This Blog was updated on June 21st, 2018.
Why Account Based Outbound?
For a lot of companies, the way they prospect is a way of life. Traditionally, that way of life has materialized in a list of leads to contact and a call plan to put them through. Much like a function works in math, you put prospects into that call plan and it should (theoretically) spit out qualified leads. The amount of companies that have adopted this function is large — very large, and we’re here to shake it up.
That’s where Account Based Outbound (ABO) comes in. ABO takes the standard call plan and augments specific portions to provide you with extra information: competitive intelligence, buying cycles, key stakeholders, anything that gives you a better picture of the account. Not all organizations require or even look for this kind of information, so it’s up to them to decide whether or not ABO is a viable strategy.
Qualification level
The biggest differentiatior that justifies whether or not you should use an ABO strategy is how deeply you qualify sales leads. Within the popular Quality vs. Quantity debate ABO has a clear side to pick — if you’re geared towards passing higher quality leads, than an ABO approach suits you more. Taking the extra time and effort to find the key stakeholders, identify existing technology, and customize the information you send along works extremely well within the ABO environment. Yes, the amount of leads you pass could be on the lower end, but your sales team will know that they’ll move through the pipeline at a quicker pace.
Contrary to that, if you prefer a high volume approach you might not want to focus on the ABO strategy. Generating higher quality leads works great if your sales pipeline is chock full of opportunities, but if it’s looking a bit dry then you’ll need to fill it with whatever you can. This approach works well for teams that are just starting out, and once the pipeline looks a bit more full you can switch over to a more targeted ABO approach.
Maturity
Piggybacking off the previous point, companies that execute an ABO strategy fall into a specific bucket — they have mature sales teams (and I’m not talking about their personalities). Companies can build up massive lists of pipeline through a lengthy sales team life-cycle, but it takes time and patience to get there. Similar to the example above, if your sales team is new and has little-to-no pipeline it might be best to let them fill it with slightly less qualified opportunities. Not only will this start them off on the tight track, but also familiarize themselves with the messaging and product. Once they have that, identifying when to execute an ABO strategy becomes much more apparent.
Eventually, all teams should move towards executing an ABO strategy. How quickly they get there depends on the maturity of the team and the desired level of qualification. You can see the progression of a company’s sales team and how it relates to ABO — morphing from a new team working on filling their pipeline into a well-oiled machine that executes a full scale account based strategy.
