Account-based sales development is outbound prospecting in which sales development reps (SDRs) work a fixed list of target accounts and contact several people at each one, instead of working individual leads one by one.
The unit of work is the company, not the lead. You pick the accounts first, then find the buyers, users and influencers inside each.
Why it matters for outbound
Most B2B deals involve more than one person. A single email to a single contact fails when that person is the wrong buyer, on leave or has left the company.
Working the account fixes that. Reps reach a VP, a director and a user at the same company in the same week. Marketing and sales also agree on one list, so the effort is measured per account (meetings booked, deals opened) rather than per email sent. It pairs with account-based marketing, which runs the same list through ads and content.
The cost is data work. You need the right accounts and then the right roles at each of them, kept current as people change jobs.
Example
A team sells payment software to mid-size retailers. It picks 200 target accounts. For each one, the SDR wants three contacts: a VP of Finance, a Director of Operations and a Head of Payments.
| Account | Role needed | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Acme (acme.com) | VP, Finance | Jane Doe |
| Acme (acme.com) | Director, Operations | John Roe |
| Acme (acme.com) | Head of Payments | Sam Poe |
The SDR sends tailored messages to all three over two weeks and logs the result on the Acme account, not on each person. Names and companies here are placeholders.
In LeadOcean data
LeadOcean covers the data step, not the rep workflow. It has no sequencer, CRM or account scoring.
- Build the account list with
POST /v1/companies/search. Filters includeindustry,employeeRange,hqCountryandtechnologies. - List the people at one account with
GET /v1/companies/{domain}/people, which stops at 10,000 rows. - Narrow by role with
jobLevel(C-Team, VP, Director, Manager, Staff, Other) andjobFunction(for example Sales & Business Development) onPOST /v1/people/search, using thedomainfilter to stay inside your list. - Check
email_statusbefore you send. No refund is given for bounces.
Sizing is free: send count=true with limit=1 to /v1/people/search and read meta.total, which is capped at 100,000. An AI assistant can do the same through the hosted MCP server with count_leads, search_leads and search_companies. Each person or company returned counts as one record. The free plan includes 1,000 records, one-off, and Pro is $499 a month. See /pricing.
Related terms
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