How to create Target Account Lists that align marketing and sales 🤝
Here's a framework I've used to create TALs that are collaborative and effective at driving pipeline.
🚩 Figure out your data sources
— Your CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive all have TAL functionality. Work with sales to understand their top priority accounts, the selection criteria for those accounts, and how it's represented and labelled in the CRM.
— 3P data sources: you likely have some gaps after you've mapped your CRM data. Lusha, Cognism, SalesIntel.io, ZoomInfo Apollo.io can help you enrich missing account and contact data that may not be in your CRM. Evaluating these tools is a great way for marketing & sales to collaborate.
— 3P intent data: 6sense, Bombora, Demandbase, Intentsify, Spiceworks Ziff Davis, Promowise can provide predictive buying signals, tech install data, and other sales intelligence to help you further enrich your TAL.
🏢 Develop your ICP
— Based on the firmographic and technographic data signals you’ve collected from the first step, now you can create your ICP.
— Analyze these signals and your existing customer base, interview your sales team, and conduct market research to round out your ICP criteria.
— Put that criteria to paper and start to funnel the available account data through the criteria to start building the raw list of target accounts.
🧽 Scrub the data
— Build the raw list of target accounts (account universe) and then scrub the data for various use cases in your GTM.
— Use cases are determined by a tiering or scoring of accounts. Prioritize the universe of accounts by company size, annual revenue, employee size, triggers, etc. Whatever is important to your GTM.
🖖 Segment the list
— Take it a step further and create segments based on your marketing initiatives. For example, slice the list of accounts based on propensity to purchase a certain solution that is targeted by an integrated solution campaign.
🚀 Launch it
— Engage your accounts with content syndication, display ABM, cTV or other tactics from demand providers.
— Import your TAL to LinkedIn and surround your top accounts with personalized messages and content.
— Deliver personalized lifecycle campaigns to your TAL using a marketing automation platform (Marketo, Hubspot, etc).
There you have it. 5 steps to build your target account list.
Here's a framework I've used to create TALs that are collaborative and effective at driving pipeline.
🚩 Figure out your data sources
— Your CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive all have TAL functionality. Work with sales to understand their top priority accounts, the selection criteria for those accounts, and how it's represented and labelled in the CRM.
— 3P data sources: you likely have some gaps after you've mapped your CRM data. Lusha, Cognism, SalesIntel.io, ZoomInfo Apollo.io can help you enrich missing account and contact data that may not be in your CRM. Evaluating these tools is a great way for marketing & sales to collaborate.
— 3P intent data: 6sense, Bombora, Demandbase, Intentsify, Spiceworks Ziff Davis, Promowise can provide predictive buying signals, tech install data, and other sales intelligence to help you further enrich your TAL.
🏢 Develop your ICP
— Based on the firmographic and technographic data signals you’ve collected from the first step, now you can create your ICP.
— Analyze these signals and your existing customer base, interview your sales team, and conduct market research to round out your ICP criteria.
— Put that criteria to paper and start to funnel the available account data through the criteria to start building the raw list of target accounts.
🧽 Scrub the data
— Build the raw list of target accounts (account universe) and then scrub the data for various use cases in your GTM.
— Use cases are determined by a tiering or scoring of accounts. Prioritize the universe of accounts by company size, annual revenue, employee size, triggers, etc. Whatever is important to your GTM.
🖖 Segment the list
— Take it a step further and create segments based on your marketing initiatives. For example, slice the list of accounts based on propensity to purchase a certain solution that is targeted by an integrated solution campaign.
🚀 Launch it
— Engage your accounts with content syndication, display ABM, cTV or other tactics from demand providers.
— Import your TAL to LinkedIn and surround your top accounts with personalized messages and content.
— Deliver personalized lifecycle campaigns to your TAL using a marketing automation platform (Marketo, Hubspot, etc).
There you have it. 5 steps to build your target account list.
