Your guide to going account-based

Winning by Design’s Shari Johnston shares her sought-after playbook

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Lately I’ve been borderline obsessed with pointing out the flaws of the marketing qualified lead (MQL) paradigm. If we’re ever going to find out what works, we need a unified (and account-based) view of go-to-market effectiveness. Thankfully, there are people who’ve been championing this for far longer than I have–and Shari Johnston is chief among them. 

Shari built and ran the account-based practice at GTM consultancy Winning by Design since 2019. She’s now Winning by Design’s Chief Operating Officer where she’s led training and consulting delivery teams across innumerable successful engagements including one out of every four public SaaS companies. Keep reading for Shari’s battle-tested insights into going account-based (hint: it’s an account-based strategy, not account-based marketing).

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Why account-based suddenly feels fresh

“Account-based goes back in style in times of fewer resources and the need to focus,” Shari told me. “If you can’t do demand gen campaigns that easily bring in prospects, account-based allows you to focus on a set of customers and see results.”

In other words, we don’t have the luxury of resources, budgets, or time for spray-and-pray marketing – hoping that marketing reaches and influences the right customer. We can’t convince the CEO or Board to fund broad-based brand awareness when we’re behind on pipeline goals. 

“I would hear a lot about how marketing ran this great webinar with Forrester and got 400 leads from it, but then there would only be one lead that sales wanted to talk to. With traditional demand gen, marketing thinks they’re doing a great job, but sales isn’t aligned.”

She believes that an account-based strategy is the best path forward in this environment. By account-based, she’s specifically referring to aligning your entire GTM team on winning and growing the accounts that will be your next best customers. (These specific words were extremely purposefully chosen.)

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Who owns an account-based strategy

Shari didn’t mince words on the topic of ownership. “It’s not a marketing initiative, it’s a go-to-market strategy,” she said. “There is no single owner for the function. It’s something that needs buy-in by the full go-to-market team and not a particular function.”

With that in mind, Shari notes that account-based efforts most often sit in marketing. The larger the deal size, the more she recommends it be owned by sales rather than marketing. Without a central owner, alignment can be achieved by creating a GTM council to align on ideal customer profile (ICP), measurement and progress against goals as a unified leadership team. The greatest impact is achieved through an account based strategy that is orchestrated across the GTM team, not just a single marketing outreach effort by a siloed function.

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The steps to going account-based

Most of the clients Shari works with are fairly early in their account-based journey. She helps them navigate the process in five building blocks.

1. Target account list

The target account list is the core building block of an account-based strategy – everything comes together if folks can all agree on the list. By focusing your GTM on those accounts that will be your next best customers, you are naturally aligning your team to success. Starting with attributes and targeting lookalikes of your current successful customers is a great way to start.

“Many people dismiss it. They assume they have a target account list, but the list is not in the CRM, it’s not accessible, and there’s no data on where their accounts are or where stakeholder engagement is.”

2. Team

An account-based approach requires different skills from traditional demand gen marketing, Shari says. “Marketing being structured by channel doesn’t fit well in ABM where you need to look at the entire customer experience.”  

Foundationally, ensure there is a common framework of goals, structure, and role definitions that are focused on moving accounts through the customer journey. The goal is to move accounts and key stakeholders in an orchestrated manner rather than uncoordinated outreach by channel.

3. Orchestration

The heart of an account-based strategy is running plays to influence target buyers within target accounts. Shari recommends orchestrating different types of plays depending on average deal size of target accounts:

• Deal sizes >$100,000: Focus on 1:1 plays like a C-level outreach program, customer stories, and referral requests.

• Deal sizes of $50,000-$100,000: Focus on 1:few plays like targeted content or virtual roundtables.

• Deal sizes of <$50,000: Focus on 1:many plays like content syndication or ABM chat engagement.

All plays need to be customer-centric with a specific value exchange offered to the target persona (ex: networking, notoriety, high-value content).

4. Technology

It can be tempting to jump right to technology too early and before having everything else in place. The key is less about an expensive (and sprawling) GTM tech stack. It’s about having the underlying infrastructure to support account-based including a tech stack that’s integrated, collecting the right data, and being able to measure success in an account-based way. (Shari notes that these days most large GTM vendors, including HubSpot, have some out-of-the-box support for an account-based strategy.)

5. Measurement

“If your target accounts don’t know about you, they’ll never buy from you,” Shari emphasizes. She looks at account-based metrics based on where they are in their journey. At a high-level, this includes (a) awareness, (b) education, and (c) selection. (This piece is focused on new customer pipeline; there’s a role for an account-based strategy post-purchase as well.)

