BDRs are tasked with a lot of critical — and difficult — duties.
They have to:
- Source new leads
- Engage inbound queries
- Qualify MQLs or other leads
- Tailor engagement to different accounts and contacts
The decisions BDRs make during the early stages of an opportunity can have a long-lasting impact throughout the lifecycle of a potential deal.
Proactive prospecting empowers BDRs to make better decisions about the accounts they engage, based on data about the accounts’ buyers. This strategy helps BDRs:
- Optimize their activities
- Find opportunities with a higher-likelihood of becoming revenue, and
- Deliver a winning experience for buyers
Let’s take a closer look.
Improving Prioritization with Data-Driven Decision-Making
Traditional marketing and sales methods give prospecting a bad rep. Old-school approaches rely on long lists of potential customers and a grind-it-out approach to calling… and calling… and calling.
The thinking behind this: The more accounts and buyers you engage with, the more likely you are to find one that is interested. But the reality is much different: You annoy a lot of people, including potential customers, who hate impersonal outreach — and you burn out your team.
You also waste a lot of time and money as BDRs hunt for the one needle in the haystack.
To maximize BDRs’ time and profit, you need to identify signs that buyers are in-market. Only a small amount of your TAM will be in-market at any given time. You need to know which accounts are researching products or services that you offer.
6sense provides this critical information by capturing buyer intent signals like:
- The topics buyers are researching across the internet
- The pages and content they’re viewing on your website (97% of web traffic to most B2B sites never complete a contact form. Deanonymization can help you spot which accounts are researching you, even if they never fill out a form.)
- The research they’re doing on third-party review sites comparing you to your competitors.
Those signals are matched to your target accounts, revealing the activities happening in real-time at accounts that are exploring solutions.
Use Case
Intent data is the bedrock of proactive prospecting. It gives your BDRs the ability to laser-focus on accounts that will make the biggest impact.
They will know:
- Which accounts are likely to buy
- What they are interested in, based on their online activity
- How to position messaging, based on the keywords and topics researched
Insights Drive Personalized Outreach
Once you’ve uncovered the accounts that are in-market, it’s time for your sales team to start engaging them.
Seventy-three percent of B2B buyers say they want a personalized, B2C-like experience. Delivering that experience requires understanding your buyers’ research topics, activities, and company characteristics.
A platform like 6sense provides quick access to in-depth information about target accounts like:
- Firmographics
- Technographics
- Topics they’re searching
- Pages on your website they’re visiting
- Competitors they’re researching
- Stage in the buying journey
This makes it simple for BDRs to quickly compile a deeply informative dossier for a target account and start formulating a plan of attack.
Use Case
BDRs can use these insights to tailor outreach. And they don’t have to do it all themselves.
Advances in AI and machine learning have made it possible to leverage automation that helps to reach and nurture opportunities. For instance, a conversational email tool can scale your outreach efforts by:
- Scheduling meetings
- Serving buyers recommended content
- Keeping lower priority accounts warm while your teams focus their direct outreach on hotter leads
Conclusion
Your BDRs are one of your company’s most important resources for finding new opportunities. Give them the tools to help them proactively prospect, deliver a better buying experience, and ultimately drive more revenue.
