Cheese and wine. Salt and pepper. Fish and chips. What do all these things have in common? You rarely ever hear about one without the other following immediately or soon after. Why is that? It is because when things pair together well, it can be hard to imagine one without the other. When it comes to your prospects, a similar logic can be applied.
Closing sales is as much about having the right prospect as it is about the right salesperson. Account mapping is a brilliant tool in the account-based marketing (ABM) utility belt to achieve this. Account mapping, along with a lot of ABM, allows you to personalise and customise your sales process down to the smallest details.
A Summary of Account Mapping
Account mapping in technical terms is a process to catalogue and organise people in a particular target account. In layman’s terms, account mapping is a way for you to get a better understanding of the key decision-makers within those accounts. You can then use this information to refine your sales approach depending on the target account. This includes the process your sales teams use to close sales as well as help your company create more targeted content. In a sense, it takes away the facelessness of sales. Prospects appreciate the personal touch and your team know where to target their efforts by identifying the best path of sale.
How to Use It
Sometimes ABM requires you to have some fancy software to get the most out of a strategy. However, that is one of the great things about account mapping. It can be done as a flowchart or a spreadsheet. The first step in the account mapping process is to break down the prospect company into job levels. Start from the top and work your way down, this will help your team to identify how many paths to sales there could potentially be. The reason for doing this is because it offers you a clear view of each individual in the team and how to effectively delegate tasks for the target accounts.
This is where the cheese and wine analogy starts to make sense. By better understanding the individuals in the prospect company, you are better able to assign them with certain buyer personas. With these insights, you can offer a more personalised service to your current customers and know how to successfully approach new ones. Even before a prospect has been approached, with account mapping you are able to strategically plan out a process as well as each result of this process. In theory, this should also allow your team to plan how to handle pushbacks from prospects and readjust their process for better success.
Why Use Account Mapping?
ABM strategies can help you to achieve great results as well as breakthrough into new industries or markets. Account mapping specifically gives your team a clear picture of the prospect they are trying to engage and can even help when it comes to prioritising who to reach out to first. Prospects’ pain points can be better understood and make creating a sales pitch and even content for your businesses a much easier process.
Like most things, it all comes down to being prepared. Tools like account mapping really help to keep things organised and make sure everyone is on the same page. It limits the frustration both your team and potential prospects could experience by eliminating the likelihood of marks being missed. Time is delegated more effectively and overall it creates better motivation within a team when they can see just how their efforts should be spent.
