“Many B2B companies make half their profitable revenue from just 3% of their customers, yet don’t recognize the significance of these accounts, nor invest appropriately in them,” suggest Bev Burgess and Tim Shercliff in their new book Account-Based Growth – Unlocking Sustainable Value Through Extraordinary Customer Focus.
Packed with case studies and interviews with market leaders, the book is a practical guide to building enduring relationships that deliver long-term growth by aligning marketing, sales, customer success and executives. It is published by KoganPage today in the UK and the rest of the world, and on November 29 in the US.
Account-Based Growth introduces a comprehensive framework for improving internal alignment and external engagement with key customers. It contains bullet-pointed takeaways at the end of each chapter, plus a comprehensive assessment tool to help you improve your own company’s approach to its most important customers.
“I’ve spent 20 years or so developing the concept of account-based marketing”, says Burgess, which has been widely adopted now across the B2B space. “But, marketing is just one aspect of an account-based growth strategy, which also has to involves sales, customer success and the executives of the business. All of these areas have also developed in the past 20 years – but in silos.”
“This book covers all the key ingredients for a company to grow with its most important customers, as a strategic initiative, sponsored by the executive team”, adds Shercliff. “We wrote it together to bring my strategy, sales and business management experience together with Bev’s B2B marketing and services experience.”
The account-based growth principles are brought to life in the book by expert contributors to the Foreword, plus 21 case studies and viewpoints from: Accenture; Atos; Cranfield University; Deloitte; Fujitsu; Infosys; Inverta; Microsoft; Micro Focus; Red Hat; Salesforce; SAP; ServiceNow; Tech Nation; Telstra Purple and Virgin Media O2.
About the authors
Bev Burgess is co-founder and Managing Principal at Inflexion Group, which delivers thought leadership, consulting and training to companies on account-based growth. She has held senior marketing roles at British Gas, Epson and Fujitsu. Based near London, she is also the co-author of A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing and author of Executive Engagement Strategies, both published by Kogan Page.
Tim Shercliff is co-founder and Managing Director at Inflexion Group. Previously an executive at IBM, with senior role in sales, strategy and P&L management, he has subsequently consulted and worked with several leadership teams, including Accenture, CSC, Fujitsu, Micro Focus and Nationwide Building Society. He is based in Kent, UK.
