MODERN SALES PROS x TRACTION COMPLETE STUDY
2022 Insights: Account-Based Selling & You
Find out where you fit in the 2022 Account-Based Selling Maturity Matrix.
Find My Maturity
ABS is not a new strategy, but where the majority
See where the industry stacks up
Curious to find out where you stack up when it comes to others who are forging their ABS journey? Find out here.
Find out what Leaders are doing
If you’re not thinking land and expand, you should be if you want to break free from the rest of the pack.
Make ABS your sales superpower
5 in 10 organizations are below sales targets. There is no better time than now to level up your selling strategies.
THE MATURITY MINDSET
Where do you see your ABS self?
Starting the strategy
Just starting their ABS journey, Adopters have account-based sales intent. They still have some strides to make along the way.
Learning and growing
Developers use an ABS approach that supports some business objectives but could improve overall. Ready, set, grow!
Leader of the pack
Beyond the middle of the pack. For Leaders, ABS is a core part of the organization’s strategy and positively influences revenue.
Overall Findings
Less Leaders, more room to grow
5 in 10 organizations fall into the Developer maturity bucket, followed by 3 in 10 Adopters, and only 2 in 10 Leaders.
As most organizations are following in the few’s footsteps, this indicates there’s opportunity to grow. Coupled with the current economic state and and the result that 5 in 10 organizations are below sales targets, account-based selling is ready for a level up.
Are you enabled for success?
Across all maturities, the most important strategies for ABS success are identifying new sales opportunities & land and expand.
The reality is not all segments are as progressive as you’d expect when it comes to the business’s ability to execute these account-based selling strategies and tactics well. How do you climb the ABS ladder?
Getting the right strategies in place such as strong data governance, data cleanup, connected parent-child accounts, and better account visibility are imperative to ABS effectiveness and a proven blueprint to pipeline success as you mature.
PRO TIP:
Use an automated whitespace tool, coupled with a third-party data provider like Dun and Bradstreet to provide better intelligence into identifying new sales opportunties.
Top challenges
Lack of organizational alignment & the ability to effectively report on ABS
Across all maturities, businesses struggled with aligning the entire GTM team as well as reporting effectively on the results of account-based selling strategies. This presents a challenge for teams to truly understand the impact of their efforts and limits their ability to drive adoption and buy-in across the business.
PRO TIP:
Start with alignment foundations – people, process, and technology – and set clear goals and objectives with a staged or tiered implementation approach
CHARACTERISTICS BY MATURITY
Adopters
Primary challenges: Getting leadership alignment followed by a lack of account visibility
“Align executives, introduce RevOps, and align digital strategy with RevOps & Sales Enablement.”
Characteristics:
Developers
Primary challenges: Resources and people power are both a unique challenge to Developers
“Create alignment and facilitate planning sessions with sales managers.”
Characteristics:
See Developer Stats
Leaders
Primary challenges: Disconnected or duplicate data is more of a challenge, as well as ability to report
“Accurate, relevant data in the hands of our AEs in real-time. Better whitespace intelligence.”
Characteristics:
THE DATA QUALITY TABLE STAKES
Focus on data to break free from industry standards
Only
2/10
strongly agree they have clean/ actionable CRM data
PRO TIP:
Disconnected data impacts your entire go-to-market alignment on ABS. Use proactive data cleanup to detect and mass remove duplicates with ease
Only
2/10
strongly agree their parent-child data is linked accurately
PRO TIP:
Link account hierarchies automatically so you have a birds-eye view with clear account relationships and territories
Looking for practical recommendations on how to get to the next level?
Meet the Methodology
We asked about ABS Strategy Effectiveness Territory Management Sales Performance Demographics The Future of ABS
Where does the market fall and how is each maturity segment characterized? We surveyed 200+ sales and revenue folks to understand the Account-Based Selling landscape to help arm organizations like yours with better insights to drive action.
232
Respondents
3
Maturity Segments
18
Questions
For Adopters, there’s no better time than right now to get on board. If you’ve not yet started your ABS journey, don’t worry, we can get you there. The silver lining is no matter what maturity you’re at, there’s room to grow. Let’s get started.
Developers use an account-based approach but are looking to grow. Why did the majority self identify with Developer? Well, the majority are likely looking to improve their selling strategies and break free from the middle of the pack.
Up, up, and away! Leaders are those who are have an account-based selling approach that supports business strategy and dramatically impacts revenue. The takeaway here is there aren’t many Leaders in the space, and there’s opportunity to innovate.
27000
MSP Audience
Partnering with Modern Sales Pros
Why Modern Sales Pros? They are “the world’s largest peer education community” for sales operations and leadership. We went straight to the source to talk to folks who are in the trenches of account-based selling each and every day. With a wide audience, we were able to garner boots-on-the-ground results that don’t miss any action.
A little more about who we surveyed
According to the Statistics Canada breakdown of organizational sizes, we surveyed 18% large-sized (501+), 38% medium-sized (100-500), and 44% small-sized (<100) companies.
Across each size segment, we found that there wasn’t a definitive correlation between company size and ABS maturity level, although indications point toward more Adopters and Developers being small-to-medium-sized (SMB). After all, you could be selling to enterprise-level companies with less than 50 employees and still implement an account-based strategy.
Ops roles are in the driver seat
We wanted to understand a variety of roles, specifically those who have influence on decision-making, revenue and sales operations. Operations include both analyst and managerial ops roles – managers are more sales-oriented managerial roles. Leadership is made up of head of departments (sales, revenue) and director-level roles.
Salesforce leads the way
While most organizations use Salesforce, Adopters are more likely to have a range of CRMs from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and more.
