Account Profiles: Sources Of Action-Oriented Data

Action-oriented account profile data provides intelligence to sales and marketing about specific buying centers and their readiness to buy. Primary research is required to uncover decision-making structures and motivating influences within targeted accounts. Use combinations of data sources to capture unique information and build more complete views of accounts.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it.” Tom Hanks delivered this famous piece of exasperated advice in the 1992 hit movie A League of Their Own. The same principle of hard work leading to significant rewards can be applied to the task of building B2B account profiles. While elements such as company overview, financial data and key executives are generally available from public sources, action-oriented data that yields insight into the status of specific buying centers and opportunities requires often-difficult primary data collection. In this report, we describe sources and best practices for gathering action-oriented profile data from external data providers, telephone-based profiling initiatives, and internal data sources.