A target account list is a curated list of companies that a business has identified as its most valuable prospects for sales and marketing efforts. This list serves as the foundation for an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy, allowing teams to concentrate resources and personalize outreach to the accounts most likely to become high-value customers.
A target account list is crucial for efficiency. It focuses your team's energy and budget on prospects most likely to convert, preventing wasted resources on unqualified leads. This also ensures sales and marketing teams are aligned and working toward the same goals.
This focus enables highly personalized outreach tailored to each account's specific needs. By delivering relevant messaging, companies increase engagement, build stronger relationships, and improve conversion rates. This ultimately leads to closing more high-value deals and maximizing ROI.
This is how you can create a focused list of high-value prospects.
While both lists guide outreach, they serve different strategic purposes based on a company's goals.
Managing your target account list is an ongoing process, not a one-time task. To maximize its effectiveness, you need to regularly refine and update it. Adopting a few key practices ensures your list remains a dynamic and valuable asset for your GTM teams.
Creating a target account list is a great first step, but several common pitfalls can undermine its effectiveness. Avoiding these mistakes ensures your ABM efforts don't go to waste and that your teams remain focused on high-value opportunities. Watch out for these common errors:
How many accounts should be on a target account list?
The ideal size depends on your team's capacity. A good starting point is 50-100 accounts per sales rep. This ensures each account receives the personalized attention required for effective account-based marketing without overwhelming your team.
How often should I refresh my target account list?
Refresh your list quarterly to keep it relevant, but avoid replacing more than 20% at a time. This allows your team enough time to properly engage accounts while still adapting to market changes and new opportunities.
What's the best way to measure the success of a target account list?
Measure success by tracking metrics like account engagement, pipeline velocity, and win rates within your target accounts. The ultimate goal is to see a higher conversion rate and deal size from these accounts compared to non-targeted outreach.
Process Builder is a Salesforce automation tool that lets you create 'if/then' business processes with a user-friendly visual interface.
A performance plan is a formal document outlining an employee's goals, expectations, and metrics for success over a specific period.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
Ramp-up time is the period a new hire takes to get fully up to speed and become a productive member of your go-to-market team.
Docker is a tool that packages applications and their dependencies into isolated environments called containers for easy deployment and scaling.
Lead generation software helps businesses automate finding and capturing potential customers' contact information to build sales pipelines.
An Operational CRM is a system that automates and improves customer-facing business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Customer buying signals are the actions, behaviors, or statements a prospect makes that indicate they are moving towards a purchase decision.
Email personalization uses subscriber data—like their name, interests, or past behavior—to create highly relevant and targeted email campaigns.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
Learn about bounce rate, including understanding bounce rate implications, key factors affecting bounce rate, & reducing your bounce rate effectively.
A Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API is a web service that uses XML to exchange structured information between different applications.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
Feature flags let you remotely control features in your app without new code. This enables safe testing, gradual rollouts, and quick rollbacks.
A channel partner is a company that works with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell their products, software, or services to customers.
Learn about B2B data erosion, including causes of B2B data decay, strategies to combat data erosion, & measuring the impact of data erosion.
Learn about B2B intent data providers, including evaluating intent data quality, leveraging intent data for growth, & B2B intent data: key providers comparison.
A sandbox is an isolated testing environment where new or untrusted code can be run safely without affecting the host device or network.
Learn about business continuity, including understanding key components, steps to ensure continuity, common challenges, & best practices.
Hadoop is an open-source framework designed for the distributed storage and processing of extremely large data sets across clusters of computers.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
A sales intelligence platform is software that provides sales teams with data and insights about prospects to help them sell more effectively.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.
Lead routing is the automated process of distributing incoming leads to the right sales reps based on predefined criteria.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
Learn about buyer, including identifying your ideal buyer, understanding buyer's journey, & evaluating buyer decision processes.
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model where affiliates earn a commission for promoting another company’s products or services.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Learn about big data, including understanding big data characteristics, benefits of leveraging big data, & challenges in managing big data.
