Q4: How do we create a strategy and value proposition that drives growth?

By this point, you know who you're targeting and have a solid understanding of your priority accounts. Now it's about using that insight to decide how you'll go after them, and how you'll articulate your understanding of them and the value you can bring.

This series explores the seven questions behind effective ABM, one at a time. Now for Question 4 of 7: How do we create a strategy and value proposition that drives growth?

Our top tips

Decide how you'll win

Use what you've learned to choose which challenges and opportunities to go after. Sometimes that means adapting your offer to meet a need you've uncovered.

In 1:1, it might mean deciding your strategic approach. In 1:few or 1:many, it means prioritising further, because you can't chase everyone with the same effort.

Focus on outcomes

People buy outcomes, not products or services: reduced cost, greater efficiency, lower risk, increased growth.

Lead with the problem you solve, not the service you deliver.

Build a value proposition around account needs

A value proposition is a simple one-liner that sums up what you offer and shows you understand what matters to them.

One way to get there: put everything you know about your accounts' needs on Post-it notes, group them into themes, then test scenarios to find your core proposition and the supporting themes beneath it.

Get your messaging house on one page

Group the supporting detail into messaging pillars, with reasons to believe under each and an elevator pitch that sums it all up.

It might take a few goes, but agreeing this hierarchy upfront makes content far easier to create and keeps everyone telling the same story.

Pressure-test against real accounts

Before committing budget, run your proposition and messaging past the Account Director, or test it hypothetically against the three accounts you deep-dived earlier.

Would it land?

Tailor for sub-sectors

Sectors are rarely homogenous, so your proposition may need light tailoring for each sub-sector without losing consistency.

Tailor for different stakeholders

A CFO, Operations Director and Procurement Lead may all be part of the same decision but care about different things.

Keep the core proposition consistent, but adapt how you explain it and which pillars you lead with.

Final thought

Insight helps you understand your accounts. Strategy turns that understanding into a clear approach for winning them.

The businesses that grow most effectively stop talking about what they sell and start talking about the outcomes their accounts care about. That's where relevance begins.

Are you leading with what you sell, or with the outcomes your accounts really care about?