Connecting Leads to Opportunities is Key to ABM Alignment with Kerry Cunningham, Research & Thought Leadership at 6sense

Connecting Leads to Opportunities is Key to ABM Alignment with Kerry Cunningham, Research & Thought Leadership at 6sense

Kerry Cunningham, Research and Thought Leader at 6sense

Kerry is former VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester and now leads Research and Thought Leadership at 6sense. 6sense is an Revenue AI platform that helps revenue teams identify and close more opportunities by putting the power of AI, big data, and machine learning behind every member of the B2B revenue team.

Kerry brings over twenty-five years of experience in B2B, spanning a broad array of industries and markets. As an analyst at SiriusDecisions and Forrester, he authored and co-authored a wide range of key models and frameworks, including the Modern B2B Revenue Waterfall.

In this episode of the OpsStars Podcast, Kerry Cunningham, Researcher and Thought Leader at 6sense and former VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester, joins Rachael to discuss the future of B2B Marketing and Sales including why now is the time to move past MQLs as a measurement of success and how to better leverage Opportunities to support buying groups.

Key Highlights:

8:44 – 9:31 – The next phase of B2B Marketing – Stepping past Demand Gen and ABM and saying B2B is about Accounts, period. Everything is ABM in B2B – so how do we identify buyers, see the signals of who is in market and use those effectively to get in front of them and influence them while also measuring marketing contribution much differently than we have in the past. The future is an aligned set of platforms or tools that can see buyers the same way across the cycle – marketing and sales seeing the same thing all the time.
10:44 – 14:18 – The Forrester Modern B2B Revenue Waterfall is Opportunity Based – Most companies have multiple solutions or can sell into an account multiple times, so if you’re only counting by the number of Accounts, you are off by an order of magnitude. Alternatively, if you are measuring success by Leads alone, you are doing yourself a disservice – it’s rare that you only have one lead per opportunity – you should be connecting all the leads together in an Opportunity.
14:19 – 18:36 – Start Opening Opportunities Earlier – MQLs should be matched to Opportunities early on so BDRs can understand all the active leads within an account and work within that context. This will help them prioritize which accounts to spend their time on and make their efforts more effective. To take it a step further, negative Opportunity Stages can be used to track, score and even automate Opportunity creation without much change to current pipeline tracking.
18:37- 22:39 – Where to Get Started – Start looking at your own Leads to Accounts ratio. A few will be single leads in accounts but the rest will not – they came in groups. Did that lead to an Opportunity being opened and closed-won at a higher rate than the single leads? Develop a picture to show what it looks like today. Ask questions like “if we’re marketing to multiple personas in an account – what does that look like if it works?” Then, “How do we notice and execute based on that?”
22:39 – 24:58 – Best Practices to Transition to Opportunities – Your ABM program is a great place to test and pilot or even try a hybrid approach. Keep your MQL model, but open an Opportunity, match leads to it, and have the BDR work them together from there. You can make the case over time to change how you approach follow up and prioritization.
24:59 – 35:55 – Why Now? – ABM with the old lead based system is missing the point and people are not where they thought they would be. Technology is improving and can help make the process more predictable. Using 6sense to see all the signals from 3rd party intent and anonymous traffic and then using LeanData to attach multiple Leads to an Opportunity allows you to get closer to seeing the buyers’ journey when it begins so that you can be more consistent where you engage.

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Rate & Review OpsStars Podcast

“Instead of talking about how many deals did marketing source, how many deals did sales source, we should be looking at how we get all of the opportunities possible to go through the optimal path into the organization. And what’s the best, most economical way providing the best customer experience to find those opportunities.”

Kerry Cunningham, Research and Thought Leader at 6sense

“Seeing all of these signals, all the third party intent, all of the anonymous traffic allows you to get much closer to seeing that buyer’s journey when it starts so that you can be much more consistent in where you engage.”

Kerry Cunningham, Research and Thought Leader at 6sense

“Operations folks are in this unique position where you understand the technology, and know the business. And when you can combine those two things, you have the ability to see creatively what’s possible.”

Kerry Cunningham, Research and Thought Leader at 6sense