AI and predictive analytics are hot topics and technologies in account-based B2B because they help you learn more about your accounts and act on the information. That’s all well and good… unless those AI and predictive analytics solutions don’t improve or even speak to your CRM. And that’s where sales reps and their accounts live every day.
6sense Sales Intelligence collects all the data you care about most (i.e., where accounts are in the buying journey, how and when they’ve engaged with your business, which contacts are part of the buying center, what they’re interested in, and the next actions you should take to move the deal forward) and makes it accessible right in your CRM.
But how specifically does Sales Intelligence support sales reps?
There are six ways that you can turn insights into actions.
1. Align with marketing on accounts
Remember, you and marketing share a common goal — the common goal: to turn prospects into customers and to turn customers into a steady stream of revenue. Sales Intelligence gives AEs and BDRs/SDRs access to the same data and insights your marketing team relies on, which makes it easy to align on the most important accounts.
We recently released 6sense Qualified Account (6QA) reporting capabilities that enable sales and marketing teams to align on the best time to engage target accounts and contacts, as well as Segment Performance capabilities that help teams measure the effectiveness of campaigns and activities driving account engagement. So sales reps don’t just know who they want to target and how, but also how to measure results and replicate successful methods of engagement.
2. Engage at the right time
Sales Intelligence provides deep insights into account and contact engagement history, including a visual trendline of engagement activity, so you know exactly when to reach out and what message is most likely to resonate with a specific customer.
3. Prioritize the best accounts
With in-market and ICP-fit predictions available within your CRM, you can prioritize the best accounts to work; not the ones that only seem like a good fit in theory or that expressed interest last month, but those that have displayed real-time, measurable intent to buy and also fit your ICP.
4. Make every conversation relevant and personal
Sales Intelligence highlights the keywords that known and anonymous contacts are searching, as well as the individual website pages they’re visiting, which locations are most active, and the campaigns they’re engaging with. With this information, you can create highly relevant messages instead of wasting cycles on a one-size-fits-all approach.
5. Identify the buying team
Knowing your account’s buying team is critical to closing the deal. With Sales Intelligence, you can quickly identify key contacts, see how engaged they are with your business, and uncover white space where additional contacts should be acquired.
6. Know your next steps
Don’t miss a beat. The Next Best Action feature uses AI to give reps a prioritized list of recommended actions to help you engage the buying team within a target account — including which contacts to engage next, key talking points to use, and new contacts to acquire.
Sell smarter, not harder, with efficiency and personalization
BDRs/SDRs and AEs can only be so productive; we’re all only human, with a growing to-do list and finite hours in which to complete it. While there’s no silver bullet that will get you to 100 more outreaches in a day, you can make your outreaches higher quality. All this to say: You can see an uptick in ROI without cloning yourself or losing sleep. The key, as we’ve discussed, is augmenting your deeply human sales talent with data science.
Your approach is unique to you, just as every customer and every conversation needs to be approached with a fresh perspective. Getting people to respond to your cadence or sequence is more challenging than ever. In 2016, it took an average of 13 touches to get a response; today, it can take between 17-22 touches. Combined with the need to reach out to accounts with multiple individual buyers, it’s easy to see how prospecting gets tougher as you scale. It takes a data-driven strategy and the right platforms to build effective prospecting cadences and see results in real time.
At 6sense, our prospecting cadences use 22 steps and incorporate social media, email, phone calls, and direct mail. Our sales reps have moved prospective companies from demonstrating intent to buy to opportunities in just 27 days. For insight into moving prospects through the pipeline with impactful prospecting cadences, check out these tips from our Director of Sales Development.
Learn more about empowering sales teams in our ebook The Science of B2B Selling: How Modern Sales Teams Win Deals Now.
