Sage Software is a global organization for integrated cloud accounting, people, and payroll systems, committed to supporting small and medium-sized businesses.
By partnering with 6sense to shift their revenue team strategy, Sage brought forward:
- a 50% increase in opportunity creation
- over 4,000 newly engaged accounts
- over 1,000 accounts with increased engagement in a single quarter, and
- alignment across the revenue team
The Challenge
Before 6sense — and before adopting an account engagement strategy — Sage applied similar sales and marketing tactics to both their small and medium business segments.
The marketing team did their best to incorporate targeting strategies, but primarily they were running the same campaigns with the same messaging across the board.
The sales team would follow up as leads came into the organization, but they were not capturing the right audience.
They realized they needed to go back to square one and better understand their total addressable market (TAM) and ideal customer profile (ICP), start personalizing campaigns and outreach, and prioritize the right prospects at the right time.
Looking for the Right Fit
An ideal platform for Sage would help marketing identify accounts showing first- and third-party intent in order to run targeted campaigns that helped push them through the funnel.
Capturing intent signals was also important to allow sales prioritize their efforts on the right accounts, increase the number of opportunities, and ultimately close more deals.
Sage found the right fit with 6sense.
Targeted Marketing
With the ability to dynamically segment and target specific accounts, Sage’s marketing team gained complete visibility into their TAM and ICP.
That prompted the team to develop specific content tracks for different vertical markets. They leveraged the 6sense Company Details API to create dynamic, personalized landing pages on the Sage website with specific, targeted content.
The Sage marketing team used 6sense for display advertising targeted to specific accounts, with relevant messaging across verticals around the benefits of their platform.
They also created stage-based display campaigns that ran across the globe. Their stage-based display ads targeted accounts based on 6sense-predicted buying stage: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, or Purchase.
Shifting Sales Techniques
When 6sense was first deployed, the Sage marketing team spent time with their inbound and outbound sales team to ensure reps had a deep understanding of what intent data really meant.
This allowed them to create a framework around next best actions based on 6sense’s buying stage predictions — a framework that became embedded into their sales process.
On the other end, the Sage team also used 6sense to prioritize accounts showing high levels of intent but that had not yet been engaged. Based on the account’s keyword and intent data, the business development representative (BDR) brainstormed outbound activities in which they could target key personas with personalized content based on what the prospects were researching.
Gaining Confidence
The additional information gave the sales team confidence in their ability to help potential accounts.
Before 6sense, Tasker admitted, the Sage outbound sales team shied away from accounts where there was little background knowledge, as it was difficult to start conversations and immediately provide value.
After 6sense, Tasker explained, “Now, the sales team is able to have ‘warm’ conversations, knowing there’s intent there and the topics the prospect is particularly interested in. It’s made conversations a lot easier, as they can navigate the conversation completely around the prospect’s needs.”
Those techniques worked. Previously, the field sales team was reliant on marketing for leads and opportunities. A year after moving to 6sense, Sage’s sales team opportunity creation increased over 50%.
In a single quarter, they uncovered over 4,000 newly engaged accounts, and over 1,000 accounts with increased engagement — accounts and insights that would not have been uncovered had it not been for 6sense.
Another significant change Tasker mentioned was the increase in credibility and trust in marketing as an organization. With a comprehensive account engagement platform in their hands, the sales team saw that intent data worked, and reaped the benefits by engaging with the right prospects at the right time with the right message, at scale.
The Results
From dipping their toes into ABM to full-blown account engagement across 90% of their global team (and growing), Tasker said, “6sense has been incredibly, intrinsically valuable. It’s a huge win for us. We’ve scaled, we’ve aligned the business around a single go-to-market strategy and the power of 6sense is right in the middle of it all.”
With 6sense backing their ABM play, Sage Software saw:
- a 50% increase in opportunity creation
- over 4,000 newly engaged accounts
- over 1,000 accounts with increased engagement in a single quarter
- alignment across the revenue team
On the bond between sales and marketing, Tasker went on to say, “With 6sense, the trust and relationship between marketing and sales is now a lot stronger — it’s pulled the teams together and they both can see how the other team operates, and they are working together to achieve the same business goals.”
