Ultimate Guide to Account Research

How to systematically find golden nuggets of intel thet

[Вставить подводку — почему важен account reseatch]

Hi there,

And welcome to the premiere issue of Big Deal Dépêche!

Today I'll cover the framework that I use before reaching out to strategic accounts.

The topic is extremely unattractive, I get it. But here is why it's extremely important to any enterprise seller:

Everybody says that you need to do your research; however, almost no frameworks show how to do it.
As a result, most enterprise sellers do their research intuitively and waste an insane amount of effort with nothing to show for it besides surface-level intel (tech stack, growth rate, exec hires, etc.)
At the same time, the bar for engaging the C-Level execs is so high right now that your pitch needs to be super-relevant to grab attention.

So let's step up your account research game!

The framework consists of five steps:

Step 1. Grasp the big picture of what’s going on in the account's industry

You need to feel the zeitgeist: what are the major market shifts, what the leaders are doing etc. Then understand how your target account is coping with those changes.

What to look for

What’s going on in the industry (trends, lay-offs, growth, stagnation, geopolitical stuff, etc.)
How the client’s business works (product line, target industries etc)

Where to look

Industry analyst reports
10K/10Q reports of the target account
Earnings Calls (don’t forget the Q&A section, sometimes it can provide crazy insights)

• Check out my short presentation on extracting data from EC

Step 2. Understand the key initiatives of the account

It's extremely hard to land a large deal if it's not somehow attached to a strategic initiative.

What to look for

Top priorities inside the account
“Star Products” that are getting major investments

Where to look

Investor Day Presentations

Here's a short post with examples of data that can be extracted

Leadership Interviews
Initiatives with wide PR Coverage
Recent C-level hires

Step 3. Deep-dive into the initiatives that can be tied to your offer

Now let's take a closer look at the important projects that could benefit from your offerings

What to look for

What initiatives can we tag along?
What departments are responsible for these initiatives?
What’s the “connective tissue” between our prop and the client’s initiative?

Where to look

Job posting and overall hiring dynamics

Nate Nasralla has a brilliant example of working with this data

Niche podcasts and interviews with C-1 level managers
Product/customer webinars
Materials from tech days and user conferences

💡

Commercial brake

Later this month, I'm conducting a comprehensive course on Account Research for Enterprise Sellers. Sign up for the waitlist to get the launch notification along with the early bird discount.

4. Draft the account map

Now let's get a glance at the potential members of the decision-making unit (DMU).

What to look for

What can the chain of command look like?
Who can be involved in the buying process?

One more shout-out to Nate Nasralla and his brilliant article on account mapping (with a small comment from yours truly)

What department should we reach out to first?

Where to look

LinkedIn SalesNav
DiscoverORG (or a similar vendor)
Case Studies by other vendors selling to this account
Job postings (both current and archived)

5. Research the potential stakeholders

Let's uncover some insights that will help engage with the buying group members (I prefer to start low and get some additional intel before reaching out to the C-Suite).

What to look for

Relevant KPIs
Career trajectory
Contact data
Personal context

Where to look

"Casual" social profiles (FB, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter)
LinkedIn profile
Zoominfo, Cognism, or similar data providers
“Creepy” open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools and some social engineering.

Here's my infamous "$4M ARR with a Blue Jersey story" to give you an example of this approach

Final thoughts

This is a solid foundation that provides enough insights to get the initial convos that will enrich your research with insider intel to bulletproof the value hypothesis.

More on those topics - in the upcoming Big Deal Depeches.

Stay tuned.

Cheers!

Dan Gridin

Hi there,

And welcome to the new installment of Big Deal Dépêche.

Last Friday we covered preliminary account research framework.

Today I’ll dig more in organizing the research process.

And yes, I totally get that it’s an extremely unsexy topic, but the ability to efficiently extract account intel and use it for building and engaging and relevant value hypothesis is a crucial skill for the enterprise seller.

Let’s go!

