Accounts First, People Second

Account level firmographics drive the top level of GTM priority in an Account Based Strategy - these are the accounts your team is focused on. My prior post, digging into the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), gets into some detail there. With account clarity, it’s time to understand the people involved in the buying process.

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The Who

Within segments of your target accounts, patterns will emerge as to who is part of the buying committee - the group of people involved in the buying decision. Bucket by role to establish the first level of clarity.

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💰 Economic Buyer - business person responsible for making the final buying decision

🧑‍💻 Technical Buyer - technical fit evaluator

🧱 User - day-to-day person(s) who be using the product

📣 Champion - advocate for purchase within the user group

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If you’ve completed the sales process (win, lose or no decision), do a retro on who is involved in the buying process.

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• Sales Feedback - Solicit feedback, who was/is involved in the sales process. 
• Opportunity Data - mine contacts tagged to closed or in-pipe deals.
• Interview Won/Lost Customers - don’t assume (win or lose) your team 100% knew who was involved in the decision making process behind the scenes. Ask retro, you’ll be amazed by perception vs reality!

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In a more complex higher value sale, expect your buying committee size to increase. Turbulent economic times, expect more people to join the buying party. Much has recently been written about the elevated role of the CFO/Finance in the decision making process on everything tech stack related. 

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Ready, Set…Rabbit Hole!

It would be tempting to write up some messaging and go, but there’s a very important step that all members of the GTM team should take - individually and shared with the team. It’s time to go down the Rabbit Hole and learn about the personas that make up your buying committee.

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Now that you know who, get lost. Research can include:

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LinkedIn - lookup personas in your ICP. How do they describe their role? Career path patterns?

Engagement - based on their social engagement, what topics/where are they engaging on topics to their job function and industry?

Job Postings - look at postings for look-alike roles, what are the jobs to be done?

Thought Leaders - who’s getting their attention? And where?

Competitors - are they targeting the same personas? Investigate and learn.

Non-Competitors - what else are your personas buying? How do they speak to them?

Customer Interviews - see list in this ICP blog post.

ChatGPT - can be used for all of the above quickly. Just ask some questions about the role itself, what are the typical job responsibilities, thought leaders in the area, etc. Just keep asking questions and you’ll be down the rabbit hole in a productive way. Just be sure to fact check and validate what you hear!

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Unstructured to Structure

Now your GTM team has moved beyond the ‘check the box persona’ process. 

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Encouraging curiosity to go down ‘rabbit hole’ and learn about your personas in an unstructured way will make everything better downstream. 

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Now it’s time to establish a buyer journey, positioning, messaging, target account list, etc. When done effectively with a structure, you can bet the output will now be a higher quality output. More on all these topics in upcoming posts.

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Dedicate time for the persona rabbit hole and get personal with your buyer personal! 

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Interested in other posts on Account Based Strategies?

You Say ABM/X, I Say Account Based GTM!

The Ideal…Ideal Customer Profile

Sales Development…You Say SDR, I Say BDR

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