Who are in the Decision-Making Units at Your Target Accounts?

In Account Based Marketing, “decision-making units” consist of the key stakeholders involved in the buying process and are sometimes referred to as a buying center or demand-unit. This unit can range from one person to dozens, depending on your customer and the type of product or service that you are selling.

Figuring out who is on the decision-making unit at your target accounts can be challenging. But you need to discover who is in this unit in order to ensure the right people are targeted in your marketing campaigns.

Each decision-making unit has certain personas in it. Knowing who these personas are can help frame sales conversations to the pain points of the person you’re speaking with, and empower you as a marketer to craft high impact campaign messages that speak to the right people at your target accounts.

So how can you figure out who comprises the decision-making units at your target accounts?

1. Don’t go by job title alone. Job titles can be the same across companies, but the role may be very different. Look at the typical deal persona involved in your sales and map each person to a standardized identifier.
2. Develop personas based on the pain points and behavior of each individual involved in the buying process.

Examples of personas that might be in a decision-making unit:

• Champion
• Primary Contact
• Decision Maker
• Business User/End User
• Economic Buyer
• Influencer
• Veto Power

Use AI to Discover Roles and Personas

You don’t have to do this all manually. You can use a tool like People.ai to leverage the power of AI to automatically surface how sales is working deals, who they are engaged with at accounts, match contacts to the correct sales opportunity, and what is happening at each stage of the sales pipeline. With insights from the People.ai platform, marketing and sales get a clear visualization of who is involved in the opportunity and which roles might be in the decision-making unit. This gives you clear insight into the personas involved in decision-making units — and lets you define a profile of your “ideal customers.”

Once you know the personas, you can partner with sales to drive more effective marketing at the right stages of the sales opportunity.

Ready to learn how to get clarity on the decision-making units at your target accounts?

Download The Marketer’s Guide to Identifying Decision-Making Units at Target Accounts to learn:

• How to discern which personas are in your target accounts’ decision-making unit (and what they need you to solve for them)
• Why you must align sales and marketing on the same target accounts (and how to do it)
• What to measure to ensure you’re on target and on track
• How AI can do the heavy lifting for you and free up your team to focus on creating high impact marketing campaigns

Get this free ebook and improve your targeted marketing today.