A Look Into The Sales Future - Account Based Sales Development

Here’s the vision. In the not too distant future, Sales Development Reps (SDRs) will no longer be incentivized to deliver on the quantity of leads while only being measured on appointments set. Some may argue that the shift has already occurred to focus on upskilling our SDRs to a higher standard of delivering the buying group of 5.4 decision makers.

From a single contact to a buying group.

Are your eyes closed? Are you catching the vision yet?

Ask yourself this question:

“Why do we incentivize SDRs on metrics that only encourage the mindset of spray and pray, while overburdening them with sales stack to automate the crap out of everything?”

On the other hand, we define success for our frontline sellers as pipeline generated, time to close, close rate, deal size, and quota attainment. Do you see a disconnect?

Perhaps the lack of correlation does imply causation.

B2B Sellers are ever more keen to the complexity of today’s buyer journey. In CEB’s book “The Challenger Customer”, we learn that not only do we need to be multithreading our deals, we also need to be building consensus as early as possible to prevent group purchasing dysfunction. You know, when you lose a deal not to price, or even to a competitor, but to the painful “no decision”.

Ok, we get it, but where do we find the time to put so much energy into targeted accounts when sales development is setting appointments with anybody who’s able to fog a mirror?

Unfortunately, most sellers are getting a seat at the table far too late in the game since 67% of the buyer journey is now done digitally and buyers typically don’t reach out to suppliers until they are in the third and final stage of “supplier selection”. If this is you, good luck… Ever heard of an RFP or an RFI? Conversations at this stage sound a lot like:

“Can your product do A, B, and C?” and “Just give me an idea of what it will cost.”

What will it cost? We haven’t even scoped it yet, let alone discussed value!

You are now fighting an uphill battle trying to win a complex sale on “features and functions” while forced to compare your apples against the competitor’s oranges.

#LoseMuch?

Oh, but there’s a better way. The solution: Account Based Sales Development (ABSD)

ABSD is a more strategic prospecting process that involves selling to targeted and highly valued accounts. The focus shifts to nurturing an account rather than a single contact within the account.

Modern Sales Development Organizations that have an Account Based Sales/Marketing approach enable sellers to focus on strategically placing themselves in front of decision makers to identify buying groups at earlier stages in the buying journey. The key here is positioning you to lead the education of the buying group while navigating them through the early phases, as defined by CEB as, “problem definition” and “solution identification”. This is truly a magical moment. Trust me; you will know when you have arrived.

With an ABSD strategy, the focus in now on building context via a power combo of high-quality efforts i.e. targeting high-value accounts, consistent follow-up, social selling, personalized messaging, and multithreading decision makers within the account.

Effectively connecting buyer stakeholders to one another, undoubtedly results in driving buyer consensus due to their ability to make informed decisions faster. Additionally, the data suggests you will now enjoy an increase in average deal size, reduction in the sales cycle, and an increase in close rate.

Congratulations, you have now earned more time to invest back into the personalization and tailored approach of ABSD.

#LevelUp

Check out Ellen Lewis’ article for more insight from a Enterprise Sales Development Rep perspective.

To learn more about using Consensus for personalization in your ABSD approach, click here to watch a personalized demo. 

This article was originally featured by The Creation Agency, here.