ThreatConnect stands at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation, offering market-leading solutions for threat intelligence operations and cyber risk quantification. More than 200 of the world’s largest enterprises rely on ThreatConnect to defend and protect their organizations.
But ThreatConnect’s traditional lead-based go-to-market market strategy fell short in empowering sales team members to identify accounts that were in-market for its solutions.
Enter Colin Cunningham, Senior Manager of Business Development, who says adopting 6sense not only refined their account-based go-to-market strategy but also remarkably reduced sales cycle length by 37% for its highest value ICP accounts.
Colin says ThreatConnect’s integration of 6sense and a harmonized approach has helped them:
- Identify and target “in-market” accounts for its solutions
- Take those identified accounts and get them into their sales funnel quicker
- Incorporate ABX into their outreach by understanding the buying center and formulating outreach surrounding those personas
- Identifying and capitalizing on their expanding addressable market
The Challenge: An Unfocused, Volume-Based Outbound Strategy
Before 6sense, ThreatConnect’s outbound strategy was purely focused on what type of account was being reached out to due to a lack of insights and data. Outreach efforts lacked personalization because they didn’t fully understand their buyers’ interests and needs.
“When I came on board, the go-to-market strategy was unfocused. The team lacked the tools and information to focus their efforts on the highest probability accounts,” Colin explains.
With no intent data, the only information available to sellers were revenue targets and job titles. Colin says, as a result, “We didn’t have any way to prioritize efforts. We didn’t know which stage deals were in and when they would close.”
The Solution: A Targeted Approach to Reach High-Probability Accounts
Now, 6sense is a crucial component of ThreatConnect’s ABX program. It serves as the central hub for aggregating account engagement and intent data in one place.
6sense’s AI-driven intent data gives ThreatConnect a better understanding of customer interests and buying stages, enabling precise outreach. 6sense also informs sellers of why, how, and when someone should be engaged.
Overall, Colin says 6sense equips ThreatConnect with the necessary account insights to build better customer relationships across all marketing channels, including email, paid advertising, paid display ads, gifting, in-person events, webinars, and BDR cadences.
The Key to Success: A Streamlined Tech Stack
One of the critical components of ThreatConnect’s ABX strategy is the technology ecosystem they’ve built with 6sense.
6sense’s integration with Salesforce enables marketing and sales to apply 6sense data across all efforts and is embedded into ThreatConnect’s reporting. This includes account priority scores infused with 6sense data to help marketing and sales select the best accounts to target.
Colin adds, “This used to take hours of manual digging from both the sales team randomly prospecting and the ABX head identifying recommendations. Now this is done in seconds.”
ThreatConnect has also moved away from cold outbound efforts toward more targeted efforts, with 6sense intent data as the guide. With 6sense, cold outreach opportunities have decreased by 2x, while intent-based opportunities have increased by 2.7x.
ThreatConnect also uses Pardot with 6sense Orchestrations to acquire new contacts, allowing them to target event invites more strategically and expand lead generation. The final contributors to a holistic ecosystem are G2, TrustRadius, and PeerSpot to identify in-market prospects who haven’t yet directly engaged with ThreatConnect.
Cutting the Sales Cycle Length in Half for a Large Enterprise Account
Within the first few months of implementing 6sense, intent data enabled ThreatConnect sellers to expand geographically and cut the sales cycle length in half.
For example, ThreatConnect’s average deal cycle length previously lasted about 6 to nine months, focusing on companies in the United States. But they closed a deal with a large enterprise company based in New Zealand in the same quarter it was booked as an opportunity using 6sense intent data.
“6sense put us in the right direction and showed us a fast-moving account ready to close. We wouldn’t have found a company in that region of the world without 6sense,” Colin says.
The Results: Improved Deal Velocity
With 6sense, ThreatConnect has seen better success rates and increased accuracy in predicting revenue. But the most dramatic impact has been on deal velocity. 6sense has equipped ThreatConnect with the necessary information to close deals in the same quarter booked, which was previously unheard of.
As of 2023, the full scope of ThreatConnect’s success with 6sense includes:
- Decreased sales cycle length for ICP accounts by 37%
- The number of engaged buying committee contacts has increased 3X since the ABX program started
- Average deal size for ICP accounts increased by 4%
“By focusing on the right accounts, we’ve seen a significant acceleration in our sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and an impressive increase in deal sizes. 6sense has transformed our ABX approach into a laser-guided missile — precise, targeted, and increasingly effective,” Arpine Babloyan, VP of Demand Generation at ThreatConnect, says.
