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Building Your Target Account List: The Foundation to an Account-Based Marketing Approach in Four Steps A Whitepaper by Demandbase, Inc. Doug Rekenthaler Jr. 301 Howard Street Suite 1800 San Francisco, CA 94105 www.demandbase.com I. Using Target Accounts to Align Sales & Marketing While the worlds of B2B sales and marketing have undergone enormous change, one principle remains consistent: The more precisely aligned the sales and marketing organizations, the greater the likelihood of overall corporate success. The fulcrum upon which the sales-marketing relationship rests is, of course, the target account. Which is to say, the more that sales and marketing can agree on the DNA of a target account, the greater the likelihood that the leads from the accounts with similar DNA will, in fact, one day generate revenue for the company (along with bonuses, raises, promotions, etc., for the players involved in generating and closing those leads). “It’s fascinating that the fundamentals of B2B marketing are the same today as they were 50 years ago … although today we have new tools and techniques at our disposal.” It’s a remarkably simple formula that too often eludes the typical company. Indeed, a frequent complaint of B2B sales organizations is the dearth of quality leads. In a recent survey of more than 1,150 B2B sales executives, for example, only 31 percent of marketinggenerated leads were considered suitable.1 Could it be, for example, that the majority of “bad” leads were the correct level and title, but from the wrong companies? David Meerman Scott How, then, to create a list of target companies indicative of a precisely aligned marketing-sales tandem? The answer: Unite these two organizations in a concerted, data-driven exercise to determine which: • Accounts we are most likely to sell to (or more accurately, accounts that are most likely to buy) • Marketing-sales efforts worked best in landing those accounts • Attributes are shared by those accounts In other words, create a named account list—the list of the companies we believe are the most likely to become customers. In this paper we will explore how Demandbase built its named account list, successfully leveraging CRM data, sales histories, customer information, sales experience, and third-party data to build a list that keeps sales and marketing happily (and productively) aligned. II. Finding Pareto’s 20% More than a century ago Italian economist and philosopher Vilfredo Pareto observed that in Italy as elsewhere, 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. “Pareto’s Principle” which, today, is more commonly known as the “80-20 Rule,” can be translated in sales and marketing parlance to mean that 80% of a company’s revenue will originate from just 20% of its leads. Even organizations unfamiliar with this rule intuitively understand that a small portion of their customer base is of disproportionate value to the organization. What they don’t know, however (but sometimes mistakenly assume they know), is which new accounts and leads are most likely to become revenue. 1 Sales Speaks: Perceptions & Ponderings on Marketing Leads, The Bridge Group and Vorsight | 2 It makes abundant sense, then, that the B2B organization needs to strive to understand which of its existing customers fall into their corporate “sweet spot,” where maximum revenue and minimal resources and expenses intersect. Only then will it have the information necessary to identify and target similar accounts with its “Business strategy should not be a scarce marketing and sales resources. grand and sweeping overview. It should be more like an underview, a peek beneath the covers to look in great detail at what is going on.” Richard Koch, Living the 80/20 Way How to identify these accounts? Fittingly enough, in the same way Pareto came up with his theorem and forever changed the face of economics: through the collection and analysis of objectively measurable data. But it can be challenging, as sales and marketing often measure success from a different set of reports, sometimes from different data sets altogether. When a single source for the truth can be agreed upon, then the measurement, collection, and analysis can begin. III. Building the List Step 1: Love the One You’re With “The truth is that the customers to whom you wish to sell tomorrow are going to look an awful lot like the ones you sold yesterday,” says Demandbase VP of Marketing and Demand Operations Jennifer Pockell-Wilson. Therefore, a logical step in the finding of “Pareto’s 20%” is to review a company’s existing accounts to spot all of the attributes that are most commonly shared by all of its highest-value accounts. In the case of Demandbase, for example, the company’s sales and marketing teams collectively: • Performed an exhaustive 12-month closed/won analysis of its accounts using opportunity and account reports in Salesforce.com, which was the system of record • Identified the key attributes common to the company’s highest value customers, and worked with sales to “fill in the blanks” on any missing data points about the accounts they had sold into • Defined the common, core predictive attributes of these companies in order to define a “target account profile,” including industry, company size, annual revenue, and technology investments During its analysis, no detail or trait was too small, irrelevant, or strange to