The 4 Core Demand Approaches: 1:One, 1:Few, 1:Many, and 1:Everyone

Whether your goal is to acquire net new customers, to retain existing customers, or to expand your relationship with existing customers through cross-sell, upsell or land-and-expand, there are 4 core demand approaches that companies should use to execute their go to market strategies:

Most companies use a blend of these 4 demand approaches guided by the specifics of their go to market strategy, their revenue growth goals, and where they are in their revenue maturity journey.

Let’s dig deeper into each approach below. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like help evaluating and adjusting your current mix, or getting a fresh, expert perspective at your go to market strategy, and how it aligns and guides your demand program strategy.

1:One Account Based for Strategic Accounts

Use this approach for your most important, highest value, strategically important, single accounts.

1. Research and Insights: research and develop insights at the industry, segment, company, individual levels
2. # of Accounts: 10s of accounts or fewer 
3. Targeting: named account + named individuals
4. Personalization: high levels of personalization are recommended — think: 100% custom offers
5. Cross-functional alignment and collaboration: high levels of collaboration and alignment are required for researching, planning, engaging, measuring and optimizing
6. Data coverage: 100% account coverage and 100% contact coverage should be the goal
7. Recommended account based team resourcing: 
   • Sales Development: Yes – dedicated SDR
   • Account Executive: Yes – dedicated AE
   • Marketing Manager: Yes – dedicated
   • Marketing Overlay: Yes
   • Executive Overlay: Yes

1:Few Account Based for High Value Clusters

Use this approach for important, high value, important clusters of similar accounts.

1. Research and Insights: research and develop insights at the industry, segment, company, individual levels
2. # of Accounts: 100s of accounts or fewer 
3. Targeting: named accounts + personas
4. Personalization: medium levels of personalization are recommended — think” mix of custom (20%) and template (80%) offers
5. Cross-functional alignment and collaboration: high levels of collaboration and alignment are required for researching, planning, engaging, measuring and optimizing
6. Data coverage: 100% account coverage and 17% contact coverage should be the goal
7. Recommended account based team resourcing: 
   • Sales Development: Yes – but use a named, “first call” resource, backed up by the 1:Many SDR/AE process
   • Account Executive: Yes – but use a named, “first call” resource, backed up by the 1:Many SDR/AE process
   • Marketing Manager: Yes – dedicated
   • Marketing Overlay: Yes
   • Executive Overlay: No

1:Many Account Based for Key Segments

Use this approach for important, high value, strategically important market segments.

1. Research and Insights: research and develop insights at the industry, segment, company, individual levels
2. # of Accounts: 1,000s of accounts or fewer 
3. Targeting: named segments + personas
4. Personalization: low levels of personalization are recommended — templated offers with segment-level personalization
5. Cross-functional alignment and collaboration: basic levels of collaboration and alignment are required for researching, planning, engaging, measuring and optimizing
6. Data coverage: 50% account coverage and best efforts contact coverage should be the goal
7. Recommended account based team resourcing: 
   • Sales Development: Use the normal, high volume SDR+AE/Sales process
   • Account Executive: Use the normal, high volume SDR+AE/sales process
   • Marketing Manager: Yes – but use a named, “first call” resource
   • Marketing Overlay: Yes
   • Executive Overlay: No

1:Everyone Demand Generation for ICP/TAM

Use this approach for engaging your TAM/ICP in an always-on, “wide net” way.

1. Research and Insights: research and develop insights at the industry, segment, company, individual levels
2. # of Accounts: 1,000s of accounts or fewer 
3. Targeting: basic TAM/ICP + personas
4. Personalization: very low levels of personalization are recommended — templated offers with best efforts/basic personalization
5. Cross-functional alignment and collaboration: low levels of collaboration and alignment are required for researching, planning, engaging, measuring and optimizing
6. Data coverage: Best efforts account and contact coverage
7. Recommended account based team resourcing: 
   • Sales Development: Use the normal, high volume SDR+AE/Sales process
   • Account Executive: Use the normal, high volume SDR+AE/Sales process
   • Marketing Manager: Yes – but use a named, “first call” resource
   • Marketing Overlay: Yes
   • Executive Overlay: No

A BIG Thank You.

We are standing on the shoulders of giants here at Intelligent Demand. And that’s especially true when it comes to the ideas contained in this blog. Account based marketing is a rapidly evolving field that matures, evolves and grows with the input from analysts and thought leaders who’ve been studying, summarizing and writing about the intersection of theory and practice for years. I want to give big shoutouts and humble thank you’s to ITSMA, SiriusDecisions/Forrester, and TOPO, in particular for their incredible research and work.

Avoid costly ABM mistakes that hurt your reputation and your revenue: 

Is your company preparing for ABM? Is your company piloting? Is your company scaling successful ABM? Is your company innovating?

Whichever you pick, over the next several weeks, Intelligent Demand’s team of certified ABM experts are going to give you real world, pragmatic tips that will help you use an account based approach to improve revenue performance at your company.  At the end, you will have the knowledge of a certified account based practitioner and the practical advice to lead your team to account based success. 

Opt in to receive real world, expert practitioner level content tailored for exactly where your company is in its account based journey.

Let’s Talk Shop.

Need an expert partner to help you connect your go to market strategy to your demand program? Reach out to us — it’s one of our true specialties. We love helping marketing, sales and customer success teams execute smarter, more innovative revenue growth approaches. And we know how to do it in the real world — with all of its imperfections and opportunities to make a big difference.