Account Prioritization: How To Win Before Starting the Quarter

Being a B2B marketer, have you ever felt miserable in the global economy because of inevitable circumstances? No matter what your answer is, if you are a marketer, then it’s a must ritual for you to keep track of your existing and potential customers. And when it comes to a global crisis, marketers go berserk in the misery and end up losing a huge share of their market. Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic phase has created the same situation putting the global market at the stake. With the end of the 2020 first quarter, many countries are on lockdown.

Business hubs like Singapore, Australia, Italy, UK, New Zealand, and China are undergoing national lockdown to curb the pandemic outbreak. Consequently, pushing business is the most difficult task for marketers in the second quarter. Undoubtedly, the second quarter of 2020 has started with unforeseen business challenges. The global economic downfall is giving chills to B2B marketers.

Yet, only marketers can play a hero and make the situation favorable for businesses with some of the marketing tips and tricks and Account Prioritization is one of them. It unleashes the account potential and gets your sales force ready for the quarter. If done smartly, account prioritization can help businesses successfully navigate through the quarter.

How to list and manage account priority?

1. Account Segmentation: the first step to make a priority-based account list is to classify the accounts into Customers, i.e. spending accounts and Prospects, i.e. non-spending accounts.
2. Customer segregation: Depending on the priority of customers, segregate them into two groups; viz. high priority accounts, that contribute heavily to your revenue and Low priority account i.e. all other accounts.
3. Prospect segregation: Separate prospects into two groups viz. high priority, these are qualified prospects, carrying high probability to be sold and low priority, these are unqualified leads requiring further evaluation.

This segregation will create a sturdy base for your account prioritization process and give you a clearer picture where to invest your time, money and efforts that will give you high ROI.

Top Account Prioritization tips:

1. Make a top-down listing of all the clients: local, national and international that you are doing business with or pitching to for the last 12 months.
2. Now determine key cut-off value with the help of the top 25% accounts. The key cut-off value is the dollar value of the smallest account to present in the top 25%.
3. All the accounts above the key cut-off are Key or primary accounts and rest are secondary accounts. Do periodic updates on this list.
4. Remember that the cut-off level and these account designations are based on the client base and not for an individual salesperson.
5. Every salesperson will have their own accounts with the last 12 months billing details, indicating which are designated as key and secondary.
6. Identify the number of target accounts for each seller and have each salesperson identify their target accounts with leads.
7. Make a list of the accounts that do not fit to the list with the name of the seller. Put those accounts for reassignments.
8. Make a list of the accounts with their status as per their responses to the sales campaign or outreach. Keep updating this list once a month.
9. Make the use of technology like CRM tools to account management and designation.
10. Do a review every quarter and keep updating your key cut-off level.

This will also give you a clear picture of accounts contributing to growth opportunities and also ‘At-risk’ accounts. Make a separate list of these accounts. Come up with foolproof strategies to get them converted.