Brian LaManna uses an 80/20 rule to focus 80% of weekly effort on the top 20% of accounts. He segments accounts into three tiers based on strategic fit, deal size, and company size, with Tier 1 getting intensive attention and Tier 3 treated as lower priority.
How are you prioritizing accounts? And then, you know, are there specific frameworks that you're following?
Yes, yes, and yes. I'll dive in. I think it all starts— I love the topic because it all starts with your territory and your accounts and where you're going to spend your time. Again, zoom out for a second. If every seller has 40 hours a week and they're working, you know, 49 weeks of the year, like there's some sellers that get insanely more done in those 49 weeks, in those 40 hours per week than others. And it's all about spending your time with the right accounts and the right people within those accounts. So it's absolutely worth it, like at the start of a new year or when you have new accounts or new territories to like block off time, like do that in-depth research and make sure you have a really good plan of attack. For me, my strategy at Gong and my prior company has always been I want to put like 80% of my time into my top 20% of accounts. So just as a ballpark, if I had 1,000 accounts, which I don't, I want to target just 200 of them, but like go absolutely all out at those top 200 accounts where like 80% of my time and effort is towards those. Um, likewise, if I have 100 accounts, right, I want to just target 20 and go absolutely all out at them. Like my, you know, life depends on it or my job does. So within how I determine that, I think first off it's about doing account research and account tiering where I bucket them into tier 1 accounts, tier 2, and tier 3. I'll put like 5% of my accounts in tier 1, 15% in tier 2, and like 80% in tier 3. And it probably sounds alarming for a lot of people, kind of that discrepancy, but I want to be super, super picky with the accounts that absolutely go all out at. For my tier 3 accounts, those might be like, hey, it's not that great of a fit, or I've identified that even if I did land an opportunity, it would be a smaller deal size because there's a small number of users or they're a smaller company, whatever the criteria is for how you go about landing new business deals or expansion plays as well.
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