A User Interface (UI) is the point where humans and computers interact. It encompasses all visual elements like screens, icons, and buttons.
The Dark Funnel describes customer buying activities that are untrackable by companies, such as private chats and word-of-mouth referrals.
Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process, from the first contact to the final sale.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
Copyright compliance is adhering to laws that protect creative works. It involves legally using content by obtaining permission or licenses.
A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
Buying intent is the collection of online cues and behaviors that signal a prospect is actively researching and moving toward a purchase decision.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
Generic keywords are broad search terms that lack specific details like brand or location. They attract a wide audience with less specific intent.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a web security vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into trusted websites.
Sales enablement content refers to the materials and tools that empower your sales team to engage prospects and close deals more efficiently.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
“End of Quarter” (EOQ) refers to the final weeks of a business quarter when sales teams rush to meet quotas, often leading to a flurry of deals.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
Learn about brag book, including crafting your outstanding brag book, essential components of a brag book, & brag book vs. resume: unveiling the differences.
An account is a company or organization that you're targeting for sales. It can be a prospective, current, or even a past customer.
Learn about buyer intent, including understanding buyer intent signals, strategies to capture buyer intent, & buyer intent vs. customer interest.
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid and deliverable, which helps improve campaign performance.
Lookalike audiences are groups of potential customers who share similar characteristics and behaviors with your existing, high-value customers.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
Digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through various online and digital channels like social media or search engines.
A consumer is an individual or entity that buys products or services for personal use, not for resale. They are the final user in a supply chain.
Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.
A custom API integration is a bespoke connection between software, enabling them to communicate and share data to meet unique business requirements.
A Marketing Qualified Opportunity (MQO) is a lead vetted by marketing as a genuine sales opportunity, ready for direct sales follow-up.
A cold email is an initial outreach sent to a potential customer with whom you've had no prior contact, aiming to introduce your business.
A sales coach is a mentor who trains and guides sales reps to enhance their skills, boost performance, and ultimately close more deals effectively.
A Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) is a target company that has shown significant engagement, indicating it's ready for the sales team to pursue.
Video selling uses personalized video messages to engage prospects, build rapport, and guide them through the sales funnel to close more deals.
Learn about B2B marketing attribution, including challenges in B2B marketing attribution, & key metrics for effective attribution.
A marketing play is a repeatable tactic used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like generating leads or driving engagement.
Event marketing is a strategy where brands engage directly with target audiences through live events like trade shows, conferences, or webinars.
Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.
A messaging strategy defines what your brand says, how it says it, and where it says it to connect effectively with your target audience.
White labeling is when a company puts its own branding on a product or service that was actually produced by a different company.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
Buying criteria are the specific requirements and standards a customer uses to evaluate products or services before making a decision.
Event tracking is the method of collecting data on specific user actions, or 'events,' on a website or app, such as clicks or downloads.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.
Personalization in sales means tailoring outreach to a prospect's specific needs, interests, and context to make communication more relevant.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
Marketo is a marketing automation platform used by B2B marketers to manage lead generation, nurturing, email marketing, and analytics.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable, recurring income a business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
A RESTful API is a web service interface that uses HTTP requests to access and use data, adhering to the constraints of REST architecture.
Learn about B2B data, including sources and types of B2B data, leveraging B2B data for sales success, & ensuring the accuracy of B2B data.
A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
Accounts Payable (AP) is the money a company owes its suppliers for goods or services bought on credit. It's listed as a current liability.
An email cadence is a scheduled sequence of emails sent to prospects over a specific period to nurture leads and drive engagement.
Trigger marketing uses customer actions or events to automatically send highly relevant, personalized messages at the perfect moment.
Outbound sales is when reps proactively contact potential customers through cold calls or emails to generate leads and build a sales pipeline.
Technographics is data that outlines a company’s technology stack, helping B2B teams identify prospects based on the software and hardware they use.