If you search for sales books on Amazon, over 100,000 titles come up. I’m a big believer in education, and books are the best way to develop your craft. But where should you start?

In the Spring of 2011, Aaron Ross started a movement that would forever change the way we sell. After Predictable Revenue hit the shelves, traditional cold calling began to die and Cold Calling 2.0 was born. Now, after nearly five years of generating pipeline with “spears, nets, and seeds” the magic is wearing off.

Account Based Sales and Marketing takes an entire team to get the ball from one side of the field all the way to the other and across the goal line. No single player can take on the opposing team alone. Many different teammates touch the ball multiple times throughout the drive to the end zone, which makes each handoff critical. If you don’t spend time perfecting this, you risk dropping the ball – a turnover that could lead to your competitors cashing in on your lost opportunity. That’s exactly why we wrote Bridging The Gap: The Ultimate Guide To Account Based Marketing & Sales Alignment  For Predictable Growth.

Sales and marketing teams have become more and more aligned in recent years, especially in B2B organizations. History may show a past of battles, resulting in scars and wounds between the two departments, but it’s imperative that they now work together.

The whole point of account-based sales is to focus your efforts on a smaller and more narrowly defined number of high-value accounts that have the greatest potential impact on your bottom line. That’s why the most important piece of the account based sales model is to select and target account.