“Data science is all about asking interesting questions based on the data you have—or often the data you don’t have.”
~ Sarah Jarvis
Director of Applied Machine Learning and Data Science at Secondmind
Attracting the interest of potential customers requires a well-organized and targeted strategy that leverages the data available and fosters connections with all members of the buying committee. Sales and marketing professionals in life sciences recognize that progressing from cold prospecting to a successful sale is more complex than a single conversation. Understanding where to focus your efforts—on the right accounts and the appropriate contacts within those accounts—is crucial for effective lead generation.
Without a well-executed account and contact mapping plan, teams risk losing valuable opportunities and potential clients. This article outlines a roadmap for account and contact mapping and provides practical strategies to enhance your sales and marketing approach in the life sciences sector.
About Account Mapping
Account mapping involves identifying, categorizing, and comprehensively understanding the organizations that make up your target audience. This process is a vital component of your lead generation strategy, ensuring that your outreach is informed, strategic, and effective. Rather than casting a wide net, account mapping enables you to concentrate on high-potential targets, often categorizing them based on factors such as industry, revenue, and current purchasing needs.
In the life sciences sector, where multi-layered purchasing decisions are common, account mapping goes beyond merely identifying a single contact. It is essential to comprehend the broader organizational structure and determine where decision-makers and influencers are located within it. This multifaceted approach is particularly effective in life sciences due to the complex approval and funding structures involved in research and laboratory purchases.
About Contact Mapping
After identifying the organizations that fit within your target market, the next step is contact mapping—identifying key individuals within those accounts who influence purchasing decisions. Contact mapping involves more than just compiling a list of names; it requires an understanding of each contact’s role, potential needs, and their degree of influence in the buying process.
In industries like life sciences, where purchasing decisions are often driven by committees, contact mapping becomes an invaluable tool. Establishing a connection with just one member of the buying committee is insufficient; input is typically needed from lab managers, researchers, procurement officers, and executive stakeholders. Each of these individuals may have different pain points, expectations, and levels of decision-making authority. Contact mapping enables your team to identify and categorize these key players, allowing you to tailor your messaging for each, leading to more effective engagement and relationship-building across the account.
Sales Tip: Map Your Territory
A clearly defined territory map lays the groundwork for successful outreach and optimizes time and resources. By mapping out your territory with clear parameters, you ensure that sales representatives focus on high-potential accounts and prioritize regions or industry segments where your products or services are most relevant.
Start by categorizing accounts by industry and geographic location, then create a tiered structure to separate accounts based on potential revenue or account value. These structured territories provide sales teams with a roadmap to identify accounts that could yield the highest return on investment (ROI).
Territory mapping also helps prevent duplicated efforts and enhances sales performance by providing visibility into underserved areas and the sales reps best positioned to close specific types of accounts.
Working Out Your Total Addressable Market (TAM)
Your total addressable market (TAM) is the first measure of the overall opportunity across all potential customers who could theoretically purchase your product. TAM provides a holistic view of your market size, helping you evaluate whether your current resources align with the market opportunity.
In life sciences, TAM includes all labs, research institutions, hospitals, and other entities that could benefit from your product or service. Understanding the TAM ensures your sales and marketing teams are aware of the entire potential market, which in turn informs resource allocation, team expansion, and market positioning.
Accessing Your Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM)
The Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) focuses on the portion of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) that you can realistically reach and serve with your existing products, team, and distribution channels. For instance, if your TAM includes all life science labs globally, your SAM might consist specifically of labs within pharmaceutical companies that have a current need for your equipment.
This subset of TAM should be the priority for your team, as it represents your most immediate revenue opportunity. SAM provides your sales team with clarity on where to direct resources, ensuring they target accounts that are likely to convert and ready to benefit from your offerings today.
Utilizing Demographic and Technographic Data
Understanding demographic and technographic data adds specificity to your account and contact mapping strategy. Demographic data may include organization size, funding amounts, and employee numbers, while technographic data examines the technology stack or specific scientific equipment used by a lab or institution.
For example, a lab already utilizing certain types of reagents or specialized equipment may be more inclined to adopt related products that your company provides. Targeting prospects with compatible or complementary technology stacks increases the likelihood that your outreach will resonate, resulting in better conversion rates.
Identifying Key Accounts
A key account is one that holds significant revenue potential or strategic value for your organization. In the life sciences sector, accounts should be evaluated based on specific criteria, such as budget, recent funding, or previous purchase history. Key accounts warrant more personalized attention, which may include special offers, customized product demonstrations, or joint development opportunities.
