HBR research emphasises the importance of finding the right customers to weather economic challenges and sustain success. As we head towards year end, targeting the right customers will be vital to navigating uncertainty and achieving sales growth in 2026.
To Survive Uncertainty, Companies Must Recommit to Identifying the Right Customers
Account based marketing (ABM) focuses your efforts on high-value accounts, helping you improve conversion, increase customer lifetime value and achieve stronger ROI than with broad, general marketing. An effective ABM strategy relies on a well-coordinated, multichannel approach that plays to each channel’s strengths and engages your audience at every touchpoint.
Digital marketing offers great reach, scale, and efficiency but a direct, data-led approach such as telemarketing is key to targeting the right key decision-makers, especially those who aren’t necessarily online or actively looking for your solution yet. A flexible, highly personal channel, telemarketing adds a human touch to your ABM efforts, creating an authentic connection, uncovering valuable insights, and building trust that can grow into long-term, profitable partnerships.
How can the phone strengthen your account based marketing strategy?
Keeping your database accurate, up-to-date and compliant
A successful ABM strategy depends on a database that not only contains the right accounts and decision-makers but is also accurate, current, and respects consent and communication preferences. Only with a clean and profiled base, can you segment and target your audience accurately and achieve an effective ABM approach.
Telemarketing can play a key role in maintaining the quality of your data through real, direct conversations. It helps make sure your records reflect what’s really happening inside your target organisations, so your outreach hits the right people, stays compliant, and avoids waste.
Telemarketing allows you to:
- Identify the right contacts so you’re connecting with qualified decision-makers, rather than unqualified suspects.
- Confirm and update contact details including names, roles, departments, and direct lines.
- Capture opt-ins, consent and communication preferences for email and other channels.
- Cleanse outdated records to reduce waste and improve campaign effectiveness.
- Support accurate segmentation with fresh, verified data on your key accounts.
A high-integrity database creates a solid foundation that makes your marketing campaigns and ABM strategy more effective and helps accelerate profitable sales growth.
Understanding customer needs
Phone calls are also a powerful way to gather real, first-hand insights about your customers and market to help you shape better offers and messaging.
Talking directly with customers allows you to:
- Identify their needs and challenges: Real conversations let you hear frustrations, goals, and unmet needs directly from the source. This helps you tailor solutions that really matter.
- Gain real-time competitor insights: Regular contact with individuals within your key accounts help you track your competition, respond to threats and exploit new opportunities.
- Inform strategy across all channels: Phone-based insights inform your wider messaging and a more effective multichannel approach, improving sales growth and the customer experience.
Personalising your approach and tailoring solutions
One of the biggest advantages of the phone channel is the direct customer feedback and actionable insight you gain that shines a light on your customers’ current and changing needs. Phone conversations help you:
- Tailor your offerings and messages to be relevant and resonate with customers’ real situations.
- Drive growth by aligning solutions precisely with what customers need, deepening engagement and expanding the relationship.
- Refine products and propositions using direct customer feedback, helping you stay ahead of trends and retain a competitive edge.
Deepening account penetration
To increase account spend, you need to expand your reach within your priority accounts. Strategically targeted telemarketing helps you deepen and widen account penetration, identifying new decision-makers, departments, and opportunities that you may not otherwise be aware of.
By building rapport through direct conversations and networking through your existing relationships, you gain insight into the organisation’s wider needs and decision-making processes, creating the foundation for deeper account penetration and increased revenue.
With telemarketing, you can:
- Identify new departments and divisions through ongoing conversations, referrals, and networking.
- Understand complex procurement processes so you can better navigate barriers.
- Address broader organisational needs with tailored and complete solutions, boosting your value as a trusted partner.
As Sopro’s whitepaper on prospecting points out, sales cycles are longer and more complex, with more buyers who are harder to reach and pickier than ever. Over a quarter of B2B buyers describe their latest purchase as “very complex or difficult.”
Building and strengthening relationships.
Strong, trust-based relationships are essential for profitable, long-term growth. Human contact over the phone creates ongoing, meaningful interactions that help you:
- Nurture trust through regular contact that shows you care about your customers’ success.
- Drive customer success by identifying new needs early and providing relevant solutions.
- Move from supplier to trusted partner, boosting loyalty and account life-time value.
According to the Dentsu B2B Superpowers Index 2024, the top three factors influencing buyers are all about building trust.
From supplier to strategic partner
Integrating telemarketing into your ABM strategy can accelerate sales growth and significantly enhance both profitability and ROI. By bringing the human side of your brand to the fore, it creates the opportunity for authentic conversations, deeper insights, and trust-based relationships that go far beyond transactions. Regular contact with key decision-makers and influencers not only keep your data accurate but also ensure your outreach remains timely, relevant, and aligned with their needs.
When executed effectively, the phone channel goes beyond improving targeting and personalising interactions, it elevates your role from supplier to strategic partner, nurturing deeper engagement, stronger loyalty, and long-term, profitable sales growth.
