Lighting Fires: Creating a sales inferno within named accounts

Creating a sales inferno within named accounts

Early in my marketing career, our marketing director mentioned a conversation he’d had with a top-performing salesperson who said that one of the things he did to be successful was lighting lots of fires across an organization.

What the salesperson meant was that he created multiple projects within named accounts and, once these were established, was able to go back to the wider organization to say:

“You have project ‘a’ running in one department, project ‘b’ in another, and project ‘c’ in yet another – all delivering real, measurable value. Would it make sense to bring the advantages these departments see to the whole organization and save money with a corporate license?”

I still find this idea ingenious despite (or because of) its simplicity. By lighting multiple fires, he nurtured multiple opportunities within each prospect and provided examples that demonstrated how the value of this product could benefit the broader organization.

At the same time, he was building a deeper understanding of the organization, its pains, and its decision-making structure.

Why this approach rocks

Lighting these metaphorical fires allows you to:

• Penetrate the organization more deeply: Creating multiple projects helps build momentum within the organization, making it more likely that your solutions get considered for additional projects – and, ultimately, a corporate-wide licensing agreement.

• Diversify your revenue opportunities: Identifying multiple sales opportunities enables you to create multiple revenue streams, reducing your dependence on a single opportunity within that client.

• Get ahead of the competition: Building relationships with multiple stakeholders can give you a competitive advantage over rivals targeting a single department. The more people supporting your projects, the more others will be drawn in by their success.

The effort involved in creating multiple opportunities means you can only do this with a limited number of accounts, which means choosing them wisely.

However, once you have a segway in, if you’ve chosen your opportunities well, the effort required to light more fires becomes easier as you build momentum within the account.

The role of named accounts

I’m a huge believer in focus. Focus enables a better understand of your customers’ industry, needs, and concerns. This, in turn, allows you to offer solutions that deliver value to your customers, which, ultimately, is why they buy from you.

Using named accounts refines your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), moving beyond simply naming the types of prospects you’re targeting to naming those carefully chosen customers you want to win.

While they require more effort upfront, this approach can be worthwhile in the long run because you are cherry-picking your most valuable customers (to reduce the associated sales cycle, you should read our blog post about ‘How to accelerate your sales cycle’).

Side note: Instinctively, organizations often react to lower-than-anticipated sales in the belief this can be corrected by extending their market too early. The opposite is almost always the case. The more thinly you spread expertise, the less deep it will be, which can reduce the value you deliver to your clients.

If your solution isn’t gaining sufficient traction, don’t simply sleepwalk into the trap of “we’ll extend our messaging to cover market x, and y, and z”, think about changing your messaging or pivoting instead.

Is it possible to light fires without using named accounts?

The short answer is a qualified ‘yes’. However, if you’re using the definition that named accounts are those you have chosen to target, it could be argued that creating additional opportunities within a prospect makes it a de facto named account.

A side issue is that while your Ideal Customer Profile tells marketing where to focus its efforts, this doesn’t prevent sales from opportunistically (for all the right reasons) going after accounts outside of the ICP.

The flip side of this is that, outside of the ICP, sales don’t have the same air coverage from marketing. Ergo: named accounts (and therefore, accounts you intend to light fires in) should ideally match the criteria of your ICP.

Assuming you are sticking within (the very deliberate focus) of your ICP, your marketing team can support your efforts by helping generate additional opportunities within them and create content that turns them into low-hanging fruit. The good news is that your Ideal Customer Profile and Key Messaging Document get you most of the way there.

If you’re concerned by marketing being overwhelmed with requests for help, remember that lighting fires in named accounts should narrow your core audience, not broaden it.

How marketing can help

Marketing can support you (through Account Based Marketing) with the following tools:

a.        Use your Ideal Customer Profile to work out who you need to contact within these prospects.

b.        Collaborate with internal stakeholders (including product development and marketing teams) to ensure your messaging aligns with customer needs and priorities.

c.        Double-check your messaging resonates with your chosen audience (if it’s not, you should fix that first!).

d.        Work with product and sales to develop a tailored value proposition that speaks to the unique needs and pain points of each stakeholder.

e.        Understand your prospects inside out (through internal or external research) to gather as much information as possible on each prospect, including identifying the key decision-makers.

f.          Create relevant, engaging, personalized content for these people.

g.         Use targeted campaigns to address them (a great deal of sponsored advertising ends up targeting your own employees and your competition - don’t do this!).

h.        Look at creating focused, packaged solutions tailored to deliver fast-time-to-value that have a low-cost entry point to in order to quickly prove business value.

i.          Create a buyers’ pack that provides the information these people need to sell your solution internally and answers the questions they are likely to be asked by colleagues (such as an information sheet, ROI studies, customer testimonials, analyst reports, etc.).

j.          Build relationships and trust with the different stakeholders, using a combination of sales and marketing touchpoints to engage and nurture leads.

Conclusion

Lighting fires is a great strategy for driving revenue growth and maximizing sales opportunities. By identifying and cultivating multiple sales opportunities across different departments, teams, and stakeholders, you can create a sales inferno, leading to far more significant, higher value wins.

If you would like any help or advice with your sales and marketing strategy, feel free to take advantage of our free expert advisory session to discuss this topic with one of our experts.