The B2B Sales-Marketing Quick Action Playbook…
Chapter 5.
Leveraging AI and Intent Data for Sales Success
The strategic use of AI and intent data has become fundamental to modern B2B sales success. Sales teams achieving the highest conversion rates are those effectively combining technological intelligence with human insight to identify and engage prospects at the right moment.
Alex Freeman from YouGov emphasises the value of intent data: "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 and to understand if what we can sense from their web activity matches with what they're doing on our site."
Kosovare Lenjani from Spendesk shares their implementation approach: "We're implementing AI solutions to transform our lead qualification process and make our outreach more effective. The technology helps us understand buyer behaviour by scanning various data sources to identify high-intent customers. Rather than relying solely on basic engagement metrics, we're using AI to analyse broader indicators -- such as whether potential customers are downloading relevant content across different websites, hiring new finance team members, or securing new funding."
Gary Young from VITRONIC Machine Vision highlights the practical impact: "Tools like 6sense have shown us that interactions often come from unexpected departments and geographical locations. It's quite eye-opening to see the global nature of these interactions after we've engaged with a customer."
Minco de Boer describes the balance required: "With generative AI, you can automate account research, and personalise messages efficiently by generating content tailored to the specific attributes of each persona. Have AI create initial drafts of outreach messages based on past successful interactions. These drafts are then reviewed by sales teams to ensure they are relevant before being sent out."
Richard Francis from Foleon notes the strategic shift: "Being focused and going for an ICP where you probably are hopefully going to have high sales velocity and high sales efficiency... you're going from a volume to a value game that is going to fundamentally change the makeup of your funnel."
Luke Rogers from ComplyAdvantage highlights the data integration challenge: "A perfect example came from a recent lead from a major telecommunications company. During a conference call, I discovered that this contact had accumulated over 2,000 touches within our marketing ecosystem before requesting a conversation. Yet this valuable information isn't currently available in our CRM system."
Our survey reveals that sales leaders particularly value AI capabilities that:
- Predict purchase timelines
- Analyse topic and content affinity
- Track cross-channel engagement patterns
- Identify competitive solution consideration
- Enable real-time response to intent signals
Jamie Willey concludes with a practical perspective: "The key to generating high-quality leads lies in the pre-work phase. By setting clear targeting parameters using AI and intent data, I ensure that every lead should, in theory, be high-quality."
The key to success lies in marketing's ability to:
- Implement AI tools that enhance human capabilities
- Provide actionable intent signals
- Enable intelligent account prioritisation
- Support data-driven personalisation
- Maintain the human element in sales engagement
Key Insights Recap
AI can identify patterns that humans miss, and intent data reveals where buyers are in their journey. The most successful teams combine AI insights with human judgement to engage buyers at exactly the right time.
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.