Published on 12/7/2017
High-growth B2B companies use account-based strategies to drive growth with the accounts that are most likely to become the company’s most valuable customers. Past approaches yielded large numbers of leads, but these leads were not highly valued by the organization and did not sufficiently contribute to revenue.
The solution is to focus on the best fit, most valuable accounts—an account-based approach. This dramatic shift comes with its own challenge: How does Oracle adapt to a new way of doing business? An account-based strategy requires new approaches in several areas, including:
- Identifying accounts to target
- Aligning resources to accounts and programs
- Developing programs that are orchestrated across functions
- Forecasting, measuring and managing results
To address these challenges, this Oracle Account-Based Playbook was created to provide Oracle teams a prescriptive plan for developing successful account-based programs. The playbook incorporates best practices and includes step-by-step guidelines, tools, examples, and recommendations to design, build, and manage successful account-based programs.
“Account-based strategy is the coordination of highly valuable, personalized experiences across all functions that impact the customer to drive engagement and conversion at a targeted set of accounts.”
WHY IS ACCOUNT-BASED SO HOT?
5 ATTRIBUTES OF AN ACCOUNT-BASED MODEL
| ATTRIBUTE | EXAMPLE | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Targeted, high value accounts | Accounts that meet pro-forma customer lifetime value (CLTV) target based on # of employees |
| 2. | Intelligence-driven programs/campaigns | Account insights inform custom campaigns with high conversion rates |
| 3. | Orchestration across marketing, sales, sales development | Outbound sales development is today’s most effective account-based tactic |
| 4. | Valuable and personalized buyer experiences | Customized customer workshops leveraging their data |
| 5. | Coordinated high-effort/high-frequency outreach | Executive outreach is coordinated with key marketing events |
This playbook is built around six core components:
THE ACCOUNT-BASED FUNNEL
The account-based funnel represents the process, milestones, and metrics for managing the account-based process. This account-based playbook provides the tools and tactics for achieving these milestones.
| Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) | Definition of attributes of the most valuable accounts for an organization to target |
| Target Account List | A list of accounts that meet the criteria in the ICP and have been approved by the organization |
| Engaged Account/Account Engagement Score (AES) | The measure of an organization’s interactions with an account, including marketing, sales development, sales, and customer success |
| Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) | A prospect that meets the criteria, developed collaboratively by sales and marketing, for readiness to be passed to sales |
| Sales Accepted Opportunity (SAO) | An opportunity that meets the criteria, developed collaboratively by sales and marketing, for the sales team to create and manage |
| Target Account Pipeline (TAP) | The value of all opportunities created with target accounts |
| Closed Won | Closed opportunities that became customers or expanded the existing relationship with a customer account |
| Lifetime Value | Total revenue flowing from a customer over the entire expected relationship with that customer |
| Expansion | Activities which, although aligned with the new-customer acquisition milestones, are unique to account expansion |
ADDITIONAL TRAINING RESOURCES
ALPHABET SOUP: NEW TERMS AND ACRONYMS IN AN ACCOUNT-BASED WORLD
Send your Account-Based questions to kelvin.gee@oracle.com