The B2B Sales-Marketing Quick Action Playbook…
Chapter 1.
Winning Through Timely, Relevant Engagement
B2B sales success increasingly depends on early engagement with buying groups. With 69% of the buying journey complete before first vendor contact, the ability to identify and meaningfully connect with prospects during their early research phase - even when they’re not yet raising their hand - has become critical.
Richard Francis from Foleon emphasises this reality: "While an inbound inquiry obviously indicates strong interest, we know that only about 1% of our website traffic actively reaches out. The remaining 99% might be well into their journey—engaged with our ads, exploring our website, consuming content, watching videos—but haven't yet requested a demo or pricing." This highlights the vast opportunity to engage prospects before they formally reach out, by being visible and valuable throughout their self-directed journey.
Kosovare Lenjani from Spendesk reinforces the value of early identification: "I've consistently found that my most lucrative and attractive pipeline comes from inbound leads. The key advantage is that we're engaging directly with people who have already identified their problem and are actively seeking solutions." This insight underscores the importance of being present when buying intent begins to surface - even if the outreach hasn’t happened yet.
The importance of early signals is highlighted by Gary Young from VITRONIC: "Given that only about 10% of our market is active at any given point, identifying who they are and where they're located is crucial. Ideally, we'd like to know their job descriptions, what they're looking at on our digital properties, and how long they're engaging with our content."
Jamie Willey demonstrates how to approach this strategically: "I operate with an A, B, and C tier targeting strategy. Tier A is our short list of specific businesses and individuals I've strategically selected. Tier B is typically more sector-based, aligning with trends I've identified in our A-tier sectors. The C tier encompasses everything else - inbound leads, organic traffic, and referrals."
Alex Freeman from YouGov emphasises the value of intent data for meaningful engagement: "Intent data is particularly valuable when working with large companies where you could potentially be engaging with multiple buying centres across different regions. It would be really helpful to get at least some sort of regionalised intent data to see where interest is spiking."
The solution increasingly involves leveraging AI and intent data not just to engage early - but to engage intelligently, based on where each account is in their journey. Minco de Boer explains: "With generative AI, you can automate account research, and personalise messages efficiently by generating content tailored to the specific attributes of each persona. It is crucial, however that the team really thinks through the array of personas and use cases."
The key to winning through early engagement lies in marketing's ability to:
- Identify potential buyers before they raise their hand
- Provide relevant content that addresses self-guided research
- Enable sales teams with insights about buyer behaviour and intent
- Support personalised outreach at scale
- Maintain presence and credibility in key markets
Key Insights Recap
Buyers now conduct much of their research independently, with a wider range of stakeholders involved. Sales teams must engage with relevance and timing across the entire buying journey, rather than relying on outdated lead-based models or assuming all signals will come inbound.
Quick Action Guide
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.