Imagine a sales funnel where every lead is high value. Every prospect is a perfect fit. Every deal turns into a lifetime customer.
No—this isn’t a fantasy sales novel.
It’s the reality when sales reps learn target account selling and apply it to their outreach efforts.
Target account sales—sometimes called account-based selling—is where every prospect is handpicked and matched to your ideal customer persona (ICP). You know their pain points, competitors, and how you'll sell them long before you pick up the phone.
Mastering the target-account process method will allow you to fill your pipeline with high-value leads that are a perfect fit for your product. We’re about to dive into:
· What is target account selling?
· How target account selling works
· 4 stages of the target account selling process
· Target account sales model advantages and disadvantages
· 5 target account selling strategies to master your craft
Let’s get targeting 🎯
What is target account selling?
Target account selling is a B2B sales strategy that identifies prospects based on specific factors such as deal value, ideal customer persona, industry, revenue, pain points, buying signals, and budget, to then focus more personalised sales resources on these highly qualified leads.
Salespeople can use target account selling to find qualified prospects who are a good fit for their product and increase their chances of turning them into paying customers.
It’s all about picking the right prospects, researching them (and then researching some more), and crafting messages that directly address their pain points. This allows for a hyper-personalised sales approach. The sales team is then able to target the highest potential leads in their pipeline, and dedicate more time and resources towards closing them, rather than a more evenly distributed shotgun approach which leads every potential customer through the same process. You basically custom-tailor your sales approach to fit their buying process.
How target account selling works
Target account selling—TAS for short—is when sales reps get into the weeds of a prospect’s needs.
A target account selling process for a sales team means gathering high-value, well-matched prospects into a list and building specific, targeted outreach proposals just for them. This strategy usually focuses on finding accounts that are:
A perfect fit. The prospect's company is in a certain industry, and their employee numbers match your ICP. They may be with one of your competitors and looking to change products or a startup with a budget that can afford your products. You need to check a lot of boxes for an account to fit your targeting strategy so you don't waste time on a dead lead.
High-value. Target account selling takes a long time—it’s not just cold calling the first 50 numbers in a random list. Each account is handpicked and more likely to convert because its budget, needs, and ICP match your target market. The effort is worth it because prospects are more likely to convert and turn into paying customers. More effort = more reward.
A potential lifetime customer. Finding prospects looking for a long-term partner will make the time invested in TAS worthwhile. Spending five hours researching and personalising an outreach strategy for a high-value client will seem like nothing if they sign up and stay with you for a couple of years!
To find the right accounts, sales reps need to follow a step-by-step process to narrow down targets 👇
4 stages of the target account selling process
Having a clear picture of the four stages of the TAS process will help you implement the concept into your sales workflow, and enable you to generate more revenue from your pipeline.
However, it does require you to be clear about your specific objectives, thoughtfully analyse your sales intel, and operationalise the steps effectively.
1. Decide what you want to achieve with TAS
Don’t start fleshing out a TAS strategy unless you know why you want to go down this road.
Targeting accounts is a great selling strategy if your sales reps have time to research, reach out, and close these deals. TAS isn't spending 10 minutes on LinkedIn and then picking up the phone to cold call a lead—you need to have specific sales goals and know what you want to achieve by selling like this.
TAS goals can include:
Signing new accounts. Do you want to fill your pipeline with new prospects? You can use TAS to find accounts that are a good fit for your product/service and match your sales cycle.
Closing deals quicker: Long sales cycles cost your company time and money. Finding accounts that are ready to close within your ideal timeframe help keep revenue targets on track and save your sales reps from getting dragged into months of stalled negotiations.
Upselling existing accounts. What about the accounts already on your books? Current customers trust your company—you’ve delivered for them once already. TAS goals can be upselling or cross-selling to customers based on the data you have on them and offering new or unused features within your product.
New accounts require a completely different approach from shortening a sales cycle or cross-selling to an existing customer you've worked with for five years. It's okay to have multiple goals with a TAS strategy but make sure your team is on the same page with what you're trying to accomplish with each batch of accounts you target.
Once you know what you want to achieve with TAS—start searching for new prospects.
2. Figure out what the perfect target account looks like
Don’t skip this step—it's an essential part of the entire target account process.
Find prospects that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP). These accounts are the crème de la crème of your target market because they fit like a glove. They may work in an industry that already loves your product. Or their company is big enough that they can afford a contract. Most importantly, your product is a good fit for them because it’ll actually help them. It's the kind of companies that (hopefully) marketing focuses their lead generation efforts on.
Tick these boxes when searching for accounts that match your ICP:
What does their company look like? Take a deeper look at the prospect's firmographic data, like company size and how many employees they have. See what industry they're in, what customers they serve, and if they're growing (or stalling). Look at your existing customer base and your most loyal accounts to see what similarities you should be looking for.
What’s in their tech stack? Are they already using one of your competitors? Does their tech stack look like they would invest in a product like yours? When I pitch Close to a new client, I want to know they're already using some marketing and sales tools. Otherwise, our product may be too advanced for their needs. This information is super easy to find—just plug the prospect’s website into a tool like Slintel or Wappalyzer to see what tools they’re currently using.
Have they shown interest in your product? Website and social media data are a treasure trove for finding companies that have already checked out what you're selling. Look at your website's analytics, LinkedIn history, and social media mentions to see if prospects have already taken a look at your products. Your analytics tools will also track if they've shown buying intent (like clicking on your pricing page) or engaged with a sales rep in the past about a particular product. This is a sign that they're interested but may still be on the fence about buying.
In fact, sometimes it might be worth developing individual buyer personas for different decision-makers and stakeholders involved in the deal within a given account. So don't just think: this is Company X's buyer profile, but think: This is the buyer persona of Bob from the purchasing department, and this is the buyer persona of Jennifer from legal, etc, etc. As soon as you know what your target accounts look like, it’s time to get searching.
3. Find your accounts and start making a list
Sales reps are totally spoiled for prospecting tools and finding target accounts (also known as key accounts).
We now have everything we need at our fingertips to search and find companies that fit even the most detailed personas. Start with LinkedIn—search for companies and CEOs that match your ICP and ensure that their industry, location, and team size align with your target.
Find around 10 to 20 matches and then move on to other criteria like growth phase, revenue, and tech stacks. Let’s say you’re targeting companies with 50+ employees that work in SaaS marketing and advertising. One of the companies you’ve found ticks all the boxes… so you put them on your list, right?
Not yet.
You need to check whether or not they're growing, their tech stack has room for your product, and most importantly—if they can afford you. When a company's growth has stalled or is losing money, investing in a new product will be the last thing it wants to do.
That said, don’t go overboard or spend weeks researching target accounts for your list—once you have a handful of matches, move on to the last step of the target account process.
Pro tip: Pick a few accounts at a time to refine the research phase and ensure that the criteria you're using are accurate. Loading your list with 50 accounts to target will be a total waste of time if the criteria are off!
4. Finalise your list and start selling
Time to start reaching out to accounts and selling.
You’ve done the hard work by finding accounts that are a good fit for your product. Don’t mess it all up by sending them a boring outreach email that is “just checking in”
Reaching out to target accounts is easy for sales organisations with the right sales tools.
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