be noted and considered, says Pockell-Wilson. “We didn’t settle for the account attributes other B2Bs might stop with, such as company size, industry, or revenue. We wanted to know it all.” These attributes will be different for every company, but Demandbase discovered two significant characteristics shared by virtually all of the company’s sweet spot accounts: a high volume of unique monthly Web visits and marketing technology buying patterns. Unique Monthly Visits – The monthly web traffic numbers of a potential prospect were a key indicator of value. Since Demandbase solutions work by identifying the accounts visiting digital content, companies with higher web traffic numbers were more likely to see an immediate impact of a tool like | 3 Demandbase. They were also proven to close faster and more consistently than accounts with lower traffic numbers. Technology Buying Trends – Because Demandbase’s own technology works well with most existing marketing technologies—such as marketing automation, web analytics, or content management systems—the companies that are “The aim of marketing is to know and already using these marketing technologies in their stack were far more likely to purchase Demandbase. understand the customer so well that the product … sells itself.” Peter Drucker With these critical attributes to a B2B organization’s sweet spot accounts clearly identified, a final step involves filling in any blanks across all of the accounts to make them as uniform as possible. Step 2: Find More of the Same Now it’s time to take those sweet spot account profiles and actually look for the inaugural members of our named account list that will match most closely to what we are looking for. Since Demandbase sales and marketing agreed that any B2B website enjoying a high volume of unique Web traffic was tailor-made for the company’s unique applications (Demandbase helps companies identify in real time the account-based data behind those visitors), it turned to third-party Web analytics services such as Compete.com to locate similarly high-trafficked B2B websites that fit the traffic threshold established in the sweet spot audit of its own high-value accounts. Similarly, Demandbase established that companies using marketing automation software, content management systems, or paid web analytics tools were far more likely to purchase. In order to identify those companies, Demandbase used a combination of third-party Web tools such as BuiltWith.com (which identifies the underlying technology scripts hidden in websites, such as web analytics or marketing automation) and good old-fashioned legwork, including: • Perusing those marketing technology vendor websites for customer lists or mentions • Scanning company social media pages including LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. • Searching for online references to companies using those services • Purchasing sponsorships at live events hosted by or involving those companies • Attending technology user conferences (e.g., Eloqua Experience, Adobe Digital Marketing Summit, etc.) Through this combination of list building tactics, and then cross-referencing the traffic lists with the technology list, Demandbase was able to pull together a list of target accounts that fit our “sweet spot” profile. These Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are the companies that we will then monitor and identify when they visit Demandbase.com, look for at live events, and proactively reach out to with targeted multi-channel campaigns including Company-Targeted Advertising and personalized content at Demandbase.com. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” | 4 Step 3: Put Faces with the Names Once you identify your “sweet spot” accounts, the next step is to build a list of the people who will likely be on the buying committee at these accounts. Unfortunately, account data alone rarely meets the needs of B2B marketing or sales executives, who may be faced with the prospect of engaging with a very large, multifaceted enterprise with dozens of stakeholders all playing a role in the buying process. In other words, while account data needs to be where you start, it is unlikely to help sales know when or where to engage inside an account or provide marketing with the “how” or “to whom” to tailor its messaging. “That’s the problem with most high-level account profiles,” says Megan Heuer, group director for Data-Driven Marketing at SiriusDecisions. “They’re not actionable at the Why should I call? and What can they buy? levels. They’re also not helpful to marketers who want to determine the most relevant messaging and offers. They’re a start, but they are not enough.” Therefore, the final step in the process is to use third-party data providers to flesh out contact information (e.g., company address, SIC codes, phone numbers, etc.) and perhaps purchase contact lists within those companies. For companies that opt to do the latter, Jason Stewart, marketing director at Demandbase, has a few words of experience to guide them. “It may be tempting to jump at volume discounts offering contact names the data vendor says are in line with what you’re looking for. Don’t. You’ve done the hard work and know your sweet spot better than anyone else. Work the list you have created, preserve the quality of the list without getting greedy for quantity.” The named account list is the first step. It is the foundation of an