Over 25 sales leaders from the Bay Area’s fastest growing companies once again gathered last Friday for TOPO’s third Sales Council. These Councils offer a unique forum for sales leaders from high growth companies to learn from each other and share best practices. Each Council features three speakers who share the processes, plays, organizational elements, and technologies they use to drive key revenue metrics.
Sales and marketing technology leaders joined us at the Four Seasons SF for our 3rd Sales and Marketing Technology Council. These particular councils offer leaders from high growth companies perspective on their target markets and the opportunity to learn from each other. This council featured three speakers in panel format allowing for questions from attendees as well as moderated questions from our CEO, Scott Albro.
In a previous post, The Framework for Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Development, we defined the Ideal Customer Profile and provided the framework for ICP Development. In this post, we provide recommendations for the key questions to answer when collecting qualitative data in the ICP development process.
For the last year, TOPO analysts have researched Account-Based Everything (ABE) programs across marketing, sales development, and sales. The purpose of this post is to present a number of plays that sales organizations execute today to drive conversion as part of their evolving role in an ABE-driven organization. Before exploring these sales plays, it’s important to understand the Account-Based Everything strategy and how it affects sales’ approach.
One of the strategic decisions an organization must make is determining where sales development will report. It’s an important question with significant repercussions for the success of the SDR team.
TOPO launched its Demand Generation Practice with a mandate to help companies adopt account-based go-to-market strategies. A year later, the account-based movement dominates the B2B sales and marketing landscape. During this time, the TOPO Analyst team has identified two major trends that dictate whether companies will succeed or fail with their account-based efforts.
TOPO recently completed its 2016 Best Practices in Sales Enablement note. The research includes the study of over 55 high growth B2B organizations. The focus of the research was to understand best practices and processes for delivering world class sales enablement.
Below are some of the key takeaways from the report. If you would like access to the full Best Practices in Sales Enablement research note, contact TOPO for more information on becoming a member of our Sales Practice.
TOPO recently completed its 2016 Sales Development Benchmark Report. It represents the most in-depth study of over 150 world-class sales development organizations. The focus of our research was to understand what separates exceptional sales development teams from their peers. We discovered a number of unique characteristics that drive the highest growth, including strategy, organizational design, process, plays, and technology.
Over 30 sales development leaders from the Bay area’s fastest growing companies once again convened last Friday for TOPO’s Sales Development Council #13. These Councils offer a unique forum for sales development leaders from high growth companies to learn from each other and share best practices. Each Council features three speakers who share the processes, plays, organizational elements, and technologies they use to drive key revenue metrics. This Council produced a few key themes, including discussions about SDR effectiveness and performance, how companies define qualification criteria and creating effective outbound emails.
The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) defines the firmographic, environmental and behavioral attributes of accounts expected to become a company’s most valuable customers. It is developed through both qualitative and quantitative analyses; and may optionally be informed by predictive analytics software.
Unlike the term “target customer,” which is often used to describe any company that might buy a product or service, the ICP is focused on the most valuable customers and prospects that are also most likely to buy. The Ideal Customer Profile should also not be confused with the Total Addressable Market or Total Available Market, which are calculations or estimates of the universe of potential target customers.
The ICP is a foundational, organization-wide decision impacting downstream sales and marketing efforts. It aligns marketing, sales, service and executive teams to the highest-value accounts. It also creates focus on scalable and repeatable strategies and tactics to engage and convert top accounts. And it drives target account list creation, segmentation, organizational structure, and other key activities.