While markets continue to shift and uncertainty is the new normal, many B2B sales leaders and their teams are ready to get back to business.
“At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, there was this knee-jerk reaction. People scaled back, feeling the need to toe the line,” said Maura Brady, 6sense RVP of Sales, Central. “That time is behind us now and we’re in a new phase.”
While this new phase presents its own set of challenges for sellers, it can also be a time of great personal and professional growth for many, and an opportunity for organizations to get creative and evolve.
At a recent virtual gathering of sales leaders, “compassionate urgency” emerged as a theme, along with the importance of proactively developing solutions for common short-term objections. One VP of Sales advised that organizations develop a new list of barriers-to-sale and rapidly create programs to address them (e.g., new service offerings or verticals, a “lite” version of their product, more creative payment terms, etc.).
Whatever the tactic, being empathetically proactive and creating value for buyers is the name of the game. But how exactly do you find those organizations that are buying right now? How do you know who’s in the market for your product or service and in need of help overcoming a challenge quickly?
That’s where intent data can make all the difference.
No More Mixed Signals
Providing value and understanding the challenges your customers (and future customers) are facing is always important. But sales teams need to be savvier than ever before to quickly recover lost pipeline and generate new demand. That requires a deeper level of insight.
“Intent is important because companies are having to be more efficient and there aren’t as many at-bats. It’s more important than ever to leverage intent insights to find companies that are in a place to buy,” said Brady.
Because most online research is done anonymously and doesn’t always translate into a form fill or even a visit to your website, it’s hard to know when specific accounts are really ready for a conversation. That is, unless you have intent data, shining a light on all those dark corners of the interwebs, helping you identify which accounts are in the market for your product or service right now.
The Competitive Advantage of Intent Data
Knowing if and when an account is showing intent signals can make prospecting more efficient and effective. 6sense customers see opportunities convert to closed business at a 40% higher rate and contract values that are 50% higher than the historical average.
A great recent example of this is global software company PTC. The organization generated millions of dollars in pipeline from new accounts and new opportunities created from their outbound prospecting efforts within four months of rolling out 6sense data to their sales team. Their team was able to uncover 1200 net-new accounts in the Decision and Purchase buying stages (i.e., those showing “high intent” scores) that did not previously exist in their Salesforce database.
B2B sellers who have these insights at their fingertips have a big leg up over competitors that don’t. That gives you the chance to reach out first when an account is showing intent and means they’re more likely to take a meeting.
Focus on What You Can Control
For many sales leaders today, preaching diligence and providing their teams with all the tools at their disposal helps keep the ball rolling.
“I’ve been telling my team to focus on what they can control. We’re using this time to our advantage and doing more things that we didn’t have as much time for before, like role-playing objection handling. This moment we’re in is an opportunity to come out stronger. What’s my success story going to be after this? The work you put in now determines the success you’ll have in the next phase we encounter,” adds Brady.
With a little help from your friends at 6sense…
To make sure you find intent data as valuable as we do, we want to give you a free In-Market Demand Report — a list of accounts that are actively researching products and services like yours right now. For real, check it out.
