Account-Based Sales Development: The Ultimate Tech Stack

Introduction

We’re excited to share Part Two of our Account-Based Sales Development Series. If you haven’t already, be sure to read Part One: Account-Based Sales Development: 5 Factors For Success.

Our first installment focused on making sure your sales org is a fit for the Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) model and key factors that are associated with its success. If you are a fit, the obvious next question is, “How do you get started?”, which brings us to our next installment.

Your Account-Based Sales Development Tech Stack

Technology has moved to center stage for the best Sales Development teams. This introduces a massive opportunity for rep efficiency and effectiveness. This modern approach brings our clients massive results by not only generating significant pipeline but significant pipeline with prospects who purchase, renew, and expand at exceptional rates.

The prevailing topic in Sales Development is, “How can I help ensure that my reps are spending their time on what matters most?” You can’t have this conversation without first discussing your tech stack. You can have the most naturally gifted SDRs, but if they’re not using the right tools, it’s like playing tennis with a baseball bat.

We invite you to use this post and interactive infographic above to help cut through the noise of the software landscape and supercharge your SDR team.

CRM and Marketing Automation

While this post and infographic focus on the ultimate Account Based Sales Development tech stack, we want to acknowledge and point out the importance of a proper CRM and Marketing Automation system.

Successful execution of an ABSD methodology is dependent on a myriad of factors (which are laid out in this series). Your CRM hygiene and Marketing Automation lead quality are critical and should be assessed prior to adopting an ABSD strategy.

Engagement

The sales engagement tool landscape is perhaps the most dense and difficult to navigate. Also, it is the most important in the world of an SDR as these tools are designed to optimize prospect engagement.

Account-Based Sales Development is designed to maximize personalized engagement by leveraging multiple communication channels. Email, Phone, Voicemail, Social (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), chat, direct mail, and video. Instead of bombarding your prospect with these channels at once, you can create a sequence over a two week to four week span.

Enrichment

Your SDR team’s outbound efforts are only as good as the quality of their data. When you think about leveraging multiple channels, you want your SDRs to have accurate data so that they don’t have to spend extra time digging for it. If you have a campaign that utilizes phone, email and direct mail, not having the right phone number or HQ address can hinder productivity at scale. Data enrichment solutions automatically update contact and account details, making your reps more productive.

Routing

An inside sales rep accidentally calling into someone else’s account is not only frustrating, but it damages the buying experience. Whether you want to match leads to existing accounts, merge duplicates or notify reps when new leads are assigned to them, using a demand orchestration tool will help eliminate mundane and time-consuming tasks.

Perhaps the best (and surprisingly under-utilized) advantage of using a routing tool is the ability to pre-seed your target accounts into your Salesforce instance. This allows your leads to intelligently route to the right SDR and/or AE, enabling a true account-based approach.

An Account-Based Sales Development approach cannot succeed without proper and clearly defined rules of engagement. These rules help ensure that reps stay in their lanes and create a truly personalized experience for their prospects.

Signals

The beauty of ABSD is that you can proactively identify, contact, and convert the customers who are the best fit for your business. These accounts not only close at a higher rate, they tend to renew and expand more than poor-fit accounts. The catch? It’s much more difficult to understand which of these best-fit accounts is ready for a conversation now.

Data intent vendors solve for this by feeding your SDR team signals about those accounts who are searching for solutions to problems that are relevant to your product/service. For example, if you sell commercial office furniture, imagine if you could focus your sales team on those companies who are actively searching for a new office space.

Enablement

Successful Account-Based Sales Development execution takes discipline. Unfortunately, most companies are still lagging in providing their SDRs with proper enablement. Whether it be onboarding or ongoing training, programs are typically designed for Account Executives, with SDRs thrown in as an afterthought.

Your SDRs must know how to research a given prospect, what specific personas they need to target, their possible titles, what messaging to use for each, what a proper AE handoff looks like, how to properly use your tech stack, etc. It’s smart to focus on SDR enablement sooner than later.

Co-Authors

Lars Nilsson, Co-Founder & CEO, SalesSource

Lars is currently the CEO of SalesSource, a premier consulting firm specializing in industry-leading best practices and advisory for the optimization of sales teams. He has served in sales executive roles at Cloudera, ArcSight/Hewlett Packard, Riverbed Technology and Portal Software – all four of which achieved IPOs. At Cloudera, he developed the sales methodology and coined the term Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD), which has transformed how businesses approach high-value targets.

Lars is also a special advisor at True Ventures where he helps True portfolio companies implement best-of-breed sales technologies and processes enabling efficient revenue operations. His unique blend of leadership skills and sales acumen has benefited dozens of startups in the Valley and beyond. Mentoring sales teams is one of his greatest passions.

Travis Henry, Partner, SalesSource

Having spent his career operating in every part of the revenue generation chain, Travis deploys his deep sales and marketing expertise to help clients accelerate their growth trajectories. He currently serves as a partner at SalesSource, advising sales and marketing leadership on the people, process, and technology necessary to building successful pipeline generation machines.

Previously, Travis led the Sales Development team at Bluewolf, the top global consulting partner of Salesforce.com that was acquired by IBM in 2016, after holding roles in go-to-market planning and marketing operations. He started his career in Oracle’s Sales Academy, first hitting the phones as an SDR and later selling enterprise database solutions to emerging startups. He received his BA from U.C. Berkeley, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with High Honors.