The challenge
Your prospects are quietly researching competitors — and your competition is setting expectations and framing the conversation for potential customers. You need to make sure you’re being considered before prospects’ perspectives are set.
Tools you’ll be using:
The goal
Most prospects research quietly and form opinions before sales teams even know they’re in the market. This play is designed to intercept accounts as soon as they begin researching competitors. That way, you can you get your message in front of them during that critical research phase — when they’re still open to influence.
FireMon was one of the first 6sense customers to test Intelligent Workflows and saw a 50% increase in buyer engagement. We can’t wait to see how that translates into added pipeline as those accounts progress through their buying stages.
“Intelligent Workflows enables us to automate intricate, full-funnel buyer journeys with ease. This powerful multi-channel automation platform drives our digital, email, and social marketing campaigns by leveraging audience intent signals. It nurtures leads through their ideal, complex buyer journeys, allowing marketing to effectively warm up prospects before seamlessly handing them off to our sales team.”
How it works
Track your ICP for signs that they are researching competitors, and then launch personalized multi-channel campaigns across email, ads, and sales touchpoints in real-time. Intelligent Workflows enables you to set your strategy and let AI handle the execution and hand-offs.
Click-through interactive demo
Step-by-Step
1. Define your audience segment
Start by choosing the audience segment you want to reach with your campaign. In this case, 6sense is starting with accounts that 6AI™ has flagged as Best Fit accounts for our solutions.
Consider starting with a fairly broad segment definition. You can add decision nodes later in the workflow to filter companies. We’ll share more in Step 5.
For this workflow, intent signals have revealed that the accounts in the segment are researching one of several 6sense competitors. Later in the flow, we’ll narrow in on specifics.
Note the icons on the right pane of the click-through demo.
As you build your workflow, you’ll drag and drop different options onto your canvas to define how your automated GTM motions will work.
2. Sort the audience by buying stage
Time for the first Decision node. We’re using this one to separate our audience into early-stage vs late-stage researchers. Buying stage predictions are made by 6AI™, which combines over a decade of AI-powered analysis of B2B buying patterns with the behavior of past deals within your CRM.
Early-stage researchers researching a competitor are probably just starting to explore potential solutions. They’re unlikely to have a firm set of vendors to consider, so we’re going to treat them differently than we do late-stage accounts.
3. If they AREN’T a late-stage account
We add early-stage accounts to a Display campaign.
- If they engage… they are removed from the Display campaign and added to a Marketo lead nurture campaign.
- If they don’t engage… they stay enrolled in the Display campaign for 30 days before being removed.
4. If they ARE a late-stage account
This is where we start getting more specific about competitors. Using another Decision Node, we…
- Filter for which competitor the account is researching
- Enroll the account in a Salesloft cadence that is tailored to position 6sense against that competitor. A BDR works to reach decision makers within the account.
5. Let’s take a closer look at Decision node filters
You have a lot of ways to filter your audience to determine how accounts are handled. Use checkboxes to narrow your audience based on:
- CRM details
- 6sense intent and predictive signals
- Firmographics
- Technographics
- Industry
- Recent funding news
- Website engagement
- Campaign engagement
- Contact engagement
6. Edit a Decision node
Edit a Decision node by hovering over it and selecting the pencil icon. Add a description to make it easy to remember exactly how each node works — and so teammates can easily understand how each part of the workflow functions.
7. Set timers
Timers allow you to set how long as account should remain within a specific campaign. Conditional timers can be used to initiate campaigns based on account behavior, such as visiting a specific page on your website.
8. Publish your workflow!
Ready to see 6sense in action?