1. Learn how to speedread

Thorough account research implies working with an insane volume of text. Luckily, there are dozens of speedreading techniques that will severely increase your reading speed within a couple of months of regular practice. A good (and not too wordy) place to start will be this article by Tim Ferriss back from 2009.

2. Do your research in the “text-only” mode.

Consuming media files “as is” (i.e. listening to podcasts in iTunes) will severely slow down your research process. Working with text is 2-3 time faster (even of you don’t yet speedread).

So I urge you to transcribe every piece of content you need to analyze.

Below is the process overview and here is the LinkedIn post with more details.

3. Create a comfortable setting for your research

Constant interruptions are kryptonite for the research project. Thus turn off all the notifications, and don’t check email, slack, etc. — get “in the zone” and concentrate on extracting as much intel as you can in the time allotted.
Create a checklist for every intel source and mark the things off while skimming through the document. This approach will save you mental energy because you don’t need to “think” what to look for next — all the tasks are outlined in advance.

A classic read on the subject is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

Use the Pomodoro technique and set a timer when you start working with a new item from the checklist (i.e., skim through the "risk factor" section of the 10K).
Get yourself a second monitor or at lease use iPad as an extra screen (Sidecar in MacOs) — this will significantly speed up the process.

4. Create and hone your note-taking routine

There’s no shortage of note-taking advice — it’s a real rabbit hole that you can explore for weeks.

But here are the first steps all the productivity experts agree on:

Pick your note-taking style (randomly clipping things from the web vs creating outlines vs drawing mindmaps etc)

Start with this video series by Tiago Forte where he covers the basic note taking styles and gives recommendation on what app to use.

Choose the app that is better aligned with your style
Finetune the app to better support your routine

I use combo of Notion (structuring the reports and databases) and Obsidian (collecting desperate thoughts and writing first drafts), but there are lots of other of options.

Pick the platform, create your own framework and stick to it.

Final thoughts

Account research is not “one and done” project —

And if you want to dramatically increase the productivity of working with data — sign up for my upcoming account research course.

Have a great weekend!

— Dan Gridin

Let’s connect on LinkedIn

P.S. If you enjoyed what you've just read, please recommend the newsletter to your peers. And if you are that peer - grab your own subscription.

Ultimate Guide to Account Research

How to systematically find golden nuggets of intel thet

[Вставить подводку — почему важен account reseatch]

Hi there,

And welcome to the premiere issue of Big Deal Dépêche!

Today I'll cover the framework that I use before reaching out to strategic accounts.

The topic is extremely unattractive, I get it. But here is why it's extremely important to any enterprise seller:

Everybody says that you need to do your research; however, almost no frameworks show how to do it.
As a result, most enterprise sellers do their research intuitively and waste an insane amount of effort with nothing to show for it besides surface-level intel (tech stack, growth rate, exec hires, etc.)
At the same time, the bar for engaging the C-Level execs is so high right now that your pitch needs to be super-relevant to grab attention.

So let's step up your account research game!

The framework consists of five steps:

Step 1. Grasp the big picture of what’s going on in the account's industry

You need to feel the zeitgeist: what are the major market shifts, what the leaders are doing etc. Then understand how your target account is coping with those changes.

What to look for

What’s going on in the industry (trends, lay-offs, growth, stagnation, geopolitical stuff, etc.)
How the client’s business works (product line, target industries etc)

Where to look

Industry analyst reports
10K/10Q reports of the target account
Earnings Calls (don’t forget the Q&A section, sometimes it can provide crazy insights)

• Check out my short presentation on extracting data from EC

Step 2. Understand the key initiatives of the account

It's extremely hard to land a large deal if it's not somehow attached to a strategic initiative.

What to look for

Top priorities inside the account
“Star Products” that are getting major investments

Where to look

Investor Day Presentations

Here's a short post with examples of data that can be extracted

Leadership Interviews
Initiatives with wide PR Coverage
Recent C-level hires

Step 3. Deep-dive into the initiatives that can be tied to your offer

Now let's take a closer look at the important projects that could benefit from your offerings

What to look for

What initiatives can we tag along?
What departments are responsible for these initiatives?
What’s the “connective tissue” between our prop and the client’s initiative?

