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It has always been a salesperson’s dream to know exactly who they are reaching out to and exactly how to convert them into a sale.The rise of account-based marketing, along with the development of Marketing Automation and CRM systems, has made huge strides to make this dream accessible for more businesses and their teams. Implementing predictive analytics into their stacks has only created further impact in their success.But there are plenty of marketers out there feeling it’s time for sales teams to move beyond account-based marketing and adapt people-based marketing instead.Why the change now?A step beyond predictive segmentation, people-based marketing is essentially allowing companies to target users based on their ‘true intent’. Research after research shows that consumers are reacting even more strongly towards disruptive advertising than ever before. Today’s consumers don’t want brands to aggressively target them, but to provide them the ability to learn about products and services in their own time. With so many options out there, if the consumer feels that a brand’s message is too forceful they can just simply walk away.On the other hand, business owners and ad tech professionals want a higher level of transparency from the industry. They want to see just how much they’re spending and whether it’s actually driving their company significant revenue. Facebook’s repeated apologies about overstating video metrics over the past few years come to mind as one of several flaws in this bid for transparency. Ad clients want to make sure they’re getting the best bang for their buck, and this hasn’t always been easy.People-based marketing shows a shift in the marketing technology landscape. It’s no longer about targeting devices based on unreliable cookies or unverified destinations where your ads might be running. It is now about knowing the face behind the account. It allows marketing and sales to consider insights about the individual, as well as their buying intent, across all devices. This means less time spent working with accounts that won’t convert. But it also means providing huge value to the customer who is trying to reach a purchasing decision.Imagine being able to prioritize the right contact, in the right place during their journey, with a product and message that will resonate with them.Some of you might be thinking “but we already have buyer personas”. Although “persona-based” marketing can be accurate to some degree, it’s just not the same as identifying who your right customer is via quantifiable data.Think about it.Using people-based marketing means that from the data that’s collected, you can learn your customer’s affinities, as well as their attitudes towards brands and offline behaviors.It can seem impersonal and cold, but there is a universally human aspect of actually taking the time to learn more about your customer’s real needs before reaching out to them.In ConclusionMoving forward, reaching your target contacts and successfully converting them is going to be dependent entirely on how much you know about the person behind the account. It’s all about personalization and segmentation.Predictive analytics and machine learning are only going to assist us in gaining a deeper understanding of the psychology of consumers than we’ve ever had before – and the more data we collect, the better sales teams will be able to provide highly personalized experiences to their target contacts in a critical moment when the outreach will have the most impact. The rest of the marketing stack will allow salespeople to measure the success of their outreach across all devices and prove revenue generated within those accounts.