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Understanding Account Based Sales Development

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

Business leaders and sales professionals are keenly aware that focusing on accounts over individual leads often yields better returns for the business.

Companies that forget to practice social selling daily are 40% less likely to  hit their revenue goals.

The results of account based sales development (ABSD) speak for themselves. These programs outpace lead-focused programs in terms of both conversions and revenue growth. Sales development representatives (SDRs) contribute around 65 percent to a company’s revenue pipeline. SDRs also realize higher conversion rates on meetings, and around 66 percent of them will attain their quotas.

For the forward-thinking sales leader, account based sales development is a no-brainer. Here’s how to effectively use ABSD to boost your sales team’s efforts.

Know Your Ideal Prospects

Do you have a good idea of which accounts will buy from you? If yes, you should be able to name them easily. This is an important factor of ABSD. Selecting target accounts is key to success when you use account based sales development.

Non-targeted selling still exists when you introduce ABSD, but it won’t drive your success the same way. Account based sales development is predicated on selecting and targeting those key accounts already primed to buy. Having a profile for your ideal client and a predictable pipeline will help you better implement ABSD. And if your “ideal prospect” is vague, you can still build a buyer profile.

Close Six-Figure Deals

Account based sales development is crucial when you have a number of ideal prospects lining up for $100,000-plus deals. ABSD also make sense for your sales team if the majority of your deals fall in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. It’s much easier to handle deals on this scale using ABSD.

If your deals fall below $50,000, however, ABSD starts to make a bit less sense. Why is this the case? Smaller deals don’t justify the effort that goes on behind the scenes with ABSD. On the other hand, larger deals—particularly those 10 to 20 times larger than average—demand an ABSD approach. The longer buying cycle, a rising average number of decision-makers, and consultative sales processes make ABSD the perfect fit for these large deals.

Boost Sales Efficiency

Take a look at your sales team’s opportunity metrics. If boosting the rate of opportunity-to-close would make a big impact, you want ABSD.

Opportunity-to-close rates look at the quality of opportunities in particular. While your sales professionals likely have plenty of opportunities, many of them might be relatively low quality or unlikely to close. Introducing ABSD can help you generate more quality opportunities and thus boost your opportunity-to-close rates.

ABSD represents the way modern B2B companies conduct business. As a targeted, personalized, and strategic approach to sales development, it may be the answer to your sales challenges.

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