Taking Action on Intent
Intent signals are signals that are triggered by a prospective buyer’s web behavior that indicates they might be in the market for a specific product or service. Capturing buyer intent data is an invaluable asset in your marketing arsenal; knowing your target accounts are in-market for your product/service can bolster your marketing efforts and strengthen your sales outreach, ultimately leading to more opportunities (and closed deals).
But as we’ve emphasized before, just having the data at your disposal doesn’t mean your marketing and sales outreach will automatically improve.
In fact, one common problem our customers face is trying to navigate the wealth of intent data at their disposal – and, once they’re interpreted it, they then have to figure out how to take action on it.
Another common challenge? Divvying up those accounts amongst the sales team. Obviously, your sales team members will want dibs on the accounts showing intent – but you need a process that evenly (and fairly) distributes accounts across the team while also making sure you’re taking action on the data at your disposal.
The solution? Rules of engagement.
By defining the rules of engagement for your marketing and sales teams, you can ensure you avoid this particular minefield.
Rules of engagement are triggers that set off specific actions and define the boundaries of account relationships. These triggers are similar to “if this, then that” logic.
From a sales perspective, defining the rules of engagement sets clear eligibility criteria, which allows a rep to answer the following question: “Am I, Rep A, allowed to reach out to a contact at this account?”
From a marketing perspective, defining rules of engagement can also help to tailor your marketing outreach.
Here’s how to define and activate engagement triggers for your marketing and sales teams.
How To Set Up Your Triggers
If you have an account-based platform like Terminus with an account-based rules engine, it can automatically manage, execute, and measure the success of your rules of engagement. If you are just starting out and don’t have an account-based platform, you’ll want to create sublists to manage the next steps and measure success.
Step 1
Define the inputs to your trigger. These should be based on a combination of fit, intent, relationship, and engagement account attributes. It could be for a combination signaling an account is highly valuable and likely in a buying cycle, it could be the complete opposite, or somewhere in the middle. You’ll want to respond to different combinations of account signals in different ways. The rules of engagement are the key to scaling your account-based program.
Step 2
Define your actions. This could be moving an account to a new list, program, campaign, or sending an alert to sales. Here are some examples:
- Add an account to an account-based display advertising campaign.
- Send sales an alert that a target account is engaging with your pricing page.
- Add an account to a LinkedIn advertising campaign.
- Send a direct-mail piece to an account.
- Request for an executive to send a handwritten letter.
- Invite contacts from an account to an event.
- Get contacts for an account from a contact provider.
- Add the account to a sub list.
Step 3
Define your process. Plan what steps need to happen and who needs to be involved from the time the trigger is set off to when the action is complete. For example, if you are triggering an executive to write a handwritten letter you might plan the following steps:
- Sydney Bristow, Marketing Ops Manager, will add the account to the executive email list.
- Sydney Bristow, Marketing Ops Manager, will send an alert via email to the sales owner of an account that has qualified for an executive email.
- The email will ask the sales owner to provide the executive contact from the account that they would like the letter to go to, address, and personal details that should be included in the letter.
- Michael Vaughn, Demand Gen Manager, will send a request via email to the appropriate executive at her company, Credit Dauphine, with the information provided by the sales owner.
- Michael Vaughn, Demand Gen Manager, will get the letter from the executive and mail it via USPS.
- Sydney Bristow, Marketing Ops Manager, will add the contact to the executive email Salesforce campaign.
Note that if you use an account-based platform like Terminus in combination with a direct mail tool like Sendoso, you can automatically trigger many of these steps.
By clearly defining the rules of engagement for your sales team, you can avoid confusion, better tailor your marketing outreach, and have clearly defined boundaries for account relationships – which can make it easier to monitor progress through the account lifecycle.
Ready to measure the impact of those marketing efforts? Check out this blog to learn how to report ABM success to your stakeholders.
You can learn more about taking action on your account data by downloading our Complete Guide to Account Targeting.
