A Strategic Approach to B2B Account Research

In B2B sales, nearly every aspect of the sales stack has been organized, systematized, and automated. Yet account research is a notable exception. It remains largely unstructured, unsystematic, and manual.

Some reps swear by LinkedIn as the one and only source for intelligence. Others analyze their accounts’ press releases, job postings, and earnings reports. Ask ten reps, and you'll get ten distinct answers about how best to research prospects.

While there are naturally differences industry by industry, are there any best practices that we can follow? Luckily, there are.

The Proven Importance of Research

Though nebulous, the significance of research is undeniable. Over 80% of reps who beat their quotas by 150% or more invest time researching every prospect before reaching out. They know that proper research matters, but they also feel the strain of spending hours on such an open-ended and unsystematic task with dozens more calls to make.

What sources should you use for account research?

• Company website: Use your account’s website to understand their products, identify hiring trends, and go deep on case studies and testimonials.
• LinkedIn: The bread and butter of prospect research, use LinkedIn to review company trends and initiatives, map internal stakeholders, and gather detailed data about individuals.
• Sales intelligence data products: These tools automate the process of identifying the prospect's key initiatives and stakeholders, build relationship maps, analyze business trends, tech stack, track fundraising, and more.
• Public financial statements: Analyze company financials to identify key trends impacting the account and highlight potential budget challenges.
• Press releases: Publicize new product launches, partnerships, executive hires, and fundraising events.
• Industry news and analysis: The best sources of news and analysis focused on industry trends and events.
• General news media: News and analysis related to broader business topics, occasionally highlighting major issues or trends in a specific industry.
• Product reviews: Used to identify potential pain points and highlight competitors.

With all the information out there, it’s no wonder sales reps struggle to do thorough research on 12 or more accounts. In order to be successful, research needs to be a full team effort between Sales, RevOps, and Marketing.

If keeping tabs on all that is too much for you, there’s AI to the rescue. 🚀

A solution like Aomni trains an AI agent tailored to understand your product's unique value proposition. It works collaboratively with you, defining targeted ICPs, qualifying prospects, and conducting deep strategic research. Unlike regular AI chatbots prone to misinformation, Aomni's approach focuses on extracting relevant information directly from the source and processing it into digestible reports.

What makes Aomni stand out is its ability to create a customized account plan for each prospect account, based on key strategic initiatives, public filings, social media, and stakeholder analysis. No more endless, fruitless hours of research. Instead, you’ll get a strategic, streamlined plan to stand out to your buyers.