Yesterday, I posted a blog on Avention’s website concerning Account Based Sales Development which discusses how sales development is being converted to a knowledge-based function:

Account Based Sales Development (ABSD) is the latest twist on Account Based Marketing (ABM).  ABSD takes account targeting down to the sales development role and shifts sales development staff away from smile-and-dial cold calling across many weak prospects to a targeted focus on your best candidates.  As such, it raises the knowledge level and professionalism of Sales Development Reps (SDRs).  With ABSD, SDRs are no longer tied to a script.

Traditional sales development was often relegated to inexperienced sales reps or specialists that excelled in cold calling and appointment setting.  The success rate was low so sales development reps needed thick skins and persistence.

But ABSD begins with the premise that the sales development goal is not to call across as many prospects as possible, but to deeply penetrate your best prospects.  As such, the cost of researching best prospects is shared across many calls, making it affordable to amortize the research across many calls into the same target account.  Thus, “strategic focus allows the rep to allocate the front-end research effort across many touchpoints.  Furthermore, by targeting best fit accounts with customized messaging, the likelihood of garnering a response is significantly higher.”

The number of B2B information services firms now messaging around ABM and ABSD is astonishing.  Two years ago, programmatic marketing firm DemandBase was the only voice discussing this strategy.  Now you will find it is a method being discussed by marketing automation, predictive analytics, and sales intelligence firms.  There is even a new set of firms focused on ABSD as a product offering including SalesLoft, QuotaFactory, and KiteDesk.  While Sales Genie and Colabo haven’t picked up the banner of ABSD as yet, they have products that also support this approach.