Definition
Account intelligence is everything a seller knows about one target company that helps them sell to it: what it does, how it is organised, who owns which problem, what tools it runs, what changed recently and what it has bought before. It turns a name on a list into an account you can talk to.
Why it matters when you sell B2B
Generic outreach fails because it could be sent to anyone. Account intelligence is what makes a message impossible to send to anyone else.
It pulls together firmographics, technographic data, recent trigger events and the people involved. Each piece alone is thin. Together they explain the account.
A worked example
Here is one invented account, briefed before the first email.
One account briefExample
- 01What it does. Makes packaging for food brands, from four plants.Company site
- 02What changed. Announced a fifth plant.Press release
- 03Who owns it. A new head of operations, six months in.Profile
- 04What it runs. An old maintenance system, named in job ads.Job ads
- 05Their own words. The chief executive talked about downtime in an interview.Interview
Each row comes from a different place. Together they let you write a first line nobody else could: about the fifth plant, the new owner and the downtime. Our approach to research builds briefs like this from sources a rep can check.
Common mistakes
- 1Collecting facts nobody uses. If a fact will not change who you contact or what you say, skip it.
- 2Letting it go stale. An account brief from last year can be wrong this year. Date every fact.
- 3Stopping at firmographics. Size and industry are the start of a brief, not the brief.
- 4Hiding it from the reps. Intelligence in a spreadsheet nobody opens is wasted. Put it where the rep writes the email.
- 5Not saving the source. Write where each fact came from, so the rep can check it before they use it.
Write an account brief in 20 minutes
- What the company does, in one line.
- What changed recently, with a date.
- Who owns the problem you solve.
- What tools they run that matter to you.
- One thing they said in their own words. Note the source for each.