More
Template is not defined.

How To: Use 6QAs and Dynamic Territories to Create Sales Breakthroughs

How to use 6sense qualified accounts (6QAs) and dynamic territories to prospect with confidence and achieve sales breakthroughs.

Share
13

Chapters

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

How AI Solves the Quality Problem

Chapter 3

How to Use and Adjust 6QAs to Achieve the Results You Need

Chapter 4

How to Ensure Each Sales Rep Has Enough Quality Accounts to Work

Chapter 5

6QAs and Dynamic Territories: A Fast Track to Scalable Sales

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

Selling and marketing are harder than ever. Old-school tactics are pushing modern buyers away, leaving revenue teams frustrated, inefficient, and unable to compete. In No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls, Latané Conant delivers the recipe for scalable, repeatable, data-driven sales and marketing strategies that work today.

In this How-To, we provide a practical, tactical dive into some of the strategies outlined in Chapter 5, The Modern Sales Organization. 

In Chapter 5 of No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls, Mark Ebert, Senior Vice President of Sales at 6sense, outlines a new era of selling, where “the path to running a high-performing team is vastly different than it used to be.”

“We now have data and tech at our disposal that can increase efficiency and attainment in ways that would have seemed like science fiction even 10 years ago,” he writes.

One big improvement is the availability of intent data, which helps tell you which accounts are ready to buy, what their problems are, and when to engage them.

By identifying accounts that show buying intent, you can:

  • Narrow the number of accounts a rep needs to work
  • Fairly allocate real opportunities
  • Massively boost confidence thanks to much more attainable wins

For sales teams still relying on traditional techniques, familiar problems persist. And, as a result, when a salesperson doesn’t hit quota, you’ll still hear two justifications: “My leads were trash” and “My territory’s even worse.”

The clever collection, analysis, and application of intent data can change all that. Let’s take a closer look. 

Salesfolk Aren’t Crying Wolf

Sometimes those complaints are excuses used by underperformers to soothe bruised egos. But, more often than not, your salespeople aren’t crying wolf. Current methods really are creating low-quality leads and territories where at least 50% of prospects aren’t a good fit for what you sell.

Even the savviest of salesfolk can’t overcome a combination of junk leads and a list of accounts not worth working. It’s time to stop the blame game and see these problems for what they are — symptoms of a broken system.

  • Traditional lead scoring is a painful waste of time. It’s guesswork, relying largely on contacts filling out forms on your site. (Only 3% of website visitors fill out webforms.) Lead scoring is time-consuming, subjective, and also ignores the elephant in the room: today’s B2B buyer is a group, not an individual.
  • Static territory lists, usually set for the year, are picked based on Total Addressable Market, revenue, and — if we’re honest — more then a few hunches. Depending on account size, lists can be shorter, or swell well into the hundreds. Either way, they lack prioritization, leaving it up to reps to decide which accounts to go after. It’s difficult to find a balance between providing enough opportunities and overwhelming reps with huge lists of every possible buyer.

Low-Quality Leads Create Misalignment

Traditional lead scoring and territory lists force revenue leaders to rely on intuition, guesswork, and experience — rather than data — to define the foundations of their programs. As a result, the definition of “quality” becomes a painful sticking point.

Sales reps ignore 80% of marketing leads, leading to finger-pointing and accusations of marketing wasting sales’ efforts and vice versa. This resentment can grow into mistrust and manifest itself in misalignment, further eroding the effectiveness of your revenue team.

So how do we avoid getting to this point?

The answer lies in objective quality scoring. It also hinges on creating territories based on data analysis performed by machine learning and AI. This way, both marketing and sales can be confident they’ve identified the best accounts and that they’re prioritizing them.

To illustrate how objective quality scoring and data-driven territory creation can transform a revenue team’s performance, let’s look at how 6sense customers apply this approach to achieve sales breakthroughs.

Chapter 2

How AI Solves the Quality Problem

Subjective, static, and siloed data undermines revenue teams’ efforts to score, distribute, and prospect leads. AI fixes this problem. Without accounts, there’s nothing to fill your teams’ territories, so AI starts at the beginning: Scoring accounts.

