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July 30, 2024
Every B2B sales rep knows the thrill of hooking a high-value lead — that textbook-perfect potential customer who becomes a lifetime account, regularly pumping out large deals. But it’s not every day that sales teams catch one of these prized accounts.
To try to find as many of these key accounts as possible, companies will often try to cast the widest net possible with their marketing efforts and sales strategy. But success isn’t about having the widest reach; it’s about focusing on strategic accounts and nurturing existing relationships. This is the promise of target account selling (TAS) — a sales methodology focused on prioritizing and selling to important existing accounts.
Let’s dive deeper into targeted account selling to understand the competitive advantage it provides and how you can leverage it in your sales strategy.
Target Account Selling (TAS) is a strategic approach that prioritizes and focuses sales efforts on high-value accounts that offer the most potential for long-term business growth. Unlike general sales strategies that aim to reach as many prospects as possible, TAS zeroes in on a select group of accounts identified through rigorous analysis and profiling. This targeted method ensures that resources are dedicated to nurturing relationships and personalizing sales tactics for these key accounts, leading to deeper customer engagement and higher conversion rates.
While TAS is often used interchangeably with the term “account-based selling,” it shouldn’t be confused with account-based marketing (ABM). ABM is typically driven by the marketing team, which nurtures targeted accounts and high-value potential customers down the sales funnel with personalized campaigns.
But why use TAS? Doesn’t it seem like putting all your eggs in just a few baskets?
What does your dream sales funnel look like? For most sales professionals, it’s packed full of high-quality prospects who perfectly fit your buyer personas and become customers for life.
Sound too good to be true? Target account selling turns this hypothetical into a reality by:
Strengthening Customer Relationships: The tailored approach behind TAS deepens relationships with existing accounts, ensuring each customer feels valued and understood. By concentrating efforts on these strategic accounts, you can build trust and loyalty, which translates to sustained business growth.
Improving Up- and Cross-Selling Opportunities: When your sales team understands the specific needs and pain points of its customers, it can capitalize on up- and cross-selling opportunities. This increases the overall value of each customer relationship.
Growing Revenue With Greater Sales Success: By focusing on accounts with the highest return on investment, TAS allows sales teams to focus their efforts on closing larger deals more frequently, ultimately boosting topline growth.
Measuring and Tracking Sales Performance: Monitoring performance across a target account list can provide valuable insight into your sales and marketing efforts. This allows you to allocate resources more effectively and tailor your sales strategy more effectively.
Overall, TAS is a powerful strategy that can drive significant improvements in sales effectiveness and revenue growth. But how does it work exactly?
As a data-driven strategy, TAS doesn’t have a concrete set of steps to follow for success. Each customer is unique and will require a custom account plan and selling strategy. However, four common components form the foundation of every TAS strategy:
Going back to your dream sales funnel, the ideal customer profile (ICP) represents the perfect hypothetical customer for your particular product or service. Your ICP should include key traits, such as company size, industry, revenue and specific challenges they face. By focusing on accounts that align with this profile, your sales team can concentrate efforts on high-potential leads, ensuring better resource allocation and higher conversion rates.
While an ICP is developed as a dream scenario, a buyer persona is based on reality. As a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, buyer personas are built on market research and real customer data, including demographics, behavior, motivations, and goals. These personas help your sales teams understand who the key decision-makers are, allowing them to address the unique needs and preferences of each potential customer.
A target account list is a curated selection of high-value or high-potential accounts. This list is based on your ICP and buyer personas to ensure each account aligns with the company’s overall goals. By concentrating resources on these key accounts, sales teams can drive significant revenue and business growth. It’s also important to regularly update your target account list based on new insights and market changes to keep your strategy dynamic and effective.
Finally, personalization is what allows you to close deals with your target accounts, transforming generic outreach campaigns into tailored experiences for each customer. Effective personalization requires a deep understanding of their business challenges, goals and decision-making processes. Leveraging data analysis and insights, your sales teams can craft unique solutions that address their specific needs, building trust and long-lasting relationships with high-value customers.
Want to see a target account selling strategy in action? Look no further than our work with Reckitt, a global leader in consumer health and hygiene products.
When Reckitt realized it needed to update the sales model for its over-the-counter healthcare division, it found a reliable partner in RevenueShift. After an extensive evaluation and redesign of Reckitt’s current outreach and targeting methodology, our team was able to help Reckitt prioritize accounts based on the highest potential. This precise TAS segmentation allowed Reckitt to allocate resources more effectively and focus on the most promising customers.
Read the full success story to learn more about Reckitt’s incredible transformation.
