Former full-stack developer Vu Thai joined the hireEZ team as the Senior Growth Manager in 2021. He came in with a developer mindset, always looking for data. But, there was one problem: the go-to-market team made decisions based on what Vu calls “fuzzy data.”
hireEZ needed actionable insights to learn how to target their ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and clarify customer profile data. As a former user of 6sense, Vu knew 6sense could do all that and more.
With full buy-in from the Head of Marketing, Shannon Pritchett, hireEZ implemented 6sense that same year, resulting in:
- 40% increase in open opportunities
- 19% decrease in sales cycle length
- 17% increase in inbound pipeline contribution
- Alignment across sales and marketing
Vu and Shannon explain why hireEZ’s former go-to-market strategy wasn’t working and how 6sense helped them launch account-based marketing (ABM).
The Challenge: ‘Fuzzy Data’ Guiding Decisions
Before implementing 6sense, hireEZ focused on two primary marketing plays: ad campaigns and sponsored events.
Vu says they spent thousands of dollars per month in Google Ads but weren’t tracking how the campaigns resonated with potential buyers. Although they weren’t losing money on paid ads, the ROI was low.
While hireEZ profited from the campaigns, Vu said the revenue team needed to understand how the ads performed and who their customers were. Further, hireEZ’s marketing and sales teams needed more alignment.
“When I came in, marketing did their own thing. They would send MQLs to sales, and that was the extent of communication,” Vu says.
Shannon adds, “Prior to 6Sense, we were stuck on traditional inbound marketing tactics that didn’t match our aggressive growth plan. We wanted to be more proactive and strategic to accelerate our customer acquisition process.”
hireEZ needed a solution to align marketing and sales and provide the actionable data necessary to understand their customers. Vu knew 6sense would prove the perfect solution since he used the platform in previous roles.
“6sense was the first thing I asked for when I joined hireEZ,” Vu says.
The Solution: 6sense Segments and Keywords
The first step hireEZ took in their new ABM play required getting to know their customers using 6sense segments.
“We were segmenting everything we could think of to get a clearer picture of our customers,” Vu says. “We’ve been training the model to learn who our user is and their journey.”
Plus, 6sense keywords show hireEZ which pain points are trending so their revenue team can conduct the right outreach, with the right message, at the right time. This deepened the understanding of their ICP and customer’s buying journey and also positively impacted sellers.
“We make converting easier for AEs,” Vu says. “So, for example, instead of handing them 20,000 MQLs to sift through, we give them 10% of that, but they convert at a higher clip.”
In the beginning, hireEZ’s marketing team primarily leveraged 6sense. But now the company is expanding adoption to align teams further.
Vu says hireEZ is adapting a POD-like methodology to the revenue channel as it’s been proven effective at delivering results in the software development realm. A Product Oriented Delivery (POD) model is a development strategy that centers on building small cross-functional teams that own specific tasks or requirements for a project.
Using 6sense data as a guide, a team including a marketer, sales development representative (SDR), and account executive (AE) will collaborate on a set list of accounts and related strategies.
“By focusing on a data-driven approach and hyper-targeting specific accounts we have successfully increased the effectiveness of our campaigns without increasing resources. Simply put, we stopped fishing in the ocean and now use a fish tank,” Shannon says.
The Results
“In less than two years, 6sense enabled us to change our whole revenue system, from individual contributors all the way to the C-Suite,” Vu says.
ABM was a foreign concept when Vu first joined hireEZ, but 6sense made it easy for the team to embrace a true account-based mindset. The results speak volumes:
- 40% increase in open opportunities
- 19% decrease in sales cycle length
- 17% increase in inbound pipeline contribution
In addition, 6sense has empowered hireEZ’s sales and marketing team members to work more collaboratively. hireEZ will continue to optimize their ABM strategies with a unified mindset.