At 6sense, we apply AI to data to objectively score accounts based on readiness to buy. AI eliminates guesswork and bias from account scoring and territory lists, replacing assumptions with data-driven facts. Here’s how it works.

6sense combines AI, big data, and machine learning to apply predictive models based on data from your CRM, marketing automation platform, and ongoing opportunities.

This internal data is combined with intent signals and engagement activity from your website and third-party sites to recognize common buying signals. These combined signals not only pinpoint which accounts are ready to buy, but also identify potential customers outside your database.

A Question of Timing, Not Quality

Applying AI to understand which accounts are in-market is a game-changer for both your lead qualification and territory lists.

6sense Qualified Accounts (6QAs) are accounts that meet your Ideal Customer Profile and have just reached a critical tipping point — moving from the consideration stage, into the decision/purchase stage of the buying journey.

Because you know an account is ready to buy, it’s no longer a question of lead quality (or even volume). It becomes a question of timing. It’s all about prospecting accounts in a moment when they’re ready to buy.

But how do you ensure your reps approach these hot accounts while they’re still primed to purchase? That’s where dynamic territories come into play. Dynamic territories periodically shed accounts that are showing no engagement and replace them with fresh accounts that are interested right now. Refreshing the list narrows your reps focus onto only the accounts that are likely to convert.

Together, 6QAs and dynamic territories are the quickest route to identifying high-quality in-market accounts and helping your sales team prioritize and get after them.

Chapter 3

How to Use and Adjust 6QAs to Achieve the Results You Need

AI might be the engine behind your performance, but you’re still at the wheel. You can adjust 6QAs to suit your targets, headcount, or performance. Before we look at how and why you might want to adjust your 6QAs, here’s how the scoring works. 

How 6QAs Are Scored

6QAs are defined by AI-driven models that actively predict what accounts are an ideal fit, when they may be ready to buy, and how well your team is doing at reaching them. No arbitrary points, just scores defined by big data:

  • Account Profile Fit Score: How similar a company is to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), based on firmographic and technographic factors. Accounts are scored from 1 to 100 and classified as strong, moderate, or weak fit.
  • Account Buying Stage: Where an account is in the buying journey (target, awareness, consideration, decision, or purchase). Accounts in the decision and purchase stage are considered to be a 6QA and ready for immediate sales outreach. Alongside the buying stage, every account is given a correlated numerical account intent score. The higher the intent score, the more likely they are of opening or progressing an opportunity.
  • Account Reach Score: This is a measure of how well engagement and outreach activities compare to previous wins. It evaluates a prospecting team’s effort so they can prioritize further engagement activities. Accounts are given a reach classification (high, low, or no reach). 
6sense Account Scores

How to Adjust Your 6QAs 

Accounts become 6QAs when they hit a certain threshold, but you can adjust the 6QA parameters to suit your goals. 

You may have reps in a particular segment that don’t have enough accounts to work. In that case, you can customize the criteria used to define a 6QA to include more accounts by tweaking score thresholds. By lowering the buying score threshold from 70 to 60, you can see how many more 6QAs are generated and evaluate whether quality remains strong.

Maybe you’ve achieved better results when engaging earlier with tier one accounts (priority accounts based on ICP fit, strategic industry logos, or high-ticket prospects). In that case, you can move the account buying stage from “decision” to “consideration” for tier one accounts. That would trigger your 6QAs sooner and alert your reps earlier in the buying journey. 

If you’re generating too many 6QAs in a particular segment, you could narrow qualification criteria by only alerting sales to companies in the purchase stage. You can turn the dial either way on any of the scores to suit a specific segment or fluctuating demand.

As well as qualifying accounts based on buying stage, intent, and fit, you can add other considerations including: 

  • Region
  • Vertical
  • Industry
  • Solution
  • Segment

Tailoring your 6QAs helps your sellers work at the right capacity. Regardless of how you tweak the criteria, you will get a list of accounts prioritized by quality — it’s down to you how deep into that pile you want to reach.

