For B2B sellers, timing is everything. The sooner they can engage a buyer, the more likely they are to close a deal.
That’s harder than it sounds. These days, B2B buyers prefer to conduct research and make decisions far from the front lines where sellers are. In fact, 70% of the buying journey happens anonymously across the B2B web where there’s nary a “Try A Demo” CTA in sight.
This means sellers are left with two less-than-ideal options:
- Sending spam and making cold calls to target accounts in the hopes they they’re performing anonymous research, or
- Engaging a buyer when they’re already deep in their purchasing process, which makes for awkward, asynchronous conversations
To overcome these hurdles, sellers need more access to the right kinds of data — the stuff that helps make informed, intelligent decisions.
Commodity-level data gives sellers basic facts about a company like their industry, size, or location. It doesn’t provides real-deal insights, like if:
- An account is a right fit, or
- An account is in-market right now
In contrast, sales intelligence helps sellers focus on the best prospects so they can prioritize outreach. It also recognizes buying signals at their earliest stages, giving sellers the chance to influence buyers before competitors even know there’s an opportunity.
Uncover Purchasing Intent Before the Competition
As we mentioned earlier, most of a buyer’s journey is happening anonymously, far from your sellers’ eyes.
Buyers are:
- Searching for topics related to your products
- Visiting your website to read your content and product pages
- Exploring trade publications and relevant groups on social networks
- Reading third-party review websites to compare offerings
This research creates a lot of invisible, invaluable “digital footprints” — but without the ability to capture, analyze, and present those buying signals to your salespeople, your revenue team is out of the loop.
That’s what sales intelligence does. It reveals the accounts that want to hear from from you, and helps you engage them with the right message, in the right channel, right now.
With a sales intelligence platform, your sellers get alerts when accounts are performing the types of anonymous activities that align with purchasing signals. Sellers also get insights into what those activities are, so they understand what’s on buyers’ minds.
Armed with this intent data, sellers can spot potential buyers long before they fill out a web form or book a demo.
Putting Intelligence to Work — More Personalized Engagement and Stronger Relationships
If a seller uncovers activity that reveals an in-market account, they’re now in pole position against the competition. But simply finding an in-market account doesn’t guarantee a closed deal.
After identifying an in-market account, sellers can leverage sales intelligence to uncover:
- Key contacts at the account (and acquire their contact information)
- The technology they leverage (to identify possible synergies)
- Psychographics (the topics of most interest to the company)
With this information at their fingertips, a seller can create a personalized engagement strategy for specific accounts.
Here’s an example of how a company can use this intelligence to craft a smart campaign and win the entire buying journey.
Example: ACME Corp. Wins Over a Buyer From Start to Finish
Let’s say the fictitious ACME Corp leverages 6sense Revenue AI for Sales™, a sales intelligence solution, to uncover accounts that are in-market and showing signs of buying intent.
John, one of ACME’s top sellers, logs into 6sense and notices a “hot” account: IdealCo. 6sense’s AI surfaced this “hot” company because they have begun searching for key topics related to ACME’s product and even visited those specific product pages on their website.
Within minutes, John:
- Acquires contact information for a VP of Product Development — a key decision-making title
- Dives into IdealCo.’s activity, uncovering the products that interest them the most
- Crafts a personalized outreach to the VP based on this real-time intelligence
During this high-velocity activity, ACME’s competitors are completely unaware of IdealCo.’s interest. Thanks to 6sense’s superior ability to uncover anonymous buying activity and the competition’s reliance on outdated lead generation techniques like cold calling and form-fills, ACME has the inside track for this deal.
By establishing a beachhead early, John can nurture the VP as she learns more about ACME’s offering. In parallel, John uses Revenue AI for Sales’ ability to surface other key stakeholders based on their importance to the deal and previous engagement.
He begins multi-threading across the organization, which further increases his chances of closing the deal.
Conclusion
Sales intelligence keeps your sellers ahead of the competition by providing them with deeper insights about the accounts that are in-market, as well as more actionable intelligence about those buyers.
By reaching potential buyers first, and understanding their needs even before your first conversation, you can boost your odds of closing deals.
