In Chapter 5 of No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls, Mark Ebert, Senior Vice President of Sales at 6sense, outlines a new era of selling, where “the path to running a high-performing team is vastly different than it used to be.”
“We now have data and tech at our disposal that can increase efficiency and attainment in ways that would have seemed like science fiction even 10 years ago,” he writes.
One big improvement is the availability of intent data, which helps tell you which accounts are ready to buy, what their problems are, and when to engage them.
By identifying accounts that show buying intent, you can:
- Narrow the number of accounts a rep needs to work
- Fairly allocate real opportunities
- Massively boost confidence thanks to much more attainable wins
For sales teams still relying on traditional techniques, familiar problems persist. And, as a result, when a salesperson doesn’t hit quota, you’ll still hear two justifications: “My leads were trash” and “My territory’s even worse.”
The clever collection, analysis, and application of intent data can change all that. Let’s take a closer look.
Salesfolk Aren’t Crying Wolf
Sometimes those complaints are excuses used by underperformers to soothe bruised egos. But, more often than not, your salespeople aren’t crying wolf. Current methods really are creating low-quality leads and territories where at least 50% of prospects aren’t a good fit for what you sell.
Even the savviest of salesfolk can’t overcome a combination of junk leads and a list of accounts not worth working. It’s time to stop the blame game and see these problems for what they are — symptoms of a broken system.
- Traditional lead scoring is a painful waste of time. It’s guesswork, relying largely on contacts filling out forms on your site. (Only 3% of website visitors fill out webforms.) Lead scoring is time-consuming, subjective, and also ignores the elephant in the room: today’s B2B buyer is a group, not an individual.
- Static territory lists, usually set for the year, are picked based on Total Addressable Market, revenue, and — if we’re honest — more then a few hunches. Depending on account size, lists can be shorter, or swell well into the hundreds. Either way, they lack prioritization, leaving it up to reps to decide which accounts to go after. It’s difficult to find a balance between providing enough opportunities and overwhelming reps with huge lists of every possible buyer.
Low-Quality Leads Create Misalignment
Traditional lead scoring and territory lists force revenue leaders to rely on intuition, guesswork, and experience — rather than data — to define the foundations of their programs. As a result, the definition of “quality” becomes a painful sticking point.
Sales reps ignore 80% of marketing leads, leading to finger-pointing and accusations of marketing wasting sales’ efforts and vice versa. This resentment can grow into mistrust and manifest itself in misalignment, further eroding the effectiveness of your revenue team.
So how do we avoid getting to this point?
The answer lies in objective quality scoring. It also hinges on creating territories based on data analysis performed by machine learning and AI. This way, both marketing and sales can be confident they’ve identified the best accounts and that they’re prioritizing them.
To illustrate how objective quality scoring and data-driven territory creation can transform a revenue team’s performance, let’s look at how 6sense customers apply this approach to achieve sales breakthroughs.
