Forrester B2B Summit — the premier gathering for marketing, sales, and product leaders — just wrapped up in Phoenix.
The sun-soaked city provided a vibrant backdrop for a hands-on, immersive experience designed to align, inspire, and empower entire GTM teams. Featuring over 50 interactive sessions across dedicated tracks, the event focused on:
- Changing generational buying behaviors
- AI’s influence in buying and selling
- Waning trust in product and service providers
- Preference toward self-guided interactions
While the entire summit was excellent, we wanted to share three highlights for those who may have missed them.
Session highlight: The next generation of intelligent automation
Jason Telmos, VP of Product Marketing Management at 6sense, delivered a compelling case study demonstrating how AI is reshaping sales and marketing.
Jason highlighted a critical challenge facing organizations: Buyers conducting more independent research and only reaching out when they’ve nearly made up their minds. This reality makes understanding the buyer’s journey more crucial than ever.
But creating a coherent buyer experience is challenging. As he explained, marketers are using various channels and tactics to meet buyers where they are, but it’s increasingly difficult because audience lists are often siloed, stale, and static. Most marketers aren’t able to create journeys that adapt to real buying behaviors.
This is why 6sense built Intelligent Workflows — to address these challenges by bringing everything together in one canvas. The new product uses the power of 6sense’s Signalverse™ and 6AI™ to move buyers dynamically through their journey based on actual buying signals.
Jason’s presentation showcased how this next generation of intelligent automation uses AI to optimize advertising as well as write, send, and respond to emails with contextual awareness. When combined with sales intelligence capabilities, these features help B2B organizations generate real pipe, not hype.
An Italian oasis amid the bustle of Summit
Forrester Summit is an action-packed event, full of incredible presentations and throngs of B2B leaders. But amid the learning and networking, it’s nice to have a quieter corner to gather your thoughts and engage in longer conversations.
That’s why 6sense set up Club6 — an exclusive spot at The Arrogant Butcher restaurant where guests could enjoy Italian treats, espresso, and Aperol spritzes while mingling at a more relaxed pace. We enjoyed 1-on-1 time with a ton of customers, and one of the biggest highlights for us was getting to connect with people, hear about their challenges, offer solutions, and share laughs.
We hope to see you at Club6 at a future event!
Session highlight: Intercepting buyers early
The breakfast presentation by Dara Such, VP, Customer Enablement & Data Strategy, Intent & Demand at Informa TechTarget offered data-driven insights from 6sense’s 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Report to explain why it’s important to start influencing buyers early in their journey.
The report revealed that:
- 81% of buyers have already picked a winner before they ever talk to a sales rep
- B2B buyers are nearly 70% through their purchasing process before engaging with sellers
- 85% of buyers have largely established their purchase requirements before reaching out
According to Dara, “Sales processes underestimate the importance of the research phase and focus on influencing deals once buyer contact has been established. That’s too late. Sellers are losing deals before they even have a chance to win them.”
This session emphasized how buying groups have evolved over the past two years, with more technical and business stakeholders involved and increasingly digitally-driven purchasing processes.
Dara reinforced that buying groups consume content about new technology and potential solutions before there’s even a formal project. Vendors that influence buyers early gain a significant advantage.
She concluded the session by discussing the powerful combination of Informa TechTarget and 6sense, bringing together two intent leaders to:
- Marry first- and third-party account intent to reduce false positives
- Expand visibility into active members of buying groups
- Directly engage and influence in-market buyers with content marketing
Looking ahead
The Forrester B2B Summit made one thing clear: B2B organizations must fundamentally shift their approach to engaging with buyers, harness new technologies, and implement strategies that put customers’ interests first. By engaging with buyers early and using AI-powered automation, organizations can position themselves for success in this new era of buying.