Focusing on key accounts enhances your sales efficiency. Knowing which accounts to prioritize allows your team to allocate resources more strategically, ensuring that time and energy are invested into accounts that will deliver the greatest long-term value.
Account Mapping Best Practices
1. Identify Contact Gaps in Your Known Accounts
To effectively engage with existing accounts, identify any contact gaps on your buying committee. Ensure that you are not relying on a single point of contact but are connecting with multiple stakeholders across departments. This approach strengthens your chances of influencing the entire committee and facilitates tailored conversations with each person involved in the purchasing process.
2. Identify Account Gaps in Your Database
Filling account gaps is equally important. These are potential accounts within your TAM that are not yet represented in your CRM. Conducting routine audits to identify missing accounts helps maintain a comprehensive database and maximizes your outreach potential.
3. Enrich Known Accounts and Harvest Data for Account Gaps
Regular data enrichment practices enhance your existing accounts, ensuring they are up-to-date with details like recent funding awards, hiring patterns, or any new relevant technologies they’ve adopted. Tools like SciLeads provide daily insights into new or recently funded research projects, delivering fresh, actionable data that supports better engagement.
4. Label Key Accounts for Account-Based Marketing
Once you have mapped your key accounts, label them within your CRM to facilitate targeted account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns. ABM strategies are particularly effective in life sciences, as they allow you to deliver customized content and outreach to organizations with the highest potential return on investment (ROI).
5. Label Key Contacts and Decision Makers to Help Prioritize Your Time
For each key account, label decision-makers and other influential contacts. This labeling organizes your CRM and helps prioritize sales efforts, ensuring you contact the right individuals who can influence purchasing decisions.
Data Churn: Don’t Let Your Database Rot
Data churn occurs when contacts in your database become outdated or irrelevant due to role changes, job transitions, or even retirements. Data in the life sciences sector is particularly susceptible to churn, as scientists and researchers often shift roles or join new research projects.
To combat data deterioration, establish a practice of flagging contacts with no activity in the past 12 months for verification or removal. Regularly refreshing your database saves time and improves outreach accuracy, ensuring that your team connects with current, relevant contacts who hold influential positions.
Territory Growth: New Accounts, Mergers, and Acquisitions
In the life sciences sector, mergers and acquisitions are commonplace. Each merger or acquisition can impact your account mapping, as new accounts may emerge while existing ones consolidate. To stay adaptable, it’s important to update your account maps regularly, adjusting for territory growth and any changes in account structures or contacts.
A database that routinely keeps up with organizational updateslike this can be invaluable, ensuring your team remains aware of these changes and can respond quickly by adding or adjusting accounts as needed.
Tools to Assist with Account and Contact Mapping
Several tools can simplify and enhance the account mapping process for sales and marketing teams in life sciences. Here are some of the best options available:
- SciLeads: SciLeads is a powerful tool designed for sales, marketing, and operations professionals looking to enhance their account and contact mapping while increasing their sales pipeline. Tailored for scientific selling, SciLeads combines contact information with account details and monitors employees’ scientific activities, organizations’ purchasing histories, and financial changes to provide the best possible insights into customers, their challenges, successes, and potential future actions.
- Demandbase: An account-based marketing (ABM) platform, Demandbase utilizes AI and machine learning to deliver insights into high-potential accounts. It enables teams to craft personalized campaigns for key accounts based on firmographic and technographic data.
- Hunter.io: Hunter.io is an email verification tool that helps ensure the accuracy and currency of contact information within mapped accounts, thereby reducing bounce rates in email campaigns.
- Apollo: Apollo.io is a ‘sales and engagement platform’ that can automate the entire sales process from prospecting to closing. It focusses on contact database management and email outreach along with reporting tools to help users analyze performance.
GDPR and Data Acquisition
In any data acquisition or processing initiative, it is crucial to prioritize GDPR compliance. Adhere to data protection principles by informing contacts that their data is being processed and offering them straightforward options for data removal or opting out. Regulatory compliance is essential to protect both your organization’s reputation and your relationships with potential customers.
Conclusion
For organizations in the life sciences sector, successful account and contact mapping requires going beyond basic data collection. It involves creating a detailed, up-to-date database that enables sales teams to target the right contacts within the right accounts and to swiftly adapt to changes in the industry landscape. By employing a systematic approach to account mapping, data enrichment, and contact management, your team can maximize outreach, enhance engagement, and ultimately drive more conversions.