This blog was updated on June 22nd, 2018.
No Contacts? No Problem.
With the shift to Account Based Outbound (ABO) taking place, I’m reminded of the times where it wasn’t even a thought in my mind. I’ll admit I fell into a rut, just like many SDRs do, where all I cared about was hitting my daily activities and blasting through a list as fast as I could. It was easy to justify — the more people I could contact the higher my chances were of getting a lead. Similar to the old methods of outbound prospecting, I was at the mercy of luck when it came to finding a good opportunity. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. Rejections began to pile up and my days would drag on, so I thought to myself, “there has to be a better way to do this.”
Pre-ABO
I won’t say I was the one who pioneered the idea of ABO (because I absolutely wasn’t), but I definitely caught the first sniff of it a couple of years back. Instead of burning through my list of contacts I began to more methodically comb through my accounts, attempting to find the best contact in each before moving on to the next. As my projects changed and the departments I called into varied, my strategy had to accommodate that. Adapting to the situation was key, and that meant my process could never stay the same. What seemed like such an obvious strategy was a revelation at the time — I was having more conversations, the quality of those were higher and I was fleshing out a more accurate organizational chart of my accounts. The value of an effective Account Based Strategy was becoming clear.
Was I still putting prospects through the call plan I had, even if they didn’t necessarily fit a target prospect profile? Yes, because it was early on in the transformation for me and I was still working out the kinks. My accounts were chock full of contacts, most of them were the wrong ones, and I just didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t have a fleshed out ICP and I didn’t have a strong target profile either — I was still blasting through a list, it was just a more thorough way to do it. I was working my way out of that rut I put myself in, but I still had some digging to do.
Current Process
Now that I’ve had time to flesh out my strategy, develop an ICP and have an assigned universe of accounts to call, my prospecting has become more targeted and process-oriented. I’ve learned that prospecting is situational more than anything, and treating each account differently from the last is key. That means I don’t always need to pull in exactly four prospects when I source the account, or that an equal level of account mapping and research goes into all of my targets. Is there a basic process that goes into starting each account? You bet there is. After that however, each account is its own and should be treated as such.
The biggest difference between executing an Account Based strategy and prospecting through a lead marketing approach is in the information required before reaching out. With an Account Based model there’s less information required at the start, and it’s up to the SDR to tease it out during their outreach. This leads to more conversations, more questions being asked, more contacts touched, and ultimately more information gathered. By starting out with less, you’re forced to find out more. No longer do you need a contact list, just the name of the account is enough information in the Account Based model to get your prospecting efforts started and for you to start digging.
Now that I’ve adopted an Account Based model for my prospecting efforts I can definitively say I’ve dug myself out of that rut. It no longer feels like a chore to prospect, but an opportunity to uncover something with each dial I make and every email I send out.
What will the future hold? I don’t know, but if it’s anything like the jump I made when executing an Account Based process I couldn’t be more excited.
