in reality: - Leads still enter as standalone records with no connection to an account. - SDRs work contacts without full context on account-level activity. - Sales misses out on early-stage engagement from the right accounts. Fixing this is table stakes. Without clean lead-to-account matching, the entire system falls apart. 3. Account Scoring & Buying Group Visibility Lead scoring isn’t enough in an account-based motion. The real question is: how engaged is the buying group? - Are multiple stakeholders active, or is it just one person? - Is the account signaling actual buying intent or just casual interest? - Are the right personas engaging? Account scoring should reflect engagement from the full buying team, not just isolated actions. 4. Clean Account Assignments, SLAs & Ownership This is where teams get stuck. In a lead-centric model, ownership is clear—SDRs work leads, AEs work opportunities. In an account-based model, it’s more nuanced: - Who owns an account when a new lead comes in? - What if it's an existing customer who could buy more (or buy something else)? - How do SDRs prioritize outreach when multiple personas engage? - What happens when marketing engagement overlaps with sales activity? And most importantly—what are SLAs to ensure high-intent accounts actually get worked (and, let's be honest - what qualifies as "worked)? If you don’t define this upfront, leads and accounts sit in limbo and pipeline suffers. 5. Account Planning & Cross-Functional Execution An account-based approach only works if everyone is operating from the same playbook. That means: - Marketing, SDRs, sales, and customer success align on which accounts matter most now and in the long term. - There’s a shared plan for prioritization, outreach, engagement, and activation. - Everyone has the same north star on focus and impact measurement (those pesky KPIs). When teams aren’t aligned, accounts fall through the cracks. Not all that great for an account-focused go-to-market model. TL;DR – I probably should’ve just said “Talk to Terry Flaherty at Forrester.” 😅

We run 5,000 Account-Based Advertising campaigns and deliver 1 billion ad impressions every month for our B2B customers. Here’s how we use Account-Based Advertising internally at Demandbase: BACKGROUND: As you can imagine, we are heavy users of Account-Based Advertising. We don't only sell it, we live it. Our goal is to focus on accounts with the greatest LTV. The primary levers we pull are segmentation, ad creative, and integration into our overall account-based GTM strategy: 1. Segmentation Segmentation is the foundation of our account-based advertising strategy. It enables the appropriate level of resources, the right message, and the right workflows to be focused on every account in our ICP. We segment accounts by starting more general and then get more granular, so each general segment has subsegments with greater levels of specificity. Here is our classification of segments: * Geo–country level * Revenue range - we have five revenue segments * Tiers - we have three tiers based on industry, technographics, and engagement scoring that define how much resources we put to each account * Journey Stage - we use custom stages that define where an account is in the customer journey * Product Interest - a combination of intent data and campaign responses 2. Ad creative Our goal is to the deliver the most relevant asset for the segment to drive the greatest engagement. We do that in three ways. First, we use an asset engagement heatmap. This shows what content assets are getting the highest level of engagement across channels and use those messages to target each segment. Second, we use dynamic creative that personalizes by industry and company name in real-time. Third, we use detailed and technical creative for re-targeting, after accounts have engaged with our website. 3. Integrating Advertising into our account-based GTM Account-Based Advertising by itself is only one component of an account-based GTM. Results will be limited if not thoughtfully integrated into a broader strategy. There are three key ways we do this at Demandbase. First, we orchestrate the same segmentation and creative strategy across Marketing and Sales Channels (i.e. LinkedIn, Meta, Google, Marketing Automation, Content Syndication, SEM, and Sales Automation). Second, we use the Tier segmentation to define the level of resourcing entitlements we give to each account. Tier 1 receives the most entitlements across Sales and Marketing (i.e. direct mail, 1:1 campaigns and experiences, and executive strategy sessions). Third, we create advertising response and engagement reports using UTM parameters for our SDR as a way to prioritize and personalize outreach. TAKEAWAY: Account-based advertising is a popular and effective use case for engaging accounts and providing air coverage. You can use segmentation and good creative to optimize its effectiveness. But its full potential is only realized when you integrate it into your account-based GTM strategy.

Account-based GTM is having a big resurgence. It used to be reserved for the highest value accounts ($100k+ deals) -- frankly it was too manual & too expensive to scale beyond that. As account data becomes a commodity -- and as AI tools help automate deep account research -- we can bring our entire target market into our CRM & tailor all our pipeline efforts on the best-fit accounts. Here's the thing: pivoting to ABM is still brutal. There are no real playbooks. And there's a painful lack of tactical resources. Emilia Korczynska, VP of marketing at Userpilot, had to learn the hard way ("ABM or die trying..."). Today she shared the tactical guide she wished someone gave her *before* she started. Read it in Growth Unhinged: https://lnkd.in/eHY8Ss5t Spoiler: it worked. Emilia's team generated >$650k in pipe in 90 days with $12 in pipe per $ spent. And now they're doubling down. Here's the TL;DR - your ABM checklist: 1. Define your ABM goals & leading metrics. 2. Pick a level of personalization (1:1, 1:few, 1:many). 3. Set up campaigns: account stages, account scoring. 4. Decide on a duration: how long campaigns will last. 5. Select channels to reach your target audience (Emilia started with LinkedIn). 6. Build your list of targets: accounts, personas, etc. 7. Prepare the content, messaging, ad formats, etc. (Make sure to define a hand-off point with BDRs). 8. Approve the budget & resources. 9. Set up dashboards to track campaign performance. 10. Onboard tools/vendors for each element of ABM. As a side note, Emilia chose an 'unbundled' ABM tech stack with 8 tools, costing ~$2.5k per month. The choices: - For list building: HubSpot (CRM), Clay, BuiltWith, Apollo.io - For campaign assets: Notion - For intent recognition & account scoring: ZenABM/Fibbler - For ad campaign mgmt, lead flows, reporting, sales outreach: HubSpot (Marketing) - For prospecting: Salesloft Hope this guide makes ABM a little less of a nightmare 🙏 #abm #marketing #gtm #saas