Even though 6sense and other intent data platforms will promote a “predictive”: analytics platform, intent itself is not predictive. Intent data only reflects the current state of mind or interest of potential buyers, indicating what they might be looking for or considering. But it does not necessarily guarantee future actions or buying behavior (which is what “predictive” implies) as it doesn’t consider if a company is against outsourcing and if the account aligns with you operationally, executionally, philosophically and culturally.
- Intent data captures current activity.
- Intent data tracks online behaviors like website visits, keyword searches, and content downloads, which show what a person is actively researching at that moment.
- Intent doesn’t show what buyers will most likely do in the future.
- And, most importantly, intent data is not predictive that an account will grow with you vs. churn.
On the ABM Done Right Podcast, David Keene (European CMO at Wipro) mentioned:
“You do not want a big, wide funnel filled with intent-qualified leads and opportunities that do not move forward. Everyone focuses on MQAs and MQLs and they focus on getting accounts to pipeline. But. you want to focus on those accounts that have a very low chance of losing and a high chance of winning at a high ACV. If accounts do not progress and if they aren’t closing at a higher ACV or staying and growing with you – then what good is that MQA. The focus should be on revenue and customer lifetime value and not MQAs. You want the customers that will stay with you and grow and become the backbone of your business. You can listen to the podcast with David Keene here:
David’s thoughts are very similar to what Nora Conklin at Forrester mentioned on the Let’s talk ABM Podcast with Declan Mulkeen:
“We need to look beyond short-term pipeline goals and focus on building sustainable, profitable relationships with high-value customers.”
And, the thoughts by David and Norma are very similar to the thoughts of Norman Gennaro (former President of Global Sales at Zendesk:
Intent data and the buying signals that many GTM teams use will not help you focus on the accounts that will impact your ARR, GRR, NRR and customer lifetime value! As Josh McClanahan posted on LinkedIn, we need signals that are not a one-size-fits-all like recent fundraises, headcount growth, and job changes that are not unique to your business.
We Need to Layer ICP Signals on Top of Intent Data and Other Buying Signals
Intent should not be your biggest factor when it comes to account selection for ABM. Intent data does not always = real buyer intent, so we have to take the intent signals with a grain of salt. In addition, intent signals are not predictive of best fit and if the company will grow with you vs. churn.
In fact, intent-qualified leads tend to result in lower deal sizes as everyone is reacting to the same signals and predefined needs to the point that it becomes a cost-based decision for buyers. By focusing on the ICP, you can identify those accounts that are a best fit, match your business problem profile and are most likely ready for your solution even though they may not be showing intent. With these accounts, you can create the need and greenfield opportunity that leads to larger deal sizes.
To get predictive, GTM teams need to beyond the proxies they use to define their ICP. Many teams go into Zoominfo, 6sense and others and put in X industries, X size of companies, and maybe some technographics. They don’t speak to the characteristics that show why their most valuable accounts derive the most value from their solution and why these customers are staying and growing with them. They do not focus on the qualitative variables (the operational, executional, philosophical, cultural characteristics) that are most predictive of an account moving forward with them, staying with them and expanding with them.
We need to uncover:
- What are the characteristics of the accounts that provide the greatest growth now – and can provide the greatest future growth?
- What made them buy in the first place – what was happening in the organization?
- What are the characteristics of those accounts that provide good returns but have lots of potential for future revenue growth if they change their buying behaviors?
- What are the characteristics of those accounts that provide diminishing returns?
We need to take a deeper look at our existing accounts and build out our ICP profile and the problem profile for those accounts.
Your ICP is who you serve best, who gets the most value from you and who provides you with the greatest revenue growth. Your ICP is not who you can serve. That’s your serviceable addressable market (SAM). GTM teams are too focused on demographics and technographics vs. getting a better understanding of their existing customers to identify the common characteristics of their greatest wins.
Remember, focus is everything when it comes to successful ABM execution! We need to identify the right ICP characteristics and then identify and match the signals that correlate back to your predictive ICP so you can efficiently and effectively qualify and disqualify accounts for ABM.
Check out this client example:
Click here to read the case study
Click here to learn more about our ICP management program.
The Next Signal We Need to Layer on Top of Intent Data Signals are Business Problem Profile Signals…
There is a better way than the popular segmentation criteria that many GTM teams use. Leff Bonney, behavioral scientist, and Research Director at B2B DecisionLabs (a Corporate Visions company), led a research study to learn what segmentation criteria are most effective for predicting buying behaviors and, ultimately, opportunity wins and losses.
The researchers analyzed 111 past deals and surveyed those past buyers to determine which steps they took to reach a decision and purchase the vendor’s solution. They compared 6 segmentation factors: Personas – the role or personality of the decision maker, company size, past purchase history, industry verticals, problem profile, and trigger events. The two most accurate predictors of buying behaviors were the problem profile and trigger events.
When the team analyzed more than 6,000 opportunities at 20 different companies, they found that universally, problem profiles and trigger events are the strongest predictors of the buyer’s journey. The most common segmentation methods—buyer personas, industry verticals, and past purchase history, aren’t the best predictors of buying behaviors.
On the ABM Done Right Podcast, Jonathan Spier (CEO of Rev), talked about a client hat drives its most wins with accounts where the HR departments are overwhelmed. They uncovered signals that will prove how overwhelmed the department is. For example, they looked for signs of distress such as is the turnover in the HR function match the turnover at the rest of the company or is it particularly high, which signifies there is an issue that needs to be looked into deeper.