Where to look

Job posting and overall hiring dynamics

Nate Nasralla has a brilliant example of working with this data

Niche podcasts and interviews with C-1 level managers
Product/customer webinars
Materials from tech days and user conferences

💡

Commercial brake

Later this month, I'm conducting a comprehensive course on Account Research for Enterprise Sellers. Sign up for the waitlist to get the launch notification along with the early bird discount.

4. Draft the account map

Now let's get a glance at the potential members of the decision-making unit (DMU).

What to look for

What can the chain of command look like?
Who can be involved in the buying process?

One more shout-out to Nate Nasralla and his brilliant article on account mapping (with a small comment from yours truly)

What department should we reach out to first?

Where to look

LinkedIn SalesNav
DiscoverORG (or a similar vendor)
Case Studies by other vendors selling to this account
Job postings (both current and archived)

5. Research the potential stakeholders

Let's uncover some insights that will help engage with the buying group members (I prefer to start low and get some additional intel before reaching out to the C-Suite).

What to look for

Relevant KPIs
Career trajectory
Contact data
Personal context

Where to look

"Casual" social profiles (FB, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter)
LinkedIn profile
Zoominfo, Cognism, or similar data providers
“Creepy” open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools and some social engineering.

Here's my infamous "$4M ARR with a Blue Jersey story" to give you an example of this approach

Final thoughts

This is a solid foundation that provides enough insights to get the initial convos that will enrich your research with insider intel to bulletproof the value hypothesis.

More on those topics - in the upcoming Big Deal Depeches.

Stay tuned.

Cheers!

Dan Gridin

Hi there,

And welcome to the new installment of Big Deal Dépêche.

Last Friday we covered preliminary account research framework.

Today I’ll dig more in organizing the research process.

Let’s go!

1. Learn how to speedread

2. Do your research in the “text-only” mode.

Consuming media files “as is” (i.e. listening to podcasts in iTunes) will severely slow down your research process. Working with text is 2-3 time faster (even of you don’t yet speedread).

So I urge you to transcribe every piece of content you need to analyze.

Below is the process overview and here is the LinkedIn post with more details.

3. Create a comfortable setting for your research

Constant interruptions are kryptonite for the research project. Thus turn off all the notifications, and don’t check email, slack, etc. — get “in the zone” and concentrate on extracting as much intel as you can in the time allotted.
Create a checklist for every intel source and mark the things off while skimming through the document. This approach will save you mental energy because you don’t need to “think” what to look for next — all the tasks are outlined in advance.

A classic read on the subject is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

Use the Pomodoro technique and set a timer when you start working with a new item from the checklist (i.e., skim through the "risk factor" section of the 10K).
Get yourself a second monitor or at lease use iPad as an extra screen (Sidecar in MacOs) — this will significantly speed up the process.

4. Create and hone your note-taking routine

There’s no shortage of note-taking advice — it’s a real rabbit hole that you can explore for weeks.

But here are the first steps all the productivity experts agree on:

Pick your note-taking style (randomly clipping things from the web vs creating outlines vs drawing mindmaps etc)

Start with this video series by Tiago Forte where he covers the basic note taking styles and gives recommendation on what app to use.

Choose the app that is better aligned with your style
Finetune the app to better support your routine

I use combo of Notion (structuring the reports and databases) and Obsidian (collecting desperate thoughts and writing first drafts), but there are lots of other of options.

Pick the platform, create your own framework and stick to it.

Final thoughts

Account research is not “one and done” project —

And if you want to dramatically increase the productivity of working with data — sign up for my upcoming account research course.

Have a great weekend!

— Dan Gridin

Let’s connect on LinkedIn

P.S. If you enjoyed what you've just read, please recommend the newsletter to your peers. And if you are that peer - grab your own subscription.