Latest Research: How B2B Revenue Teams Understand Prospect Behavior

How much do you really know about your buyers?

Kerry Cunningham and Sara Boostani from 6sense Research recently surveyed B2B revenue teams to learn more about how sellers gather insights into potential customers. The results and analysis can be found in our latest ebook, How B2B Revenue Teams Understand Prospect Behavior.

Highlights from the Report

Data Gaps

• The average B2B form-fill rate is about 3%. As a result, 97% of B2B website traffic is anonymous.
• Only 26% of organizations surveyed currently de-anonymize non-form-fill web traffic. Unless you are de-anonymizing this traffic, you’re missing important clues about which potential buyers are researching you.

Incomplete Data Signals

• 23% of those surveyed are using only direct buyer intent signals (such as freemium signups, form-fills, or gated downloads), and are missing out on the additional context available from third-party signals (such as topics consumed on third-party sites).
• 27% of organizations rely entirely on individual-person signals to determine sales strategy, rather than tracking the behavior of an entire account to spot when multiple individuals are engaged in research.
• 39% of organizations don’t treat multi-lead accounts differently than accounts from which they have received just one lead. That’s a problem.

Implications

This research reaffirmed the fact that B2B buying decisions are made in groups, rather than by a single person.

Thanks to an abundance of available data signals, it’s possible to spot buying organizations with confidence — but only if you are making appropriate use of the available data. Survey results indicate that many organizations are underutilizing or misusing signals in ways that lead to wasted time and money.

The B2B community seem to be aware of these problems: Only 10% of survey participants believe their organizations have an ideal mix of buying signals.

Getting it right takes effort and resources. It starts with acknowledging the critical nature of buying signals — not just in obtaining them, but in analyzing and using them to make a stronger impact in your market.

Download our latest ebook, How B2B Revenue Teams Understand Prospect Behaviors, for more insights from the survey, as well as their implications.