Target Decision Influencers at Key Accounts

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Most of us would agree with Anand, but how do you gain such valuable information without expensive market research that involves a great deal of awkward bribing and prying to come up with actionable advice?

To understand his prospects, Anand turns to tech-based comparison, discussion, and review sites like G2, Clutch, Capterra, and Software Advice. In doing so he finds a plethora of insight straight from the people he wants to target without having to conduct focus groups or surveys.

B2B buyer guides, like the ones listed above, generally include demographic information of the person who wrote the review. Marketing and sales teams can cross-reference buyer personas with the reviewers to determine if the feedback is relevant to your target market.


The average B2B purchase involves six to eight decision-makers. While we all would love to fill our calendars with c-suite sales calls it’s just not a realistic expectation.

Instead, Anand recommends creating internal referrals by targeting decision influencers who would benefit from your company’s solution.

This might seem like a long haul, but before you dismiss decision influencers, consider how difficult connecting with upper management can be. Emails and calls are often ignored or, more likely, intercepted and rejected by gatekeepers.

What if, instead of trying to push past assistants, your sales team could turn them into promoters of your products?

Here’s how it works.

When contacting decision influencers, salespeople should first acknowledge that procurement is not necessarily in the influencer’s control. (This eliminates the pressure for commitment.) Then the salesperson can ask to demonstrate the immediate value the influencer would experience by using your company’s solution.

This is an example of how Anand would communicate with an influencer:

“My understanding is most often your CIO has the decision-making and procurement authority to purchase a tool like ours. However, the reason I am reaching out to you first is that our platform demonstrates enormous value specifically to individuals with roles like yours.”

Taking this extra step to include influencers in the decision-making process increases affinity with your sales representatives while simultaneously building brand advocacy from within the target organization.

How to Make ABM Work For You
Now that you understand Anand’s ABM approach, we recommend starting by targeting 100 companies that match your ideal account profile.

Map out the organizational chart, including decision-makers and influencers. Have your sales and marketing team do a bit of online recon to establish a strong content strategy, and incorporate multiple sales channels to maximize touchpoints.

At Martal, we have found that outreach through an omnichannel approach results in higher conversion rates. Consider having your team connect with prospects through emails, cold calls, and LinkedIn.

And speaking of LinkedIn, let’s shift gears now and explore how social croatia cell phone number database media can be used to increase your customer acquisition and drive down costs.

Savvy Social Selling
Robyn Orsini attributes a big part of her success at Martal to a refined outbound strategy on LinkedIn.

When asked how she nearly quadrupled her results, Robyn said:

“I was able to go from two sales-qualified leads in four months to nine in nine days simply by making success on LinkedIn a priority.”

Robyn further explained that through trial and error she developed a repeatable process that anyone with a Sales Navigator account and a bit of initiative can implement.