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Automatic Corporate Hierarchy Mapping Across Systems for B2B Sales Efficiency
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In recent blogs, we’ve looked at several ways your sales and marketing teams can win by mapping B2B hierarchies across CRM and marketing automation systems. From optimizing your ABM strategy to actually identifying buying groups, B2B hierarchy mapping is a critical tool for ascertaining the insights necessary to maximizing the fruits of your GTM efforts. In this blog, let’s explore how B2B hierarchy mapping can be highly advantageous to sales teams in particular, and consider the numerous hurdles that stop sales teams encounter as a result of not having hierarchies mapped across their Total Addressable Market (TAM) within their existing customer and prospecting systems. So, how exactly does hierarchy mapping increase the productivity of B2B sales teams?
A B2B sales team can significantly enhance productivity with hierarchy mapping by gaining a complete view of organizational relationships. Many large companies operate through complex structures involving parent organizations, subsidiaries, and various divisions. By mapping these hierarchies, sales teams can identify the key decision-makers and influencers within the broader company network. This enables them to engage the right stakeholders, coordinate outreach efforts, and prioritize high-value opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked. A unified understanding of how entities are interconnected helps sales reps avoid duplicating efforts and ensures they focus on the most impactful accounts.
Improved account prioritization is another major benefit of hierarchy mapping. There are nearly 9M companies with multiple subsidiaries, headquarters or sites – representing 36M sites overall. The U.S. government for example has over 66K separate entities. With a clear view of organizational structures, sales teams can accurately attribute opportunities to the right accounts and assess their potential value. For example, rather than treating multiple subsidiaries as separate opportunities, reps can approach the parent company with a strategic, consolidated proposal. This reduces the time spent chasing low-impact leads and allows sales reps to focus on larger, multi-faceted deals. Additionally, understanding how smaller accounts fit into the larger hierarchy ensures that no opportunity is missed within the broader ecosystem.
Hierarchy mapping also enables tighter alignment between sales and marketing teams. Marketing efforts, such as campaigns or Account-Based Marketing (ABM), can be better targeted and personalized when hierarchies are well-defined. For instance, if a marketing campaign generates a lead from a subsidiary, sales can immediately trace it back to the parent organization and leverage existing relationships to accelerate the deal. This seamless handoff between marketing and sales eliminates redundancies, ensures consistent messaging, and boosts conversion rates. Such alignment reduces friction and allows both teams to work toward shared goals more efficiently.
Finally, hierarchy mapping supports data-driven decision-making and planning. Sales managers can use this data to identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities across different entities within the hierarchy. For example, if one division of a company is a satisfied customer, sales teams can more confidently pursue other divisions or subsidiaries. Additionally, hierarchy mapping improves sales forecasting and territory planning by providing a clearer picture of how revenue streams are connected. This leads to more accurate resource allocation, better sales strategies, and a streamlined sales process. By eliminating guesswork, hierarchy mapping empowers sales teams to work smarter, not harder.
While the benefits of hierarchy mapping are extremely significant and sought after, most organizations in the B2B world still haven’t achieved a comprehensive solution to mapping hierarchies across their existing systems. When B2B sales teams lack properly mapped hierarchies between their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation platforms, they should expect to face several challenges that can greatly hinder (or completely halt) their efficiency, effectiveness, and alignment. Let’s consider some of the problems those B2B sales teams are facing as a direct, or indirect, result of not having hierarchies mapped across their CRM and Marketing Automation platforms:
Incomplete or Disjointed Customer View
Without hierarchy mapping, the sales team struggles to see relationships between parent companies, subsidiaries, or affiliated entities. This leads to fragmented insights and missed opportunities for upselling, cross-selling, or understanding the broader organizational context of deals.
Misaligned Sales and Marketing Efforts
Marketing campaigns may target individual accounts without considering the influence or connections of related accounts or decision-makers across the hierarchy. Leads generated by marketing might not be properly attributed to the appropriate account, leading to duplicate efforts or missed opportunities for sales follow-ups.
Ineffective Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
ABM strategies depend on a unified understanding of decision-making units (DMUs) across organizations. Without hierarchy mapping, it’s difficult to tailor messaging or understand key influencers in buying decisions. The lack of accurate data makes it challenging to engage all stakeholders in a meaningful and personalized way, reducing the effectiveness of ABM initiatives.
Challenges in Lead Scoring and Routing
Marketing automation platforms often use lead scoring to prioritize leads for sales. If lead scores don’t reflect hierarchical relationships, high-priority leads from related entities may not be flagged correctly. Sales teams might prioritize lower-value opportunities or overlook important connections that could speed up deal closure.
Inaccurate Sales Forecasting
Forecasting depends on understanding all opportunities tied to a company or its broader hierarchy. Without this view, it’s harder to estimate potential revenue. Sales forecasts may be less reliable, leading to unrealistic expectations or missed revenue targets.
Inefficiencies in Territory Planning
If hierarchical data isn’t integrated, sales reps might unknowingly overlap efforts on accounts that belong to the same organization. This creates internal competition, inefficiencies, and potential frustration among sales representatives.
Poor Customer Experience
Without hierarchy mapping, sales reps may approach different departments or divisions of the same organization without coordination. This results in redundant outreach, inconsistent messaging, and a perception that the company doesn’t understand its customer’s structure.
Compliance and Data Governance Issues
Proper data synchronization between CRM and marketing platforms is critical for regulatory compliance (e.g., GDPR, CCPA). Lack of hierarchy mapping could result in sending marketing communications to inappropriate entities or contacts, leading to potential fines or reputational damage.
Mapping hierarchies ensures your sales teams are operating with a complete 360-degree view of your customers and prospects, improves collaboration between sales and marketing, and ultimately drives more effective B2B sales outreach. Here are three best practices for implementing B2B hierarchy mapping successfully:
1. Invest in tools that enable hierarchy mapping and account relationships: Aim for the solution with the strongest Identity Resolution framework available, as well as dynamic data for active profiles.
2. Align CRM and marketing data models to ensure cross-platform consistency: Look for solutions that can unify all of your data with direct integrations into your existing systems.
3. Regularly audit and update account hierarchies to maintain data accuracy: Look for a solution that will automatically update the data across your systems on a regular basis, with cross-signal analysis, leveraging several sources for each data field to ensure accuracy.
Mapping hierarchies across your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the key to unlocking smarter, more efficient sales strategies. By understanding the relationships between parent companies, subsidiaries, and decision-makers, you can create a unified customer view that drives better targeting, personalized outreach, and seamless collaboration across your organization. This not only helps you identify hidden opportunities—like cross-selling or expanding within a company—but also eliminates wasted efforts that result from mismanaged territories and redundant or misaligned campaigns. Ultimately, hierarchy mapping ensures you’re maximizing every opportunity in your market and building deeper, more strategic relationships with your customers. To learn more about the benefits of B2B hierarchy mapping, check out 10 Ways to Win with B2B Hierarchy Mapping.
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