The Account Journey is Your Biggest GTM Advantage

Linear process vs. non-linear and dynamic.

Individual leads vs. entire accounts.

First-party data vs first & third-party data.

Single points of contact vs buying groups.

People funnel vs. account journey.

While the people funnel is helpful for straightforward sales processes focused on individual leads, the account journey provides a more strategic and holistic approach to engaging with accounts. The account journey emphasizes the real-world collective decision-making process utilized by organizations while enabling a better experience for both prospects and customers.

In the early 2000s, the concept of an account journey was first introduced. It gained significant traction and formal recognition in the mid to late 2010s, as organizations focused more on personalized, account-centric marketing and sales strategies.

Fast forward to today, and the account journey has evolved as more organizations recognize the importance of holistic and integrated approaches to customer acquisition, engagement, and retention.

Welcome to the double-funnel

The people funnel has long been the gold standard in marketing and sales:

• AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action)
• TOFU, MOFU, BOFU (Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, Bottom of Funnel)
• SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall (Target, Active, Engaged, Prioritized, Qualified).

Not that those stages of the sales/people funnel no longer exist — they are alive and well — but they are just part of the more complex B2B sales process, one where multiple decision-makers are involved.

The account journey tackles this multi-decision-maker hurdle head-on by focusing on the entire account, offering a more holistic view of an account’s marketing and sales activities. This model allows companies to track interactions and engagement at the account level, while still utilizing the people funnel as an embedded component of the holistic account journey. This allows for a clearer picture to be provided to identify potential opportunities and challenges.

For instance, consider a company selling enterprise software. In a traditional funnel, the focus is likely on single individuals from a specific department, say IT. However, the decision to purchase software rarely involves a single individual. Today’s decision-makers live in sales, finance, operations, and (often) the C-Suite. To identify the demand from this expansive buyer group, we need to change our perspective and include them all, instead of focusing only on a single person.

The account journey model enables companies to capture insights from all relevant stakeholders, view the buying committee as the group it operates as, and address their concerns and priorities. 

This comprehensive approach improves the chances of conversion, while also forging stronger relationships and trust with prospects and customers as they no longer need to educate the rest of the buying group themselves.

The power of activity signals

One of the key advantages of the account journey is its ability to incorporate a wide range of activity signals — intent data, engagement metrics, behavior/technographic/firmographic data, and more. All these signals provide valuable insights into an account’s interests and buying readiness, allowing companies to prioritize their outreach efforts more effectively.

However, not every signal can be tied to a specific person due to the nature of how people utilize technology in their research phase. The account journey allows for these anonymous signals to be incorporated into how organizations view an account’s overall engagement, ensuring that they are not missing out on signals as the patterns of the buyers change.

For example, if a potential customer frequently visits pages related to cybersecurity solutions and never downloads a whitepaper or fills out a form, these activities are never surfaced in the traditional people funnel. In the world of the account journey, these anonymous signals are not only tied to the account for marketing and sales to utilize, but they also help identify how ready that account is in regards to purchasing your solution.

By no longer missing out on these signals, sales and marketing teams can now take action earlier and tailor more effective messaging as it resonates more deeply with the account’s immediate concerns.

Once these activity signals are embedded into the account journey, companies can analyze data patterns to identify trends, forecast future behaviors, and adapt their GTM tactics accordingly.

Where does this play out in the real world?

This all sounds lovely in theory, but does it work?

Splunk, a data analytics software company, leveraged Demandbase’s intent data capabilities to identify accounts with a high likelihood of purchasing. With the help of Demandbase, Splunk reviewed online behavior and content consumption patterns and used those data signals to prioritize accounts most likely to convert.

This personalized, targeted strategy significantly increased the quality of leads passed to the sales team — a 30% conversion rate bump.

The program was met with resounding success.

As detailed in slide #7 of this presentation, at the 3-month mark, the Splunk/Demandbase integration served nearly 4 million impressions and saw:

• 52% overall accounts lifted (+70% vs. benchmark)
• 73% of accounts were engaged (+143% vs. benchmark)
• 58% of accounts clicked (+117% vs. benchmark)

Solid numbers.

The future is now: customization and buyer groups

Customizing account journeys based on specific signals and organizational needs will become increasingly critical as businesses evolve.

Different products and services often require tailored GTM strategies, and the account journey provides the flexibility to adapt to all variations.

The concept of buyer groups — all the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process within an account — is also an essential part of the account journey.

Without focusing on the buyer groups within an account, you are left with too many signals and no focus. Identifying the right people within an account will enable you to paint the true picture of an account’s willingness to engage with your sales team. This approach increases the likelihood of closing a sale and builds more substantial and durable customer relationships.

Customization & Specificity

In the vastly diverse B2B landscape, customization and specificity are crucial requirements of technology. Each customer has a different GTM strategy, which means an account journey that cannot adapt to each organization will not enable it to succeed.

Allowing customers to adapt their account journeys to their strategies, and even allowing for multiple to be created, lets each organization approach their landscape in the most effective way possible.

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