Quantifying Account-Based Engagement Efforts

Continuing with this week’s theme of account-based engagement (see here and here), there’s another element that needs more discussion: quantifying account-based engagement efforts. Let’s say you have accounts rated by tier with the ‘A’ accounts being best-fits, the ‘B’ accounts being the second tier, the ‘C’ accounts being the third tier, and so on. How do you decide how much effort to devote to each tier?

There are two common approaches:

Minutes-Based

• Take the most common activities (call, initial email, email reply, demo, etc.) and allocate a number of minutes for each as a proxy for effort (e.g. 5 minutes for an email, 20 minutes for an email reply, 90 minutes for a demo including prep work, etc.)
• Figure out the ideal mix of activities and the corresponding minutes per rep per week, assuming 40 hours:
  • 5 hours – general meetings, coaching, etc.
  • 25 hours – 50 Tier 1 accounts at 30 minutes each
  • 10 hours – 40 Tier 2 accounts at 15 minutes each
  • Total: 90 accounts engaged
• Build a CRM report by activity type with a formula to multiply by the number of minutes allocated and then group by the account tier to see the results

Touches-Based

• Take the most common touches (call, email, social media interaction, InMail message) and assume each is roughly the same amount of effort
• Take the number of Tier 1 accounts and Tier 2 accounts and start with 2x the effort for Tier 1 accounts
• Assign a required number of touches per Tier 1 account and per Tier 2 account each week (a touches quota)
• Build a CRM report by activity type grouped by the account tier to ensure the efforts match the touches quota

Quantifying account-based engagement efforts takes work to setup and requires an on-going process. Every sales leader knows that more effort equals more results, and this strategy is excellent for more predictable revenue.

What else? What are some more ways to quantify account-based engagement efforts?