Chapter 4

How to Ensure Each Sales Rep Has Enough Quality Accounts to Work

Just as big data and AI change how your reps prioritize which accounts to target, they also transform the way you build and work territories.

Old School Static Territory Lists

Traditional territory lists are set for the year and don’t change. They remain static, regardless of whether the accounts on the list show any signs they’re ready to buy.

Strategic sales lists might be short and made up of only big-ticket accounts. But further downmarket, reps can have hundreds, or even 1,000+ accounts in their name. Unable to work them all, they inevitably go after the big logos, hoping for a huge payday. 

But the emphasis is on hope. Salespeople have little way of knowing if an account is in-market, or which accounts to prioritize. This results in mistimed deals, missed revenue, and sellers gradually losing motivation as they waste months chasing accounts that will never become opportunities.

The New Game: Building Dynamic Territory Lists Based On In-Market Data and 6QAs

Just like a traditional territory, building a dynamic territory starts with defining the types of accounts you want to target in 6sense based on firmographics, including:

  • Industry
  • Company size (by employees)
  • Location 
  • Status and structure
  • Business performance

But the magic happens when you layer on in-market insights to create a list of accounts that have reached your 6QA threshold. 

These insights don’t just help your reps. They provide a clear picture of your revenue opportunities. You can use your 6QA totals alongside your historical conversion rates to map out how many reps you need to hit your goals.

So far, so good. But where does the dynamic element come in? 

Once you’ve built your territory list, any time an account hits your 6QA threshold, 6sense dynamically assigns those accounts to team members in a round robin. Your reps can check their 6sense dashboard in your CRM daily to see if there are any new hot accounts, and should work them as if they’re inbound.

By their nature, in-market accounts are time-bound and their status changes regularly –– particularly in high-velocity sales cycles. Dynamic territories adjust automatically, periodically shedding accounts showing no engagement and replacing them with fresh accounts that recently met your 6QA threshold.

Strategic Accounts Remain in Play

As with 6QAs, you’re not boxed in by the AI. 

There are certain strategic accounts you’re always going to want to target, or accounts where the longer game could pay off. You can separate these high-priority accounts so they won’t be removed from lists and your reps can work them as long as you see fit.

We recommend putting aside no more than a third of your rep’s list for priority accounts. The remaining two-thirds will dynamically update to high-intent accounts they can prospect with confidence.

This dynamic, data-driven approach to territories sets your reps up for success.

Greater Focus: With dynamic territories, less really is more. By narrowing down the accounts a rep is expected to work, you focus their full attention to the ones that are likely to convert. Shrinking account lists can initially be jarring, but any misgivings are swiftly overcome by faster results and satisfaction from working engaged buyers.

More Motivation: Better results, more confidence. When they’re only working accounts that are proven to be in-market, reps’ attainment skyrockets. Because they’re targeting prospects that are ready to hear from you, cold calls and spammy emails are consigned to the past. Even if reps are enduring a dry spell, the knowledge that they’ll regularly get new, interested accounts keeps them optimistic about future wins.

Chapter 5

6QAs and Dynamic Territories: A Fast Track to Scalable Sales

Combining 6QAs and dynamic territories fast-tracks the hottest accounts straight to your reps. 

This brings about a change in mindset. Your team stops worrying about the volume of leads they can work. Instead, their focus is on working engaged accounts in a timely manner.

Since intent data and 6QAs give you an idea of the true sellable opportunity, they also help you to plan and grow your team, confident in the knowledge you have enough accounts in a territory to feed hungry reps. 

Finally, by removing doubts about lead quality and qualification, AI helps to realign sales and marketing so you can move forward as a unified revenue team.

Learn More in Our ‘No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls’ Resource Center

Interested in learning more about taking your sales and marketing effort to the next level by uncovering and targeting the accounts most likely to buy? Visit our Resource Center to find more How-To’s like this one inspired from the pages of Conant’s book.

All of 6sense’s proceeds from book sales go to GoodSense, the charitable arm of 6sense whose mission is to do our part for our community and beyond.

No Forms.
No Spam.
No Cold Calls.

The 6sense Team

The 6sense Team