For the 300+ attendees of this year’s London-based ‘Inspire’ business conference, the wisdom and revelations just kept coming.
The annual event, held on June 12, crackled with excitement as renowned B2B revenue thought leaders revealed how B2B revenue teams can master the art of efficiently increasing revenue while preserving the most valuable aspects of the customer relationship.
Read on to get the sharpest highlights from guests like Aaron Ross (bestselling author of Predictable Revenue), Jacco van der Kooij (founder of Winning By Design), Mimi Turner (of LinkedIn’s B2B Institute), and others.
(And be sure to check out the Inspire 2024 section in our RevCity community portal for even more insights.)
‘The Antidote to More’ with Saima Rashid
In our current B2B environment — in which ‘doing more with less’ is often prioritised at the expense of employee morale and efficiency — 6sense SVP of Marketing and Analytics Saima Rashid offered a refreshing perspective in her keynote: ‘more’ doesn’t mean ‘better’.
Sure, business leaders can run their teams ragged for short-term gains, Saima said. But achieving sustainable success requires more than focusing solely on execution. Leaders must recalibrate how they think of the business itself.
Investing in technology certainly increases productivity and produces transformative intelligence (rather than mere commodified information), but such tools can only get teams so far, Saima said.
You need to rethink process, she said, and embrace change management.
This requires aligning strategies and goals across your marketing, sales, and ops teams, for starters. This cohesive collaboration enables teams to use cutting-edge tech in ways that grow revenue without sacrificing employee well-being.
To illustrate this, Saima recounted a success story within 6sense — our own usage of 6sense’s AI-powered Conversational Email solution.
Applying this tech — which automates the email writing and response process by using intent data and AI analysis to provide bespoke engagement to prospects — has freed 6sensors to focus their efforts on more strategic and effective activities.
So far, the results are astonishing: 18% of 6sense’s pipeline generation now hails through this autonomous solution.
‘When you build the right culture, everyone wins’, Saima concluded. ‘The hope is that eight out of 10 workdays are fun. It’s impossible to have a zest for work without having a zest for life.’
‘The Power of the Customer Promise’ with Mimi Turner
As a follow-up, Mimi Turner, Head of EMEA & Latin America at LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, presented a go-to-market strategy called ‘Promise to the Customer’. This innovative approach was informed by her extensive research into effective business practices.
As LinkedIn’s B2B Institute investigated ways revenue teams could drive better business results without increasing their spend, Mimi discovered the crucial impact of something she calls authentic promises.
When brands make authentic promises to customers, she found, they do better across all traditional quantifiable metrics.
But here’s the catch: Nearly all companies think their messaging presents compelling and sincere promises. ‘But in reality, only 20% really do’, Mimi said.
How can brands forge authentic promises to prospects? Mimi offered these insights:
- B2B buyers, whether they’re consciously aware of it or not, are driven to feel ‘career safe’. Your campaign’s promise should address this self-interest.
- Your promise must reflect an understanding of the broader buying group (including finance, procurement, and legal) and address their specific needs, too.
Authentic promises are ‘true, memorable, and really mean something to customers’, Mimi explained. ‘It’s something that cannot be faked. When we respond to a brand campaign we really believe in, it’s at the neurological level. A promise is personal, not economical.’
‘6sense in Six’ with 6sense All-Stars
In this session, several 6sense revenue leaders — including EJ Oelling, Adam Kaiser, Stefano Iacono, Chris Dutton, and Harry Monkhouse — offered a coveted behind-the-scenes look at how our revenue team efficiently transforms opportunities into closed-won deals.
They explained how these six key activities generate high-quality pipeline for our org:
- Define your target market (and determine who’s actually in-market right now)
- Create measurable plans
- Uncover the Dark Funnel™
- Attract and engage active buying teams
- Prioritise the best sales opportunities, and
These tactics run the gamut from thoughtfully defining your company’s Ideal Customer Profile, to regularly refreshing your keyword strategy, to investing heavily in Customer Success efforts, and more.
One quotable takeaway was from Harry Monkhouse, a 6sense Sales Adoption Consultant: ‘At 6sense, we emphasize ABH – Always Be Helping’, he said. The message was clear — when you go out of your way to help your customers, selling becomes not only easier, but more fun.
‘Revenue Makers LIVE’ with Aaron Ross, Saima Rashid, and Adam Kaiser
Top sales keynote speaker, business growth expert, and bestselling author Aaron Ross then joined a live presentation of 6sense’s Revenue Makers podcast.
6sense marketing leaders Saima and Adam, who co-host the show, discussed Aaron’s game-changing 2011 book Predictable Revenue and how so many of its principles remain relevant today.
‘It’s easy to say things like outbound is dead, or predictable revenue is dead’, Aaron said. ‘But nothing really dies. It just evolves’.
For instance, artificial intelligence — which can eliminate so much human effort — is driving evolution in B2B marketing and selling right now. But using AI won’t guarantee success.
Offering prospects a perspective with ‘a deeper truth’ will always resonate, Aaron said.
‘It’s not about what optimized subject line I should be using. It’s about how do I get people focused on the things they do best?’ he explained.
Aaron also offered inspiring advice on how we all can break free of ‘the grind’ and embrace the life and work that we truly love.
‘The Revenue Factory’ with Jacco van der Kooij
Inspire’s closing keynote was delivered by legendary thought leader Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design, a firm that offers a GTM process centered on customer impact.
Jacco explained why revenue teams should focus their keenest efforts on making a positive and transformative impact on their existing customers. Doing so builds a sustainable ‘revenue factory’ for sales organizations.
‘Recurring revenue is a result of recurring impact’, Jacco told the crowd. This kind of high-value impact can, and should, occur well after a prospect has become a customer.
But this ethos requires care and cultivation, not a ‘growth at all costs’ mindset, Jacco said.
He illustrated this concept by presenting a truly customer-centric revenue model: While traditional GTM funnels stop at revenue generation, recurring revenue requires extending a funnel into a ‘bowtie’-shaped model that emphasises onboarding, retention, and expansion.
This consistently creates impact across the customer lifecycle. ‘To expand within a customer is just as important as winning a customer’, he said.
A Special Thanks to Our Sponsors
We want to thank Inspire’s sponsors for making Inspire 2024 possible. Their support was invaluable, and we appreciate your commitment to driving innovation in the B2B space.
Massive thanks to LinkedIn, Infuse, Exclaimer, Gravity, Salesloft, G2, ON24, STEIN IAS, B2B Marketing Expo, Folloze, Reachdesk, Revsure, Wiser Elite, and the Women In Tech Forum.
One More Thing…
If you like what you’ve read and want to get in on the next 6sense UK event, join us (and Reachdesk, Exclaimer, and Infuse) on July 17th for a special ‘Boats n’ CMOs’ get-together. We’ll take to the high seas — well, the River Thames — to discuss the intricacies of GTM with your peers.
