Rank your market and pick your top 25 accounts

What it does

Account-based work only pays when the accounts are worth it. Writing by hand to 500 companies is just slow cold email. So start from your whole market, rank it, and hand-pick a short list you can actually give attention to: about 25 accounts at a time. Everyone else stays in your regular outreach until something moves them up.

What you need

• Your market as a list of companies (see count your market)
• Your fit rules (see fit-check every company)
• Your buying signals (see rank your buying signals)
• A spreadsheet or a Clay table

How it works

1. 1

   Score fit out of 5

   How much does this company look like your best customers? Size, what they sell, who they sell to, the tools they use. Give a 5 to a company that looks like your best three deals, a 1 to one that barely passes your fit rules.

2. 2

   Score timing out of 5

   Is something happening there now? New funding, a new leader in the buyer’s seat, a hire for the job you help with, a launch into a new market. Two signals in the last 30 days is a 5. Nothing in six months is a 1.

3. 3

   Score access out of 5

   Can you get to the people who’d buy? Someone you both know, a past champion who works there now, a buyer who posts and replies on LinkedIn, an address you can check. No name and no way in is a 1.

4. 4

   Multiply, sort and take the top 25

   Fit times timing times access, out of 125. Multiplying beats adding: a perfect fit you can’t reach shouldn’t outrank a good fit that’s hiring and posting this week. Sort, and take the top 25. If two are close, take the one with the fresher signal.

   The score

   ABM score = fit (1-5) x timing (1-5) x access (1-5)
   
   Top 25 = worked by hand, one at a time
   26 to 100 = watch list: check for new signals every week
   The rest = your regular outreach

5. 5

   Keep the list moving

   An account leaves the top 25 when it says no, goes quiet after a full week of touches, or loses its signal. The next one on the watch list takes its place. A deal you win moves the companies that look like it up the ranking.

What good looks like

A ranked sheet of your whole market, 25 accounts you’d be glad to win, and a watch list that tells you who’s next. You can say in one line why each of the 25 is on it.

Mistakes to skip

• Picking accounts by logo. A famous name with no timing and no way in is a year of silence.
• Working 200 accounts “account-based”. Past about 25 at a time, the hand-written part gets skipped.
• Never re-ranking. Signals go stale in weeks, so the list has to move.
• Putting these accounts in an automated campaign too. One careless email undoes the hand-written ones.