Ultimate Guide to Account Research

• 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.

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

• 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)

• 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

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

• 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

• 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?

• 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

4. Draft the account map

• 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?

• 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

• Relevant KPIs
• Career trajectory
• Contact data
• Personal context

• "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

1. Learn how to speedread

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

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

1. Pick your note-taking style (randomly clipping things from the web vs creating outlines vs drawing mindmaps etc)
1. Start with this video series by Tiago Forte where he covers the basic note taking styles and gives recommendation on what app to use.
2. Choose the app that is better aligned with your style
3. Finetune the app to better support your routine