Terms

Account-Based Sales

What are Account-Based Sales?

Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a strategic approach in business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing that focuses on building personalized relationships with specific high-value accounts. It involves identifying a select group of ideal customers and tailoring sales and marketing efforts to their unique needs and challenges. ABS requires close collaboration between sales, marketing, customer support, and product development teams to create a unified, customer-centric experience, contrasting with traditional sales models that often pursue a larger volume of leads with a more generalized approach.

Key Principles of Account-Based Sales

Implementing Account-Based Sales involves several strategic steps:

  • Account selection: Identify high-value accounts based on your ideal customer profile.
  • Account research and profiling: Gather information on target accounts and their key stakeholders.
  • Cross-functional alignment: Ensure collaboration between sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
  • Personalized messaging and outreach: Tailor communication to address the unique needs and challenges of each account.
  • Account-specific campaigns: Develop customized marketing strategies for target accounts.
  • Relationship building: Foster strong connections with stakeholders within target accounts.
  • Sales and marketing orchestration: Coordinate efforts across departments to deliver a unified customer experience.
  • Measurement and optimization: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) and adjust strategies as needed.
  • Customer success and post-sale nurturing: Ensure ongoing support and engagement with customers after the sale.

Crafting Your ABS Strategy

Crafting an effective ABS strategy involves:

  • Defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and identifying key buyer personas within target accounts.
  • Developing a content strategy that addresses different stages of the sales process and caters to specific buyer personas.
  • Structuring your sales team to include roles such as account executives, sales development representatives, marketers, and support representatives.
  • Segmenting your target accounts into tiers and creating customized outreach strategies for each tier.
  • Tracking key metrics like average contract value (ACV), lifetime value (LTV), and customer acquisition cost (CAC) to measure the success of your ABS strategy.
  • Maintaining tight alignment between Sales and Marketing to ensure a seamless and unified customer experience.

ABS Versus Traditional Sales Models

Account-Based Sales (ABS) and traditional sales models differ in focus, resource allocation, and sales and marketing integration. ABS treats each account as a unique market, dedicating significant resources and personalized strategies to a select number of high-value accounts, while traditional models spread efforts across a wider array of prospects. ABS also requires a closely coordinated effort between sales, marketing, and other departments, which is less emphasized in traditional sales models.

Measuring Success in Account-Based Sales

Measuring success in ABS involves tracking various KPIs:

  • Account engagement score: Measures the level of engagement with target accounts.
  • Deal velocity: Tracks the average time it takes for a target account to move through the sales pipeline.
  • Opportunity conversion rate: The percentage of target accounts that become qualified sales opportunities.
  • Account expansion rate: Measures the success of expanding relationships within existing target accounts.

Other terms

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Siloed

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Siloed

Sales Development

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Sales Development

Software as a Service

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Software as a Service

Employee Advocacy

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Employee Advocacy

Customer Relationship Marketing

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Customer Relationship Marketing

Touches

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Touches

Applicant Tracking System

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Targeted Marketing

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Batch Processing

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Business to customer

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Business to customer

High Availability

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High Availability

Fault Tolerance

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Branded Keywords

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Virtual Selling

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Serverless Computing

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Cold Call

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Triggered Email

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Lead Response Time

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Sales Enablement Technology

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Page Views

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Phishing Attacks

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Dialer

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Site Retargeting

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Service Level Agreement

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CPM

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Marketing Metrics

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B2B Demand Generation

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Sales Conversion Rate

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Scalability

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Scalability

Fulfillment Logistics

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Brag Book

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Firmographics

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Sales Team Management

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Data Pipelines

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Event Tracking

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After-Sales Service

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Serviceable Obtainable Market

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Rollback Procedures

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Kanban

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Browser Compatibility

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CI/CD

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Marketing Analytics

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Scrum

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Email Marketing

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Lead Velocity Rate

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Bottom of the Funnel

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80/20 Rule

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Docker

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Cybersecurity

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B2B Data Platform

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Sales Director

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Data Management Platform

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Decision Buying Stage

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Database Management

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Demand Generation

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Regression Testing

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Funnel Analysis

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Payment Gateways

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Employee Engagement

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Forecasting

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Contact Discovery

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Contact Discovery

Persona

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Buyer’s Remorse

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Net 30

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Sales Territory

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Cloud Storage

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Buyer Behavior

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Lead Generation Tactics

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Sales Performance Metrics

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Account-Based Selling

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Return on Marketing Investment

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User-generated Content

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Account Match Rate

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Tire-Kicker

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Supply Chain Management

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Lead Management

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Demographic Segmentation in Marketing

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Master Service Agreement

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Sales Operations

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Sales Engagement

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Point of Contact

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Point of Contact

Return on Investment (ROI)

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Enterprise Resource Planning

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Virtual Private Cloud

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Marketing Funnel

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User Testing

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Value Gap

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SDK

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Consumer

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Commission

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Dynamic Territories

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Dynamic Territories

Channel Partners

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Buyer Intent

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Social Selling

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Data Mining

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Sales Pipeline Reporting

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Sales Pipeline Reporting

Customer Churn Rate

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Predictive Lead Generation

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Predictive Lead Generation

Direct Sales

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Direct Sales

Marketo

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Marketo
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