account-based marketing approach. Once it is in place—and contact lists are acquired that are strictly comprised of the potential influencers and buyers from those companies—tools like buyer personas and nurture programs become more effective because the prospects and leads on your lists are from the accounts that have been singled out as potential “sweet spot” accounts. Step 4: Stay With It Actually, there is one more piece of the named account puzzle but it’s more a philosophical commitment than a step in the process: continuously revisit which accounts are of greatest value to the organization and the attributes that define them. In the same way an automobile or any other machine can be thrown out of alignment from dynamic operating conditions, so too do B2Bs and the markets they serve constantly change and require vigilance on the part of your sales and marketing teams. For example, while Eloqua was the key MAS technology identified at the time the initial Demandbase list was created, accounts using Marketo and Aprimo have also become key targets for the Demandbase sales team. “We have a very tightly aligned sales and marketing process that constantly works together to monitor and gauge these attributes,” says Demandbase’s Pockell-Wilson. “The good news is that once you do the hard work up front, it’s a lot easier to sustain that process moving forward.” | 5 IV. Beware the Bright Lights Before we get started with the process of building the named account list that is right for an organization, it is important to note that this also means avoiding the mistakes and erroneous assumptions that can lead an organization into developing and pursuing the wrong list. While analytical data is a critical means of identifying the picture-perfect customer for your company, notes Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, “You also need to be able to recognize who is not a potential customer for your company.” “I urge you to know which customers buy more or have the potential to buy more or have greater influence. And invest accordingly.” Tim Suther CMO, SVP Acxiom Given the scope and complexity of the typical B2B sales engagement, many sales and marketing organizations come to know these accounts in great detail. This can lead to certain assumptions about the kinds of organizations that are of greatest value to the company. And as any acronym-savvy grade school student can attest, danger lurks whenever we assume anything. “As we started the process of building our named account list, we had certain instincts about which accounts were our most important,” says Pockell-Wilson from Demandbase. “We used data to test our instincts. Some were on target, but some were really, really wrong.” Similarly, sales, marketing, and even C-Suite executives are not immune to the allure and “big brand blindness” to which all of us are susceptible, meaning they assume that their marquee or brand name accounts are their most valuable. A B2B’s sweet spot accounts may, in fact, be the more innocuous brands that, for example, may have been easier or faster to sell, that are more self-sufficient and therefore less expensive to support, or that serve as terrific reference accounts for building new business. V. Conclusion Andrew Carnegie famously noted that corporate teamwork is “the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” Which is to say, the more tightly aligned a B2B’s marketing and sales organizations, the greater the likelihood their combined efforts will produce improved revenue results for the company. Because the sales lead is the most tangible point of exchange between these two groups and the one upon which the overall success of the company depends, it makes sense that a joint exercise in defining and developing a named account list is ideal for producing that marketing-sales alignment. As we have seen, the key steps to this process require marketing and sales to use a variety of internal and third-party data sources to: • Identify the company’s most valuable accounts • Isolate the key firmographic and decision-making attributes unique to those accounts • Use this data to identify optimal prospects The result to this process is a marketing-sales tandem united in a powerful understanding of who they need to pursue and how best to pursue them, not to mention an “uncommon” confidence in their chances of success. | 6 About Demandbase Demandbase is a Real-time Targeting and Personalization platform for B2B. Demandbase works by identifying the companies that are visiting a website, and then by making that insight actionable in your existing Marketing and Sales programs and technologies. Real-time identification means you can make targeting decisions as well as personalize the content or web experience based on otherwise unavailable attributes of the visitor, such as specific company, company size, number of employees, industry, or 1st party attributes such as customer or pipeline standing, or even competitor status. Demandbase offers Company-Targeted display advertising, website engagement and conversion modules, and CRM integration for a consistent view of accounts from spend to revenue. Demandbase is where Digital Presence and Account-Based marketing intersect, allowing B2B marketers to target their most valuable audience and personalize the experience to make engagements more effective and more measurable. 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