When in the pursuit of growth, businesses need effective sales strategies to ensure they don't stagnate in the ever-evolving marketplace.
Account-based selling has emerged as a successful approach, and understanding how to penetrate a new account is crucial for achieving its goals.
As a sales metric, account penetration is how much your customers engage and spend with your business compared with what their total spending is with other businesses in your industry. You can use that metric to determine how effective your sales and marketing strategies have been.
By focusing on the right accounts, embracing cross-selling, personalizing the experience for each account, and adopting multithreading strategies, sales leaders can drive revenue growth and expand market share.
1. Focus on the 'right' accounts
To make the most of your sales efforts, it's essential to identify and prioritize the leads that are closest to making a purchase decision. Before they reach your desk, potential customers have typically gone through the lead generation and lead qualification stages. Your marketing team should have narrowed down the list to give you only verified leads.
From there, choose the best leads that are closest to making a purchase decision. Harnessing AI-powered lead qualification and scoring tools can streamline the process by determining the leads that align with your products or services and that have purchasing power. Answering crucial questions about the customer's needs, organizational changes, risk factors, and buying decision complexity will improve your chance of success.
2. Double-down on cross-selling
Cross-selling presents a valuable opportunity to increase sales within your current customer base. By recommending products or services that complement what customers already use, you can enhance their experience and boost revenue.
For instance, if customers are purchasing gourmet peanut butter, offering them your new line of exotic jams as a complementary product would make sense. Similarly, suggesting an automated email marketing add-on package for your CRM solution can further meet their needs.
3. Create a personalized experience for each account
In today's business landscape, personalization is paramount. Treating each account as a unique entity with distinct needs is crucial for successful account penetration.
Investing time in researching and understanding your accounts will enable you to tailor personalized messages that resonate with their specific requirements. By addressing their pain points and offering solutions that meet their unique challenges, you can establish stronger connections and increase the likelihood of success.
4. Consider multithreading strategies
Building relationships with stakeholders is a vital aspect of the sales process, especially in larger organizations. However, unforeseen circumstances (such as personnel changes) can disrupt those relationships. When that happens, you may have to start the deal over from scratch with someone new.
However, if you use a multithreading approach, you can build on the work you've already done by reaching out to other stakeholders. It's one of the most important principles of account-based selling, and it allows you to mitigate the risks associated with losing a contact.
Follow these steps:
- Start the process early. Instead of waiting until your deal starts to fail, reach out early in the discovery phase.
- Find similarities. As you talk to a contact in one department, you can point out that decision-makers in other departments might also find the information valuable. Ask to be connected to them and draw connections between departments and priorities.
- Continue conversations. Once you make multiple connections, don't stop the conversation after one interaction. Continue reaching out to build a stronger relationship.
- Focus on priorities. You're not in the business of selling products and solutions. You're really in the business of solving problems. Present your solutions effectively by focusing on your contacts' priorities. If you skip this step, they won't see your solutions as worth their time and money.
- Know when to move on. There will be times when your solutions aren't a good fit. Perhaps the account isn't concerned with what you see as a problem. When that happens, it's time to either move on to the next stakeholder in your thread or move on to a new account. Don't waste your time on deals that aren't ready to close.
By establishing connections with multiple stakeholders within an account, you can ensure continuity and avoid starting over if one contact becomes unavailable. That is crucial for maintaining momentum and increasing your chances of closing deals successfully.
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Mastering account penetration is vital for sales leaders to achieve their growth objectives. By focusing on the right accounts, harnessing cross-selling opportunities, personalizing the experience for each account, and adopting multithreading strategies, sales teams can drive revenue growth and strengthen customer relationships.
Implementing those tactics requires consistent effort and a customer-centric approach. By embracing the power of account-based selling, you can unlock the potential within each account and elevate your sales performance to surpass your targets for the rest of the year.
More Resources on Account Penetration and Account-Based Selling
How ABM Automation Can Change Your Sales Process Forever
ABM: Balancing Technology and a Human Touch to Maximize Sales Success
