Account research tends to fall into one of two extremes. Either a company is contacted knowing nothing more than its name and one person’s job title, or so much time goes into research that the conversation gets delayed without the extra information really changing anything.
Useful research sits in the middle. We need enough context to decide why an account deserves attention, who it makes sense to speak to and what we want to test once we get a conversation.
Start by understanding the company
Before personalising a message, I would try to understand the business: what it sells, who to, how it is organised and what is happening right now that might relate to the problem we solve.
Then come the signals: hiring, expansion, leadership changes, new initiatives or technologies. It pays to treat them for what they are. A new hire is a fact. Thinking that hire is putting pressure on a process is an interpretation. Linking that possible pressure to our solution is a hypothesis.
Keeping those layers apart avoids one of the most awkward mistakes in prospecting: writing to someone as if we knew what goes on inside their company when we are really inferring it from the outside.
Research is there to help us ask better questions, not to fake certainty.
Research has to lead somewhere
Once we understand the account, we need to decide what to do with that information. Perhaps we find it doesn’t deserve the priority we thought. Perhaps a different decision-maker appears, or we realise the purchase will probably involve several people.
In B2B sales, the first contact rarely tells us the whole decision structure. Even so, researching roles and responsibilities can help us choose a sensible entry point and avoid relying on a single person from the start.
Mapping ten contacts for the sake of it achieves little. What helps is understanding who is likely to know the problem, who can drive a change and which other profiles might get involved if the opportunity moves forward.
That is how I approach decision-maker mapping on the accounts I work: the key contacts, chosen for the role they play in the purchase.
Personalisation starts before the message
A personalised message isn’t necessarily a long one. If we have done the research properly, it is sometimes enough to explain what we noticed, why it caught our attention and what we want to check.
Personalisation lies in the hypothesis, not in mentioning three details from someone’s LinkedIn profile. If those details don’t change the conversation, they are decoration.
We also need to know when to stop. An account can have a huge amount of public information and still give us no clear reason to get in touch. Another can give us enough context in a few minutes. How deep the research goes depends on the account’s potential value, its priority and what we need to know to take the next step.
Research has to change what you do next
The most useful test is whether the research changes a decision. Does it help us prioritise the account? Choose the right person? Ask a better question? Rule out a hypothesis after speaking to someone?
If the answer is no, we are probably collecting information we don’t need.
Research doesn’t necessarily end with the first contact, either. A conversation can reveal a new decision-maker, an initiative that wasn’t public or an objection that changes how we read the account. That information goes into the context and improves the next action.
Research prepares us for the conversation: arriving with good judgement is what lets us learn something useful and make better decisions afterwards.