Jonathan also mentioned that companies buy for underlying reasons that are related to the pain they have, which is often related to the structure of their company, the situation that they and/or their markets are in, the products they sell – and the way those products are received by their own customers. When you tap into those underlying reasons, you can identify better, you can communicate better, and you can make a more meaningful connection. This is why teams need to look into exagraphics – the executional details of the organization and the business problem profile.
You can listen to the podcast with Jonathan Spier below:
The Next Signal to Layer on Top of Intent Data is Personality-Based Signals
ABM is not really about accounts – it’s about the human buyers in the accounts we want to win, protect and expand. So we have to understand the strategic priorities of key accounts (vs. pain points), gaps and the impacts on the strategic initiative, the impacts to the company and different departments and to the buyers. It’s about what the buyer’s are thinking and how we need to reframe their specific thoughts and ideas. Titles and roles do not buy. People do.
You have to understand the personalities of the people you’re engaging with.
- Influencers are great at consuming information, but they struggle with owning a problem. They’re learners. They may start a buying process, but they will not drive it.
- Those with the dominant personality will be your champions as they are driving a strategic initiative, which you can play a strong role in if you show them the impact you can have – and it connects to them. If you’re selling to a dominant, you must be within their window – and show them the role you can play in what they are already working on.
- The steady is the person who likes to be liked. They’ll talk to salespeople and consume time and content, but they are using it for their own purposes. They’ll never catch a pass, they’ll never make a call, they’ll never throw the ball. They only move when the team moves.
- Then you have the skeptic who’s very conscientious. They are subject matter expert. Salespeople shoot their foot with the skeptic as they do not have the research and data that’s needed to build credibility.
It’s not only important to understand the different personalities that make up the buying group but also how they interact with each other within your target organization.
Titles and roles don’t predict behavior. As mentioned above, some executives like to engage with sales, some prefer to avoid them. Some like to research deeply, others want shorter stories. And this occurs at all levels of the organization. Different people can drive decisions and it often has little to do with the title and role.
By applying personality-based signals, you can eliminate prospects and accounts that most likely will not respond based on the personality make-up of the organization. You will gain insights into which accounts have the best probability to convert. You can build the right content resources that meet the unique needs of different audiences and personality types – and predictably put the right content in front of the right audiences consistently. And, you’ll be able to predict the buying journey that will shorten the sales cycle.
The Account Insights to Add on Top of Intent for Greater Predictability
On LinkedIn, Laura Erdem at Dreamdata posted:
When you hit the core the right way, that’s when win rates go up, stage progression accelerates, sales cycles go faster, and deal sizes increase. When you align with your core, you build retention, you drive customer lifetime value, and expand with your core as you provide greater value to them.
Very few GTM teams align with their core as they rely on intent data from 6sense and other platforms that are just noise without contextual insights. Many GTM teams react to 6sense intent signals and website engagement data vs. responding by understanding why there may be intent in the first place. It’s the “why” that should guide content, communications, interactions and experiences. It’s the why that should guide if it’s an account that you should move forward with as intent data and other “signals” can give you a lot of false positives.
We also need to research to uncover “why” they may have been looking at your website so you can target with the right message that focuses on where the future customer wants to go vs. just provide additional thought leadership content based on what the prospect engaged with or reacting with content and messaging that focuses on industry and persona pain points that are related to where the intent lies. Because teams lack account-based insights, they fall back on “persona” and “industry” pain points. When you anchor on industries and personas, you stop focusing on the companies and people you need to engage with – and you start telling everyone’s story.
Because Uniphore failed to understand the account story – they struggled with accounts like Bank of America going dark after initial engagement. Uniphore’s sales and marketing teams failed to increase their relevance to named accounts as buyers moved along their journey.
By getting account insights that inform account-specific value props, content, messaging, interactions and experiences — Uniphore was able to re-engage with Bank of America and drive $500K wins.
Click here to read the case study.
Here’s the Account Intelligence That’s Needed to Add Predictability to Your Pipeline and to Deliver the Right Account Experience:
We need to gather the account insights that…
- Prove the intent, ICP and business problem profile signals to be true.
- Show there is an active strategic priority that we can play a strong role in.
- Help us understand the buyer’s situation and help us see if we have a relevant, differentiated situational story to tell vs. just an industry or persona story.
- Map out what the buying journey should look like to lead to a predictable win.
Click here to learn more about our account intelligence program.
Making Your ABM Program Predictable with the Accounts That Are Most Likely to Land and Expand
Jordan Adams (CEO of oneninefive) mentioned on Linkedin… The next great startups will sacrifice predictability for velocity (and profitability.) While I agree that there needs to be a greater focus on velocity and profitability, I believe that more predictability will get you to greater velocity. However, we would have to make our ICPs predictable and focus on ICP opportunities vs. intent-leads as Adam Schoenfeld at Keyplay talked about on our ABM Done Right Podcast:
We have to define the ICP in a way that it’s predictable that the accounts we’re targeting will most likely result in a high-ACV win and that the account will grow with us vs. churn. We need to go beyond intent and target opportunities that are often hidden in plain sight. We need to ensure that those hidden opportunities are most likely to close and grow with us because they match the characteristics of our best customers, they match the business problem profile and we have a differentiated situational story to tell. That’s the predictiveness teams need to increase sales velocity. So instead of sacrificing predictiveness, we need a new level of predictiveness that you can only get with ICP signals, business problem profile signals, personality signals, and account insights. You can get this combination with our ICP management program.
Click here to learn more about our ICP management program.
You can also book a call with us (below) to discuss our ICP management program and how you can get more predictive with your ABM program.