Although ABM is account-centric and not focused on selling an individual lead, you need to identify the decision-makers within each target account. The more, the better.
You need contact information—name, title, email address, phone numbers, physical address and social accounts. Account profiling with up-to-date contact information on key decision-makers can help you identify pain points, focus on solution strategies, shorten the sales cycle and even find up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
While you’re building your contact data on as many decision-makers as possible, your team or outsourced service should also be tracking intent and engagement data. Intent data provides the signals or alerts that a target account is ready to buy. Engagement data tracks your current and previous connections with that account.
Let’s say a target account comes up on your cell phone number list radar. Buying intent is high as signaled by a recent expansion of the sales force. If you also know that your sales reps already have some level of engagement, you can assign the account Tier 1 priority and justify assigning more resources to it.
Maintain Current Contact Data
At this point, you’re in rinse and repeat mode. Maintaining data readiness is a never-ending process. To manage the quality, accuracy and completeness of your data, you need a CRM system you can rely on.
As you scale, you’ll require more and more third-party data. To ensure you’re always buying the freshest data, look for providers that allow you to buy records and intent data in near real-time.
And if you’re wondering whether or not all the attention on your data is really worth it, consider this: Just a 10% improvement in your account scoring could raise your sales productivity by as much as 40%.
As you scale your ABM, it pays to keep your data in top condition.
