Insights and Research for Marketing, Sales Development and Sales

More and more organizations are adopting and leveraging an account based strategy to drive business growth. Therefore, organizations must identify the most impactful activities for an account based strategy and align internal expectations around the expected outcomes.

An account based approach is the coordination of highly-valuable, personalized experiences across all functions that impact the customer to drive engagement and conversion of a set of target accounts. This starts with identifying the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) all the way through measuring the results.

The TOPO Account Based Framework is a standard methodology practiced by the world’s fastest-growing companies and supported by research into account based practices. This series of repeatable activities that are organized into 10 categories can be used to build or iteratively improve an account based organization:

• Market: Define and agree on target accounts and stakeholders. This starts with creating the ICP as the basis for the account based strategy. It also includes gathering insights into the buyers (e.g., people and companies) and the market (e.g., use case, vertical, competitive forces).
• Go-To-Market: Develop a strategy to align the organization to the target account list that includes an account based charter, segmentation, revenue model, strategic metrics framework, capacity planning, and data strategy.
• Organization: Establish the organizational infrastructure designed to deliver integrated experiences across all functional groups in a skilled go-to-market team through resource planning, skills development, and the establishment of account teams.
• Process Design: Design the end-to-end account based process that helps the marketing organization run efficiently, including milestone definitions, SLAs, account selection, account planning, and orchestration management.
• Technology: Build a technology stack to drive scale, automation, and efficiency to enable account based execution that includes data process, integrations, technology management, and user enablement.
• Program Design: Design high-touch, high-value, integrated programs which are the foundational elements of high-impact account based execution. These programs and plays utilize briefs, research, insights, content, orchestration plans, personalization, and program messaging.
• Offers: Identify and develop content and offers that drive customer engagement with an SDR or sales rep by addressing the challenges or objectives of target accounts and roles. The most common offers include sales meetings, workshops, assessments, roadshows, executive dinners, content, and tools.
• Orchestrated Plays: Execute programs that are coordinated across channels and functions to drive engagement, increase velocity for deals in the sales cycle, and expand customer relationships with target accounts.
• Channels: Deliver offers and messages across multiple channels to maximize impact and progress target accounts. The most common channels are media and advertising, owned sites, email, sales/SDR engagement, executive outreach, direct mail, and events.
• Measurement: Create dashboards and reports to measure, manage, and optimize account based performance that support the revenue model, account activity, and engagement scoring.

Organizations that have adopted an account based approach to marketing should adopt the TOPO Account Based Framework below to ensure success with their target accounts.