Beyond Firmographics: Revolutionizing B2B Sales Targeting
How you segment your business has a strong impact on your ability to grow and retain. Think about the time and effort your sales teams spends on poor targets. How about the effort you put in trying to save an account that should have never bought your product in the first place? How many deals have you missed out on competing for because your team is focused in the wrong place?
Getting your segmentation right is a key pillar of your growth potential so let’s spend time on how to do it right.
How Segmentation has changed in recent years
Segmentation was typically handled through very basic firmographic information: employee counts, revenues, geo. That worked years ago where the ability to have greater detail on accounts was challenging. With the breadth of data available to teams now, you’re cutting yourself short if you remain only looking at those basic levels of segmentation. Better performing companies are taking it a level deeper.
Dynamic data
While intent data may be trending to being a lagging indicator, activity happening can improve the likelihood of a buying decision happening. Using insights by their platforms and even your own online properties can improve the rating of a company due to increased engagement frequency.
Tech stacks
Are there certain tech stacks that your product really shines with? Do you know certain pain points of companies using XYZ tool? Understanding if they’re using certain platforms can make some companies more advantageous to target than others. Do you think Microsoft wants to know which companies are using Tableau? If your offering makes working with MongoDB faster, know who uses MongoDB! Not only does your targeting improve, but you can better prepare for the messaging required to get the win.
Buying patterns/signals
If you sell into certain industries that have regular budget cycles, using that as part of your targeting can help you spend less time on companies that can’t yet make the decision. If you’re selling to the education market, you know that the majority of spending is happening when schools get back in session and budget years have reset. When you are out of those high movement times, are there other markets where you can make progress?
Implementing more modern segmentation strategies
Now that we know we have more data and ways to segment, let’s explore how you execute.
Data integration - aggregate all of your CRM, MAP, 3rd party data into a clean, standardized data set. This includes the heavy lifting of deduplication and aligning on how you will treat global entities.
Scoring framework - Develop a weighted scoring model that combines all of the key factors that drive a high quality target account. Test the accuracy and backtest prior years to see how well it would have predicted wins, losses and churns.
Align across teams - Review the proposed segmentation structure across marketing, sales and customer success to validate the assumptions used in the scoring framework and finalize on the model. Be sure marketing has access to the inputs so they can set up lists for marketing and CS can be aware of any changes that could impact TOFU targeting. Make key inputs available to sales so they can understand why accounts are in certain segments and remove the black box scoring that erodes trust.
How do you know if it’s working?
It’s not enough to say you have improved segmentation. Build the reporting to support tracking any impacts. Look for things like:
Faster sales cycle time
Increased ASP (average sales price)
Improved retention rates
Improved quota attainment
Lower CAC
Leading indicators could be evaluating the conversion and velocity of moving deals through the early stages to see if certain segments are performing better than legacy groupings.
Wrapping things up
How should you get started? Begin by:
Auditing your current segmentation approach
Identify any data gaps or integration needs
Build a scoring framework
Back test the performance of the scoring and refine your model
Train all teams on the new methodology and build territories to support it
Monitor and optimize for performance
The impact of your segmentation efforts compounds over time due to winning better accounts which should land faster and renew better. Teams that invest in building the right segmentation early in their development and maintaining/tightening it up over time will outperform those who operate in a scattered approach. Be better.