Just last month, SiriusDecisions unveiled its new Demand Unit Waterfall, which provides an innovative framework for managing leads across the full sales and marketing funnel, and it seemed as if everyone around me couldn’t stop talking about it.
What really excited me was that the new waterfall takes (finally!) an account-centric view of the world. In fact, the new Waterfall aligns so well with Account-Based Marketing (ABM) that we were asked numerous times whether Demandbase, my employer, helped create it. (We didn’t, though we have met with analysts at the firm and shared our point of view many times over the past several years.) No wonder I think it’s a great model for ABM!
Here are four of the biggest reasons why:
1. It focuses on accounts
Most marketers are familiar with older iterations of the Waterfall and the impact it has had on the way marketers track and manage leads. The new Waterfall takes a different approach: It recognizes that each purchase decision typically includes various buyers and influencers across a model and provides a system for tracking these connected leads. These buying groups — or “Demand Units,” flow through the following stages of the Waterfall:
Target Demand — This stage is all about sizing the market and identifying your ideal customer profile. You’ll need to ask yourself, “What types of accounts are most likely to value our solutions or services?”
Active Demand — Once you’ve established your ideal customer profile, you’ll want to identify which accounts you actually want to go after. How many companies are ready to buy in the near future?
Engaged Demand — Of the companies you’ve chosen, how many of them have interacted with you?
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