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More Revenue ASAP: 4 Steps To Accelerate The Sales Cycles Through Effective Account Planning

Forbes Business Development Council

Anand Shah is cofounder and CEO of Databook, a revenue technology company.

2023 is not going to be an easy run for enterprise sales leaders and teams. Growth is the number one driver of shareholder return, and sales is under intense pressure to increase revenue per seller—fast.

As a result, sales leaders are prioritizing shorter sales cycles to generate the greatest amount of revenue as quickly as possible. The problem? Many are pulling a variety of levers in their quest to accelerate deals, but it’s not proven which ones will work.

Right intention, uncertain outcome.

As John McMahon outlines in his seminal book The Qualified Sales Leader, there are five key positive characteristics for the enterprise seller:

• Intelligence.

• Persistence.

• Heart and desire.

• Coachability and adaptability.

• Integrity and curiosity.

This last is considered most crucial, and this extends to what strategic buyers are most looking for today: a seller who will seek to understand the business issues and technical challenges within an organization that their solution or offering can improve.

That’s the number one job of sales right now: to become strategic consultants capable of helping buyers align their teams and processes to make faster purchases. That means showing customers you bring value to the table—which in turn requires that you first understand their business health, strategic priorities and how your solution can uniquely help their organization.

This is why strategic account planning is more important than ever in 2023. Get it right, and you can drive more efficient, productive sales teams—and guide buyers through a faster, more rewarding sales cycle. Here are four steps to get you started.

1. Create a single source of truth internally.

Use account data to align individuals within the sales and marketing organization, from demand gen to pre-sales to business development reps to operations. Working in concert can enhance the overall understanding of the highest propensity to buy accounts that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP). Understanding an account’s current needs will help identify which stakeholders have pain and urgency to improve performance in the coming cycle.

In addition, account executives and sales managers should share their findings more widely to ensure alignment across their organization—and the buyer. Technical and customer success managers can provide further insights into priorities for existing accounts. Marketing teams can sync their messaging to align with sales strategies.

My understanding of the crucial importance of establishing a single source of truth has been shaped in part by sales and marketing leaders like Nancy Harlan, VP of Global Account Based Marketing (ABM) at UiPath, a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader in the robotic process automation space and Databook client. Simple best practices like sharing account-specific reports across marketing, sales and customer success foster collaboration and demonstrate the time-saving value of shared intelligence. This, in turn, establishes the basis for a unified account strategy. Frequently monitoring and updating accounts’ priorities—and mapping new offerings to those strategic objectives—keeps anyone who engages with strategic accounts current and aligned.

2. Build and nurture alignment with selling partners.

Intelligence about target accounts can reveal whether they typically invest in new technologies through systems integrators or service providers offering a range of solutions. If accounts prefer to use a selling partner or have long-established strategic partnerships, that information can help shape priorities for internal sales teams.

Sales team members and their counterparts at enterprise partners should offer mutual assistance in identifying key decision makers and strategic opportunities at target accounts. A synchronized approach to account planning will leverage existing relationships and established processes to notch wins as efficiently as possible.

3. Meet buyers where they are.

Connecting on a human level is even more critical amid today’s market uncertainties. The ability to empathize with clients through targeted discovery is even better.

Take, for example, a common discovery question: “What are your biggest IT challenges today?”

Consider enhancing this with something like: “It’s impressive that you are already the most efficient investment bank on the street, so how do you think we can help you improve performance?”

By addressing prospects’ specific priorities with tailored messaging, sales teams can showcase their expertise and accelerate the buyer’s own planning. Through this informed exchange of ideas and solutions, sales teams earn the trust that can drive business and also provide the buyer with the strategic information they need to generate awareness—and agreement—across multiple stakeholders.

This two-way conversation is especially important for enterprise accounts with existing contracts. Sales teams should know in advance how satisfied buyers are with their current solutions and develop a plan that dovetails with existing upgrade and renewal cycles.

Sellers should also tap industry benchmarks and trends to share with target accounts. Peer group analyses of competitors and innovations in other industries that might be applicable to customer priorities are especially helpful, giving accounts intelligence and context they might not otherwise access.

This information, combined with solution-specific use cases that align with prospects’ key priorities, gives buyers the confidence to move to the next step quickly.

4. Plan to change the plan.

While account planning season may be perceived as a one-time kickoff to the annual sales cycle, it’s essential to revisit plans once they’re set in motion to ensure they continue to align with current reality. Changing priorities within target accounts, shifting conditions in the industry as a whole and new product or service offerings to propose can all prompt adjustments to existing plans.

Deep-dive reviews each quarter—or even every month—can be supplemented with quick scans of a comprehensive intelligence dashboard that gives sales teams anytime access to the business data that powers their account plans.

Effective account planning is possible—even in 2023.

Enterprise sales teams face unique challenges in 2023 that require unprecedented agility and account intelligence. A strategic, data-driven approach to account planning will not only ensure that sales teams stay on track in uncertain times. It will also help buyers define and navigate their own processes with as little friction as possible, helping build trust and close deals more quickly.


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