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Picking the right target accounts

Account selection may seem basic, but it’s one of the hardest parts of the account-based process. 

A basic starting point might be selecting a set of target accounts that sales cares most about. The most sophisticated companies, on the other hand, build a dynamic target account list using intent data and constantly refining the list based on where they’re seeing success. These companies use a lot of data from their historical customer base including static attributes (size of the customer, industry, etc.) along with dynamic attributes (account is growing their sales team, they announced a new round of funding, they changed their website, etc.).

Shari underscores that the most important factor is alignment rather than 100% scientific precision. “Make a v1 account list that’s collaborative,” Shari urges. “If the list originates in marketing, sales will be concerned it’s not right and vice versa. That back and forth between data and account review shouldn’t be skipped.”

How many accounts? It comes down to average deal size, the number of sales reps on the team, and how many accounts those reps can physically work on. Remember that there can (and should) be tiers within target accounts, i.e. Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3; Tier 1 accounts might represent 20% or so of the total target accounts. 

Some rules of thumb Shari shared:

• Named global accounts ($1M+ deal size): 2-6 Tier 1 accounts per rep

• Named large accounts ($500k-$1M deal size): 6-20 Tier 1 accounts per rep

• Field sales ($50k-$500k deal size): 20-50 Tier 1 accounts per rep

• Inside sales ($10k-$50k deal size): 50-150 Tier 1 accounts per rep

The target account list by definition won’t cover all accounts who could possibly adopt your product. Use the 80/20 rule; 80% of business is on the target list, but it’s OK if there’s occasional inbound that’s not on the list. 

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Orchestrating account-based plays

Figuring out plays is the fun (and creative) part. Shari starts by focusing on a segment of target accounts and answering five SPICED questions to make sure there’s a unified message to reach out to them:

• What is their situation?

• What are their pains? Emotional and rational?

• What impacts are they hoping to achieve? Emotional and rational?

• What are their critical events? By when do they need a solution in place? What happens if they don’t meet this deadline?

• What are their decision criteria? What is the decision process? Who makes up the decision committee?

From there, decide on a play type: 1:1, 1:few, or 1:many (i.e. through marketing automation). Regardless of the play type, there needs to be a value exchange, it should feel personalized, and customer-centricity is key. 

And then get clear on the target buyer(s) to reach with the play: user, initiator, champion, decider, influencer, gatekeeper, or exec buyer. Shari suggests starting with the initiator persona. The initiator is typically going to be the first point in the sales cycle that may be tasked with evaluating solutions or, depending on your customer GTM motion, may be the recipient of the biggest impact your solution provides.

Then it comes down to brainstorming across the different types of value exchange:

• High-value content (think: tailored workshop, custom eBook offer)

• Custom content (think: relevant customer story)

• Networking (think: happy hour, roundtable, virtual event)

• Notoriety (think: podcast interview, custom direct mail gift, thought leader invite)

• Executive access (think: 1:1 executive briefing)

The best plays are designed to influence target accounts across education, awareness, and selection and cut across multiple channels (email, InMail, direct mail, email, phone call, etc.). 

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Measuring success

This is where success metrics diverge significantly compared to the classic marketing qualified lead (MQL). A roundtable play, for example, could include an email component, direct mail (sending a physical invite), LinkedIn (connecting with people directly), SDR phone call, and (much) more. 

Success comes down to the results of the entire campaign, not just one channel. And it should connect with downstream outcomes, specifically closed won customers and pipeline. 

So, for example, let’s say you have a field rep in the Texas area who is new and low on pipeline and you decide to host an account-based event in the Austin area where you have a large amount of target accounts. You use a combination of email outreach, LinkedIn notes and a robust follow-up plan that includes a physical gift as part of the integrated campaign. The combination of orchestrated efforts to the right targets is really what provides outcomes, not any single touchpoint. An ROI on any one touchpoint would not help you understand success. The real success is measured in building business for your Texas rep by having identified the targets, created awareness and interest for those accounts, and also moving any later-stage prospects into consideration and selection stages in the Austin area.

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The TL;DR:

• Account-based approaches are surging as software companies struggle with traditional demand gen campaigns and focus on efficiently building pipeline.

• It’s an account-based strategy, not account-based marketing. It needs buy-in across the go-to-market team (especially sales).

• Spend the time to align on your target account list. Building this list is part rational (data analysis) and part emotional (manual account review with sales).

• Orchestrate 1:1, 1:few, and 1:many plays depending on the deal size. All plays need a specific value exchange, personalization, and customer-centricity.

• Don’t over-invest in technology too early. The good news: most large GTM vendors now have some out-of-the-box support for an account-based strategy.