Sales account planning has turned very complex in today’s competitive technology sales landscape.
Technology sales and ABM teams must crunch and navigate through volumes of account-level data to identify opportunities, understand customer needs, and build effective strategies.
AI-powered sales intelligence platforms streamline this account planning processes, enhance efficiency and drive faster sales.
Traditional account planning involved extensive manual research and data analysis that was time-intensive. In the last decade, AI has stepped in as a catalyst for ABM and account planning, offering instant access to real-time target account-level insights.
This includes crucial information like a company’s high-priority digital initiatives, financial health, ongoing projects, and the technology stack they currently use. The precise insights empowers you to tailor your outreach efforts.
AI helps drive efficient account planning for technology sales by helping ABM teams
- Find high-value target accounts aligned with their services/solutions,
- Match the account-level pain points with the use cases of their service/solution,
- Micro-target specific stakeholders with budget authority, and
- Finetune pitch messaging to resonate with the stakeholders.
Instant account and buyer level insights create a difference
Technology businesses find themselves in a challenging position with getting access to an increased number of stakeholders and decision-makers involved in the buying processes, increasing the sales cycles.
Typically, an enterpise target account has 5-8 cross-functional decision makers within a panel. ABM teams often take upwards of 7 months to convince a panel to buy their product/solution, while 70% of the committee may not see the value.
The value of AI-powered sales intelligence platforms lies in its ability to reveal instant account and buyer level insights that can be used for account planning.
These platforms provide instant insights about the priorities of the digital initiatives and decision makers within the target accounts.
With such insights for account planning, ABM teams can create hyper-personalized strategies and map important buyer-level details that deeply resonate with the key decision makers, helping them drive meaning engagements faster.
- Uncover budget allocation:
Another critical account planning insight provided by AI is the budget allocation. For instance, knowing the budget dedicated to cloud services in the current quarter enables ABM teams to time their pitches.
Such account planning insights like insight into budgets help ABM teams to prioritize accounts and assign suitable resources so that they can engage with stakeholders and win those accounts.
- Understand the buying behavior:
AI sales intelligence platforms can analyze past purchases and buying patterns to predict future needs and preferences.
By understanding the ‘how’ behind the stakeholders’ purchasing decisions, the ABM teams can tailor their prospect facing messages.
- Discover hidden needs and opportunities:
After analyzing real-time market signals and customer data, AI sales intelligence platforms can highlight key pain points and high-value opportunities within an account.
ABM teams can proactively showcase how their offerings can solve these pain points. This demonstrates a deep understanding of the client and puts them ahead of the competition.
Why use AI-based account planning
78% of salespeople say AI allows them to focus on the most critical parts of their job, like account planning.
AI has emerged as an asset for tech sales teams, offering a range of account planning benefits. Here’s why AI-based account planning is essential:
- Instant data aggregation and 360-degree account view:
AI sales intelligence platforms aggregate insights and provides a comprehensive, 360-degree view of each account, making them accessible and scalable – INSTANTLY.
- ABM teams can gain real-time insights at the account level. This means having access to up-to-date information about an account’s financials, current projects, technology stack, and strategic goals.
- A holistic view enables ABM teams to identify promising opportunities, target each account’s unique needs, and respond proactively to changes.
- Uncover low-hanging opportunities – REAL FAST:
AI uncovers opportunities that traditional research methods may not uncover.
- AI tools provide insights into the likelihood of winning a deal based on the analysis of historical technology procurement patterns and market trends. ABM teams prioritize accounts with the highest win probability.
- By identifying low-hanging opportunities, ABM teams can focus their efforts on accounts that are most likely to convert.
- Enables better account planning and sales workflows – REAL FAST:
AI transforms sales workflows by introducing agility, data-driven decision-making, and the ability to identify patterns and trends instantly.
As per research, AI can potentially result in 50% more sales leads.
- AI enables access to relevant account-level information and market signals, for enterprise ABM teams. The ability to build models (on such data) on the go allows teams to refine their strategies in real-time.
- Unlike traditional methods driven by analogy or intuition, AI relies on data to guide decisions. This approach minimizes bias and enhances the accuracy of sales strategies.
- AI tools can analyze vast datasets to identify emerging patterns and trends. These insights help ABM teams to anticipate customer needs, tailor their messaging, and build stronger relationships.
- Faster account penetration and relationship building:
AI-driven insights empower ABM teams to penetrate accounts more effectively and build lasting relationships.
- With AI, sales teams gain a deep understanding of each account’s pain points, preferences, and strategic initiatives. This knowledge allows for personalized engagement that resonates with the client.
- By delivering relevant and timely solutions, sales teams can build trust and credibility with their clients. AI helps in tracking engagement and customer feedback, enabling continuous improvement in customer interactions.
Bring together actionable insights for their key accounts: A case study
An engineering services company that partners with the automotive industry and mobility ecosystem for making software-defined vehicles a reality. The company faced the below challenges:
- Manual research for account planning.
- Finding critical intelligence around the account’s health indicators like financials, IT spending, etc.
- Gathering relevant information from multiple sources and drawing accurate insights.
The engineering company partnered with Draup to curate actionable and credible insights around account planning and reduce the manual research efforts of their internal research and sales/marketing teams.
With Draup, the engineering services company experienced the following benefits:
- Enhanced account planning insights – It spends, executive profiles, tactical signals
- Drastic reduction in research efforts to derive actionable insights for target accounts.
Micro-targeting the right decision makers within the target accounts is crucial to fast-track enterprise deals.
Companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, Capgemini, Intel, PWC, Genpact, Infosys, among others leverage Draup’s AI sales intelligence platform for account planning and accelerate ABM motions.
