2 Simple Things You Can Do With Your Prospect Database to Win Higher Revenue Accounts

Reps work tirelessly to open new opps, but a subpar database just means wasted time and energy.

The power of an optimized database is immeasurable. Kind of.

I mean, what’s better than a perfectly categorized and ranked database? In sales, nothing is better.

If you employ a technical guru or a sales op specialist to tackle that system success should come a little easier but even then it takes work.

Not wanting to be negative here, but...

When I speak with people about their prospect database, they don’t understand how crucial an optimized database really is especially considering how much opportunity can be delayed or lost the longer it goes unaddressed.

It’s not rocket science, and if database (market) segmentation is done right, the business benefits with:

• Improved product development because you know who wants to buy

• More focused marketing which creates better inbound interest

• Sales reps who are targeting higher-percentage opportunities

• Sales reps who can close higher quality revenue accounts

Who doesn’t want better everything including closing higher quality revenue accounts?

No matter how many verticals you sell into or what your ACV (average contract value) is, your company should always focus on targeting the best accounts in your database.

Trust me—there was a period when I was a sales rep that my company didn’t have the process down yet. I just figured if I made the calls and was able to assume whether the account was good or not, that would work. In the end, I was wasting time. But, once our database and best practices were in place, I was able to use the same amount of energy and guarantee that I was allocating it to the best accounts.

So, what does your database look like? Do you have no strategy at all? Or maybe qualification is sporadic and segmentation maybe happened once? Or were your processes once strong but have diminished over time?

For simplicity’s sake, here’s two simple things about your prospect database that you need to focus your attention on and how to execute to win higher revenue accounts.

1. CATEGORIZE ACCOUNTS

The purpose of this process is to properly categorize accounts so that you can easily assign sales reps, map territories, and communicate with marketing.

• This should be kept basic and focus on publicly available information such as industry/vertical, company size, website presence, and even revenue

• Account types can be as simple as SMB, mid-market, or enterprise

• The best way to capture this information is to create a section in your CRM called “Demographic” or “General Information” where reps can fill in pertinent data

• Consider having both required and non-required fields in this section to create data standards

The end goal is to have all your accounts neatly categorized by whatever is your main (basic) segmentation criteria. This could by industry and then by SMB/Mid/Enterprise within each industry, if applicable. Or if you only sell into one industry, categorize by SMB/Mid/Enterprise which you can be based off revenue or employee size.

2. BUYING MOTIVE/LIKELIHOOD TO BUY RANKING

The purpose of this process is to identify common characteristics that define good customers and their likelihood to buy your solutions.

• This account classification is based on a validation process where you obtain direct feedback from the account such as their growth needs, current technology in place, interest in new technology, probability of purchasing technology in the next X days, etc. (This is so you can ascertain their likelihood to buy.)

• Based on which answers you get or how many you get, you can then rank the account A, B, C, etc. The key is to keep it simple to start.

• Consider hiring interns or use your marketing team to conduct “market research” calls to gather this information from your prospects. Provide a brief script with 3-6 questions they should ask.

• Run recurring analyses (after an initial period) to see what percentage of business closed from the different classifications. If you have a higher percentage of A’s closing than say B’s and C’s, your validation process looks to be working.

• In the event a sales rep establishes a connection with an unranked or a lower ranked account (B or C), and they determine the prospect is using a competitor then the sales rep should add that competitor to the “Demographics” section. Any accounts that have a competitor listed should be higher ranked.

The end goal is to have all your accounts ranked by your scoring system. For example, most likely to buy are A’s and least likely are C’s. Those that didn’t respond at all should be tagged “unranked” and recycled.

In Conclusion

SaaS startups obviously face many significant challenges right out-of-the-gate but focusing on your database from the start will help lead to success. And for established firms, it’s never a bad thing to review your database health.

By simply creating a database where accounts are categorized and a buying ranking is established, any size firm can benefit from a simple, yet well-managed process (instead of nothing at all).

There are many articles that you’ll come across that provide a much more robust approach for building out a prospect database. But this also requires a project team and can take 6-18 months to complete. If you have that luxury, then consider it. If not, keep things simple and make sure you have all of your accounts segmented at minimum.

As for the "likelihood to buy" ranking part, start with the accounts that seem to appear most likely to buy—the ones that mirror other customers of yours.